Online reviews are an important aspect of your business, whether you want them to be, or not. Good or bad, they are not something you can simply opt out of. And yes, managing them can be a daunting task.

Depending upon the size of your business, the number of locations, and the volume of reviews you receive, you will need to optimize, prioritize, and be very selective in vetting which reviews to respond to, and how.

For large organizations with numerous locations, and a high volume of reviews, the objective may seem insurmountable. Having a clear and defined strategy is a must. You don’t need to respond to every review, but you do need to define what reviews are important to your business and to consumers, and how you will identify and respond to them.

Where do you begin?

This quick-start guide will provide the framework you need to begin establishing an online review reputation strategy.

Decide If You Need to Respond

First, not all reviews require or need a response. If the review includes derogatory or degrading comments and the language and opinions are irrational or the reviewer is a “regular or frequent” complainer, it may be better left alone.

Additionally, if the comment or review is found on a small or obscure website, and is biased or unfair, you may be better served to leave it alone rather than draw attention to it.

On the flip-side of this, ALWAYS respond to legitimate and genuine concerns and opinions, negative or not.

Dealing with Negative Reviews

No matter how careful you are about your customer experience, a simple fact of life is that bad reviews will happen— there’s even an entire YouTube series devoted to how ridiculous one-star reviews can be. Try not to take anything personally, and recognize that there’s probably something truthful and useful to what a disgruntled person is saying, even if they could have said it a different way. When it comes to review responses, as Chris Carlson says, “You must be authentic to be credible.”

With negative feedback, you need to take the HEAT. This commonly-used customer service acronym is a great guideline for how to deal with a customer who may be emotional about what happened and make them feel like they’re taken care of. The four steps are:

• Hear them out
• Empathize
• Apologize
• Take action

Hearing your customer out takes care of itself in this example, because they’ve already written their review, but it may be useful to give them space to provide more details. Empathizing means acknowledging their experience, regardless of whether you think those emotions are justified or not. Once you show that you empathize, you should apologize for their experience— it matters. Again, this has nothing to do with who is right or wrong. You don’t want anyone who comes to your business to have a bad experience, right?

Read More: How to Manage Online Reviews for Your Business – A Quick Start Guide