Over a decade in, with Google reviews having been dominant for all that time - and even more dominant today - we still need to remind ourselves, and our readers, that there is still a way to go.
In a line? Businesses that adopt a moderated review management system will thrive, stand-alone and by comparison with their competitors.
First, let us remind ourselves why reviews are so important:
- they provide an invaluable guide to the quality of service a potential customer can expect from a business*
*There remain naysayers whose opinions of online reviews are, to say the least, negative. We say 'Reviews are not perfect but, with one's radar operating effectively it is possible to winnow out the chaff and read reviews that do make sense and do reflect the overall opinions of the customers of any given business'. We have seen so many instances where well-managed reviews have aided both businesses: to increase their customer base significantly, and consumers: to be reassured enough to contact really vital, and often potentially life-changing/enhancing/saving services (we are talking medical, legal and financial services here, not apparel or electrical goods).
For those who continue to doubt the value of reviews, we ask them to read this....
...and then ask themselves if a review such as this would help someone looking for such a service, and would it help the business attract new, in this case, patients?
But, and this is a big 'but'...
...providing they are genuine opinions of the business under review posted by a genuine customer of that business.
We will mine deeper into this crucial aspect below.
Google reviews - the evolution
Attempts to monetise reviews by charging the consumer were made around the turn of the century (Angie's List, founded in 1995, was essentially a list of reviewed trades that was sold to home improvers for a fee. It is now a lead-generator renamed Angi). The 'consumer paid-for' model was soon overtaken by review-led sites sold to businesses, either as lead-generators - the likes of Checkatrade and Rated People - or as marketing reinforcement tools - Feefo and Trustpilot and Reviews.io: 'Use us, just look how pleased our customers are.'
But there was one outlier: Google. Google saw reviews as a primary driver of traffic to their search engine. So they made them free. Free for the consumer and free for the business. They also carry far more credibility with consumers than most other review sources - simply by dint of Google knowing so much about the reviewer, down to individual keystrokes.
Some readers will be ahead of the game by now, and they will be asking themselves 'If Google reviews are free, then why should anyone - consumer or business - need to pay?'
And you're absolutely right. In an ideal world no one, be they business or consumer, would need anything more than Google reviews. Need a lawyer? search and read their reviews, need a financial adviser? Ditto - and so on.
But this is where it gets interesting, and more complicated (bear with us, this is important and can mean the difference between a business succeeding and failing with reviews).
Google reviews are not moderated
Above: all it takes to post a Google review: select a star rating and write your opinion. If you are reading this and have never written a Google review we suggest you do so, if only to understand how simple the process is
Anyone who has ever used a Google service, no matter what, can write a Google review. And that's now well over 95% of the population. The days of 'I cannot write a review without signing up to Google' are well and truly behind us; one click, day or night, weekday or weekend, at work or on holiday, sober or not so sober (!), and a Google review can be posted.
This, in the main, explains why the other review sites continue to exist (that and the massive amounts of capital backing they raised before Google entered the market that enabled them to employ salesforces - there is no salesforce behind Google reviews).
They all, in varying degrees, claim to offer businesses some form of safety net to protect them from harmful negative reviews (and, believe us, a well-constructed negative review, true of not, fair or not, posted to Google will harm a business).
Their offering? All kinds of dashboards and badges - you've seen them everywhere from business's websites to their advertising and marketing; you barely hear a radio or TV advertisment without the tag-line 'Rated five stars on [insert review site]. But the clincher is often some kind of mechanism that purports to protect the business from 'fake' reviews. So far all so laudable. But a cursory search online will find forums full to overflowing with the likes of...
"My review was removed at the request of [review site's paying business customer]. I queried this and [review site] demanded I provide proof of purchase. I provided them with a copy of my till receipt; [review site] says this needs to have my name on it. When did you last see a till receipt with the customer's name on it?"
On the face of it: an attempt by the review site to ensure that reviews are the honest and genuinely held opinions of verified consumers. All well and good? Unfortunately not. UK law specifically states that 'no barrier must be placed in the way of a reviewer who wishes to express their opinion'.
Moderation
There is only one legal and legitimate way, in the UK at least, to ensure that the overwhelming majority of a business's reviews are genuine and factually correct, and it's called moderation. This is how moderation works...
- The reviewer posts their review
- The moderator, an entity independent of the business (and a 'real' human being, not AI or other software), reads the review to check that it is - as far as possible - genuine and factually correct
- If there are doubts: the moderator refers to both the reviewer and/or the business for clarification
- If needs be: the reviewer is offered the opportunity to edit their review (to correct errors of fact or potentially misleading wording)
- At any time in this process, the reviewer has the right to publish their review, edited or not
The only aspect of this process that gives the business under review pause is point 5. They quite understandably identify this as a potential red flag: what proportion of reviewers that initially post factually incorrect, potentially misleading or just plain unfair reviews insist on them being published, uncorrected? Thankfully for all concerned, the answer is a vanishingly small percentage, way under 1. Some time ago we conducted a survey of reviews and these were the results (out of a sample of 1000)...
- Reviews where a moderator needed to contact the reviewer and/or the business under review (aside from simple corrections of spelling/grammar, which are done as standard): 67 - 7%
- Reviews corrected by the reviewer: 53 - 5%
- Reviews not posted live by the reviewer: 10 - 1%
- Reviews posted unedited: 4 - less than 1/2 of one per cent
By now readers will be getting very close to the answer to the question posed at the head of this article: the future of reviews is to make them...
Our submission is that there is one solution that fulfils all these criteria (and, importantly, will continue to do so for the foreseeable future): moderated Google reviews. It just so happens that this is the solution HelpHound has been managing for our clients for well over ten years now.
Our clients have...
- independently verified and moderated reviews on their own websites...
From this flows: compliance with UK law (the 'Write a review' link beside the score and number of reviews), a great marketing and PR resource and reassurance for those potential clients and other stakeholders visiting the business's website, as well as confirmation that the reviews have been gathered and moderated by an independent entity. Moderation exists to protect the business and future clients who depend on moderated reviews to aid them in their choice and not deflect fairly held negative opinions. If a HelpHound client looks great, they are great
- a significant percentage of those reviews are channelled through to Google using our automated invitation software supported by the business's own CRM function
It is these - both headline score and the individual reviews) that drive the flow of enquiries through from search to the business's door/phone/inbox
What other reasons do we have for predicting that Google reviews will continue to be the best solution?
- Google's dominance in the search market: currently 92% in the UK, the same in the EU and 87% in the USA. And in every search, Google shows - you guessed it - reviews
- Google's financial stability: reviews are a long-term proposition, so there's no point investing in a review platform that won't be around in ten years (remember Qype? Probably not. Bought for $50 million by Yelp to 'consolidate its presence in UK and EU markets'. Yelp itself then subsequently withdrew from the UK and the EU).
Action to take
Let us assume your business adopts a moderated system to minimise the likelihood of any inaccurate or misleading (or plain unfair) reviews seeing the light of day: it will be able to take the brakes off review gathering altogether (and become compliant with the CMA regulations as it does so). Everyone can either be invited or allowed to write a review*.
* 'Invited or allowed': in order to comply with UK law a business that invites reviews from any of its customers must allow all of its customers to write a review. This does not mean having to invite all your customers to do so; the 'Write a review' button on the business's website makes your review management compliant.
Targets should then be set to achieve critical mass. So what is 'critical mass'? It is a moving target mostly dictated by a combination of common sense and the knowledge of where the business stands, and scores, relative to its competitors. The business in the example above and below has nigh on 500 Google reviews, all but a few copied from the 700 reviews on its own website. This puts them way ahead of their local competitors, both in terms of score and number of reviews...
...and on a par with the business that has paid for the sponsored listing (a full three miles away - a significant distance in London) in terms of the number of reviews and ahead by a meaningful margin on overall score. Both of which are used as key benchmarks by Google users.
From this one can see that a business such as a single branch estate agent, a doctor's surgery or a financial adviser/accountancy practice should be aiming for reviews in the hundreds - currently. We say 'currently' because in the next five years, those numbers will certainly be elevated into four figures.
Our detailed advice is here; it is summary of everything we have learned in well over ten years of monitoring our client's strategies and subsequent experience. To sum this up: aim to achieve a review to your own website from half of your customers contacts, and then get 50% of those on to Google.
So - the Future...
Those businesses that adopt a moderated review management strategy...
- will be able to relax in the knowledge that the 'fear factor' that prevents so many businesses from engaging is being addressed in the most effective way possible: by being moderated
- will save significant sums compared with less effective review solutions, especially review sites
- will outperform their competitors that lack moderated review management in terms of their Google score (consumers increasingly use Google scores to winnow out good businesses, a business that scores 4.9 will receive more enquiries than one scoring 4.6)
- will be completely future-proof: the business owns the reviews, not HelpHound or a review site, so, if something unpredictable comes to pass (see Qype and Yelp above) the business still has all its reviews to dispose of as it sees fit
And finally: what will it cost? Our aim is to be seen as a profit centre, and we achieve that for all our clients who follow the advice contained in the articles above (and even for the odd one that doesn't!). The details are here along with our guarantee of success.
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