Why are some law firms using Trustpilot over Google for reviews?

 

This article highlights a major issue for law firms when it comes to reviews; if they use Trustpilot they will simply be joining a 'club' of similar firms whose scores are as close to the 'perfect 5' as makes no difference. There is also the question of businesses using Trustpilot - or a similar solution - to illegally gate reviews to Google (the practice of inviting every client to write a review on the former and then only those that rate the business 5* there to copy it to the latter - it's also against Google's terms of service to do so and runs the risk of having every one of the business's Google reviews deleted, without recourse to appeal).

Here is just one example of a legal firm that has gone down the Trustpilot route:

And here are their locations in Google search:

Why, we ask ourselves, did Setfords - and many firms besides (and not only law firms) - choose Trustpilot over Google? Google reviews are visible to everyone searching on the web, whether on their business name or for a local solicitor. Trustpilot reviews? The potential client has to specifically search for them.

By choosing Trustpilot, Setfords have, as well as making themselves look relatively insignificant from the point-of-view of anyone looking for or at their Google reviews (worse, in one or two locations), put themselves in a position where they are forced to invest heavily in Google PPC to ensure the visibility of their Trustpilot reviews. It is only by buying the advertisement you see below that their Trustpilot reviews are exposed to view in search:

How much better off, from every point-of-view, would Setfords have been today, and for the foreseeable future, if they had chosen to invest their energies into inviting their clients to post - free - Google reviews rather than Trustpilot?

With nearly 2,000 Google reviews and a great Google score, visible whenever anyone searched for them, at no cost whatsoever.

Maybe there is a reason?

When we spoke to Setfords they listed, quite reasonably, the 'opportunity to challenge a review they suspected of being written by someone who had no direct experience of their services' as one of the factors they found attractive about Trustpilot's offering.

What sensible business would not want such a mechanism? 

To mine down further into this, let's see exactly how many times Setfords have used this facility - called 'quarantine' by Trustpilot - and examine just how it operates.

If you look at this screenshot you will see that Setfords have had occasion to challenge just 5 reviews - out of a total of just over 4,500. 0.1 percent. Negligible, with two of the five challenged reviews remaining on the site (as the reviewers provided proof of their dealings with the firm to Trustpilot). But that does not mean that one of the other three might not have done significant damage if it had remained on the site; a quick look at what happened to another firm - Summerfield Browne - will dispel any illusions on that account.

It also makes clear the nature of Trustpilot's offering. They allow businesses to flag any reviews at all (Setfords have been sparing in their use of this facility - challenging the validity of less than two percent of their negative reviews). Trustpilot then contacts the reviewer and asks for 'proof of purchase' which, as you can see, has not been forthcoming from two of the cases.

We have concerns about the legality of such a mechanism under UK law, which explicitly states that reviewers have the right to have their opinions published, no matter what. It probably works pretty well where the subject of the review is a product, but to insist that 'proof of purchase' of a service is provided would deny many classes of reviewer - the person on the other side of a legal issue, for just one instance - their right to have a review published. It also goes to the issue of confidentiality; someone who wishes to warn others - rightly or wrongly (remember the business has right of reply) may, in some instances, reasonably be excused from revealing their identity to the business under review.

One of the authors of a deleted review has seen fit to post this - unchallenged - review:

Which makes the point about Trustpilot's requirement that personal details - how much more 'personal' do details get than a name? - not being disclosed in reviews an interesting one-way street. To listen to all their marketing one would think that reviewers would be encouraged to be specific about issues raised with individual members of staff - the injunction to 'not mention personal details' would seem to go against this.

What do we think is happening here?

First: Trustpilot has a very proactive and motivated salesforce; after all, with all that lovely money raised by their previous VC rounds and now their IPO they can afford it! One of our Plc clients has been approached by them countless times over the last four years, the last time this spring with an offer to undercut our rates by over 50% - and at a huge discount to Trustpilot's advertised fee scale.

So why has this business remained with HelpHound?

Not out of any misplaced sense of loyalty, we can assure you. Here are the hard and fast reasons.

1.  Our primary focus for them is, and always has been since they joined five years ago, Google.

Google reviews are far more visible than Trustpilot reviews (Trustpilot clients are lucky if their reviews show on page one of specific or local search). Google reviews show prominently in every search, and always will. This often involves Trustpilot clients in expensive ongoing commitments to PPC in order to have their Trustpilot reviews show in search.

Google reviews also have far more credibility, partly as a result of exposure, partly because the Google brand is so well known and also, increasingly, partly because    consumers are coming to realise that Google reviewers leave a paper trail that Google can follow if needs be: in other words, Google reviews are more trusted by consumers.

2.  Of their 100 plus locations, almost all feature in the top three in competitive local search; most at No. 1

Local search is a service business's lifeblood these days, even if the search is initiated by another factor (personal recommendation or the business's PR/marketing, for instance). Service businesses and the professions recognise that consumers are far more likely to click through to their website - or call - if a business appears high up in search.

When someone is searching for medical, financial or legal advice there will almost always be a dozen businesses thrown up by such a search (often more, especially for professions such as estate agency, where a search in a metropolitan area such as London or Manchester will throw up twenty-five to fifty alternatives).

We don't take all the credit for this: the business in qustion has an excellent website that is properly optimised, but when you consider Google score businesses 15% for SEO based on whether or not they host independently verified reviews, then what other major differentiator can there be? Especially when you consider many of the business in question's competitors have similarly excellent websites, but no reviews hosted there.

3.  HelpHound moderates every single review

Inaccurate, potentially misleading or even downright fake or malicious reviews can do serious harm to a business and they can equally mislead a potential customer - often away from the business. Our moderators make as sure as is compliantly possible that no such reviews see the light of day, at least not before the reviewer and the business have had the opportunity to correct them. This is an aspect of our srvice that businesses find it hard to put a monetary value on; that is: until they have such a review moderated successfully.

For an example of the kind of harm a single review can do to a service - as opposed to online retail - business, please read this sorry, and ongoing, saga.

4.  HelpHound acts as an honest broker

Our interest is our clients best interest; our advice is always 'best advice'. If Trustpilot - or Feefo or Yelp or any other solution - were in a client's best interest we would have no hesitation in recommending them. As a matter of fact we have just finished an exercise in rebalancing the impression created on Trustpilot for the above-mentioned client. 

Conclusion 

Law firms - as well as many other professional services - have struggled to find a solution to online reviews; they are quite understandably wary of embarking on any strategy that has the potential to do long-term harm to their reputations, in most cases unfairly.

This has led to some looking at the most high-profile solutions and picking the one of them. Unfortunately that, for the overwhelming majority, is not a reviews site; it's Google, but Google plus independent moderation.

Reviews and the Law - an important update

One of our most important roles as review managers is to make sure our clients comply with the law as it relates to reviews - in letter and in spirit.

The law?

Most businesses, when we first meet them, are unaware that reviews are governed by legislation. But, just as with almost every aspect of business life these days, they are. On 1 April 2014 the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) took over many of the functions of the Competition Commission and the Office of Fair Trading.

This is an extract of a letter from the CMA to businesses - the full letter, and our notes on it, is available here

Under CMA rules - which are enforceable in law -  it is illegal for a business (or their agents) to:

• post fake reviews of their own business
• post fake reviews of another business
• not publish negative reviews
• offer inducement - money or gifts - in exchange for reviews

In addition, it is illegal to do anything to intentionally mislead the public (consumers). This may include:

• describing testimonials (selectively invited customer opinions) as reviews
• selectively inviting customers to write reviews (what regular readers of this blog know we describe as 'cherry-picking')

Common practices that flout the letter or the spirit of the CMA rules

We see examples like the ones below nearly every day. They are mostly innocent, resulting from ignorance of the rules. Just as important, they do the business no favours in the eyes of the sophisticated consumer (or competitor).

This is a screenshot from an estate agent's website. We cannot be absolutely sure that they are contravening the CMA code, but the fact that the 'reviews' themselves are not independently verified and that all twenty-one of the reviews displayed were written on the same day over six months ago might lead to understandable suspicion

• inviting testimonials from customers and displaying them as reviews
• selecting 'happy' customers to write reviews, and, by definition, positively excluding 'unhappy' ones - whether to the business's own website or to an external site

HelpHound's standpoint

Our systems are expressly designed to comply with the CMA rules, in word and spirit. This is why Resolution incorporates the 'promise to publish' and why our clients incorporate a 'Write a Review' button into their websites, offering anyone the opportunity to write a review, whenever they choose to do so (and as often as they wish). 

It is also why the invitation to copy the review to Google (or the nominated external site) is automatic - not at HelpHound's or our client business's discretion.

Your questions answered

Can you expand on HelpHound's 'promise to publish'?

Anyone - and we mean absolutely anyone - has the ability to write a review to a HelpHound client's website. They don't have to wait to be invited - and they will always be invited to publish their review. 

While this may seem a little nerve-wracking for the business - potentially opening it up to unfair criticism (and even 'fake' reviews) please read on - there are very good reasons why our clients have succeeded with reviews. Perhaps most important of all, it means the business does not make the common mistake of inadvertently driving its unhappy customers to write potentially inaccurate or misleading reviews elsewhere - commonly on Google.

How does that work in the context of Resolution™?

Here's a detailed overview of Resolution. Resolution is designed to fulfill two purposes:

• to make sure our clients' reviews portray as accurate a picture of their business as possible, for the benefit of future customers
• to show to potential customers of the business in question that they will be able to write a review - and have that review published - at any time during (or after) their relationship with that business

So a customer can write an intentionally misleading review of our business and have that review published?

In theory - yes. It's the price paid for complete transparency (and the credibility that flows from that transparency). In practice it very seldom happens - and if it does happen the business always has the right-of-reply. 

Resolution is designed to minimise the chances of an inaccurate or misleading review being published by allowing the business and the reviewer to engage pre-publication. But the reviewer will always be invited to post their review. In the many years of experience we have of operating Resolution (and the many thousands of reviews that we process on behalf of reviews and our client businesses) we can count the instances of a reviewer persisting in publishing a review containing an error of fact on the fingers of one hand. Inaccurate or misleading reviews benefit no-one - and that's the reason for having Resolution in the first place.

Are there any more safeguards?

We will do our best to establish that the reviewer has (or has had) a relationship with the business. If we can establish that the reviewer has purely malicious intent we will revert to the reviewer and ask them for more particulars of their relationship with the business. No-one - not HelpHound, nor our clients, nor - most important of all - the consumer benefits from the kind of reviews that have got sites like Yelp a name for publishing false and malicious reviews. 

In summary

This as much about compliance with the law as about being - and being seen to be - open and honest. Our advice can be summed up with two 'Don'ts' and two 'Do's':

• Don't confuse testimonials with reviews - a business cannot, by definition, publish its own reviews without verification by an outside agency
• Don't select - 'cherry-pick' - those customers who you invite to write reviews
• Do allow all your customers to write a review
• Do allow them to write that review at any time they wish

This client got to look like this on Google...  

 ...and this on their own website...

...by doing everything we describe above - in compliance with the regulations.

If you follow these simple guidelines you will find that your business is rewarded by those consumers who appreciate openness and honesty.

If you have any more questions - about what we do here at HelpHound or what you are currently doing with regard to reviews - please do not hesitate to speak to us.

Reviews and the law - detailed analysis of the CMA's letter to businesses

Here we take Jon Riley, the CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) Project Director's open letter to businesses inviting customer reviews, to their websites or to anywhere else, be that Google or one of the many independent reviews sites, and expand on it - point-by-point.

We are doing this now - nearly nine months after the letter was published and in addition to our December article on the same subject, because we continue to see solutions adopted by businesses that are - wittingly or unwittingly - flouting both the word and the spirit of these legally enforceable regulations.

Links: use of online reviews and endorsements and concluded an investigation

Note: When the CMA use the term 'retailer' they mean any business selling products or services to members of the public or other businesses.

The important phrases in this section are 'content....accurately reflect reviewers' feedback on their experiences, hotly followed by 'Fair-playing'. The litmus test of any reviews system is really very simple: does it allow a dissatisfied customer to voice their opinion in exactly the same way as a satisfied customer? If your business can answer 'yes' to that simple question it is likely to be compliant with CMA regulations.

Do not think that the CMA will hesitate to take action. They have the full weight of consumer protection law behind them and there is ample recent evidence that they are prepared to use it. In 2015 three estate agents were fined a total of £375,000 for breaching CMA rules.

Compliance with these three points is crucial. The CMA has legal powers to demand evidence of compliance. Every customer of every HelpHound client is able to write a review whenever they choose, they just need to visit the business's website. HelpHound moderators are trained to monitor communications between our clients and their reviewers to ensure compliance.

Our Resolution™ moderation system is designed to ensure compliance with both these points. Many reviews sites currently have procedures in place which favour the business. Examples of these include 'invitation only' systems where the review site only invites reviews from nominated email addresses and or only allows reviews to be written at point-of-purchase. The CMA would doubtless argue that the purchaser of, say, a pair of shoes or a dishwasher, or the tenant in the case of an estate agent, might be in a a better position to review the quality of the product (in the first two examples) or service (in the latter) months or even years post-purchase. At HelpHound we would agree.

It is made clear on our modules that all genuine reviews are published:

All our clients' reviews are displayed chronologically by default, with the reader being given the following options:

All legitimate, genuine, relevant and lawful reviews are published, positive or negative. The extent of the delay in publication of the review remains in the hands of the reviewer at all times. We advise all our clients against displaying testimonials as they have lost power in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of consumers when compared with independently verified reviews.

Resolution is designed to efficiently facilitate both these points. Some systems incorporate appeals procedures that - perhaps inadvertently - favour the business. One such allows the business to 'appeal' any review, at which point the review site will suspend the review from publication and revert to the reviewer and ask them to substantiate whatever comments the business finds contentious. On the face of it this looks fair, but in reality it allows the less scrupulous business to appeal all and any negative reviews in the near-certain knowledge that few reviewers will persist. With our system the reviewer always retains the right to have their review published - at whatever stage in the process they may find themselves. Furthermore, all reviewers are invited to publish a review at the completion of the Resolution process.

Our T&Cs do not allow threatening or abusive language, but that does not necessarily invalidate the review: we will refer back to the reviewer and ask them to rewrite their review using more temperate language.

There is an interesting reversal of this - we have seen communications from one review site to a business declining to enter into discussion about a negative review of the business and inferring that this might happen if the business in question were a paying member.

In summary

To take the well worn 'duck test' (if it look like, quacks like...it almost certainly is). If, as a business, you are offered a reviews solution that 'favours your business' it is almost certainly non compliant. And this is not confined to external review sites - we have in the last month  encountered a large national business with over two hundred branches that is selectively displaying Google reviews on each branch's web page.

Here is a link to the 60-second summary from the CMA:

As ever, if you are a HelpHound client this article is for information only. If you are not yet a client and you would like us to comment on your current procedure, just contact us.

Important update May 2020: The CMA launches an investigation

22 May 2020: The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has opened an investigation into several major websites that display online reviews.

The CMA will investigate whether these websites are taking sufficient measures to protect consumers from fake and misleading reviews. In particular, it will examine how the websites currently detect, investigate and respond to fake and misleading reviews. It will look into issues such as:

• suspicious reviews – where, for example, a single user has reviewed an unlikely range of products or services;

• whether businesses are manipulating the presentation of reviews about their products and services by, for example, combining positive reviews for one product with the reviews for another; and

• how these websites handle reviews about products or services that the reviewer has received a payment or other incentive to review.

See the full text and the CMA's press briefing here.

And finally...

It is illegal to chop and change review solutions as and when one shows the business in a better light than another. This is especially the case when a business uses a widget to feed its Google reviews to its own website until it receives a damaging one-star review there, when the feed is dropped until sufficient 5* reviews are gained to 'bury' the damaging review. 

In short, any strategy that the CMA sees as benefitting the business to the detriment of the consumer will be deemed illegal - even if it is not specifically mentioned in the CMA regulations.

Further reading...

• Moderation - the answer for businesses requiring professional review management for the long term
• The importance of adopting a medium-long-term reviews strategy
• Why break the rules - when there's no need?
• Fear of unfair or misleading reviews - it's real, so many businesses react by adopting the wrong strategy

Just how much is a single review worth?

We often ask our clients this question and we get a variety of responses, but no-one says 'Nothing'. Just last week an estate agent surprised us a little by saying £1000. When we said 'Really - one thousand pounds?' he said 'If I can get my business from nowhere on Google to a 4.5+ rating and, in so doing, look great against my competitors, that has to be worth at least £5000.'

Put like that, we had to agree. Now we examine the process by which this is achieved. Let's remind ourselves how Dialogue works...

• An email is sent asking the client to write a review on your own website*
• That email is followed up - within minutes - with a phone call. The sole purpose of that call is to stress to your client just how much you value their opinion
• The client writes a review on your website
• An email is sent, automatically, asking your client to copy their review to Google
• The client copies their review to Google

So far, so very good. But - and this is a VERY BIG BUT - you need to invest some time and effort as well. Not a thousand pounds worth, you'll be glad to hear, but a minute or two on the phone.

This is how it goes (and if you stray from this process the results you get will suffer):

1. Warn clients at every opportunity during your relationship that you will be asking for a review and just how important it is that they write one, to you and to Google
2. Email clients asking for the review - one at a time
3. Phone straight away, within five minutes
4. Re-stress just how important both reviews are
5. Phone back if the reviews are not written within 24 hours
   

That is all, but any short cuts and response rates will drop dramatically, both to your own website and to Google.

The key is to get inside the mind of your client: understand what will motivate them to write the review (you - and only you - know exactly what you did so well for them, and they may need a gentle reminder!) and they'll do it. Try and do it all by email and, unfortunately, yours will join that endless pile of 'emails I must get round to answering (but never do)' in your clients' in-boxes.

Advice for managers

The most successful businesses make review harvest a part of every member of staff's role. Staff are trained to:

• Mention the fact that a review will be requested at point-of-sale: 'So we can be sure our high standards are maintained we ask all our clients to write a review when our job is complete.'
• Recognise opportunities to invite the review: for example, when a client pays a compliment to the business, in person, by email or over the phone: 'Thank you so much for saying that, may I ask you to repeat it in your review?' 
• Follow up the request by phone - this is key to getting the review to Google

If you are in a high value/low volume business (e.g. financial services, estate agency, legal) you may also consider rewarding staff for getting reviews. It focuses the mind wonderfully and it means your objectives are achieved in a timescale set by you (to repeat the title of this article: 'Just how much is a single review worth?').

HelpHound client services

Remember that Karen Hutchings and her team are here to help and guide. Just a call or an email away you will find years of experience and professional knowledge.


*Please don't underestimate the value of this review (the one posted to your own website); with hundreds of visitors to the average estate agents' website every month, those reviews produce results like these.  

And never succumb to the temptation to short-cut the process by asking them to post straight to Google; that way lies significant potential for disaster (more on that here).

Ongoing review management - it is SO important

In your first weeks of operating Dialogue your business has gone from no reviews on its own website and no (or very few) reviews on Google to 'lots' on your own site and 'some' on Google. What happens now?

To get the right answer to that question it is important to understand how consumers use reviews. There has now been plenty of academic research in that field and all of it points to the following:

1. The pure number of reviews can either boost or dilute the impression you create online. Put simply: a business with 100 great reviews looks bigger and more successful than a business with 50 (and much more so than one with none). The message here is loud and clear: never take your foot off the throttle.
2. Recent reviews matter: If consumers see that the last review was written months ago that runs the risk pf creating the impression that it was written by the business's most recent customer. Then some will draw the conclusion that you are not a great force in your marketplace.
3. The content of reviews is important: it is used by Google to create the three 'rich snippets' shown in the Knowledge Panel (the box that pops up to the right in search containing all your business details - see illustrations below), so encouraging customers to make content detailed and relevant is a good idea. Simply explain how important this is to your business and your customers will respond with great content.

More detail:

Pure numbers

Remember that four reviews a month will add up to fifty by this time next year (and how many of your competitors have anything like that number)? Perseverance is the key here.

Recent reviews

If you build the fact that you will be inviting reviews into all your dealings with your customers they will be upset if you don't invite them, rather than the other way around! That's the way to keep your reviews fresh, as well as the numbers steadily growing.

Rich snippets*

Rich snippets are one of the most important aspects of the Google Knowledge Panel - there for all to see, every time you feature in search results. Negative rich snippets can do untold harm. Here's what one client's looked like when they joined at the end of last year:

And here's what they look like now (less than three months later):

And for anyone wondering about this business: they are a large well-established lettings agency with a very positive and proactive attitude to tenant relations. But with thousands of tenants it was all too easy for the disgruntled minority to dominate what was being said online, so the impression being given was heavily skewed towards that tiny (but vocal) minority's opinions. Dialogue has redressed the balance for them (and will continue to do so).

And one last thing...

There's much more to our role, but clients refer time-and-again to the 'discipline' element, by which they mean that Dialogue ensures that they are always up-to-date as far as reviews are concerned; that they are consistent in requesting (and therefore getting) great reviews, month in, month out.

*Rich snippets: Google software analyses the content of all your reviews, looking for the three predominating themes, it then chooses a phrase from a review that relates to those themes and displays all three as illustrated above.

Dialogue for the Professions - getting off to a great start

The professions (in this context: medicine, the law, financial management, estate agency and the like) come to Dialogue with one (small and eminently surmountable) disadvantage and one massive advantage, compared with, say, those in hospitality.

Whereas hotels and restaurants have numbers in their favour when looking for customers to write reviews (a hundred bed hotel is likely to host upwards of 15,000 guests a year) the professions have an asset that more than makes up for their lack: the customer (client) bond is profoundly greater, and this can be employed to great effect.

Your objective

Your aim will be to get as many great reviews to your website as you can, and get as many of those posted on to whichever external website matters the most (for the purposes of this article let's call that Google). 

To do this effectively you must make the most of this bond. You must optimise the ratio of clients who respond to your invitation to a) write their review to your website and b) go on to copy that review to Google.

Optimising response

In an ideal world every client would respond (to both the invitation to your site and to Google). But we all operate in the real business world, where time is at a premium and emails, despite best intentions, go unanswered.

So our advice to our new clients (born of over eight years' experience) is as follows:

1. Build the fact that you will be asking every client to write a review into every aspect of client contact. Mention it when you first meet ('We invite all our clients to write a review...') and clients will be actively expecting your email when the transaction is completed.
2. Make sure all client-facing staff reinforce the message. For instance, clients will often thank staff over the phone or by email, if staff are trained to say 'Oh, please do remember that when you are asked to write your review' the message hits home.
3. Don't just email (the invitation to write the review) and hope. Most important of all, follow up with a brief phone call.

The crucial phone call 

It takes less than a minute, and it should go something like this...

“Just calling to say that the review you’ve been asked to write is really important to us. Once you have posted your review you will be asked to copy it to Google, this helps us create local awareness, so I’d be really grateful."  

Everyone has their own words to communicate the same message: 'please don't ignore the emails'.

What we do know...

Is that if you do this, you will get reviews, great reviews to your website and great reviews to Google. 

And before you know it, the phone call will become second nature, part and parcel of your customer service regime. 

Click to enlarge or email karen.hutchings@helphound.com for your very own copy