Notes for owners · Branding and communication
How to handle bad employee reviews online
Reply once, factually, to a former employee's bad review, fix what is true, and leave out argument and deletion requests. Includes a worked reply and wording for three more common complaints.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 5 min read
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A former employee has posted a one-star review, and by evening three people have forwarded it to you. Reply once, calmly and factually. Say what you checked and what has changed, and fix whatever is true. Do not argue, do not name the person, and do not ask staff to flood the page with praise. You are not writing for the reviewer. You are writing for the candidate who reads it a year from now and wants to see how you behave when someone says you got it wrong.
Why the reply matters more than the review
A candidate cannot check a bad review. What they can check is your reply. A defensive one tells them the criticism may be true and the employer cannot take it. A calm one that says what was looked into tells them the opposite, even if they still think the reviewer was right.
Deleting or hiding, where it is possible, can be worse. Reviewers notice, take screenshots and post elsewhere. Staying visible and sensible is safer.
Sort it before you write: true, partly true, or no record
Do the checking first. Find the person's role and dates, ask the manager involved, and read the record. Do not write while angry; the first draft is for yourself and goes in the bin.
Many reviews are partly true. Sorting into these three decides the reply.
| What you find | Say in the reply | Keep out |
|---|---|---|
| True | What you found and what you changed, and who now owns the change | Excuses, blaming a vendor or the bank |
| Partly true | The part you recognise, plainly, and the part you cannot find a record of | The reviewer's attendance, performance or reasons for leaving |
| You have no record of it | That you have none, and a way for the reviewer to write to you | Calling the person a liar |
A reply that promises a change nobody owns is worse than silence. Decide who does what before you post.
The shape of the reply
Four sentences are enough, in this order: acknowledge the point without grovelling, say what you checked, say what changed, and give one way to reach a named role. Do not paste a template, because a reply that matches another company's word for word looks like one. Sign it with a role, not a name that sounds like a department.
A support centre in Bhubaneswar
This is an invented firm, not a client. It runs a customer-support centre with around a hundred and twenty seats and two night shifts. A former agent posts: the pick-up cab did not arrive for three weeks, and the team leader told them to arrange their own way home.
The owner's first reply says the agent "had eleven absences in the quarter and the cab vendor's log shows every trip on time". It is long, it puts the agent's attendance on a public page, and it tells every future candidate what the firm will do with their records if they complain.
The reply that replaced it reads like this: "Thank you for raising this. We checked the pick-up logs for those weeks and found trips that did not run as scheduled. We have changed the vendor's reporting so that a missed pick-up reaches the operations head, and team leaders no longer tell staff to arrange their own transport. If you are willing, please write to [address] so we can hear the dates." The owner also checked what the team leader had said, spoke to the team leader, and paid the agent's reimbursement claim.
Two things happened to the review. It stayed, one star and all. And the second reply gave candidates something to weigh, since it stated a change and a contact.
The log, once checked, did not support every detail of the agent's account. The owner left that out, because a public reply is not the place to settle a dispute over dates.
Reply wording for other common complaints
Adapt these. Do not paste them.
- Late salary or reimbursement. "We checked and the delay in [month] came from our approval step. We have changed who approves it and when. If anything is still pending, write to [address]."
- A manager's behaviour. "We are sorry this was your experience. We take reports like this seriously and have spoken to the team involved. If you are willing, please write to [address] so we can hear the details."
- Hours and time off. "Our busiest periods do run long and we should have said so clearly. Job posts now describe it, and time off afterwards is [what is true]."
What not to do
- Do not ask your staff to write praise. It is easy to spot and may break the site's rules.
- Do not reply from a personal account, pretending to be a customer or an employee.
- Do not threaten legal action in public. If you think a claim may be defamatory, speak to your own legal adviser first, because whether it is and what you can do depends on the facts.
- Do not reply to the same review twice. If the reviewer answers back, leave it.
Some reviews should get no reply at all: abuse, or a review that belongs to another company. Report them through the site's process and leave them.
Patterns, and your next step
No reply fixes a pattern. Once a quarter, read all your reviews together and write down what keeps coming up: pay timing, transport, a particular manager, onboarding. Fix the first cause, and then say so on your careers page. For how candidates read your page before they reply to an offer, see what candidates check before accepting an offer.
Pick the oldest open review, mark it true, partly true or no record, and fix one cause before you reply to the next. The employer branding hub links the rest. If you want help with both the replies and the fixes behind them, online reputation management is the service nearest to that, and you can tell us what you need.
