That feeling, oh, that feeling. You know the one. You go to a restaurant and the service is abysmal, the lobster bisque is cold, and the iced tea is hot. You roll up your sleeves, roll up the tiny sleeves on your finger and thumbs, and you proceed to lay into Friendo’s Nosh and Nibblets, detailing your subpar experience with vim and vigor, and you garnish the whole thing with a big sour ONE STAR.

Ohhh, do you ever feel good. You got’em. You did the only thing you could. You shouted anonymously into the internet.

And then the owner replies.

Because your review wasn’t anonymous and it wasn’t shot out into a dark dimension, where only the eyes of potential customers might see it. It landed in the inbox of the business owner. And while some businesses are too busy, or don’t see the point, or consider themselves above responding to reviews, other businesses sit down just like you, roll up their thumbsleeves, and write a review response.

But just like when you write a review, an owner’s reply can be hot, cold, or indifferent.

The Types of Owner Responses

The Glad-Handers

Let’s start with the ones I hate the most. The smarmy, the saccharine, the simply insincere. These responses are just as likely on positive reviews as they are on negative ones (unless they are very obviously ONLY on positive ones), and are often reflective of new management trying way too hard or an owner who is way out of touch, but took part in an expensive conference with all the information a YouTube video could’ve told them, and now they think responding to reviews is THE WAY.

They’re hokey or jokey or just way too plain. They refer to the person by name but feel very impersonal, especially when you see how it can be a simple copy-paste situation.

Here are some non-copy-pasters that still end up being very cringe-inducing:

It feels gross, doesn’t it? It’s not always easy for people to respond to compliments or to criticism, but when it happens this way, online, it’s even more awkward.

Don’t be like this business owner. If something is egregious, reach out. If not, leave it be. And don’t just assume William, Wilfredo, and Douglas are cool with you calling them Bill, Will, and Doug!

The Corporate Line

These are big businesses. Franchises. The ladder goes way, way up in these places, and somewhere up there, some team put together a bunch of words they deem appropriate to handle each and every situation that each and every reviewer might post.

These are repetitive and lean heavy on the copy-paste, broad stroke style, but you know it’s just someone doing their job, that somebody told them to sit and reply with these responses, then check to see if they actually send something to the corporate email. It makes it less grating, because it’s at least more honest than the Glad-Hander approach.

Good or bad, they kind of sound the same. They treat everyone with respect, and even if new employees filter into responding over the years, it will still sound like the same “voice.” Not a greasy owner, which is good, but also not a firecracker of an owner. Though rare to spot in the wild, those are something special.

The Loose Cannon

Sometimes you need to take justice into your own hands, and that’s what loose cannon owners do. They understand the internet just enough to get petty about what people say about them online. That, or they have a sarcastic young employee they should monitor better. Because loose cannons go OFF on people, and it’s a spectacle to witness.

A reviewer dropping a One Star might think that’s the last word, but owners have power, too. Power to drop bombs like this:

When you own the business outright, when it’s not a corporation, just you and you alone that the reviewer is dragging through the mud, there’s no one to stop you from going off like that. You have all the freedom to do so. That’s what the internet is for, for airing grievances, slights, and differences of opinion.

And for oversharing information:

You know the details, you’ve got the receipts, and you know the customers by name if not by face. That’s a lot of power, but it can be wielded for good as well.

That’s personalization. That’s customer service. That’s happiness on both sides of the review.

And that’s what we’re all after. Even with owner responses that are a bit bristly, the end goal is to make people happy. Or to tell them to never come back. Either way, know that people see what you do when you review, and not just your fellow customers. Out there in the wilds of the internet lurk business owners, ready to tear you apart just as quickly as you’d tear into them.

The only question is: who’s hungrier?