Getting the reviews flowing

As you might expect, we have very wide experience of review flows, given different circumstances/business types and methods of approach. We will deal with all these and more in this article.

The process

This is the simplest part:

1. The business sends an email asking for the review
2. The review is posted to your website, having been moderated by HelpHound*
3. HelpHound sends an automatic email to the reviewer inviting them to copy their review to Google

If that is all the business does, they will see a response rate of +- 1.5 per cent.

Which may be fine for a business that completes many thousands of transactions a month (an online retailer, for example). Sell 500 shirts, get 7 reviews, sell 5,000 shirts, get 70 reviews:

All the reassurance a customer could ever need, right? Bearing in mind a large proportion will be repeat customers, and everyone knows how to return an unwanted purchase these days.

But what about high-value low-frequency services, the kind of business that HelpHound predominantly works for? Let's look a little closer at what we mean by 'high-value low-frequency'.

We mean the professional and other service businesses, from accountants to yacht brokers (we couldn't come up with one beginning with 'Z'), medical, legal and financial services. The kind you choose and hope to stay with for a lifetime, or the kind you need in an emergency, or once only (think 'estate agent'), but where the wrong choice will cost you dear, in more ways than one.

A medical practitioner, an accountant, a wealth manager or a solicitor may only have single figures of touch points - a 'touch point' being where it would be appropriate to ask for a review - per month. A single branch of an estate agency is unlikely to have dozens. 

So let us look at the aims, lessons, and strategies that will ensure your business succeeds.*

* 'Guaranteed success'? Absolutely. Read more about our guarantee and fee scales here.

Aims

• To turn your existing customers into your most valuable marketing advocates

• To achieve a score of 4.9 on your website and on Google

• To get high-quality reviews*

• To get a steady flow of fresh reviews

• To get 500+ reviews in both locations, then 1,000, and so on

*'High quality': we have tested every possible means of acquiring this kind of extremely valuable review (see above). The kind that can convince a potential customer to pick up the phone or visit a business's website all on its own. They typically contain details of the customer's requirement before contacting the reviewed business, and then more details on how the business fulfilled their requirements. Not just the 'great business' type of review elicited by text/SMS.

Lessons learned

• Do not use text/SMS to invite the review. You will get a lower response rate and will be sure to get far less detailed (and therefore less helpful) reviews. Always invite reviews by email 

• Do not ask for reviews to be completed in your place of work; firstly, it puts undue pressure on the customer, and secondly, Google have been known to arbitrarily delete all or some of the reviews for a business where it sees multiple reviews from the same IP address 

• The wording of the email inviting the review is critical. It must be tailored to every single business, and sometimes to every discrete service offered by that business. The focus of the email should be on the benefits the review will bring to future customers, not the business

• Invitations to write a review out of the blue (with no warning) achieve a far lower conversion rate, and are generally of a far lower quality as well. 'Warn' customers that they will be asked to write a review, and reinforce how helpful future customers will find their review, as often as possible. If a customer pays a verbal compliment, be sure to ask them to remember to include it when the time comes to write their review

• Set targets. Easily achievable at first, and then ramped up as staff become increasingly practised at achieving them. It should be eminently possible to achieve reviews on your own website from half of your customers, and half of them copied onwards to Google

• Appoint members of management and staff to drive your review management. Integrate it into everyone's daily routine

• Reward members of staff, by team or individually, for achieving target numbers of reviews. Consider rewarding staff for every review they achieve**

**Do not incentivise customers to write reviews. Ever. It is against many review sites' T&Cs and flies in the face of the spirit of the CMA's regulations. Providing incentives or rewards for writing positive reviews is illegal.

Strategy

This client had 3 Google reviews and none of their own when they joined. They have developed a strategy, in conjunction with HelpHound, that has produced the results you see here. Above is their website. Below is what they look like in the critical Google local search:

And here they are, leading organic search (all in a very competitive marketplace):

The red arrow is pointing at the score that Google has pulled from the business's own reviews, not their Google reviews. We thought this aspect of our service was a 'useful addition' to our core service until a Google update temporarily switched it off; the howls of anguish from clients who valued it as much as anything else we do for them echoed around the office. Luckily, it proved to be a very temporary glitch

We tailor a strategy for every single one of our clients (no one-size-fits-all at HelpHound), and we will liaise with your marketing and web team to dovetail your review feed with your overall brand and web design.

Longevity

We will ensure that the strategy we recommend endures. Review management is a long-term commitment bringing benefits all the way along the journey. But many of those benefits will be apparent from day 1. Full compliance with the CMA regulations from Day 1, reviews flowing from Month 1.

Here's a memo that clients of HelpHound will immediately recognise. It is now well over ten years since it was first issued, and guess what? It is as relevant today as it ever was.

Here's another - more recent - version of the invitation email*:

*We always recommend that new clients run with a version of this email - tailored, naturally, to their own particular business - for two reasons: firstly, because this email format has been tried and tested over the years, and secondly, so we can eliminate the email as a cause in the event of lower-than-expected response rates.

Important note:

The above email invites the review to the business's own website only. This allows HelpHound to moderate every review (an average of 7 in every 100 reviews will involve some intervention by our moderators), in order to allow the reviewer to correct factual inaccuracies or potentially misleading statements***. Only after the review is published on the business's website will the reviewer be asked, automatically, by HelpHound, to copy their review to Google. If you look carefully at the example of Winkworth above, you will see just how successfully we - 'we' meaning the management and staff of their office in conjunction with HelpHound's software and advice - have been in converting a very high proportion of the reviews written to their website into Google reviews. 760 reviews to their website, resulting in 570 Google reviews.

***The wording here is precise. Our moderation is not designed to deflect honestly held opinions; by law, a consumer must be allowed to publish whatever review he or she wants, but in our long experience, the vast majority welcome our service: few actually wish to see inaccurate or misleading comments under their name, and therefore welcome our service. The result? Accurate and helpful reviews. For all concerned.

When clients are established and confident with their procedures and our mechanism, we often recommend they convert to what we call a 'Multi' invitation: inviting reviews to both their own website and Google at the same time.

Trustpilot in the regulatory crosshairs

The AGCM - the Italian equivalent of the UK's Competition & Markets Authority - has fined Trustpilot EU 4 million as '[the] Online review platform provided consumer rating information not always representative of customers’ actual experiences.'

The ACGM's press statement is here. An extremely thorough English translation of the detailed findings of the Italian investigation is to be found here. 

In this post, we have taken extracts from both of these and made our own comments where necessary. 

The above is a summary press statement by the AGCM.

What follows is a translation and summary of the key findings by a European law firm.

Our comment

Overall

We continue to ask the question of any business subscribing to Trustpilot - or any other online review website - 'Why?'

• 'Why pay [a review site] when Google reviews are free?'

• 'Why pay [a review site] when Google reviews have far higher visibility?'

• 'Why pay [a review site] when Google reviews have greater credibility?'

We contend, as we always have, that if Google reviews had predated the online review sites, the latter would never have come into existence. 

Not covered by the above

Trustpilot's use of a 'Bayesian average' to calculate a business's 'Trustscore'. Here is what Google Gemini has to say on the topic...

The issue here can be broken down into 'Simple' and 'More complex':

Simple

Work this out if you can. We spent hours wondering how a business with 77 per cent of its reviews scoring it four or five stars could possibly result in a 'Trustscore' of 1.6, and couldn't come close to finding an answer

Most - all? - consumers will expect a score to be a mathematical average (as is the case with Google reviews and just about every other mechanism we have ever come across, including our own): the business has ten reviews scoring 5.0 = an overall score of 5.0. Not with Trustpilot, partly because of the seeding referred to above. All businesses start with a score of 3.5. The kind of score that will have most consumers moving swiftly on (to the next business). 

More complex

Click to read. Does anyone else think this sounds like 'Join and look great'?

Add to the above the fact that Trustpilot also applies a (positive) weighting to more recent reviews, and the water is muddied even further. This obviously benefits larger businesses and those that actively invite reviews from customers, which may just mean 'paying business members' (the ACGM evidently thinks so).

Overall

Some might say that all of the above work in favour of paying subscribers and against businesses that haven't joined Trustpilot. Certainly, Grizzly Research's examples, comparing similar businesses, some members and some not, give the distinct impression that 'join Trustpilot and look great, don't join and look terrible.'

The key here is two 't' words: 'Trust' and 'Transparency'. Reviews are relied on by the overwhelming majority of consumers these days to guide them toward reliable businesses. If businesses are offered an opportunity to tip the scales in their favour and that results in consumers being misled into using a business they might not otherwise use, it erodes trust. 

Tell us that a review such as this is not gold-dust? For all concerned: the business and those researching the business

We often hear people saying 'I don't trust reviews' or 'I wouldn't use reviews', and that is probably acceptable in the context of online shopping, but when it comes to choosing a medical, financial or legal adviser, it would be a great pity if the vital resource that online reviews can be was unable to be trusted.

 

How will the CMA identify businesses in breach of the law regarding reviews?

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has begun action, initially against five businesses (including the review site Feefo) for alleged breaches of its regulations relating to reviews. A question that crops up not infrequently is 'How would a business be caught?' or words to that effect.

Here is the answer.

First, let's look at the CMA. Here are the relevant staffing levels (out of a total of just over 1,000):

Key Departments: The staff are distributed across units such as Competition Enforcement (131), Consumer Protection and Markets (118), and the Digital Markets Unit (70).

Specialists: The CMA employs about 120 economists, econometricians, and statisticians, alongside a 40-person data and technology team

These staff are all concerned, to one extent or another, in ensuring that businesses do not manipulate online reviews to the detriment of consumers.

What tools did they have at their disposal before 2024? They mainly relied on in-house manual investigations, sometimes, but by no means always, prompted by whistleblowers.

Who were those whistleblowers? The answer will surprise no one: they primarily consisted of ex-members of staff from non-compliant businesses or competitors of the same.

After 2024? There has been a seismic shift, driven by two factors:

• The introduction of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which has given the CMA greatly increased powers to investigate and sanction businesses guilty of misusing online reviews

• The development of sophisticated specialist AI tools, designed specifically to identify those businesses in breach of CMA regulations

The above include:

• The power to enter a business or domestic premises with or without a warrant (section 75 (2)). This includes the power to access computer equipment, including passwords, and to interview staff.
• The power to impose fines of up to 10% of the business's global turnover where breaches are proven

Here is a uselful Gemini AI summary:

You can see and follow the links by conducting the same search: 'Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 powers to fine businesses'

In this context, it is significant to note that the UK CMA is not the only regulatory body interested in sanctioning businesses or review sites that it considers are not acting wholly or primarily in the interests of consumers. The Italian government, in the person of their version of the CMA, the AGCM, recently fined the review site Trustpilot EUR 4 million for breaches of its similar code.

So let us put this plainly: if the CMA identifies prima facie breaches of its regulations relating to reviews, it will visit business or residential premises without prior announcement and require access to all means of communication and data storage, including emails, texts/SMS and computer hard drives, as well as any keys or passwords. 

This will include:

• Seeking evidence that customers were selectively invited to write reviews, to whatever destination

• Seeking evidence that customers were pre-qualified - using an email or a questionnaire, for instance - before being invited to write a review

• Seeking evidence that members of staff or their friends/and or relations were invited to write a review

Secondary indicators will be:

Above, you see the actual number of reviews for a real business over the last 3 years, expressed as a monthly rolling average. The variation in the number of reviews gathered over similar periods would be enough, of itself, to arouse suspicion that the businesse in question is engaging in non-compliant activity. This information is publicly available, and is therefore accessible by the CMA's AI investigative software.

 

• Unusual review patterns, such as many reviews one month and none the next
• Similar wording in multiple reviews
• Unusual geographical spread (Google show the home location of the reviewer, so a review of a dentist on a different continent might ring alarm bells)
• Repeated use of employee names in reviews
• Repeated reviews of incidental contacts (phone calls not relating to the core product or service, for instance); not of itself a breach, but indicative of a non-compliant management mindset

Upon finding evidence of breaches (cherry-picking and/or gating in the main - both of which leave a very visible and obvious paper trail) the CMA now has statutory powers to directly levy significant fines and director censure, now, unlike up until 2025, without recourse to the courts. 

Action any business currently in breach must take

Cease any illegal activity immediately. Put in place a strategy for 'cleaning house'. This will involve:

1. Having a CMA complaint mechanism that allows all of your customers to write a review at a time of their own choosing. This is best incorporated into your website
2. Ensuring that whatever mechanism you choose incorporates effective moderation, to ensure that as few inaccurate or misleading reviews as possible are published, anywhere, on your website, on a review site or on Google
3. Then, and only then, begin to invite customers to write reviews

That mechanism? May we humbly suggest one that has been tried and tested for over a decade now? Welcome to HelpHound.

And finally...

We cannot, for obvious reasons, make any promises on behalf of the CMA, but common sense dictates that it is far more likely to pursue 'current' rather than historic breaches. Businesses that take action to comply now are, in our opinion, far less likely to find themselves subject to regulatory action.

 

The CMA's new powers - fail one question and your business is vulnerable

There have been three important events in the last eighteen months regarding online reviews that every business should be aware of:

• The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 gave the CMA vastly increased powers to sanction businesses misusing online reviews
• The CMA has invested in AI software to speed up the identification of businesses likely to be in breach
• The CMA has begun taking action, initially regarding five businesses (one being a review site), where it considers there have been potential breaches

Below is a checklist, in the form of the five questions to which the answer will be a simple 'Yes' or 'No', so you can identify if your business is in breach, and therefore what action it needs to take, if any, to avoid sanction by the Competition & Markets Authority (CMA).

1.  Does your business selectively invite customers to write reviews, either to a review site or to Google (or both)?

2.  Does your business employ any mechanism - a formal survey or a simple 'were you happy with our service?' type email to identify 'happy customers' before inviting them to write a review? 

3.  Does your business have control over the timing of reviews written by your customers?

4.  Can your customers only write reviews of your business if specifically invited to do so?

5.  Does your business use a review site - Trustpilot, Feefo etc. - to identify those customers most likely to leave a 5* review and then invite those, and only those, to post a review to Google?

If you cannot answer 'No' to all of the above five questions, your business is in breach of the CMA's core regulations*.

*We cannot, of course, make any promises as to any course of action the CMA is likely to take in any individual case, but logic indicates that businesses that have taken steps to correct breaches, or that were in breach in the past but are no longer, are unlikely to be the first targets for regulatory or legal action by the CMA.

What will the CMA do?

First: what it will not do: the CMA will not warn any business that it is about to become subject to either investigation or sanction; it will consider that its press releases over the years have provided sufficient warning.

Past history indicates that the CMA is highly unlikely to initiate action against a business and subsequently find it not at fault. The CMA will only initiate action where it considers that it has a watertight case. 

CMA fines, even before the 2024 Act gave them the power to levy fines of up to 10% of a business's turnover, were never insignificant. The case of the four Bristol estate agents that were fined £370,000 for illegal price-fixing is instructive in this regard.

The 'we're too small/insignificant' argument that we have heard so often in the past ceases to hold water now that whistleblowers, combined with the CMA's own AI, make it economically viable for the CMA to sanction businesses regardless of size. From our discussions with the CMA, resources are a critical factor, and anything the CMA can do to bolster these or show HM Treasury that its ROI is providing a positive financial impact will undoubtedly be viewed positively.

Our advice?

It couldn't be simpler: comply with the CMA regulations. Now. 

How?

We fully understand the reasons why businesses have cherry-picked (invited only customers they were certain would write a positive review) and/or gated (pre-qualified customers before inviting only those likely to leave a 5* review) in the past. Inviting 'everyone' was considered a risk too far. But the benefits of having a great score, especially a great score on Google, were just too obvious to ignore.

Unfortunately for such businesses, that option was never on the table: the CMA's regulations have expressly forbidden such a strategy for many years now. One can see the CMA's logic: how are consumers to trust a business if it is somehow able to filter reviews to ensure that only those that show the business in a positive light ever make it onto the web? On top of that, how are consumers to trust reviews as a whole?

This has, until now, given a great many businesses a stark choice: avoid engaging with reviews altogether or flout the CMA regulations. The first sacrifices far too many benefits (increased enquiry rates and lead flows, social proof and SEO, to name but a few). It also runs the increasing risk that a minority of disgruntled customers can 'capture' a business's online image. 

The second of those is no longer viable, as we have explained above. The risk of sanction is now just too great (and the sanctions are far too severe to contemplate). 

Achieved thanks to moderation - search 'estate agent Kingsbury' and see how this business shines in full compliance with the CMA regulations

That's where moderation - the act of employing an external moderator to ensure reviews are as accurate and reflective of the reviewer's experience of the business as possible*, comes in - it's an extra expense, admittedly, but one that will a) ensure compliance with the CMA regulations and b) protect your business from factually inaccurate, potentially misleading or just plain unfair reviews. 

*Moderation relies on the cooperation of the reviewer. In our long experience, an average of 7 reviews in 100 require intervention of some kind by our moderators, to invite the reviewer to correct errors of fact or rewrite a potentially misleading comment. In only 3 cases in 100 where our reviewers become involved does the reviewer decline to do so. Put yourself in their position: who, knowing the business will post a response to their review, will persist in writing one that contains inaccuracies?

The 'Perfect Business' - does it need moderation?

We come across these less and less these days. Why? Not because businesses have become slacker, but because more and more consumers have come to understand the power a single well-crafted review has - especially if written on Google - to hurt such businesses.

We continue to encounter many businesses whose perfect Google score of 5.0 has been impacted by an inaccurate or misleading negative review. Some might reasonably say, 'But that's just one among dozens (hundreds even)', and they would be mathematically correct. But consumers have also learned how to read reviews: these days they will often select the 'lowest' button...

...and if the reviews they then read are credible, they will often move swiftly on to another similar business.

How do we know this? Because of the urgent calls we receive from businesses where a single negative review, often inaccurate and sometimes unfair in the extreme, has resulted in their inbound enquiry flow falling measurably. Retroactive review management - known as 'reputation management' in the trade - is far less effective than proactive moderated review management.

And Finally...

Even when businesses understand all of the above, they are left asking one crucial question: 'Does this mean we have to actively invite every single one of our customers/clients/patients to write a review?'

The answer is 'No'. The 'golden key' to review management is twofold: first, an intimate understanding of the CMA regulations and then this button, allowing anyone to review your business when on your website...

To see this working live - both the 'Write a review' process and the 'What is HelpHound?' explanation, click here

...the key word here is 'allow'. This makes your review management practice compliant. The CMA understands that there are circumstances where a business wouldn't want to proactively invite a customer to write a review, but they do require you to provide a mechanism to 'allow' them to do so. We probably don't need to repeat it, but all reviews written by people clicking that button are sent directly to pre-publication moderation. How much better than a factually inaccurate or misleading review on Google?

Further reading...

• How the CMA uses its direct enforcement powers

Quinux Acquoxis - a great example of reviews-based 'hit and run' marketing

The name, with hindsight, probably gave us a clue. So what are we talking about here? It's a 'miracle' pressure washer. And if you watch YouTube at all, you will have seen their advertisements in the last three weeks - perfectly timed for the Easter/Spring garden/DIY spending surge. 

Here is just one of their websites.

Let's take a look...

Note the prominently displayed stars and score (4.8), as well as the tab, which leads to these...

all, as far as we have been able to establish, fake. No source.

This as well...

Not entirely sure what the customers who voted the item 5.0 for 'Comfort' were referencing

We did a quick scrape of the usual websites to see if we could find any genuine reviews. Here's Trustpilot...

Nice of Trustpilot to give them a score of 1.9 or 1.4; 2.9 even better, given that between the three listings there's only one 5* review - and that is thanking the business for a full refund! At least Trustpilot cannot be accused of lending credibility in this instance, but we are surprised that they will even grant a listing, let alone three, to such a business.

The point at issue here is that unscrupulous businesses - in this case, the parent appears to be a company called 'Cablelinker' based, again 'allegedly' in Hong Kong - can bypass the conventional online review channels entirely to make a quick buck. There are undoubtedly tens of thousands of unhappy new 'owners' of one of these seriously misrepresented and overpriced product (£50 in the UK - the same product can be had for £10 by searching Google shopping). 

We will forward this article to the CMA in the hope that the advertisements on YouTube can be shut down.

The CMA's crackdown on review abuses gathers pace - important!

The full text of the BBC report is here. Businesses cannot say they weren't warned. The CMA has been issuing warnings for a long time now, and we have repeated them on this blog, alongside advice on what action businesses should take to ensure compliance.  The 2024 Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act gave the CMA massive additional powers to enforce and fine non-compliant businesses.

First of all: why is this 'important'?

Because a large proportion of consumers have come to rely on reviews before making purchases or engaging services. If those reviews are gathered or displayed in ways that in any way favour the business at the expense of the consumer, then the CMA has a legal duty to step in. 

In addition, if consumers lose confidence in online reviews as a resource, then they lose a valuable aid to decision-making when considering such purchases, and the businesses themselves lose valuable social proof.

The CMA Action

Here is a summary of the reasons behind the action being taken by the CMA:

• Feefo and Autotrader are under investigation over whether they denied consumers a "fully rounded" picture online of other people's experiences by not including some bad reviews.

• Just Eat is being probed over whether its rating system inflated certain restaurants' and grocers' star ratings.

• Dignity is being investigated over whether it asked staff to write positive reviews about the firm's cremation services, giving people "a potentially inaccurate picture" of customers' feedback.

• Pasta Evangelists is being looked at to see whether customers were offered discounts on future orders in exchange for leaving 5-star reviews on delivery apps without this being disclosed.

 

Here is the full CMA press release. We suggest you read the full text here, along with our comments, and refer to the original for links.

Comments

1. This action should be seen by any business that is proactively engaged in inviting and/or displaying reviews that the CMA is 'on their case' and that compliance is no longer a 'nice to have' addition to their review management strategy, but core to it.
2. Interestingly, the CMA refers to 'fake reviews' when their action covers, but is not confined to, them. They are also concerned that negative reviews are being suppressed, and that consumers are being prevented from posting their honestly-held opinions at a time of their own choosing.
3. The sanctions - fines - for non-compliance have been massively increased (to 10% of global turnover).
4. This is the first in what we fully expect to be an ongoing campaign by the CMA. More businesses will be investigated in a rolling programme.
5. That programme will be enhanced (and accelerated) by the investment the CMA has made in AI investigative technology. No longer will the CMA be solely reliant on its manual investigations and whistleblowers - although we are certain that both will continue.

And finally...

This article would be incomplete without providing you with a reference to the CMA regulations. If you have any questions whatsoever, please do not hesitate to speak to us.