Don't - whatever the pressures - do this...

We never miss an opportunity to bang the drum about complying with the CMA rules - rightly, as I am sure any reasonable person would agree. And not just because breaking those rules may (should?) involve any business in a fine and some very unwelcome negative publicity, but because when a business plays fast and loose with reviews it undermines the very concept of reviews themselves. If consumers have their confidence eroded, as this commenter ('Attrix') on the Times online so obviously has...

...then any value reviews might provide, for both the business world and the consumer, is lost.

This week we stumbled upon a really appalling abuse of Google reviews. The company in question - and its name, for the moment, must remain unvoiced - has systematically set out to create a positive impression through the medium of Google reviews, using methods which might be best described as underhand and at worst plain illegal.

 Impressive Google score? Too right - the sort of score that convinces consumers to use a business

What have they done? Let's look at their Google reviews history first...

• three years ago they received their first Google review (positive 5*)
• two years ago they received their second Google review, this time a negative rating them 1*
• Immediately afterwards they received their third and fourth reviews, both rating the business 5*, both posted by reviewers that had only ever posted that single Google review
• A year later, just a year ago now, the business received another 1* review, this time from a reviewer who had posted two other reviews (albeit, at the same time)
• There followed eleven 5* reviews (and two more 1* reviews)
• In the last nine months they have received over fifty reviews, all but one rating the business 5*

Now, this pattern is not unusual in itself (consumers have discovered Google reviews in a big way recently), but, when taken in the context of a detailed analysis of the positive reviews - almost all of them - there is grave cause for concern.

What did we find when we mined down into the reviewers and the reviews themselves? Well, let us state right at the beginning, no 'smoking gun' - no proof positive that would stand up in a court of law - but if you read on you might like to see if you agree with our conclusion at the end of this article...

1. The pattern of review writing, while not unheard of, is right at the extreme end of the 'credibility scale'; a business gets no Google reviews for four years, then two, then fifty - unusual, to say the least.
2. The reviewers themselves stand out by their (lack of) activity. Look at any business with 50+ reviews on Google and you will most likely see a cross-section of reviewer 'types', from the singleton (someone who has only ever written one Google review) through those that have written a handful, all the way up to Google Local Guides, who have often written dozens, sometime hundreds. The most any of this business's reviewers have written is five.
3. Where the business's reviewers have written multiple reviews to Google, these reviews were invariably written in the same immediate time period as the review of the business in question. 
4. The language used in many of the reviews has the same idiosyncratic use of English - the use of 'staff is' rather than the more conventional 'staff are' (as in 'their staff is great') is just one example.
5. None of the [positive] reviewers have any other Google+ activity. Very unusual in such a large sample (for instance, none have posted single image to accompany any of their reviews).
6. Almost all the reviews written by these reviewers of businesses other than the one in question exhibit very similar characteristics: they are 'one liners', they are extremely anodyne in their content ('the Ritz is a great hotel'), they are all positive (again, very unusual) and they never give any detail of the customer's experience of the business (in any sample of reviews you will normally see all the variables: long/short, well/badly written, good/bad grammar, and you will 'hear' different 'voices'. the reviewers' voices in this businesses positive reviews appear to be similar, if not identical).
7. The business's responses to their positive reviews: are identical. This may be for all sorts of reasons (laziness, usually), but could also be an indication that the responder knows that they are not 'speaking' to a 'real' reviewer, and so need not bother to reference the content of the review.

Conclusion

As the saying goes 'If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...' This business 'is a duck'. It has set out, perhaps aided by some outside agency (there are plenty) to bypass its own customers and simply concoct a great score and image on Google.

This is wrong on so many counts, but mostly it is committing the crime of wilfully misleading potential customers, who increasingly rely on reviews, especially Google reviews, as a guide.

Lessons for other businesses

Don't do it! We sometimes hear pleas from businesses when we first meet: 'We were only protecting our reputation' in defence of all kinds of rule breaches (here's an exhaustive list) but the fact remains that the worst possible thing that can happen to any business in relation to reviews is to be found to be rigging their Google score by posting fraudulent reviews (the word 'fake' is simply not strong enough in this context).

The Competition & Markets Authority is committed to stamping out this kind of practice - see their statement here, along with our commentary, but it should be just one concern of many. What happens when a member of staff leaves to join a competitor, and tells that competitor just how 'Business A' got to look so great? We are sure you get our drift.

There's no reason...

Lastly, if you run a good business (and it need not be perfect), proper professional review management should have you scoring at least 4.5 out of 5, on your own website and on Google (and anywhere else that matters - Facebook, for instance). There for all your potential customers to see - and, crucially, rely on.

Why break the rules - when there's no need?

The whole point of reviews is that they provide a reliable guide for consumers, but to see what some businesses do with them you would think that they were expressly designed to be manipulated so businesses could 'fool all of the people...'.

Without credibility these are worth less than nothing - they actually harm a business's brand.

We have written about this before - here, amongst others. But we have found more glaring breaches since that article. We are writing again because what started out as a gentle trickle has now morphed into an epidemic. Almost every business we look at is manipulating reviews, either intentionally or unintentionally - and always in breach of the Competition & Markets Authority's regulations.

Let us pose a question...

• Do businesses think that they have a right to manipulate reviews? Because if they don't, then there are far too many out there doing just that.

For example...

• The business (UK-wide, multiple locations) that thinks it is fine that their management and staff post Google reviews - how do we know? Because they have done it using their real names; not only have they posted five star reviews, they have responded to those reviews, thanking the 'reviewer'!

• The business - a Plc - that thinks it is a good idea to get their customers to write reviews to an obscure reviews site and then have their staff cherrypick the five star reviews and call up the authors and encourage them to copy their reviews to Google

• The business - another Plc - that thinks its a great idea (presumably for the business) to use a reviews site that does not allow its customers to write a review unless invited by the business. Let's make it plain - the business a) chooses which customers to invite and then b) chooses the timing of that invitation

• The business that thinks it is a good idea to offer incentives for customers to write a review. This would probably be questionable under any circumstances, but in this case the reward is conditional upon a positive review. How do we know - because one of their customers thanked them in the body of their review and another complained about not receiving their reward, again, in their review

• The business that uses a (multi-national) reviews site that allows them to have negative reviews suspended 

• The business - with branches across London - that employs a member of staff to write its own reviews

Then there are the 'unwitting' ones (businesses that claim they didn't know that what they were doing was in breach of the CMA regulations)...

• The cherry-pickers: choosing which customers you invite to write reviews, whether to Google or a reviews site, is in breach - of course it is. Just think for a minute - if you were the regulator - would you condone this? Of course not.

• The users of 'closed sites' - where the customer can only invite a review if they are expressly invited to by the business. Again - of course this is a breach, because the regulations explicitly state that a customer must be able to write a review at a time of their own choosing. Do you want to know if a brand new pair of shoes is fit-for-purpose? Yes. But might you also want to know if that pair of shoes is still in one piece six months after purchase? 

• The 'incentivisers': businesses that reward customers for writing positive reviews - we have seen Amazon vouchers, M&S vouchers and just plain ordinary cash

And then there are the reviews sites themselves...

These sites had a nice little earner all to themselves until Google entered the fray - they were the only way a business could get reviews onto the web. With the advent of Google reviews these sites found themselves in a pickle - what had they to offer that Google did not - for free? The answer is 'virtually nothing' - especially since Google introduced their free product reviews widget. So they now face an uphill struggle to add value, and, in doing so, some of them are crossing over the regulatory line. This gives businesses an added problem - they cannot take it for granted that a commercially available reviews solution complies with the CMA rules. We see examples of the following...

• Sites that offer 'invitation only' solutions

• Sites that offer the business the right to challenge - and even suspend - any negative reviews

• Sites that allow businesses to attribute star ratings gained in one product or service area to another product or service

• Sites that allow reviews and ratings gained in one location to be attributed to another location

None of these is compliant, and the onus for compliance lands fairly-and-squarely at the door of the business using the reviews site - it is they, the business, that will be on the receiving end of any disciplinary action.


Why break the rules?

There's one simple answer to that, and it goes something like this (we know, because so many businesses like this have told us)...

• "We have to have reviews - because we know that without them we will lose business to our competitors. But we are afraid to ask [all] our [genuine] customers to write them because, human nature being what it is, we know our happy customers won't and our unhappy customers will"

So these businesses willingly put their reputations in harms way. They know that people know they are 'up to no good' and they know that there's a significant risk that one day, sooner or later, a (ex)member of staff will blow the whistle and the game will be up. but still, such are the potential rewards, they continue to do it - because they fear giving up the short-term rewards of looking great in reviews.

There are many reasons that we publish on this subject again. To warn businesses that they have far more to worry about than the odd whistle-blower. They need to know that the CMA is actively taking an interest in just the very practices that we have outlined above. We also need businesses to know that there is another way.

Another way?

This all pre-supposes that the business in question is committed to high levels of customer care. Given that, then the only thing such a business would require is access to a mechanism that would ensure, as far as is reasonably possible, that reviews containing inaccuracies - of fact or opinion - could be addressed before publication.

Such a mechanism - as HelpHound clients already know - does exist. And its name is Resolution™. Resolution enables our clients to look just as good as they are. It does not prevent a reviewer from publishing an inaccurate or misleading review (and it certainly does not prevent a reviewer from writing a negative review) but it does mean that such a reviewer will know, pre-publication, that their review - if potentially misleading or factually inaccurate - will be subject to challenge by the business if it is published. 

There's no need - there is another way - and it's called HelpHound.

Further reading...

• The Competition & Markets Authority's rules relating to reviews - and an analysis
• Resolution™ - an owner's manual
• Trust is everything - where reviews are concerned. An article from 2016