Some customers have legitimate complaints. Others are just itching for a fight--or a refund. How to respond.

For many small businesses, a solid online reputation provides a gateway for virtual word-of-mouth referrals. Unfortunately, a negative review--especially one that is articulate and engaging--on Yelp!, TripAdvisor or Amazon, can have an outsized impact on a small company.

I found one of the best public responses to an irate customer complaint from Savusavu, Fiji. The respondent was Tige Young, CEO and owner of the Tui Tai Expeditions, cited by National Geographic as "one of the best adventure travel companies on earth."

With an excellent online reputation, it would be understandable if Tige chose to disregard the occasional negative review. However, rather than ignore discontented customers, Tige does a masterful job of crafting rebuttals that are informative, appropriately deferential and amusing.

Bipolar reviewers

The reality of customer reviews is that, in most cases, the people who take the time to share their thoughts online either had a euphoric experience or were extremely dissatisfied. Thus, online customer reviews tend to be either highly positive or grossly negative. This is certainly true for Tui Tai Expeditions. Of its 51 reviews on TripAdvisor, 40 are extremely positive, giving the company five stars. Only three customers voice negative opinions.

I was particularly impressed with Tige's response to this irate customer's review, posted on TripAdvisor under the heading "Very Disappointing." In it, the customer complains about, among other things, the food and the variety of activities available on the trip. Tige politely addresses the customer's concerns, while firmly supporting the veracity of his company's value proposition. Here's how he does it.

Tip #1: Authentic, not corporate.

When you read Tige's comments, you can picture him having a calm, polite conversation with the "very disappointed" honeymooners who wrote the negative review. His reply is not perfect, but neither are real people's conversations.

Start-ups should similarly communicate in an intimate and friendly tone, and avoid the off-putting formality of a corporate spokesperson. Of course, the relative degree of formality should be consistent with your company's marketing voice. However, when dealing with angry customers, overt formality can be misinterpreted as bureaucratic insensitivity.

Tip #2: Pander, don't preach

When addressing complaints via social media, your intended audience is not the person who feels they were wronged. Rather, you should indirectly speak to the potential future customers who will consider the negative review, and your response, when assessing the purchase of your start-up's product or service.

Tip #3: Counter, don't call out

When a customer says something untrue about your business, it is more effective to show an inconsistency between his or her complaint and his or her action,s rather than calling out the customer as a liar. In Tige's case, he notes that the disappointed honeymooners were offered "the choice to disembark and move to any number of nearby resorts, OR to stay onboard for 2 additional days. The reviewer chose to stay onboard for 2 additional days. That did not strike us as an indication of dissatisfaction."

Tip #4: Deferential, not defensive

No matter how rude or unsavory the negative comments, always treat your customers (even pissed-off former customers) with deference and respect. Even when there is little chance of winning back their business, keep in mind that your conversation is being held in the public square and will be accessible online for many years to come.

Tip #5: Break it down. Never rant.

Tige addresses each aspect of the customer's complaint in a compartmentalized manner, just as a skilled lawyer refutes a hostile witness' adverse testimony. Rather than force the reader to dig through a dense rebuttal, he clearly outlines his counterarguments by using headings to denote his response to each topic raised by the dissatisfied customers.

Tip #6: Humorous, not humoring

Realizing that his primary audience is his future customers, Tige uses humor to undercut some of the more ludicrous aspects of the reviewer's diatribe. For instance, when responding to a complaint about the weather, Tige notes, "That trip was indeed affected by heavy rain. Still, passengers were able to complete nearly every activity scheduled. Better weather certainly makes it a better experience, and try though we may, we haven't found a way to control the weather : )." Yes, Tige included a smiley face in his response.

Tip #7: Take ownership, not umbrage

Although Tige cannot control the weather, he willingly claims ownership of the aspects of the honeymooners' trip that he could influence, writing, "As an owner, Service is one of those areas we can control (unlike the weather), and it's the area I care about most." He then defends the quality of the service provided by stating the results of a contemporaneous survey, taken on board at the end of the voyage.

Tip#8: Facts, not flatulation

Whenever possible, counter a negative reviewer's comments with concrete facts. In Tige's case, he shares the collective numerical scores of the passengers who accompanied the honeymooners on their disappointing voyage. For instance, the honeymooners noted that the food did not meet their expectations, yet Tige notes that the cuisine was given a "9 out of 10″ by all of the passengers, including the disenchanted honeymooners.

Channeling Tige

The next time a disgruntled customer writes a negative online comment about your start-up, resist the natural temptation to write a hurried, angry reply. Instead, pour yourself a large glass of pineapple juice (rum optional) and take a deep breath of an imaginary tropical breeze. If you then pretend you are sitting on the Tui Tai, calmly chatting with the disappointed customer, while surrounded by a multitude of your future customers, you will no doubt craft responses that are as effective and engaging as Mr. Tige Young's.

You don't build a brand like FUBU by begging for favors. Daymond John explains how he found partners who believed in him.

In 1992, Daymond John started selling homemade hats and shirts on the street. Within a few years, he had turned FUBU into a popular clothing line. For John, it all came down to supply and demand. (And being friends with a few rappers didn't hurt, either.)

I started FUBU selling hats and screenprinted T-shirts, but the ones that really got us noticed were our embroidered shirts. I had 10 of them. Not 10 styles of shirts. Just 10 shirts. For the first few years, I put those 10 shirts on rappers to wear in their videos. I'd put one on LL Cool J, take it back, and put it on Method Man and take it back. Because of those videos, people saw the product everywhere, but they couldn't get it. It built up huge demand.

At the time, I really wanted to be in Macy's. That was my Holy Grail. But the big department stores we approached said, "We don't know. We think those clothes are going to attract the wrong type of people into our stores who will steal clothes or get in shootouts."

So, instead, we focused on the mom-and-pop shops--the small chain stores in the middle of the hood. These were the type of places where you go in and the owner says, "This is a great brand! These guys are on fire! You need to wear this!" Those were people we could build an intimate relationship with.

Within a few years, the department stores came around. They found out those mom-and-pop stores were making a lot of money from our products. The first department store we landed was Macy's. The best part was, they supported us. We didn't have to walk around hat in hand. This was something they wanted to do. It's always better to do business with people who respect you. When you go around begging for favors, it doesn't get you far.

Day job while launching FUBU: Waiter at Red Lobster
Start-up capital: $100,000 from a home mortgage
FUBU's peak annual revenue: $350 million

Your company culture isn't as friendly and supportive as you want it to be. What can you do about it? Seth Godin has an unorthodox idea.

As if you needed any more evidence that bullying behavior is corrosive to your culture, here on Inc. last week we reported the results of two studied that found being a jerk is actually contagious, spreading from the original bully to his or her unfortunate victims and then outward to infect the office culture in general.

For business leaders, this science tracing how bad behavior spreads through a group may be interesting, but the more pressing question about bullying for bosses probably is: How do you put the genie back in the bottle?

If your company has somehow become infected with nastiness and your culture (and team productivity) is suffering, is there any way to battle the malaise and re-instill a sense of safety and support among team members?

A fascinating recent blog post by best-selling author Seth Godin offers a suggestion. For inspiration, Godin looks to perhaps the world's most bully-intensive environment--yes, you guessed it, high school—to explore the roots of nasty behavior and what interventions are effective to stop it.

He starts out with a clever definition of what bullying actually is: "Bullying is what happens when an individual with power exercises that power against people who don't fit in. By threatening to expose or harm or degrade the outlier, the bully reinforces the status quo in a way that increases his power." And goes on to suggest that to combat jerk behavior at its root, organizations, whether they be schools or small business, need to explicitly celebrate the weird:

Bullying persists when bureaucracies and hierarchies permit it to continue. It's easier to keep order in an environment where bullying can thrive (and vice versa), because the very things that permit a few to control the rest also permit bullies to do their work. The bully uses the organization's desire for conformity to his own ends.

At the fabulous lab school in Manhattan, they're making huge progress at undoing this problem. A recent assembly (organized and run by students and volunteers) was created around weirdness, fear and most of all, "owning it."… When there isn't a race to fit in the most, bullying those that don't fit in loses much of its power.

This is incredibly brave and risky for those in charge. It involves trusting people to become something wonderful, as opposed to insisting that they fit in at all costs.

"We're all a lot weirder than we'd like the world to know," he concludes. Bullying, in other words, thrives in environments that value conformity and implicitly demand group members hide their true selves to make life easier for the higher ups. That sounds like high school, but remove the raging hormones and ill-advised fashion experiments, and it also sounds like plenty of businesses.

Could encouraging a little more weirdness make your business a friendlier and more productive place to work?

Trying to build a new relationship? You'll never manage it by staring at a screen. Here's what you need to do instead.

We’ve stopped seeing each other. You and me. All of us.

Our eyes may indeed be windows to our soul, but with our necks craned downward and our eyes focused on tiny handheld screens, who can tell? We hardly make an effort to look at the person we’re talking to anymore. Younger people, in general, find it challenging to maintain eye contact with adults. Video conferencing complicates things further. When is the last time you consciously looked into someone’s eyes and had a meaningful conversation?

When nearly every personal and business interaction uses a screen as an intermediary, it’s difficult to develop and maintain meaningful relationships with employees, customers and partners. But such relationships are the cornerstone of building a long-term business. So put down that smart phone, walk away from the computer, and think about these five things:

Speak with Your Eyes

We communicate so much with a simple look. Are you genuinely interested and receptive to ideas or do your eyes dart away while someone is talking? A challenging stare can thwart collaboration before a word is spoken. Even if your eyes are relaxed and attentive, your eyebrows may convey concern, surprise and other emotions. Relax your face when you’re meeting with someone and use your eyes to meet theirs for five seconds at a time, while making note of their overall body language.

Listen to Their Eyes

Without looking directly into someone’s eyes, you’ll miss millions of visual clues as to what’s going on inside their head. Can you see fear? A spark of excitement? A glazed look of boredom? Are the other person’s arms crossed or relaxed at their side? You can’t read body language if your eyes are looking past them, down at papers or at your phone. Carefully pay attention to the other person’s eyes, and you’ll learn more than you ever could from lifeless words on a screen.

Look for the “Tell”

In poker, it’s called the “tell”: the habitual signal your opponent makes that betrays whether he or she is holding a full house or a hand full of nothing. Someone is telling you something. She can’t make eye contact with you. Why? Perhaps she’s afraid to deliver bad news or wants to be somewhere else. If a customer or employee is staring at the ceiling or evading your eyes for no apparent reason at all, you need to figure out what’s really going on.

Be Shifty-Eyed

If you’re making a presentation to a group you need to look at everyone in the room. The guy over there in blue jeans? He might be the CEO. Ignoring eye contact with all the women? You’ve just alienated both the CMO and CFO. Take your time. Be deliberate. Connect while you speak by scanning and making brief eye contact with everyone in the room. That’s a great way to change your message into a truly powerful connection.

But Don’t Be Creepy

Eye contact is something most people struggle with, yet it’s a critical component of communication. Relax. Blink normally. Don’t squint or stare. Above all, eye contact should not be awkward or creepy. The goal is not to drill into the other person’s soul with an unbroken gaze for extended periods of time. Just work on being fully present when meeting with someone -- and pay attention to your eyeballs.

Too much of anything is injurious to health and this is so true of startups too.

As a startup founder/developer, you are asked to have a blog to let users know what you’re up to, to let other developers get to know you, to enable a marketing campaign that works wonders… the list is endless. Blogging, networking, “github”ing (one of the words that’ll be in vogue by the end of this year): these are productive work, mind you. And as developers, our focus is on “creating” and these productive works involve a lot of creation. This creates an impression – a false one – that we’re actually productive.

I read a post on the state of several projects that never really made it to the finish line. This reminded me of several developers who blog about their upcoming new project and after a few months, there’s no project at all. Did this ever happen to you? Like you started off on a high note – blogged about it a lot in the initial period – and then somehow, the whole thing waned away, ending kind of prematurely with an unfinished project?

Oh and it’s not just blogging that can do this to your project. There are other monsters too – monsters who are basically good but who can eventually turn into productivity-suckers.

Networking: Social networking is an amazing thing that can help your app/project like no one else can (okay, PG, Andreessen and, say, TechCrunch excluded). It can help you build amazing relationships with people who can spread the word about your work, or help you hack some stuff out of Backbone.js so your app kicks ass. But social networking can also drain away your most important asset: time.

A popular hangout for developers is HN. Or even Google+ for that matter. And then there’s Quora these days. These are places where meaningful, insightful, informational and “whatever” conversations take place. These are places I love, too and you get tons of info that is hardly found anywhere else. But developers can – and do – get carried away a lot.

GitHub is funny in a way. You start forking one interesting and relevant open-source project and then one thing leads to another and by the end of the day (or night, if you’re burning the midnight oil to code your project), you’ve seen a ton of interesting code on GitHub but none of this is actually, really going to finish your app.

Startups need to have blogs whether you are just starting out or mid-way into your project. But you should be very strict and disciplined about this aspect of entrepreneurship and marketing. The same goes with your time spent on networking and code-discovery.

A lot has been written about why blogging, networking etc. are mandatory for developers. Let’s just not over-step the line and end up spending time that should have been used to finish that module.

Image by David Precious