.png)
Quick answer: To respond to a negative salon review, reply within a few days, thank the client, apologize for the specific problem instead of defending yourself, and invite them to sort it out offline with a name and a direct way to reach you. Keep it short, human and free of private details, because the people reading it next matter as much as the person who wrote it. Then fix the cause, since many one-star reviews start with a phone call nobody answered.
A one-star review lands at 9:14 on a Sunday night. It's from a client you only half remember, upset that her color came out darker than she wanted, and she signs off with the words "never again." Your stomach drops. Your first instinct is either to fire back with your side of the story or to pretend you never saw it. Both of those cost you money.
A bad review isn't the end of that client, and it isn't really about that client anyway. The people who matter are the ones reading it next, the ones deciding whether to call you or the salon down the street. What you type underneath does more to win or lose them than the review itself ever could. Here's how to answer negative reviews so they pull clients toward your chair instead of away from it, and how to keep a good share of them from ever being written.
The client who wrote it may already be gone. The bigger loss is everyone who reads it next. Reviews are how people pick a salon now: in LocalImpact's State of Online Reviews 2026, a July 2026 survey of 1,068 US adults, 92% had read an online review in the past year, 67% check reviews before buying often or every time, and 88% have decided against a business after reading negative reviews. More than 78% said they won't consider a business rated below 4 stars. A prospect three blocks away can't judge your work from the chair. She judges it from a screen, from your star rating and the words underneath it.
The rating maps onto money, too. A Harvard Business School study by Michael Luca of Yelp restaurant reviews found that a one-star increase in rating led to a 5 to 9% increase in revenue, and the effect came from independent restaurants rather than chains. A salon isn't a restaurant, but it lives on the same local and repeat trade, so half a star can be the difference between a booked-solid Saturday and a slow one.
Yes, and this is the part owners miss when they decide a review isn't worth their time. The reply is public, and strangers read it as closely as the complaint. In BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (February 2026), 89% of consumers said they expect business owners to respond to reviews, 80% said they're likely to use a business that responds to all of its reviews, and 42% said they're unlikely to use one that never replies. Far fewer were likely to use a business that only answers its negative reviews (47%) or only its positive ones (45%).
What they read changes their mind. In the same LocalImpact survey, 78% said a thoughtful response to a negative review made them more likely to trust a business. A single one-star review with a calm, human reply beneath it can land better with a stranger than a profile where nobody ever answers. The complaint proves you are real. The reply proves you fix things.
Within a few days, and sooner if you can. A reply three weeks late lands about as well as no reply. In BrightLocal's 2026 survey, 81% of consumers expected a response within a week and 19% expected one the same day. LocalImpact's 2026 survey found that 70% expect a business to reply to a review within 1 to 3 days. Google's own guidance on responding to reviews leads with promptness, since a fast reply signals that you are paying attention.
A fast, personal reply also matters for the long run. A 2023 study in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (Wu, Ye and Chu) found that replying to positive reviews gives the clearest lift in future ratings, while replies to negative reviews have more mixed short-term effects but build trust and higher ratings over time when they are thoughtful, and that generic copy-paste replies weaken the effect. Turn on review alerts and give yourself one rule: every review gets a reply within a day or two, the happy ones included.
You don't need a crisis-communications background. You need a short, steady structure you can run every time, even when the review is unfair. Businesses that do this consistently tend to climb. In research on hotels on TripAdvisor by Davide Proserpio and Georgios Zervas, written up in Harvard Business Review, February 2018, hotels that started responding to reviews went on to get 12% more reviews, and their average rating rose by about 0.12 stars. Replying doesn't only soothe one customer. It lifts the whole profile that new clients are reading.
Your gut says to explain that she showed up 20 minutes late, that the color she asked for was always going to go dark over a box dye, that you did nothing wrong. Hold back. Google's best-practice guidance is to stay professional and skip the defensiveness. Open with a real acknowledgment, something like "I'm sorry your color didn't come out the way you pictured, and I understand the frustration." You aren't confessing fault to a jury. You are showing the next reader that you treat upset people with grace.
The public reply is not the place to settle a refund or relitigate the timeline. Move anything that needs back-and-forth to a private channel, and invite the client by name: "I'd really like to make this right. Can you call the salon and ask for Maria?" That does two useful things. It hands the client a clear path back, and it tells everyone else reading that a real person owns the outcome.
Skip the copy-paste. A reply that could sit under any review anywhere ("We value your feedback and strive for excellence") reads like a machine wrote it, and people can tell: in BrightLocal's 2026 survey, 50% of consumers said templated or generic responses make them unlikely to choose a business. Name the actual thing she raised, keep it to a few sentences, and sign it with a real name. Resist answering a dozen reviews with one recycled paragraph, because each one is being read by a different person deciding whether to call you.
Templates are a starting point, never a script. Change the details so each reply sounds like you and speaks to the actual complaint. Here are three example situations salons see all the time, with a reply that opens a door instead of slamming one.
"Paid $180 for balayage and it looks nothing like the photo I brought in. So disappointed."
"Hi Jenna, I'm sorry the color didn't match what you had in mind. That's the last thing we want after you trusted us with it. I'd love the chance to make it right, so please call the salon and ask for me, Maria. We'll get you back in with our senior colorist at no charge. Thank you for telling us."
"Had a 2pm appointment and didn't get in the chair until almost 3. My time matters too."
"You're right, and I'm sorry. A 45-minute wait isn't the experience we promise, and we've already looked at how we booked that afternoon so it doesn't happen again. I'd like to make it up to you next time you're in. Could you email me so we can set it up? I appreciate your patience."
"Tried calling three times to book and no one ever picked up. Went somewhere else."
"I'm sorry we missed your calls, and I don't blame you for going elsewhere. We were short-handed at the front desk that week, and we've since changed how we handle the phone so callers get a real answer. If you're ever willing to give us a try, call and ask for Maria and I'll take care of you myself."
Look at what that last reply admits. A lot of one-star reviews don't begin in the chair at all. They begin with a phone that rang out.
Answering a bad review well is damage control. It beats the alternative, but it is still cleanup after the fact. The higher-value move is heading off the complaints you can prevent, and a surprising number of them trace straight back to the front desk phone.
Read enough salon reviews and the pattern jumps out: "I called and called," "no one ever answered," "left a voicemail and never heard back," "couldn't get anyone to book me." Those aren't reviews about a bad haircut. They are reviews about not being able to reach you, and they are the most preventable one-star ratings on your whole profile. We dug into how many of these callers quietly give up in our piece on why salon callers hang up before they book, and how to recover the ones you miss with a missed-call text-back.
The fix is making sure the phone gets answered every time, including the evenings and weekends when a client is on the couch deciding where to go. That can mean better desk coverage, an overflow line, or an AI receptionist that answers every call, answers the caller's questions, and books the appointment while you're mid-foil. CallPad was built for that: every call answered, so the frustrated voicemail that would have turned into a review turns into a booking instead. When the phone stops dropping people, a whole category of negative reviews simply dries up. And the clients you keep happy are the ones who leave the five-star reviews that outnumber the occasional bad one and pull the next caller in. If a call does go wrong, here is how to handle an unhappy salon client on the phone before the complaint reaches Google.
Not every one-star review deserves a reply. Some deserve a flag. If a review is fake, comes from someone who was never a client, includes hate speech or a personal attack, or is spam from a competitor, it may violate Google's content policies for reviews and you can report it for removal. Do that first. If it sits there while Google takes its time, a brief, factual public reply ("We have no record of this appointment and have asked Google to review this post") protects you without dragging you into a public argument. Save your real energy for the honest complaints, since those are the ones you can turn around.
Open your Google Business Profile tonight and find the most recent review you haven't answered, good or bad. Reply to it before you close the app. Then set an alert so the next one doesn't sit for three weeks. The reviews will keep coming either way. The only real question is what the next person reading them sees: a salon that goes quiet when something goes wrong, or one that shows up, owns it, and asks for another chance. The second salon is the one that books the call.
The same structure works for day spas: answer quickly, apologize for the specific experience, and move the details to a private call or email. Med spas and clinics need one extra rule: never confirm that the reviewer is a patient or mention their treatment, results or costs in a public reply, even if they shared those details themselves. In a US Department of Health and Human Services settlement announced in October 2019, a Dallas dental practice paid $10,000 after its Yelp replies disclosed patients' names, treatment plans, insurance and cost information. If your med spa is covered by HIPAA (or by privacy law where you operate), reply in general terms, such as "We take every concern seriously and would like to talk with you directly; please call us and ask for the practice manager," and check your approach with your compliance adviser. For the phone side of a med spa, see how multi-location med spas handle phone calls.
In a group, each location usually has its own Google Business Profile, so its reviews sit with that location and are read by people deciding whether to book there. Agree one reply standard across the group: how fast to reply, who replies for each location, a short apology-and-offline structure, and when a review goes to head office. Then track which locations get reviews about unanswered calls, long waits or booking mix-ups, because those point to a fixable process rather than a bad stylist.
CallPad helps with the phone side of that. A shared number can book a caller into whichever location has the first opening, using the caller's history, the location they prefer, or by offering open slots at nearby locations, and it can move a booking between locations if the caller agrees. Each location can also keep its own line, and when a caller needs a person, CallPad transfers them to the right location's staff. It works even when your locations use different booking systems, and owners get one dashboard with reports for each location and across the group. Head office can set brand-wide prices, policies and scripts that franchisees can't change, and each franchisee sees only their own locations' data.
Pricing for salon groups is custom; contact us for a quote. For more, see phone setup and call routing for multi-location salons, central reservations for salon groups and CallPad for salon groups.
CallPad is an AI receptionist for salons, spas, med spas, barbershops and clinics in the US, UK, Australia and Canada. It answers every call 24/7 without adding staff hours, handles several calls at once and screens out spam calls. It answers questions from your own information, including your prices and policies, and speaks several languages. It books, moves and cancels appointments in real time on supported booking systems, including multi-service and group bookings, and can take a deposit or payment on the call or sell a gift card. It can also suggest add-ons, like a gloss, a toner or a deep-conditioning treatment, while it books. If you have more than one location, it asks which one the caller wants and books into that location's calendar. It replies to texts and can book by text, sends missed-call text-backs, texts clients on your waitlist when a slot opens up, and sends personalised reminders and thank-you notes. You can read call transcripts and listen to call recordings in the dashboard, and add a "this call may be recorded" notice to the greeting. When a caller needs a person, it can transfer the call or take a message.
Setup takes about 10 minutes, and you keep your existing number by forwarding it. CallPad also answers WhatsApp and email, and on WhatsApp it does everything the voice receptionist does, including booking, rescheduling and live transfer. Instagram, Messenger and TikTok are coming soon. Pricing is a flat rate with all minutes included, starting at US$150 a month in the US, £100 in the UK, A$200 in Australia and C$190 in Canada per location.
It books in real time with Mindbody, Booker, Zenoti, Square Appointments, GlossGenius, Setmore, Zoho Bookings, Phorest, SalonIQ, Salon Manager, Shortcuts, Simple Salon, Cliniko and Google Calendar. Mindbody works out of the box; if you use SalonIQ, Shortcuts or Salon Manager, contact CallPad to activate it. There's no CallPad Vagaro, Timely or Booksy integration yet; contact us and join the waitlist. Using Fresha or another system? Ask us. See all the booking systems CallPad works with.
You can hear what CallPad sounds like on a call before you decide.
Reply within a few days, thank the client, apologize for the specific problem instead of defending yourself, and invite them to sort it out offline with a name and a direct way to reach you. Keep it short and human, then fix the cause.
Yes, and to the positive ones too. In BrightLocal's 2026 survey, 80% of consumers said they're likely to use a business that responds to all of its reviews, and 42% said they're unlikely to use one that never replies.
Within a few days, ideally within a day or two. In BrightLocal's 2026 survey, 81% of consumers expected a response within a week, and LocalImpact's July 2026 survey found 70% expect a reply within 1 to 3 days.
A thank-you, a short apology that names the actual problem, what you're doing about it, and a named person and direct way to continue the conversation privately. Leave out arguments, blame and any private client details.
Use them as a starting point only. In BrightLocal's 2026 survey, 50% of consumers said templated or generic responses make them unlikely to choose a business, so change the details so each reply speaks to that review.
If a review is fake, comes from someone who was never a client, or includes hate speech, personal attacks or spam, it may break Google's content policies and you can report it. Otherwise, a calm, professional reply is your best response.
Reply in general terms and never confirm the reviewer is a patient or mention their treatment, results or costs. In a 2019 HHS settlement, a dental practice paid $10,000 after its Yelp replies disclosed patients' details. Check your approach with your compliance adviser.
Agree one reply standard for every location: reply speed, who replies, an apology-and-offline structure and when to escalate to head office. Track which locations get reviews about unanswered calls or booking mix-ups, because those point to a fixable process.
Make sure every call is answered, including evenings and weekends. CallPad answers every call 24/7, answers questions, books the appointment during the call and sends a text-back if a call is missed.
CallPad starts at US$150 a month in the US, £100 in the UK, A$200 in Australia and C$190 in Canada, per location. It's a flat rate with all minutes included, so a busy month doesn't change your bill.
Want fewer reviews that start with "nobody answered"? Contact CallPad to hear how it would answer your salon's calls and get set up in about 10 minutes.
We use cookies for analytics and ads. Accept or reject non-essential cookies. Privacy policy
