A A Gill fillets another restaurant - what should they be doing?

This review appeared in this week's Sunday Times:

You don't need to be an expert to understand how the management and staff felt on Sunday morning; but some expert advice might be welcome once the tears have dried:

Review management and restaurants

High profile reviews by respected reviewers do still matter (and A A Gill was accompanied by the revered Fay Maschler of the Evening Standard, just to make matters worse), but a restaurant can be rescued by its customers.

First let's see how Fucina looks in search:

Answer: in summary: not great but not as bad as Mr Gill's 'No Stars/No Stars'.

Lessons

Take review management seriously from the day you open; Fucina opened four weeks ago and already they rate less than the crucial 4 stars on TripAdvisor and SquareMeal - and perilously close to the Google filter at 4.1. It is absolutely no good pleading 'teething trouble' when you are trying to attract custom online - no one will hear you.

Invite all your customers to write a review: let's say Fucina has 50 covers (from the photos on their website they look to have nearer 100), lunch and dinner - that's 100 potential reviewers a day. On that basis Fucina has got less than 1% of its customers to write a review anywhere. Thirteen reviews to Google and eight to TripAdvisor with their attendant scores are simply not enough to counter the Sunday Times review; 130 and 80 would be (as long as the scores were good).

Use Dialogue: that way you get great reviews to your website and great feedback as well. You are able to manage negatives in private and then get reviews copied to platforms that matter.

 

Another week - another London restaurant gets roasted

But 'What has this got to do with HelpHound?' we hear you ask...

If we make a pretty safe assumption: that this restaurant (and all the others that Gill, Coren and their compatriots earn their living reviewing week-in week-out) is doing its level best, then wouldn't it have been much better if they'd had Dialogue working for them?

• If people had criticisms, they would have been delivered straight to the restaurant, privately
• If people liked the restaurant, they would have been able to say so, on the restaurant's own site and on Google

In the first instance the restaurant would have been able to react and make changes, hopefully before this killer review was written, in the second it would have at least been in the position of knowing, for sure, that A A Gill was in a minority.

How?

Very simply: ask each and every diner for their email address and tell them you will be inviting them to go to your website and leave a review (you could even hand them a card with the bill, but be sure to collect it before they leave), and HelpHound will do the rest.

Dialogue: know what your diners think, react to each and every comment (privately for negatives) and be comprehensively reassured that your customers love what you are doing, even if the press don't always agree.