The issue with 'closed' review sites

Let us first describe exactly what we mean by a closed site, and why, initially at least, they seem like a great idea:  A closed review site is one where the public - customer, client or patient - can only write a review at the express invitation of the business.

What's not to like about that? Surely that means that all the reviews on whatever site - Feefo, Doctify and so on - must be from real people? 

The answer to the basic  - and fundamental - question is 'Yes', all the reviews will be from real customers/clients/patients. Now put yourself in the position of a dissatisfied customer of, let's see, a clothing manufacturer, a less-than-thrilled client of a wealth manager or an unhappy patient of a doctor.

In the first example - a classic Feefo situation...

No problem, no issues; customers are happy to leave any kind of review and any rating; the business can see which of its products are popular and which are causing problems. The business won't be harmed by the review (there are many more giving this particular product an overall rating of 4.8). It can respond to the customer, which aids customer retention.  An ideal solution for online retail.

The second, a financial adviser or wealth manager...

Five out of six sites we looked at asked multiple questions before arriving at a similar page to the one above. This one references Trustpilot, where it has accumulated a grand total of 65 reviews over the past 12 years, many of which are for individual advisers, not for the service provided by the aggregator/lead generation site. Reviews on Google? Precisely zero.

There are closed review sites, and then there are closed financial services review sites. There is only one dedicated FS review site in the UK that we can find that will allow you to read reviews of a financial adviser or wealth manager without providing them with your personal details. And when we say 'personal details', we mean not just your email address, your physical address and your phone number(s), but the amount of money you have currently invested, the whereabouts of those investments and the amount of cash you have in the bank. All before they will provide you with any details of a financial adviser whatsoever, let alone any reviews. This kind of site is known, in polite circles, as a lead-generation site. Less politely? A 'squeeze site' (also 'squeeze page' because it /they are designed with the sole intention of extracting -'squeezing' - the maximum amount of information about an individual which they then effectively sell on as a lead). 

The one exception: VouchedFor, a division of Defaqto. Whilst allowing you to see rated advisers, you quickly realise that the advisers all score 5.0 or 4.9 and that VouchedFor has a great mechanism for ensuring they are kept 'hooked' by revealing the number of recent reviews posted - let's face it, you're not going to contact an adviser that hasn't received a review in the last 12 months, are you?

The third, doctors and other medical professionals

Sites such as Doctify will allow you to search for a doctor or other medical specialist, but what do you see when you do so?

Notice any common denominator? How about the great scores? Again. Now, there is one obvious reason for those close to perfect scores: that doctors are highly trained and dedicated people, by their very nature. But many are far from perfect, at least in the view of some of their patients, as even a cursory Google search will reveal.

There is another reason for those near perfect scores: given that the doctor or other medical professional has to initiate the review in the first place, suppose you are not 100% thrilled with your treatment so far, but have no other option but to continue with that person, are you about to write a less-than-glowing review when invited to do so by the practice using a mechanism that will precisely identify you and that they are paying for? 

One might even ask, 'Why bother to consult a review site at all, if every individual or business listed on there is as near to perfect as makes no difference?'

Examples of deflection: both patients and doctors comment on another 'open' site, in this case Trustpilot. 59 of 461 reviews of Doctify hosted there rate it at 1*. Of the remaining 400 reviews, almost all are of a medical practice/practitioner; in other words, they have been posted on the wrong listing (we see this all the time with Trustpilot; surely it would be simple to identify these at the time of posting and redirect the reviewer?). One wonders why a business such as Doctify would not ask Trustpilot to delete these, until one realises that they are the main prop maintaining the business's score at 4.5?!

What happens when a patient wants to comment, but doesn't want their medical professional to see/link them to the comment? They are driven to Google or Trustpilot (something which we named 'Deflection' many years back), open sites that will accept their review, without that review having to be initiated by the business. 

Let us not ignore the legal profession

10,000 - impressive? Not really; there are nearly 216,000 registered solicitors in the UK, with over 177,000 of those in England and Wales alone

One last point

As we can see from the above, unlike Google, which lists just about every single business on the planet, they only list paying businesses and individuals. We checked our local central London GP practice on Doctify; they have five full-time doctors, none of whom are listed.

In conclusion

We will say it again: if the business you are using prefers a review site, of whatever kind, to Google reviews, it is a red flag. It doesn't necessarily indicate that they are a bad business or that they are manipulating reviews, but it does raise the question, 'Why not Google?' 

Closed review sites - driving negative comment to Google

As regular readers will know, we have always had issues with 'closed' review sites. 

What is a closed review site?

It is a site where the reviewer must be invited, by the business or the review site, to write a review. On the face of it this logic is flawless: only a verified customer of the business can write a review. If we all lived in a vacuum, where that kind of site was the only option, they would - and still can - have many advantages:

• those reading the reviews know that they are reading genuine reviews, written by real customers
• the business can rest easy in the knowledge that unscrupulous reviewers - competitors or disgruntled ex-employees - cannot write a review and do it harm

The problem, though, is that we don't live in that ideal vacuum, and our customers, whatever the nature of our business, have myriad options if they want to write a review, invited or uninvited.

Perhaps it would help if we looked at two examples: first for hotels:

Two (or more) of you stay in a hotel that you have booked through an online travel agency. On checkout you receive an email inviting a review of your stay. But who, in this example, is 'you'? 'You' is the person who made the booking. Suppose one of you loved the hotel and the other hated it - it does happen - the hotel now has a 50/50 chance of getting a great/awful review. And, more importantly, the second guest must look elsewhere to voice their opinion.

So they go to TripAdvisor or Google.

Next: an estate agent sends a closed invitation to its client. In this case the situation is a little more complex. Just like the hotel, there may be more than one client - but an efficient estate agent will know that and send two invitations. Job done - or is it? 

Unlike staying in a hotel, the relationship an estate agent has with their clients is often - especially in the case of lettings, ongoing. A landlord or tenant who is happy when they receive the closed invitation may not be happy a month - or a year - later. 

We have many examples of sellers who have written glowing reviews on exchange who have come back again to post a negative review. We have reviews from purchasers who have raised issues many months post-purchase. Some of you will be thinking - isn't that a case for a closed system?

 This Google score is for a business that has hundreds of 5 star reviews on a closed site. The have unwittingly driven dissatisfied customers to Google to comment, driving their score down and exposing some really harmful negative reviews to the public gaze on the most high profile and visible of all platforms.

No! Just because the client cannot write a review without being invited does not mean that they won't write a review somewhere else. A decent percentage will - perhaps to one of the specialist open sites - AllAgents for example, but much more likely to Google. We recently audited a great firm of agents who had overwhelmingly positive reviews on a closed review site. But nearly one in six of their reviews on Google were negative. What was happening? By using a closed site they were unconsciously forcing their less than happy clients to resort to posting a Google review.

HelpHound to the rescue:

It is so important to allow everyone to write a review:

• both guests in a hotel
• people who used your spa, restaurant or bar - but did not stay
• every guest in a restaurant
• every tenant in a property
• people who, for whatever reason, considered using your business, but decided not to

But - we hear those of you who are reading this but are yet to be HelpHound clients say - "what about bogus/inaccurate/unfair reviews?" 

That's where HelpHound's Resolution™ comes in: every review is moderated, and all those containing negative scores or comments are first asked to verify their connection with your business. This might, for a hotel, be to identify the precise date of stay and their room number, for an estate agent: the member of staff they were dealing with and the address of the property concerned. If and when the reviewer does verify - and 'fake' reviewers never do, for obvious reasons - their review will then be forwarded to the business so it can engage and respond. It gives both the customer and the business an opportunity to resolve (hence the name 'Resolution') any misunderstandings and to put wrongs right pre-publication - and is extremely popular with consumers and businesses alike. 

  

This client welcomes reviews from anyone and everyone - whatever the time or day of the week, whether they have done business or not. And the result on Google:

So - fear of unfair criticism is not a reason to choose a 'closed' review site. Fear of driving aggrieved customers into the arms of Google is a definite reason to choose review management. Welcome to HelpHound!