The 'secret' impact of professional review management

What could be so 'secret'? The business invites reviews, and HelpHound moderates them to, as far as possible, eliminate factually inaccurate or potentially misleading reviews. The reviews are posted to the business's website and then copied to Google. Job done.

Or so you might - reasonably - think. But there's more to review management than simply inviting, moderating and posting reviews. There is the 'secret' impact on management and staff.

Case history

Business 'A', an estate agency, joined HelpHound in August of 2017. This is what they looked like on Google back then:

4 five-star reviews and one one-star review

And this is what they look like now, eight and a half years later:

This for a business employing less than a dozen staff (if you don't count the office dog). Mind you, they have opened another branch in the past year!

So what did we advise them to do, and what did they do, in reality?

Our advice

This was straightforward: we advised them to invite everyone to write a review. Buyers and sellers, landlords and tenants, professional connections and those they had advised but who had not, for whatever reason, conducted business. 

We provided them with our recommended wording for the email inviting the review (this is more important than you may imagine - both to send the invitation by email, not text, and to use precise wording), and our software - API - to enable them to prominently display their reviews on their website.

In less than a week, they went live. The very next day, the reviews began to roll in.

The reasoning behind that advice

There is no law that says a business must invite anyone and everyone to write a review; what the law - in the person of the Competition and Markets Authority's regulations - says is that 'if a business invites anyone to write a review it must allow everyone to do so'; in other words: no cherry-picking, no hand picking definitely happy customers only and then only inviting those to write a review.

So why does HelpHound invariably advise businesses to invite 'everyone'? For one simple reason: the one person you exclude from the invitation to write a review may - even will - be the person who goes directly to Google and writes a factually incorrect, potentially misleading or just plain unfair review. And there's no moderating a Google review once it is posted.

Gaining the confidence that moderation works

Business 'A', as is the case with virtually every high-value business client of HelpHound's, took our advice, initially at least, with a grain of salt. They invited 'nearly everyone'; until they saw some people who they hadn't invited do one of two things...

• Write a review directly to Google

or...

• Follow the button on their website that a) keeps the business fully compliant with the CMA regulations and b) allows them to write a review without being first invited by the business

Once these two things had happened a few times, they reassessed our advice and their approach.

What did they do next?

They stumbled upon the 'secret'. And that secret? If all the business's staff, from CEO to the newest recruit, adopted a strategy that assumes that every single person they come into contact with will write a review, then the service they provide will be as near perfect as makes no difference. 

Reviews were no longer simply the responsibility of sales staff, or marketing staff, or client services staff, but of every member of staff. In no time at all, a senior member of staff was chosen to devote themselves full-time as the business's dedicated 'head of reviews'.

And every customer is now warned, at the first point-of-contact, that they will be expected to write a review - to help others choose the right business and to help the business provide a really tip-top service to its customers.

The results

In purely review terms: a constant flow of 5* reviews (19 in the last month, so no slacking off, quite the opposite); importantly, and just about uniquely for a London estate agent dealing with multiple sales an d letting a week, the business hasn't had a one-star review for over three years, which has meant it has maintained its overall Google score at 4.9. In business terms? Imagine you were a competitor? They have doubled their payroll and opened another branch as well.  

Another bonus? Here are the most recent two reviews...

These reviews came as a result of an email invitation. We have tested inviting reviews by text. The result? Short one-line reviews. Far less helpful (and far less convincing)

What do we notice? That they are thorough and, as a result, informative and extremely helpful. In short, the kind of review that encourages a potential client to make first contact. Job done.

Now, for a fact that may surprise some

There is no reason whatsoever why this scenario cannot be replicated for any well-managed business with dedicated staff.

But what about a notoriously difficult sector? Women's health, say? Where people often find themselves under severe physical and emotional stress, and, on top of that, are extremely sensitive to personal privacy.

Like this...

How do you think this business feels, seeing this review as Google's 'Most relevant' at the head of every search?

Nothing like the volume of reviews, but starting from scratch in 2020, a steady average of roughly a review a month has seen this clinic build up critical mass, to the stage where their reviews are all a potential patient needs to give them the confidence to make an appointment.

We are continually astonished at the wonderful women who are so conscious of the confidence they were given by reading the clinic's reviews that they not only write one themselves, but a great many, such as the one above, are content to see their name attached to it as well.

We can do this for your business

What if you are keen to see your business reap all the benefits of great professional review management, but remain concerned that you may attract unfair, inaccurate or misleading reviews? What is our candid advice? What is the safest compliant way of testing if HelpHound will work as well for your business as it so patently has for the two examples above?

The key word in the sentence above is 'compliant'. Any business can cherry-pick its way to a score of 4.9 in the short term. All it has to do is select the cream of its happy customers and just ask them, and them alone, to post a review. The fact that this tactic will be obvious to regulators and their competitors (not to mention their staff, some of whom will one day be ex-staff working for those competitors) doesn't put some businesses off adopting this 'strategy'. Unfortunately, apart from the legal issues, eventually its less-than-happy customers will find their way to Google, and that near-perfect score will begin to dwindle.

So let us begin with a compliant solution, shall we? This will involve placing some code on your business's website to enable your business...

1. To allow you to ask customers to post reviews there 
2. To allow us to moderate all your reviews pre-publication
3. To show your reviews to everyone who visits your website (potential customers)
4. To benefit from the SEO kicker - Google loves websites that host reviews
5. Get those reviews copied across to Google
6. Get you a great Google score 
7. Get you a consistent flow of great - factually accurate, and helpful - reviews

Just like the businesses at the top of this article.

What if it doesn't work?

As you can probably imagine, with our 'no minimum period' contract and money back guarantee, we are loath to take on businesses where our magic will fail. We will conduct a full audit of your CRM and make the processes crystal clear before you go live (we are far more than just a great piece of software; unlike some businesses in this sector, we always answer the phone and respond to emails). So no risk there.

What remains to be done?

Speak to us. Meet us. Get HelpHound working for your business. You won't regret it.

Further reading

• Moderation - the cornerstone of all we do for our clients

• CMA regulations - why it is so easy, and important, to obey them

• Results - see for yourself, hard numbers

• Our guarantee - HelpHound really is a win/win - two years and counting, an no one has invoked it

• Our fees - all of this for so little? Yes!