

Ask HN: What can you do with bad reviews? - launic

Actually the full question is: "What can you do with bad reviews when improving the situation does not depend on you?" For example in our case people ask for more television channels on our platform, but so far we could get approval from only one European channel.<p>We decided to release the application with only one channel with the hope that by gaining a significant number of registered customers we shall be able to convince other TV stations to join.This seem to get us a lot of bad reviews.<p>Which is the best way to handle them? Is it better to respond to them, trying to explain the situation, or is better to simply ignore them.<p>What I did this evening (making fun of them) does not seem wise, but it helped me cool off. Here is the link to my reply and to some of the reviews:<p>http://store.ovi.com/content/680C42A2A122F8CCE040050A85325203?clickSource=homepage#/content/680C42A2A122F8CCE040050A85325203/reviews
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kevinholesh
Let me get this straight. You're making fun of your early adopters, the ones
who tried your product and gave their honest feedback.

These are the ones you want talking about your product, getting TV stations
behind it. Making fun of them is a great way to kill your company early. It
may seem like fun now, but it won't be fun when none of them visit ovi.com
again.

Turn them into your loudspeaker. Get them talking to the TV stations saying
that they want their content on _your_ product. The last thing you should be
doing is criticizing them for your marketing problems.

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icey
Don't ignore your users, recruit them.

If your customers want more channels and the bottleneck is a TV station, let
your customers know that you want to add new channels as well. Let them know
that you haven't had much luck getting things done, and if they (your users)
wanted to help, they could send an email to so-and-so at the TV station.

I'm a little amazed that you think it's even remotely OK to deride your users.
Those are the people you work for, you know. If you treat them poorly they're
likely to fire you.

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pierrefar
Oh man. Never make fun of users.

Instead, thank them for taking the time to write feedback, explain the
situation, and (here is the most important bit) tell them what they can do
about.

For example, set up a petition online asking a TV channel to open up on your
platform, and ask them to sign it. Or give them address to a decision maker
(could be a politician for example) and ask them to write to this person.

You can take this a step further: if a user says he/she works for a TV channel
and is sad it's not there, ask them who you should talk to and ask for a
referral. Likewise if they have a friend who works there.

You'll need a public page to manage these efforts that is the first port of
call and one reference for everything. Say domain.com/more-channels . Anyting
descriptive and memorable will do. On this page, write that this page is for
helping users get more channels on the platform, and give them references
along the tips I mentioned. ANY TIME you engage a user about this topic,
provide a link to this page.

And don't forget to give your contact details on this page.

Good luck.

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makecheck
I haven't figured out why, but far too many people will (often anonymously)
publicly eviscerate a product when they find a problem, without actually
bothering to contact the maintainer for help.

It's sad, because there is often a perfectly valid reason for the issue; and
the fix is often trivial, or at least, explainable.

There are a few defenses against unjustifiably-bad reviews. (I have had to
deal with this personally.)

First, if you can become a member/poster on the forum with a rant against you,
do it. Post a reply that identifies you as associated with the product, and
clarify whatever the customer has apparently misunderstood; or, if it is a
bug, instruct the person on how to provide more information to have the
problem fixed. There is little chance that the fuming anonymous poster will
ever see this, but they might; and either way, it shows others that you are
doing your best to deal with the problem.

Second, forums sometimes have moderators who will accept complaints and remove
remarks. Rants are often obvious; for instance, if everyone except one fuming
moron is giving you 5 stars, a moderator shouldn't have any problem removing
the offending post.

And third, be vigilant. It can be disheartening to have people publicly
destroy your product, and sometimes all you can do is just keep working and
make it better. At some point, the bad press will fade. It may well have
caused some damage to your product's appeal in the short term, but in the long
run your name will be considered one of the good brands.

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DanielStraight
Anything but what you did. That's about the worst thing you could've possibly
done, so anything else at all would be a step up.

What the reviews indicate is that your product description is misleading. They
aren't upset because you only have one channel. They're upset because they
were deceived. If deception and derision are your idea of marketing, the
sooner your product dies the better.

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sammcd
For this specific situation it is good to address the issue. However, you need
to take ownership. This situation _does_ depend on you. Getting channels _is_
your problem.

The best way to address the issue is to work on the product. This isn't a bad
review, this is a good user feedback.

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colinplamondon
Wow, you came across as an enormous dick. If I saw that on a product I was
considering I would high-tail it away and purchase a competing product.

When someone tells me that my company's book app sucks because it doesn't have
Twilight or Harry Potter, the answer isn't that they need to read the
description. The answer is to apologize, explain the reasons we can't offer
those titles, and offer a refund, no questions asked. I get at least three
emails like that a day, too- we've only had one person to date ask for the
refund. If you're nice to your customers, they're nice to you.

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pclark
its always better to engage the customer and explain and address complaints,
why would you think you should do anything else?

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ekpyrotic
Your response is outrageous. Simply inexplicable.

