There’s only one thing worse than getting berated by a resident on site – getting berated on a review site. 

When words are put on paper, they’re much more powerful than when they’re said to us in the heat of the moment. That’s because we can say something we don’t mean much more easily than we can write. When we write it, we probably mean it. 

That’s what makes multifamily reputation management so hard for anybody who works for an organization they love and believe in. The moment you read a negative review from an angry resident, you feel it to your core, whether you were involved in the situation or not. You might feel angry, annoyed, hurt, sad, confused or any other negative emotion for that matter. 

But that emotion won’t serve you well when you sit down to write a response to that review. That’s why we recommend hiring a third-party to respond to reviews. However, if you are tasked with writing the response yourself, you’ll need some strategies to manage your emotions. Here are a few I’ve seen work:

Of course, you could just hire a third party to respond to your portfolio reviews and avoid all this mess. But if that’s not in the cards, you have to find a way to tame your emotions if you want reputation management to work for you rather than against you.