Reviews - the four questions any business should be asking

This is a simple guide designed to help businesses choose the right reviews solution. Why do we need to publish it? That should become clear as you read on...

First - the questions (for the reviews solution)...

1.  Can anyone write a review on your platform?

2.  Can they write a review at a time of their own choosing?

3.  How do you prevent misleading or inaccurate reviews from being published?

4.  What results have your clients achieved?


Now, let us analyse these in detail...

1.  Can anyone write a review?

You may (or may not) be surprised to know that there are reviews solutions on the market that prevent consumers from writing reviews unless they have been invited by the business. The logic is that this ensures that the reviewer is a bona-fide customer of the business under review.

Our comment...

• This practise, whilst undoubtedly well-intentioned, contravenes the UK CMA regulations, which clearly state that a business must, if it invites any of its customers to write a review, enable all its customer to do so. You can probably see the CMA's logic here: they want to prevent business's inviting only happy customers to write a review - a practice known as 'cherry-picking' and therefore running the risk of skewing the impression for potential customers
• It also has the effect of driving those unable to write a review to resort to Google. We often see businesses that employ this kind of site looking great on their own websites and much less good on Google - it is so common we have come up for a term for it: 'Deflection' (because businesses are unwittingly causing their unhappy customers to 'deflect' away from the reviews site to Google)

Can they write a review at a time of their own choosing?

Our comment...

• If the answer is 'No' - the mechanism is also in contravention of the CMA regulations. Why? Because consumers need to know more about products and services than what the customer thought at point-of-purchase. Think for a minute - do you want to know how fast the shoes wore out? Do you need to know if the long-term impact of that financial or legal advice was positive?
• The 'Deflection' point applies here too - the customer cannot write a review to the business's review site of choice - they will resort to the biggest 'reviews site' of them all: Google

How do you prevent misleading or inaccurate reviews from being published?

Our comment...

• If the answer to this key question is anything but 'We don't!' alarm bells should be ringing loudly in your ears. Why? Because the CMA rules - again, rightly - prohibit any mechanism that enables the business to in any way deflect negative reviews. We know of (and have documentary evidence of) reviews sites that incorporate mechanisms that have this very effect - they may be given grand-sounding names like 'quarantine' for what appear - superficially at least - to be the best of intentions, but the outcome, in the hands of some businesses, is straightforward: the negative review does not appear

What results have your clients achieved?

Our comment...

• and by results, we don't mean 'numbers of reviews' (we see businesses every day that have hundreds of reviews in the wrong place, making no impact on their bottom lines whatsoever) - we mean a quantifiable financial impact. An uplift in visits to their client's website, an uplift in calls (both of which most marketing directors can put a £p value on). Insist on seeing case histories and actual results. 

Now: HelpHound's answers to those four key questions...

1.  Can anyone write a review on your platform?

Yes - all our clients have a button on their website, accessible to all, 24/7, without invitation


2.  Can they write a review at a time of their own choosing?

Yes - whenever they choose, seven days a week, morning, noon or night


3.  How do you prevent misleading or inaccurate reviews from being published?

We cannot. But we do have a mechanism that allows the business and the customer to interact, pre-publication, and it is welcomed by both as a way of ensuring that reviews posted HelpHound are factually accurate and less likely to mislead the consumer than those on any other platform we know of - more here


4.  What results have your clients achieved?

These...

...and these, taking a business from this...

...to this...

...and lots more, that we will be happy to show you.

Welcome to professional review management. Welcome to HelpHound.

Responding to reviews - what can you hard-nosed business people learn from a ballerina?

She left her home in Argentina at the age of fifteen, to train at Royal Ballet School. She is universally acknowledged at one of the greatest ballerinas of our time. But we can be pretty sure she has not had much training in marketing or social media - so what can Marianela Nunez teach us business folk?

Let us begin by telling you a story: last night a HelpHound staffer attended a performance of Marguerite and Armand by the Royal Ballet. Being a keen fan of ballet in general and Ms Nunez in particular our staffer follows her on Instagram. Let's be clear about this - she did not invite this person to follow her, they just 'did', as you do on Instagram. But they posted their congratulations on her performance, not at the end of the evening, but during the interval. What do you suppose happened next? 

This happened next...

...and for those of you who don't use Instagram, the 'heart' is a user's way of thanking someone for their comment. Much more importantly: the thanks were posted within ten minutes of the original comment being uploaded.

Compare that with businesses and their reviews. We would rather not, but since it is an important part of our job, we will.

We reckon the average business does not respond to reviews - ever - at all. Bearing in mind that these reviews are posted by happy customers who have gone to some lengths to express that happiness - and that responding is FREE for the business - we are dumbfounded.

How about "Thanks for your kind comment and helpful suggestions"? That took all of ten seconds to type. Even better: how about addressing the criticisms? But three weeks later and...nothing. It gets worse. 

The next reviewer is doing their best to say "Don't use this company". So what does the business, with all its marketing nous and resources, say?

Nothing. No apology, no explanation. How could this be? Seriously: HOW - COULD - THIS - BE?

Let's apply all of our experience and give you some options - and our answer to those options...

• Option 1: the business is unaware that they have the review. We see this all the time with big corporates (seldom with SMEs - a review like this rightly keeps them awake at night). So many businesses think they have reviews covered - when we meet them they say things like "Our PR people handle that side of things" - our answer? Make sure an individual within the branch is nominated an understands their responsibility. And then make sure head office has KPIs to keep the branches on their toes.

• Option 2: the business doesn't know how to respond. They may have lost their G+ log in details (often the person that set up their G+ account has left). Solution: ask us for our simple step-by-step memo and our help to recover the lost log-in.

• Option 3: a negative attitude to reviews. All people who write reviews are either 'idiots with too much time on their hands' (positives) or 'keyboard warriors with impure motives' (negatives). This reason for ignoring reviews - and not responding - is more common than some might imagine - but it flatly goes against all the evidence that consumers now rely more heavily on reviews than ever before. Solution: a fundamental shift in the business's attitude and approach to reviews needs to happen.

• Option 4: Failing to understand that the simple act of responding to reviews makes it less likely that someone will post a negative review in future. Action: try it - prove it for yourself, it's true.

...and, most important of all...

• Option 5: Failing to understand that a good showing in reviews, which consists not only of getting great reviews but in responding to those reviews in a timely manner, drives business through the door.

And, by 'timely' what exactly do we mean? How about 'within an hour of receiving the email from Google alerting you to the review's appearance?

Why scoring 4 on Google is simply not enough

Google allocates a score to every business on the planet, from 0 to 5 ('0' for businesses with no reviews - for reasons better known to Google, a customer cannot score a business '0'). In this article we will help you understand why your business's score matters so much (and will matter even more at some point in the not-too-distant future). 

Your Google score

Your Google score is used as a headline guide, by everyone who is searching for a business. If that score is not as close to perfect - 5.0 - as it can be, those potential customers will mine deeper - by selecting the 'lowest rating' option given to them in every search...

The Google filter

This can be set to '4 and above' or 'top rated'...

So, if your business scores more than 3.9 you will pass the first of these filters, but to succeed with certainty with the second it will need to score as close to 5.0 as possible.

How consumers view your score

This section is based on hard research by several respected institutions - Harvard Business School and Cornell University School of Hospitality amongst them - we have simply expanded on their findings...

• 5.0 - will use this business - no questions asked (may read the first two or three reviews)

• 4.8 - 4.9 - will use this business - will read the first two or three reviews

• 4.5 - 4.7 - will use this business - as long as the negative reviews are not convincing

• 4.2 - 4.4 - may use this business (will definitely read the negative reviews) if there is no comparable business scoring higher

• 4.0 - 4.1 - may use this business, will definitely read the negative reviews, but will actively seach for a business with a higher Google score

But what if my business scores less than 4.0? we hear some of you say. I think we have probably answered that question already, but, for those harbouring any lingering doubts...

• 3.9 or less - these businesses are increasingly finding themselves filtered by even the most unsophisticated Google users (bear in mind that well over 70% of search is now conducted on mobile). If they do make it into the consumers' line of sight then estimates show that at least 93% of those consumers will be influenced by the reviews - negative reviews in this case - that they read.

The 'No-one believes a business that scores a perfect 5' myth debunked...

This has achieved the status of 'urban myth' with businesses. How often do we hear a business say 'No-one will believe their reviews - they score 5'? Pretty often - especially when referring to a competitor! But all reserch points to the fact that consumers actually discriminate in favour of a business that scores as near to 5 as it possibly can.

This business is not 'suffering' from its score - quite the contrary. How do we know? Because they are clients of ours. Of course it does help that all our clients can point to the fact that they invite reviews from everyone with a button like this on their website...

...the button illustrated is 'actual size' so our client can hardly be accused of not proactively inviting reviews!

Why a score in the 'low 4s' is damaging...

Apart from the fact that your competitor with scores better than yours will be doing more business, consumers will invariably read a business's one-star reviews. Here is a typical business scoring in the low 4s - see how they look...

Ranking by score

Sheer force of logic dictates that Google will soon rank businesses by their reviews scores - it is just a question of 'when'. Why do we say this? Because of the single most important reason people use a search engine - and that is to find the 'best' business for them there is. Not the one that pays the most for advertising, not the one that is (necessarily) the closest - the best. 

Google have a three-pronged conundrum to solve before they switch over to 'best' in search, and it goes something like this...

1. Will it dilute our ad pitch (even more)?
2. Do enough businesses have enough reviews to make it a reliable test?
3. Are the reviews themsleves reliable enough?

Our answers:

1. You - Google - will have no option, the logic is just too strong (and you are already acknowledging this in mobile search, with your filters)
2. In some markets and amongst some types of business - yes. There is some way to go with businesses in denial - here's a good example: our recent article on financial services
3. Far more reliable than those from external reviews sites, partly because businesses are not paying Google for reviews and partly because Google now insist that a reviewer is indentifiable - at least to Google!

Reviews - back to Basics

It is sometimes difficult for us - steeped in reviews and review management as we are - to remind oursleves that not everyone else on the planet, or, indeed, in the business world, 'gets' reviews as we do. 

This week we were invited to speak to an audience of business people in the South West of the UK and the questions we were asked demonstrated the need for a 'nuts and bolts' explanation. It was also made abundantly apparrent that businesses have been confused by the array of offerings being promoted to them - we will look at these too.

This article is going to go right back to the early days of the 'Interweb' and explain exactly where reviews and review management fit into a business's strategy and planning. We have included links to Wikipedia for those who would like fuller explanations and have tried to make the headings self-explanantory so you can skip those you don't need to read. 

In the beginning...there was the world wide web, then there were browsers and search engines

...there was the world wide web. No one had access to it without being a) in the US military or b) a graduate of the Massachussets Institute of Technology (or Tim Berners-Lee, obviously - because he invented it all). Then there were 'browsers'. Browsers enabled ordinary folk to connect their computers up to the world wide web (soon, thankfully, to be known simply as the 'web' and 'search' for information that others - mostly eductional establishments and businesses - had 'uploaded' on the the web.

Early browsers - you probably remember the first one you used; was it Netscape Navigator, or maybe Still is Internet Explorer. Later on Apple came up with Safari and Google came up with Chrome.

Browsers should not be - but often are - consfused with 'search engines'. Some people find it easy to remember that a browser is like the library door and the search engine is the librarian. 

You browse with Chrome and search with Google.

Search engines gave you lists of 'relevant' information - and ads...

Loads of ads. 'Banner' ads (the ones accross the top and bottom) and skyscraper ads (the ones up the side. The search engines sold ads in the same way as newspapers: 'Buy an ad, that'll be £500 please'. Like this...

I know it's hard to believe nowadays, but these ads were sold on 'size' - see the pixel dimensions next to each ad!

They were then displayed above or beside the search directory, like this...

...Tower Records has now gone the way of this kind of search - replaced by two twenty-somethings who had the idea that businesses would rather pay if their ads were actually clicked on and then fed the customer straight through to the business's own website. Their business? Google. 

The first Google home (search) page...staggering how little it's changed, when you think about it.

Anecdote alert! Jeff Bezos was one of Google's initial backers - does everything he touches (Amazon) turn to gold?

Anecdote alert 2! Google's founders, Sergei Brin and Larry Page decided they wanted to sell Google to Excite. They went to George Bell - Excite's CEO and offered to sell it to him for $1 million. He rejected the offer. Vinod Khosla, one of Excite's venture capitalists, talked the duo down to $750,000, but Bell still rejected it. A true 'Dick Rowe' moment - except that Dick Rowe did sign the Rolling Stones.

Google truly invented modern - 'intelligent' - web search.

And advertising?

Google's genius was to combine natural - sometimes known as organic - search where links to businesses are delivered based on popularity (OK, we know there are other factors, but 'popularity' will do for the purposes of this article) with advertsements based on a 'pay per click' model. In theory a business coudl run an advertisment - lineage only, no images - on Google and customers could see that ad and pick up the phone or visit the business, but Google had done their homework: the overwhelming majority soon learned that clicking on the ad would take them to the website behind it, and that's where Google made money - by charging for each of those clicks.

Natural search - free. Advertising - paid.

Here was the new world. The only answer was to pay or not to pay? - or rather: 'to pay Google or a web designer'?

This confused plenty of businesses and there was no lack of snake-oil salesmen (did someone mention SEO?!) who would relieve thousands of businesses of huge lumps of cash on the basis that 'you won't need to advertise with Google, we'll get you showing on page one of natural search'.

Why we businessmen didn't relaise sooner - maybe some did -  that this is exactly what they were telling all of the boys, and only ten of those 'boys' were ever going to appear on page one for any given search. Google must have stood by laughing - they must have loved the uncertainty this generated amongst marketing executives, and, of course, the advertising people weren't averse to it; after all, they were trousering lovely commissions for sellling Google PPC to their clients who demanded to appear on page 1 whatever the price!

The flaw in Google...

There's a flaw in Google? The flaw in Google was - and remains - that its search results are not qualitative. Let us explain, because this is important.

When anyone searches the web, using Google, what do they want? Really want?

• a list of plumbers?
• a list of plumbers near them?
• a list of plumbers with clever web designers?
• a list of plumbers with even cleverer SEO specialists?

or...

• the best plumber near them?

simple really, when you think about is, isn't it. We won't go into why Google does not supply the very thing their users want - directly. What we will do is explain why a whole global industry grew up to fulfil that role.

And the name of that industry - REVIEWS SITES!

At last! 'You got there in the end' we hear you say. Unfortunately we are not quite finished yet - there is a twist in the tail.

Reviews sites...

If Google gave us the best 'plumber' near us (or near where we wanted to be), then we would never have needed any of these...

• Tripadvisor
• Yelp
• Trustpilot
• Feefo
• Angie's list
• Zagat
• Glassdoor
• RatedPeople

...and all the hundreds of others to help us find that 'plumber/hotel/dentist/lawyer'.

Google wakes from its slumber...

Goodness, how long it took Google to wake up to the fact that people needed a review site to help them make sense of a lot of their Google searches. But wake up thay eventually did - and how savagely unfair on those reviews sites it was when they did.

Google introduces reviews

Google first tiptoed into the world of reviews when it introduced Google Places (pretty well buried behind Google Maps) which eventually morphed into Google+ Local. Now anyone could write a review on Google. And, it goes without saying - read a review on Google.

At one fell swoop Google had sounded the death knell of reviews sites (how thrilled must the owners of Zagat have been, when they realised they sold to Google just in time? No-one needs a restaurant reviews site now).

And: no-one needs...

• a plumbers review site
• a doctors review site
• a hotel reviews site
• an online retailers reviews site
• a physiotherapists review site
• a bowling ball manufacturers reviews site

...we guess you are getting the point...they just need Google (unless, of course, the business in question is still using - and paying for - an 'old-fashioned' reviews site).

The reviews sites won't disappear in a puff of smoke overnight - after all the canals are still here over 150 years after the invention of the railway (and lots of those reviews sites have significant capital behind them, albeit draining away like Yelp's)...

...and TripAdvisor's share prices... 

Both peaking at almost exactly the same time (Dec/Jan 2013/14) and subsequently falling by over 50% -  and it's no coincidence that it was around this time that th stockmarket woke up to Google as an increasing force in the reviews marketplace

...but it is HelpHound's job to make sure our clients are advised to catch the 11.05 to Birmingham from Euston, not the four-day-journey narrowboat.

Reviews and review management in 2018

As we have been advising clients for over four years now, their primary focus - if they don't want to spend a fortune on advertising (and indeed, waste that money - because consumers now invaribly check out a business's reviews pre-purchase - 93% of them,according to the Chartered Institute of Marketing's most up-to-date figures, so what is the point of advertising if it's going to be contradicted by your reviews?) has to be Google reviews. 

Looking good in a search on their business...

 Having nerly three hundred Google reviews - all attched to a verified Google+ account - and highly visible in every search helps the consumer choose the right business. Having oover 500 of your business's own reviews showing in natural search and 'Reviews from the web' reinforces the trust those Google reviews create.

and looking good in a local search...

Consumers are, understandably, cynical about reviews - just see this artcle about fake reviews and the recent BBC programme - so having over 500 of them goes a long way to allaying fears that they are 'only written by firends and connections'

Until?

Until? Yes - until Google finds a way to do what logic overwhelmingly dictates - rank businesses in search by their reviews score!

Will your business be ready then?

And finally...

...where does HelpHound come in?

HelpHound provides three essential services for our member businesses...

1. We enable them to show independently verified reviews on their own websites
2. We moderate every review before it is posted on their own websites - making sure, as far as is possible that no inaccurate or potentially misleading reviews see the light of day (providing a benefit to all stakeholders: the business, its prospective customers and Google)
3. We then go on to invite your reviewers to post their review to Google, in effect giving both your business and Google a source of very high quality - reliable - reviews

...and, on top of these, we keep a watching brief over every aspect of the reviews market (there are nearly a thousand articles on the Blog alone - covering every concievable event that has impacted reviews over the recent past), so our members can relax in the knowledge that they have 24/7 coverage of the complex and ever-changing reviews scene.

Humberts estate agents in administration - why no effort with Google reviews?

You might be mistaken for thinking that a business that was short of revenue might pull out all the marketing stops - especially ones that cost little besides time and effort.

This week there was bad news for the management, staff and customers of Humberts, the estate agents. They called in the administrators. So what efforts had been made to make their offices look great in search?

Here's their London HQ...

...and here is a representative selection of their offices...

We spoke to Humberts about adopting professional review management eighteen months ago. If they had come aboard then, they would have been a long way down the road to looking like this...

When this client joined they had two reviews on Google and none on their own website - put yourself in the shoes of a local competitor of theirs; would you want to be looking like Greene & Co or like Humberts?

Now, we are not for a moment saying that great review management would have saved Humberts (or would save any business) all by itself. but surely, in an intensively competitive market such as estate agency, where your reputation is your USP, staying five minutes late of an evening to encourage some clients to write reviews would not have been in vain?

Even just putting an invitation to post a review on their website - it would have shown willing, at least...

But what did they do? They adopted the solution we have constantly - and consistently - warned everyone about: an independent reviews site...

This article: Reviews sites - the unintended consequences was published eighteen months ago, coincidentally at almost the exact time we were speaking to Humberts.

And for the cynics out there who still think review management is about 'window dressing' - don't believe us, believe Google - have a long hard look at this...

...is anyone thinking what we are thinking? That an increase of 20% in calls and 30% in website visits might just have pulled Humberts back from the brink?


And finally...

We will attempt to answer the question posed by the title of this article: Why no effort with Google reviews?

And we suspect the answer was one of the following...

• Fear - fear of receiving highly visible negative reviews where everyone would see them, if they complied with the law and invited everyone to write a review
• Fear - fear of being seen to be in contravention of the CMA regulations if they did what many businesses - unwittingly or wittingly - do to this day: cherry-pick happy customers to invite to post reviews
• Hope: that advertisements like this...

 We couldn't agree more - Google stars increase sales

...mean what they look as if they mean. Here is a full search on a Humberts office - any 'stars in Google'...?

Further reading...

1. Are you selecting which customers you ask to write a review? You are breaking the law. Read this.
2. Are you using a site that only allows customers to write a review ate a time of your choosing? You are breaking the law. Read this.
3. Are you using a site that places the onus on your customer to prove that they have done business with you before they publish a review? Sounds great, doesn't it? You are breaking the law. Read this.
4. Why break the rules when there's no need?

The bulls**t job phenomenon - HelpHound takes up the gauntlet

The premise of David Graeber's essay (a viral phenomenon which has been read by more than a million people and has now been expanded into a book) is that in the post-industrial workplace, so many jobs are pointless.

So - we took a look at our job, review management, and applied some of the Times' tests to our role...

"Can you picture your mother succinctly describing your job to one of her friends? Anecdotally speaking, the more important your job, the easier time she'll have of it. You're a nurse? That's easy. You're a teacher? Again, a piece of cake. You're a crane driver or a scientist or a binman? Congratulations, your mum can talk about you with ease."

What about a 'review manager'? Mmmm. But that's not how we describe ourselves to our mums - or how our mums describe us to their friends. It actually goes something like this...

"You know reviews on the web? Well my Jimmy/Janet makes sure they are useful."

That description tends to hit the spot - and we often get responses like...

• "you mean Jimmy stops fake reviews?"
• "does he help consumers get a more accurate picture of the business we are thinking of using?"
• "so he helps business that are great in the real world look great online?"

If they are still interested - and the ones who own or manage a business mostly still are - our 'Jimmys' get supplementaries like...

• "Can anyone write a review on these sites - even competitors or ex-staff or customers that have just plain got the wrong end of the stick?" - sometimes followed by "is that allowed?" and/or "can I get them taken down?"...and then...
• "I thought [insert name of reviews site] did that - wow!"?

To which the - current - answers are...

• "Yes" and...
• "No - they simply provide a vehicle for consumers to write reviews - they take no position on whether or not those reviews are honestly held opinion or, worse for both business and consumer, factually accurate."

"So that's where Jimmy comes in - he make sure they are useful?"

Isn't that what mum said five minutes ago?

Next...

"What would happen if your job disappeared overnight? Would the planet continue to turn?"

Jimmy and Janet's mum's answer:

"Their clients would lose the only mechanism currently available - worldwide - that ensures that their business is accurately reflected in its reviews."

and...

"Their clients' customers would lose the most accurate way of establishing that any given business is good at what they say they do."

and...

"Google would lose a hugely valuable source of accurate reviews."

Enough? We think so. Much more importantly, so do our clients and their customers.

Review 'aggregators' - and why they are the wrong solution

What is an 'aggregator'? An aggregator simply displays reviews from all over the web - usually Google and all the reviews sites - on the business's own website and in search. It sounds like a good idea (they certainly promote it as one!) - until a customer writes an unfair, inaccurate or potentially misleading review on an external platform that neither the business in question, nor the aggregator, has any control over.

And, make no bones, the kind of negative reviews you see in the examples below, do harm businesses - just because no-one rings or emails a business saying "I'm not using your business because I read a negative review" it doesn't mean that doesn't happen - it does, all the time. According to a recent survey by the Chartered Institute of Marketing 93% of consumers now actively consult reviews before doing business - and we're guessing the remaining 7% don't have access to the web!

Here is an example of an aggregator...

...simply showing - on the business's own website - what any potential client might reasonably be expected to find on Google...

 This Google score is not necessarily an indicator of a business that is unpopular with a significant proportion of its customers, but it is an indicator of a business that has chosen the wrong review management solution

...and, if that is not enough 'self-harming' - here is more evidence to show how it has the potential to do serious damage to the business in question...

This is the most recent review published on Google and then re-published on the business's own website by the aggregator

Here is another aggregator and another business's website...

...with the results highlighted in search...

You cannot argue with the aggregator's SEO: but here it is working directly against the interests of their client

The root cause of this? Lack of moderation. We are sure that the businesses themselves, when quizzed about the individual negative reviews, would all have reasons why many of them were inaccurate and/or misleading (the word 'unfair' often crops up when we speak to businesses) - but the external sites have no moderation beyond their T&Cs, they will publish a review is it complies with those, and almost reviews short of the outright libellous will. 

Any business that takes its reputation seriously, as we are sure those in the examples above do, should be looking at professional review management, not an aggregator. 


Further reading...

Aggregators make much of 'stars in search' being a core benefit, and we agree with that, but with one important difference: the stars that matter, above all, are Google stars. Google has the visibility and the credibility businesses need, but they also need moderation, as the above article makes clear. For more on 'stars in search' read this, for a description of HelpHound's moderation process read this.