The holiday season it seems is making Flipkart’s team rusty too. I say this after I read Pluggd.in’s analysis of Flipkart deleting a bad customer review on their website (Woikr reported it first).
Here’s the whole issue in short:
A customer bought a 1 Lac+ Samsung LED TV on Flipkart. He got it delivered on time, but did not get the specified Blu-Ray discs (theywere for free). Flipkart called him up and asked for some other titles as the ones specified were not available, but still the discs were not delivered.
The customer, surely disappointed wrote a negative review on Flipkart which was deleted by it soon after. The reason which Flipkart cited was that the reviews on their website is only for the product and not for the whole buyer-experience. This is crap as far as I can figure out.
Now, that’s not the actual issue about which I sat to write today. Many blogs have covered it by now. I am writing this post to tell why deleting customer reviews is bad for business. Here’s why:
Lose customer’s trust: I’d trust a vendor more when I see both positive and negative reviews on its site. It simply shows the universal rule that no one is perfect. And, belive me I won’t stop going to that restaurant just because I see one bad review. There are countless good reviews accompanying it as well. So, basically Flipkart shouldn’t have deleted the review. Instead it should have responded there itself which would have created more confidence in the Flipkart team amongst consumers and would have also prevented from spreading bad word about it – which sadly is the case after that one incident.
Deletion meant a permanent dent in Flipkart’s image: Belive it or not – this one small issue has made me a little skeptical about Flipkart. Maybe, the time I buy something online, I could rather use Letsbuy.com and not Flipkart. I say this as I haven’t read anything bad about them, but the post about Flipkart makes me a little apprehensive about this customer issue. I don’t want to undergo the same thing. Above all, the deletion part just shows that Flipkart is hiding away from the whole issue. Good brands admit mistakes. And they better on it. That creates customer trust. If Flipkart would have commented below the bad customer review and tried solving the problem from there itself, it would have not seen so many blog posts being written about the whole issue. And the very customer who bought the TV set would have really enjoyed the Flipkart experience (albeit his problem got solved) and would’ve recommended the whole experience to his friends.
How Flipkart Should Have Handled the Negative Review
I am not too sure if I am the expert on this topic, but here’s my say:
- Flipkart should try and identify unhappy customers even before the product is delivered. The customer care team here needs to play a very important role. They should be able to identify customer grievances quick and apply remedy even quicker.
- Flipkart and other brands should always respond to negative reviews with sincerity, consistency and transparency. They should rather explain how the whole problem cropped up rather than deleting. They could very well take a note from Pepsi’s Facebook page where even the bad comments are not deleted and left on the wall for millions of people to see. So, basically I won;t stop shopping from you if I read just a bad review. But yes, I could stop shopping if I undergo a bad experience. And, trust me when I say that Flipkart lost that buyer by deleting his review – they did lose him.
- Flipkart should encourage their happy customers to post some reviews as well rather than their own team posting reviews on other sites as reported by Pluggd.in in the same post.
- Also, if they try creating an opportunity from that one bad review – they’d have done more good. Companies should always see it in a positive light. Bad reviews are a reminder or a nudge saying that here’s where you need to better. So, taking the cue from a negative reviews should be as important as celebrating when you get to see many positive ones.
I think Flipkart and other startups would follow the above advice. Customer service, or should I say customer experience can make startups/companies the king or the pauper – the choice is theirs now.
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