Online reviews? They don't matter, do they?

Our answer may surprise some: it's a qualified 'Yes' where product reviews are concerned. You are probably better off consulting the likes of Which? or an expert blogger if you need a new washing machine. But where high-value services are concerned? A managed and proactive review strategy is essential, and it is this that we address in this article.

We still hear this - the headline comment - on an almost daily basis. Or variations on the same theme...

• No one ever refers to our reviews
• All our new business comes as a result of referrals anyway
• What kind of person writes reviews anyway?
• What kind of person takes any notice of reviews?

To answer these points one by one to give us the answer to the question posed in our headline...

1.  No one ever refers to our reviews

Spend a minute studying this screenshot. It provides conclusive evidence that consumers of high-value services - wealth management in this instance - do read reviews, especially Google reviews, and that they value negative as well as positive opinions. It is estimated that for every 'Thank You' - the hands/heart icon - at least a hundred people will have seen and read the review in question

Try asking them. A simple 'Did you read our [Google] reviews before contacting us?' will prove - or disprove - this point. In addition, we would suggest that you check out the 'Thank Yous' your individual reviews have received (see above).

2.  Referrals

Not everyone will do this. But some are bound to. Weigh the cost of adopting a proactive review management strategy against the benefit of converting more referrals 

It is a brave business that assumes that those referred to it, either by professional connections or by its existing customers, will not take the trouble to check it out by reading at least some of its reviews. Businesses sensibly weigh the benefits of taking action - in this case, adopting a review management solution - with the cost of doing so. 

3. The 'kind of person' that writes reviews

She's just as likely to write a review as anyone else

In short? Motivated and prompted. Motivated because they have received exemplary service and advice or, in their eyes anyway, the opposite. Prompted? Asked to write a review by the business. No demographic is exempt, except those with no access to the web. Never make the mistake of thinking that customer X 'is not the kind of person to write a review'. We have seen instances of people in their nineties asking their carer or children to write a review on their behalf.

Taking notice of reviews

Take a minute to search 'estate agent Kingsbury' and then ask yourself 'Would I at least ask to meet them?' if you were selling a house in their area

Again, we can show you conclusive proof that scoring above 4.5 with a significant number of reviews - 100+ these days will bring in more business. A great Google score, by comparison with your competitors, will bring in more enquiries. If asked to put a number on that at outset, we will usually say 'between 15 and 25 per cent more', but we have seen uplifts of well over a hundred per cent. What can you be absolutely sure of? Looking great in search, with a score like the client above that has recently opened a second branch, certainly won't harm your business!

Conclusion

One thing we haven't mentioned here is absolutely key for a business embarking on engaging with reviews for the first time: moderation. It is the essential safety net that reduces the chances to as near as zero as can be of an inaccurate, misleading or just plain unfair review from being published. A full description of the process is here.

Once a business understands moderation, it is time to make the move towards professional review management. What more reassurance can we provide?

Reviews are displayed front and centre on the business's website - location specific - and are proven to drive business.

More proof. This time on the business's own website...

1. We will fully brief your business and all its management and staff as to process and best practices. Not just at the outset, but all the way along the journey. And that will be done by a human being, not AI.
2. We will do all the development work that will enable you to invite reviews to your own website (Google gives you great SEO credit for that) and then enable you get them on to Google. We will provide you/your web designers with the code or our API so you can harmonise your review display with your own branding - no mandatory star colour!
3. We will not tie you into a contract; on the contrary, we will positively guarantee success - no strings attached

Wealth managers and financial advisers urgently need to address their review management strategies

Numbers crunched: back in 2019 these businesses had an average of 7 reviews each - and that average was heavily skewed by Hargreaves Lansdown and Nutmeg - today they average 45 reviews each. Their scores averaged a borderline respectable 4.4; those have now fallen to 3.7. From reading the individual reviews, it is evident that very few have been written at the request of the business. These businesses, virtually all of them, have left their image in Google search to a tiny minority of their most motivated clients. And those most motivated to write a review? Those that are the least satisfied

We first addressed the concept of reviews for wealth managers and financial advisers back in 2019. Here is the article. Before we go on to look at one example in depth, let's compare a handful of those businesses' images in search then and now.

We think you will agree that there is no arguing as to the direction of travel for these numbers. If unaddressed, the number of reviews will continue to rise, and the average scores of the individual businesses will continue to fall. 

In-depth analysis

Now on to our deep dive into a specific example: have you seen an advertisement for Fisher Investments UK* lately? We have. Normally we wouldn't 'name names', but we will make an exception in this case, for two main reasons...

*We should mention that none of what follows implies that we agree with any of the comments made in the reviews used to illustrate this article. We are solely addressing matters of fact relating to Fisher Investments UK's engagement with online reviews.

1. The business - or its PR advisers - should pick up this article in a standard media scrape, and its contents will be of considerable help in digging the business out of the review management hole** (no exaggeration, by the way; read on) it currently finds itself in.
2. The business provides an outstanding example of what will happen to any service or professional business that has not yet engaged with reviews, and the wealth management industry as a whole has been very slow to embrace the world of online reviews, whether on Google or otherwise. In short, each business's image in Google search has come to be dominated by a tiny minority of its clients, and the most motivated ones at that

So what did we find, bearing in mind we followed exactly the same route as almost anyone seeing Fisher Investment UK's advertisements and seriously considering contacting the business?

Let's follow that route. First, a simple Google search...

...that conveys, we are sure you will agree, a pretty shocking first impression. next: mine down into the actual Google reviews themselves...

We didn't cherry-pick (or select 'lowest' as most consumers do). These were simply the first reviews served by Google when we searched. Besides the content of the reviews themselves, which is hardly encouraging, the really damaging thing is the 22 likes next to the two-year-old review. That's one person a month reading that review and bothering to thank the reviewer; bear in mind that we always estimate that only about one in twenty readers, at the very most, will do that.

Next, if we haven't been put off already, let's go further and see if Trustpilot agrees with Google (it doesn't always)...

And Trustpilot breaks their reviews down by percentages for each star rating...

...Fifty-four per cent 1*. Based on the available facts, on the face of it, it is hard to argue Trustpilot's 'Poor' descriptor.

This review isn't great, in and of itself; it also references the business's TrustPilot reviews (our undelining). Proof, if proof were needed, that consumers of high-value services take note of online reviews

We will translate the above for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar with Trustpilot's process: a business can challenge any review on Trustpilot, as can a consumer. Trustpilot will then contact the reviewer and ask them for 'proof of purchase'. 

As you can see, in this case, 96 reviewers declined to provide this to Trustpilot, five did but had their 'breach of Trustpilot's guidelines' upheld, so their reviews - all 101 of them - were not published. 

On the face of it this looks like a reasonable safety mechanism for all concerned; whilst we cannot answer for Fisher Investments UK or Trustpilot on these individual cases, we have consistently - over a period of many years - held such activity to be in potential breach of the UK CMA's core regulations which specifically state that no obstruction be placed in the way of a consumer wishing to express an honestly held opinion. 

Google, for example, will not take down a review unless it breaches its very narrowly drafted Terms of Service. It certainly will not insist on 'proof of purchase'.

It is obvious that a great many of those who have written reviews of Fisher Investments UK on Trustpilot have not wished to provide Trustpilot with what would almost certainly be highly confidential personal financial information. They may also, for completely understandable reasons, not wish to divulge their precise identity to their investment adviser when writing what might be a critical review.

We also have two questions for the business:

• Engagement: Why not respond to all the reviews? - on Google, the business has responded to 3 out of 34 reviews (it's free to do so). On Trustpilot, it has responded to 37 out of 113. All businesses should bear in mind two things about responding to reviews: the first is that a negative review without a response from the business is pretty universally viewed as an admission, by the business, that the client's criticism is valid; the second? That is when responding, you are not only responding to the individual who has taken the time to write the review, but to every single one of your potential clients that may read your response. That's why we consistently advise businesses to address the points raised in the review and not, as so many currently do, to respond with 'please contact us'.

• Why not invite investors to write a review? To Google (or to Trustpilot, if the business has a negative image there). It's free (although Trustpilot limit those businesses not paying for its services to 50 free invitations a month - which shows where their core market is: retail).  We'll begin by answering this question ourselves, for any similar business reading this article: there is one very good reason not to engage: finance is a complex area. Many clients will not fully understand the processes involved or the work their adviser is doing on their behalf. To put it in plain English, it will be very easy for them to 'get the wrong end of the stick', and this can easily result in a factually inaccurate or potentially misleading review, for the world to see. And that is exactly why such businesses should use an independent moderator. Moderation will ensure that these problems and misunderstandings are resolved before a review is posted anywhere. Not only does this result in factually accurate reviews that potential clients can rely on, but it is also a brilliant way to ensure that existing clients understand what the business is doing on their behalf - see the link above or in 'Further reading' at the ned of this article. 

**At the head of this article, we say that the business is 'in a hole' and we imply that the individual reviews and their attendant scores - on both Google and Trustpilot - will be causing significant reputational, and therefore financial, harm. This is not conjecture. We have years of experience in dealing with clients in the professions and service industries, and know only too well how damaging a low score and the individual critical reviews are. Potential business is lost in significant volumes if a business's score falls below 4.5, and it is also lost whenever someone takes the trouble to 'like' a critical review (unlike reviews of hospitality or product reviews, no one ever idly reads reviews of service businesses for fun; they read them because they are actively considering using them).

Every one of those 22 hearts is a potential client saying - to the writer of the review 'Thank you for warning me'. And they are just those who bothered to click on the heart. We estimate that at least fifteen people read a review for every one that votes, possibly running into the hundreds.

AI search

AI search is spreading like wildfire. Here is a typical Google Gemini search for Fisher Investments UK...

1. is a description of the business, likely scraped from its own website. 2. is the result of Google Gemini's scrape of at least 110 websites, including its own and others' reviews. 3. are links to articles from the web that Google's AI thinks most relevant to the question asked of it (in this case, some credibly critical articles).

Conclusions

What seemed like a reasonably safe strategy at the dawn of Web 2.0: 'ignore reviews', is no longer viable. Reviews - its own and those from other sites - are just too core to Google's offering. If in any doubt whatsoever, just check where they appear in Google's hierarchy. And Google responds to user demand. Users demand reviews, and Google ensures they get to see them.

The only thing left in the business's control is just how effectively it engages...

• Not at all: not viable these days, the business will be exposed to precisely what has happened to Fisher Investments UK: having its online reputation controlled by a, in this case, tiny, minority of dissatisfied clients

• Through a review site: better than nothing at all, but only marginally; since Google entered the reviews game when it introduced its own, Google reviews have been supremely dominant in search. They also win in the credibility stakes, partly because they are so difficult for businesses to manipulate (and more and more consumers understand this these days)

• Through Google: fine if you are in a business that will not be significantly impacted by factually inaccurate or potentially misleading Google reviews (or a lower Google score). If you are in the professions or high-value service business, then you will need to seriously consider taking an extra step in conjunction with your Google review strategy: Independent moderation

• Moderated Google reviews: think of this as Google reviews +++. The only proven way to do this is to engage an independent moderator, as neither consumers nor the regulators will readily accept a business moderating its own reviews. Moderation involves every review being checked by a moderator for factual accuracy and/or any misleading statements, before the review is published on the business's website, and then the reviewer is automatically asked to copy their review to Google

We have continually refined this last solution for over a decade now (you can read back over nearly 1,000 articles stretching back to April 2010 - we never delete one, and we're proud of just how many correctly predicted the current situation). And the cost? Since New Year 2024, we now guarantee that HelpHound will pay for itself and more.

Back to the list of businesses at the top of this article

Our final 'conclusion' is that there is still time for almost all of these businesses to address their review management and turn around their Google scores, and therefore 'rescue' the adverse image they are currently creating in search. The task presents more challenges when a business has 200+ Google reviews and a score under 4.0, simply because directing clients to write reviews to Google will inevitably involve presenting them with the business's current lacklustre score and the negative reviews themselves. If your business is in this situation, we will need to discuss a precise strategy with you. And the sooner the better.

Further Reading

1. Results: quantifiable results, both in terms of traffic through your door and an uplift in the quality of business transacted
2. Moderation: a full explanation 
3. Compliance: we alluded to this above; suffice to say, there's no reason for a business to sail close to the wind as far as the regulators are concerned