Boost App Store Rating

My app’s rating has recently taken a hit from what I believe are coordinated, bad-faith reviews posted by competitors. The comments don’t point to real performance glitches or UI faults; they feel fabricated and are damaging our credibility in the store.

I need practical, ethical help turning the rating around. I do not yet have a solid strategy in place, so I’m open to your professional guidance—whether that involves a well-timed review-encouragement flow for genuine users, a tactful review-response plan, reputation management tactics, or a mix of approaches. At this stage I’m unsure about adding new features, so any proposal should first focus on reputation recovery; additional feature work can remain on the table as a future phase.

Please outline:
• Your step-by-step plan to push legitimate positive ratings and mitigate the false negatives.
• The tools or dashboards you’ll rely on (App Store Connect, Firebase analytics, sentiment-analysis utilities, etc.).
• Clear acceptance criteria—e.g., expected rating change within a realistic time frame and the measurable actions taken to reach it.

If you’ve handled similar situations, a brief example of the before/after results will help me assess fit.