Exactly two years ago today, we introduced our guarantee. This article is best read in conjunction with the one behind that link, but for those who know about the guarantee, we hope it provides a useful refresher/update.
Read the full article
here
The HelpHound guarantee consists of the following...
- Full compliance with the CMA regulations and Google's terms of service
- A Google score of 4.8 within three months of joining
- A ten per cent uplift in enquiries through your own website and through Google
- A specified and agreed target for the number of reviews achieved on your business's website and on Google for any given timeframe
The article behind the link gives specific examples of businesses that will benefit. In this article, we will expand on the four points above.
1. Full compliance
We hear the groans! No one's favourite subject is it? But, where reviews are concerned, it is just about to become a whole lot more important. Why? Because the CMA's ongoing investigation into online reviews, which is now years long, is nearing completion, aided by a recent introduction of some powerful AI detection tools, announced last August. Businesses, and they are legion, involved in either of the following...
- cherry-picking - the act of identifying selected customers more likely to write 5* reviews and then only inviting those customers to do so
- gating - the act of using a mechanism - usually a questionnaire or email - to pre-qualify such customers
...will now run a far higher risk of sanction by the CMA. Up until now so many businesses have said, to us, directly, that they would rather run the risk of CMA action than comply with the law, as the CMA sanction seemed, to them, to be unlikely, and it they were more certain to score highly if they continued to cherry-pick. And we had - notice the past tense - some sympathy with their view; after all, how was a business going to look great, and compete with its competitors, if it failed to achieve a really impressive Google score? And that 'impressive' score? It used to be anything over 4.0, now it is more like 4.8 and over, especially for high value service businesses and the professions.
So, how can HelpHound guarantee compliance alongside success with reviews? Take a business, any business, it could be an investment bank with few reviews, such as this...
...or an estate agency office with many, like this...
The former has avoided engaging reviews altogether, and the latter has been cherry-picking its 'nailed-on happy' clients for nearly ten years.
Both of them can achieve compliance and increased review volume overnight by adopting a moderated review management process. In short: employ an outside agency such as HelpHound to read every review as it comes in, challenge those that contain errors of fact or statements likely to mislead the reader and allow the reviewer the opportunity to correct them. No need to fear reviews (the investment bank) or flout the law (the estate agency) any more.
2. A Google score of 4.8 within 3 months of joining
This client had 5 Google reviews when they joined.
If this were not achievable, by every single one of our clients, we would have had claims on our guarantee. But we have not. Two years and counting (as of tomorrow).
Just how can we promise this? It's simple: we conduct an audit of all our new clients' CRM, if we consider that it needs improvement we will tell the business what improvements, in our opinion (based on well over ten years' of experience), need to be made; then, and only then, will we embark on our review management journey together.
But most new clients pass this audit with flying colours, because we tend only to attract businesses that take their custmer relations seriously in the first place. For the others there are review sites available that will award stars (and more) a plenty. Our clients want their reviews on the only platforms with visibility and credibility - Google and their own websites.
The above client's website: reviews - all 770 of them - fed through from HelpHound, having first been moderated. In only 7% of cases do our moderators become involved, but those 7 in 100 reviews, containing errors of fact or misleading statements (or even just badly mangled grammar), are crucial when it comes to maintaining a fair view of our clients' businesses, on their own website and on Google. The 'Write a review' button on the left is critical for compliance, and the 'What is HelpHound?' button on the right reassures the reviewer that third-party moderation is a boon for all concerned.
Your business passed the audit and your management and staff have been briefed as to the tried and tested way in which results such as those above have been achieved (there's far more to HelpHound than just great software). Reviews begin rolling in, first to your website - to be shown there and to enable them to be moderated by us - and then to Google. History and long experience shows us that a business employing independent moderation will score between 0.3 and 0.7 better than it would without, and that businesses starting out with scores at the lower end will show the most marked improvement. So a business joining with a Google score of 4.2 and a business joining with a Google score of 4.5 should both achieve 4.8 in short order. And hopefully more; we have many clients scoring 4.9 like the one above, but 5.0 is rare, as businesses may be as close to perfect as makes no difference but, as we all know, even perfect businesses have imperfect customers, and the law unequivocally states that their opinion must be pubished. Moderation is accepted, even welcomed by most customers, but there is always the odd salmon that will insist on swimming against the flow, so 4.9 it is!
3. A ten per cent uplift in enquiries though your website and through Google
It is a pity Google stopped publishing the actual numbers - see example above - (we suspect that they were undermining Google Ad sales), but we were lucky to be around in the days when they did. Here's an example of the improvement in clicks and calls in one month after joining HelpHound and getting the reviews flowing. Google still gives SEO credit for reviews hosted on the business's own website.
As you can see, the 10% 'promise' is conservative. Nowadays, we rely on our clients to feed back results from their own data, and we are absolutely sure our guarantee would be invoked if this were not the case.
4. A specified target for numbers of reviews
The client in our example has received 19 reviews in the last month. They received their last 1* review over three years ago, and it was one of the best learning experiences they could have had. A complete review of their CRM resulted in a dedicated member of staff being brought in to head up their review management
Flow is crucial, and not just for maintaining a great score (as important as that is). Consumers are becoming more and more sophisticted in the way they analyse businesses before making that vital first contact and online reviews form a big part of that analysis; if a business has few reviews or if the first review the consumer is faced with is credibly negative then consumers have a habit of adopting the line of least resistance, a competitor is always just a click away.
A simple answer to the question 'How many reviews should we expect?' is our 'rule of fifty per cent': get half of your customers to write a review to your website and then half of them to copy their review over to Google (our software and Google's interface makes that easy). Business such as the one referenced here comfortably exceed tose figures month by month.
So: the best way to prove this for your business? Join us and our successful clients who are making the most of online reviews without breaking the law - or the bank! Make 2026 the year your business begins to benefit from professional review management. We promise you will never look back.
Further reading...
- Results - what professional review management is all about, making your business money
- Our fees - how much is all of the above worth for your business?
