How to Respond to Facebook Reviews

Method 1: Reply to a Facebook recommendation

Recommended

First, the naming, because it trips everyone up. Facebook retired star ratings and replaced them with Recommendations, where someone chooses yes or no and writes why. Everyone still says reviews, but your Page says Recommendations. Replying is a comment underneath one, posted as your Page.

1. 1Wait an hour before you write anythingNot a day, an hour. The reply you write in the first ten minutes is the one you take down later, and on a review it sits there publicly while you work that out.
2. 2Open the Reviews or Recommendations tabGo to your Page as an admin and find Reviews or Recommendations in the tab list under your cover photo. If it is not there, it may be behind the More menu, or switched off, which is covered further down.
3. 3Work out which kind it isAngry but real, fake, mixed, or a rating with no words. Four different problems with four different replies, and treating a real complaint like a fake one is the most expensive mistake available here.
4. 4Reply once, in public, and keep it shortClick Comment underneath it and write. Take the complaint seriously, never dispute how they felt, and never argue. Post once. It goes up as your Page, not your personal profile.
5. 5Move the details into a messageOrder numbers, dates, and refunds do not belong in a public thread. Invite them to message you, where you can look their order up and where the whole internet is not reading.
6. 6Fix the thing, then leave it aloneSome people update their recommendation once it is sorted. Never ask them to. Asking is how a resolved problem turns into a second, angrier post about being pestered.

Method 2: Report a fake or abusive recommendation

The one case where replying is not your best move. Facebook can remove a recommendation that breaks its rules, including one from somebody who was never a customer. That beats any sentence you could write, and it costs nothing to try.

1. 1Check your own records firstBefore you call anything fake, look. Wrong spelling of the name, booked by their partner, ordered under a work email. Publicly telling a real customer they do not exist is a far worse review than the one you started with.
2. 2Report the recommendationOpen it, click the three dots in its top right corner, and choose the report or give feedback option. Fake reviews are handled as spam, so that is usually the right category. Harassment and hate speech have their own.
3. 3Report the account if it is clearly not a personClick the name to open the profile and use the report option under their picture. If Facebook actions the account, everything it posted goes with it, which helps every other business it hit.
4. 4Reply once, calmly, and then stopSay you have no record of them and invite them to message you. That is the whole reply. You are not writing to convince the person who made it up. You are showing the next reader that you checked and asked.

Method 3: Match the reply to the kind of review

There is no single template, and the businesses using one are obvious from the outside. Four situations, four shapes. The shape matters more than the wording, because the wording is what you change to sound like you.

1. 1The angry one star that is completely fairApologise for the experience rather than for a fact you have not checked, and move it to a message. Short. Every extra sentence here reads as a defence.
2. 2The mixed one, some good and some badThe easiest to answer and the most often ignored, because it is not urgent. Thank them for the good part, name the bad part without excusing it, and say what you are doing about it. This is the reply that convinces buyers, because it sounds like a person, not a policy.
3. 3The recommendation with no words at allSomebody said no and wrote nothing. There is nothing to answer, so do not perform one. A line inviting them to tell you what went wrong is enough, and occasionally it gets you the reason.
4. 4The glowing oneTen seconds. Thank them by name, mention the thing they mentioned, and stop. Do not sell anything underneath a compliment. It is the fastest way to make a real one look bought.

What a reply cannot do

Replying well is worth the ten minutes and it is the part of this you control. It also sits downstream of everything that already went wrong, and it is worth being clear about where it stops.

• It does not remove the review

  Only Facebook can, and only if it breaks their rules. There is no reply good enough to take a recommendation down, and nothing you can do about one that is simply true and unflattering.

• Turning the tab off is not the fix it looks like

  You can hide the Reviews tab in your Page settings, which takes every recommendation out of public view and stops new ones. It also takes the good ones and your rating with it, and buyers notice a business with no reviews section. A fire escape, not a strategy.

• It does not fix what caused the review

  A brilliant reply about a late parcel does not deliver the parcel. Replies are the last step, not the repair, and a business replying beautifully to the same complaint every week has a different problem.

• It only covers the slow half of your reputation

  A recommendation sits on a tab people reach by scrolling, and it waits patiently, which is usually fine. The comment calling your product a scam underneath a live ad is read by more people in an hour than your reviews tab sees in a month, nobody has to go looking for it, and it does not wait politely at 2am while you sleep.

A bad recommendation is one problem, and this page is how you handle it. The comments underneath your posts and ads are where most of the same damage happens, faster and in front of the people you are paying to reach. That half is the one we work on.

When it does not work

• Why can I not find the Reviews tab on my Page?

  Three usual reasons. It is behind the More menu under your cover photo rather than missing. It is switched off in your Page settings, possibly by whoever set the Page up years ago. Or your Page category does not offer recommendations, which is common for Pages that are not local businesses. Check your settings first, since that is the one you can change.

• Why can I not comment on a recommendation?

  Not every recommendation is public. People can leave one visible only to their friends, and one you cannot fully see is one you cannot answer. You also need to be a Page admin and to be acting as the Page rather than your personal profile, which is the switch people forget on mobile.

• Why did nothing happen after I reported a fake review?

  Reporting is a request, not a button that removes things, and most reports on a single recommendation go nowhere. Reporting the account behind it is usually the stronger move, especially if it has hit other Pages. Meanwhile, reply once, calmly, and let that reply do the work with readers.

• Why is my Page rating not showing?

  Facebook needs a handful of recommendations before it shows a rating at all, and only public ones count. If you recently switched the tab off and on, or your recommendations are mostly friends only, that is usually why the number is missing. Newer ones carry more weight, so the fix is slow and ordinary.