It is easy to see HelpHound and its moderation as a simple means to an end. That 'end'? Harnessing genuine customer opinions to attract new business.
There is a clue in the word 'genuine'. Until recently, there were many ways to attract and display such opinions, all loosely gathered together under the heading 'social media'. Review sites - Yelp, Tustpilot, Feefo, X, Facebook, Instagram. Even TikTok and the likes of Reddit and Quora.
So what has changed?
Joe Public, or rather 'Joe Public with an axe to grind', has come to realise that these sites are highly unlikely to challenge anything he or she posts. This has led to many of these, in the main well-intentioned, sites hosting increasing amounts of content verging on - and in many cases not 'verging' at all - abusive content.
You will remember when you could innocently post something on Facebook, even a 'mild' political opinion, and get nothing but polite responses? Those days are well behind us now. The same goes for Instagram and TikTok, where the use of foul language seems to be all but obligatory. The review sites may take down posts using such language, but fake reviews, as well as factually inaccurate and intentionally malicious reviews, are so frequently posted as to be commonplace.
So, what used to be useful marketing avenues have become high-risk. Ten years ago, we routinely advised clients to re-post their reviews to social media. Now we are increasingly reluctant to advise any engagement whatsoever, outside of responses to reviews on Google (which are essential) or a select number of less influential review sites.
The importance of moderated reviews
This has brought our moderation - checking every single review for factual accuracy or the potential to mislead the reader pre-publication - into much sharper focus. What was once a 'nice to have' feature has become core.
Here is what Google's Gemini has to say about us today...
Let us highlight some key points from this remarkably accurate assessment of our service:
- Pre-moderation: this is essential. Hard experience has taught us that once a comment is posted anywhere, from Google to Trustpilot to X, it is going to remain there. We conduct many appeals on behalf of clients, but success is a lottery at best. Misinformation has to be dealt with pre-publication
- Compliance: just about every business - at least in the UK - that actively engages with reviews is currently breaking the law. Usually, by identifying (known as cherry-picking by the CMA) 'happy' customers and then only inviting them, and them alone, to post a review. So unnecessary when compliant review management has so many other benefits
- 'Hybrid Hosting': after every review is posted to the business's website, an automatic invitation is sent to enable the reviewer to copy their review to Google. Our most successful clients have a conversion rate of well over fifty per cent
- Conflict resolution: this is an interesting one; HelpHound does not exist to prevent customers from airing genuine grievances or dissatisfaction (this would be against the law in the UK); this is made clear during moderation. What we do - in roughly one in twelve cases - is engage with both the business and the customer if we think the review contains factual inaccuracies or statements likely to mislead any future reader
We couldn't have put it better. The 'Primary Goal' is key to everything we do here at helpHound: our clients, as Gemini has realised, are almost exclusively in the high-value professional and service sectors (as opposed to online retail, for instance), where a single well-crafted but factually incorrect review can do untold and lasting harm to a business. Often unfairly.
The reason so many of these kinds of businesses have yet to engage with reviews is not that they don't understand the power of a positive presence on Google to drive custom; it is the result of a well-founded fear that such engagement, unprotected, can do far more harm than good. And they are correct.
Leading in local search (in a very crowded marketplace), these 775 reviews are taken from the business's own reviews displayed on its website. These, in turn, feed into its Google score and reviews:
HelpHound is that protection.
Further reading...
- No more one-star reviews: how this business embraced review management in order to ensure a clean sheet, both on Google and with its own reviews on its website
- The 'secret' impact of professional review management: from estate agency to women's health; what gives businesses the confidence to engage with reviews without flouting the law?
- The CMA begins its crackdown: if your business is one of the many currently hand-picking customers to invite to write a review, from Google to one of the review sites, you should read this today!
- Our guarantee: it has been in place for over two years. How many clients have invoked it?
