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.