Another reason to embrace moderated review management

It is easy to see HelpHound and its moderation as a simple means to an end. That 'end'? Harnessing genuine customer opinions to attract new business. 

There is a clue in the word 'genuine'. Until recently, there were many ways to attract and display such opinions, all loosely gathered together under the heading 'social media'. Review sites - Yelp, Tustpilot, Feefo, X, Facebook, Instagram. Even TikTok and the likes of Reddit and Quora.

So what has changed?

Joe Public, or rather 'Joe Public with an axe to grind', has come to realise that these sites are highly unlikely to challenge anything he or she posts. This has led to many of these, in the main well-intentioned, sites hosting increasing amounts of content verging on - and in many cases not 'verging' at all - abusive content. 

You will remember when you could innocently post something on Facebook, even a 'mild' political opinion, and get nothing but polite responses? Those days are well behind us now. The same goes for Instagram and TikTok, where the use of foul language seems to be all but obligatory. The review sites may take down posts using such language, but fake reviews, as well as factually inaccurate and intentionally malicious reviews, are so frequently posted as to be commonplace. 

So, what used to be useful marketing avenues have become high-risk. Ten years ago, we routinely advised clients to re-post their reviews to social media. Now we are increasingly reluctant to advise any engagement whatsoever, outside of responses to reviews on Google (which are essential) or a select number of less influential review sites. 

The importance of moderated reviews

This has brought our moderation - checking every single review for factual accuracy or the potential to mislead the reader pre-publication - into much sharper focus. What was once a 'nice to have' feature has become core. 

Here is what Google's Gemini has to say about us today...

Let us highlight some key points from this remarkably accurate assessment of our service:

1. Pre-moderation: this is essential. Hard experience has taught us that once a comment is posted anywhere, from Google to Trustpilot to X, it is going to remain there. We conduct many appeals on behalf of clients, but success is a lottery at best. Misinformation has to be dealt with pre-publication
2. Compliance: just about every business - at least in the UK - that actively engages with reviews is currently breaking the law. Usually, by identifying (known as cherry-picking by the CMA)  'happy' customers and then only inviting them, and them alone, to post a review. So unnecessary when compliant review management has so many other benefits
3. 'Hybrid Hosting': after every review is posted to the business's website, an automatic invitation is sent to enable the reviewer to copy their review to Google. Our most successful clients have a conversion rate of well over fifty per cent
4. Conflict resolution: this is an interesting one; HelpHound does not exist to prevent customers from airing genuine grievances or dissatisfaction (this would be against the law in the UK); this is made clear during moderation. What we do - in roughly one in twelve cases - is engage with both the business and the customer if we think the review contains factual inaccuracies or statements likely to mislead any future reader

And the comparison?

We couldn't have put it better. The 'Primary Goal' is key to everything we do here at helpHound: our clients, as Gemini has realised, are almost exclusively in the high-value professional and service sectors (as opposed to online retail, for instance), where a single well-crafted but factually incorrect review can do untold and lasting harm to a business. Often unfairly.

The reason so many of these kinds of businesses have yet to engage with reviews is not that they don't understand the power of a positive presence on Google to drive custom; it is the result of a well-founded fear that such engagement, unprotected, can do far more harm than good. And they are correct. 

Leading in local search (in a very crowded marketplace), these 775 reviews are taken from the business's own reviews displayed on its website. These, in turn, feed into its Google score and reviews:

Their last one-star review was received over three years ago

HelpHound is that protection. 

Further reading...

• No more one-star reviews: how this business embraced review management in order to ensure a clean sheet, both on Google and with its own reviews on its website

• The 'secret' impact of professional review management: from estate agency to women's health; what gives businesses the confidence to engage with reviews without flouting the law?

• The CMA begins its crackdown: if your business is one of the many currently hand-picking customers to invite to write a review, from Google to one of the review sites, you should read this today!

• Our guarantee: it has been in place for over two years. How many clients have invoked it? 

Moderation - every professional business's key to reviews

With apologies to regular readers, but this subject is so vital - it is at the core of everything we do for our client businesses and their customers. We're going to keep this article brief - but we will include links to more detailed information and analysis for those who want to mine further down into this vital aspect of managing a business's online reputation.

Here goes...

1.  What is moderation?

This is one of the most important questions we are ever asked - and one of the most important services we ever provide, to both our business clients and their customers. So let's look at a real example; here is a review, posted through the business's website and picked up - pre-publication - by our moderator...

We have purposely chosen this review as it is an excellent example of the kind of review that, if posted straight to Google, would remain on the business's Google page for the foreseeable future; there is nothing in the review that would give us cause to think there was any chance of an appeal to Google succeeding as it does not remotely infringe any of Google's terms and conditions.

 

Indeed, on the face of it, the review is an entirely genuine opinion and record of a consumer's - in this case a patient's - interaction with the business - in this case a medical practice. Also, on reading, it is a pretty convincing argument not to use the business. And therefore potentially hugely damaging.

So: what happened during the moderation process? 

Our moderator acknowledged the review by messaging the reviewer to tell them that we would be consulting the business before publishing the review. Simultaneously the review was sent to the business for comment. We make it completely clear to businesses that their response must be with our moderator by close of business the same day (if a business wants to be sure of provoking a review direct to Google, then any delay at this point is a good way of ensuring that happens). 

In this instance the clinic reverted to our moderator the same morning, addressing each point in the review in turn.  This response was forwarded, immediately, to the reviewer who was then invited to do one of three things:

• Amend their original review
• Have their original review posted
• Message the business via our moderator and leave the review unposted

In this case, as happens in so many*, the latter course was chosen by the reviewer...

Not only the right outcome but the fair outcome. The clinic's reputation was protected and the relationship with their patient was restored. Both parties benefitted.

*The overwhelming majority of consumers - especially where there is a professional ongoing relationship or service at stake - are entirely receptive to a full and truthful explanation of the facts of the matter under review. Indeed, they are often grateful in the extreme for our moderator's intercession.

Moderation is the act of 'having a review read and analysed for factual accuracy and/or misleading statements' by a person independent of the business under review. It is the only legal way for businesses in the UK (and the EU) to ensure that, as far as possible, their reviews are an accurate reflection of their business and its services.

2.  If our moderator finds either of those - factual inaccuracies and/or statements with the potential to mislead someone who may rely on the review (a potential client/patient, for instance) what exactly do they do?

They message the reviewer - in private (example above) - and suggest modifications to the review before it is published. They will also correct obvious mistakes in spelling and grammar.

3.  Will our moderator ever involve the business?

Sometimes. Our moderators are experienced and understand our clients' businesses, but if there is something in the review that needs clarification - the 'he said/she said' kind of thing - they will refer to our point-of-contact at the business as well as back to the reviewer (again, see the example above).

4.  Do reviewers ever object to our moderation process?

Very rarely. We always make it clear that the reviewer always has the right - excluding profanities or allegations of illegal behaviour - to have whatever review they wish published (this keeps every party in compliance with the CMA regulations, which specifically prohibit businesses from using any mechanism that prevents the consumer having their say).  On the contrary, we often receive messages from reviewers thanking us for our intervention. Vanishingly few consumers want to have inaccurate reviews published for the world to see (the actual figure, from our own data, is far less than 1% of the 3% of reviews that enter the moderation process).

5.  What should we expect our business to score with moderation?

This is the question we get most of all: before we answer it - and we will give you actual numbers at the end of this section - we should explain that there are two elements in the customer relationship chain that we, at HelpHound, cannot (and should not) control: the first is the behaviour of your staff, which is entirely your responsibility and the second is the behaviour of your customers. We often meet 'perfect' businesses with far-from-perfect Google scores; what we know for sure is that our moderation process will address a great proportion of those mistaken negative reviews. So...

A (near) perfect business with (near) perfect clients? Or a business that has felt the need to selectively invite 'happy' clients to post reviews to Google? Bearing in mind that 186 reviews divided by the six years since their first Google review = 31 reviews a year = just over one fortnight, the available evidence points to the latter. 

If your business currently scores between 4.8 and 5.0 - it will have the very best chance of maintaining that score with HelpHound's moderation (and it will be fully compliant with the CMA regulations - as will all the solutions below)

This business has worked hard to get 300 Google reviews, possibly in order to dilute the 26 one-star and 3 two-star reviews it has received, almost of which would have been effectively managed by our moderation process (a quick scan of their negative reviews shows a mix of misunderstandings - language issues in the main and plain wrong-headed comments). Going forwards they should be looking to raise their percentage of 5* reviews from its current level of 91% to far closer to 99%. This will see their score rise to 4.8/4.9 alongside their most successful competitors.

• If your business currently scores between 4.5 and 4.7 - it will have a great chance of achieving a score of at least 4.8 with HelpHound's moderation

This firm had a clean sheet - scoring the full 5.0 - until a matter of weeks ago. Its experience illustrates just how vital a moderated review management system is for professional businesses. We cannot guarantee that the 3 one-star reviews posted recently would not have been posted, but the firm would have had vastly more than 14 five-star reviews to counterbalance them. This should be its aim going forward: to invite clients to post to Google as a standard practice.

• If your business currently scores between 4.0 and 4.4 - it will have a great chance of achieving a score of at least 4.8 with HelpHound's moderation

We're going to take an educated guess here: someone within the firm began asking their satisfied clients to post reviews four years ago, then a colleague pointed out the CMA anti-cherry-picking regulations and they stopped doing so. Then some unhappy people - not necessarily clients - posted a handful of critical reviews. So their Google score has gradually declined from 4.9 to its current 3.9. Being the lowest-ranked solicitor in its area will not be helping to drive new clients through the door. But all is not lost: a low score from a few reviews is easily rectified, whilst a low score form hundreds - or thousands - takes time (but will still be achieved)

• If your business currently scores less than 4.0 - the only way, as they say, is up! That is, unless our initial audit pinpoints a flaw in your CRM, in which case we will advise accordingly and delay implementation until the flaw is rectified

To reinforce these four assertions we recommend you read these two articles:

1.  Results: two case histories that demonstrate the uplift in Google score, the subsequent increase in new business enquiries and the resultant critical quantum shift in the quality of customers acquired through Google search.

2. Our guarantee of success: see exactly what we absolutely guarantee will happen when you join HelpHound.

Does all of the above mean that HelpHound can make any business look great in search?

We understand, at first glance, this might appear to be the case, but it ignores two significant factors in HelpHound's own business model...

1. We only work with the professions and service businesses, and most, if not all, service businesses can improve their CRM to the stage where HelpHound's review management will work effectively for them. This is not the case with product-based businesses: a substandard product will always be a substandard product, and we leave those businesses to the review sites.
2. We recognise that the reviewer always retains the option to write their review directly to Google or one of the review sites, so we always advise our clients to facilitate the maximum number of reviews through their own CRM and website. If a business ignores that advice they run the very real risk of negative reviews, often factually incorrect or just plain unfair, being written to Google.       

A vital - and hugely valuable - unintended consequence of moderation

Very soon after we introduced moderation we began being asked, by virtually every business we spoke to (especially those that had taken the trouble to understand the CMA regulations - the law)...

'Do we have to ask all our customers to post a review?'

Our initial response was...

'No, you don't, you are compliant with the CMA regulations by dint of the fact that you offer all visitors to your website the ability to post a review.'

Sighs of relief all round! But then we took a long hard look at the individual negative reviews being posted. And we had an epiphany: we realised that clients of relationship-based businesses didn't often 'warn' those businesses that they were dissatisfied with whatever long-term service they were being provided with - they just resigned/left. And, as any such business will tell you, once a client or patient is gone they're almost always 'gone gone'. The chances of clawing them back are as close to nil as makes no difference. 

But our moderators also noticed a distinct pattern emerging: businesses that had invited all - or just about all - their stakeholders to write a review were receiving warnings of the 'about to go' kind. The review of the clinic at the top of this article is a good example. And, as all businesses know, a customer saved is worth a great deal of marketing £s. 

So we revised our advice: proactively invite as many people as possible to write a review; the 5* reviews are gold-dust, but the 1* or 2* review that is resolved in moderation is platinum.

Lastly...

If you interrogate this blog and its 900+ articles you will find plenty that reference moderation.  The first was written on 26 April 2013, eleven years ago now, but here are two more recent ones that will explain everything that this article has left out in the interests of brevity.

• Moderation: the essential ingredient in every professional business's review management strategy
• Review moderation and why it is a 'must have' for businesses that intend to grow

A single review can strangle a business

The catastrophic human cost of lack of moderation at social media sites such as Instagram has made front page headlines in recent days. Our view - that all social media platforms, including review sites, should be made legally responsible for the content they publish - is well-known to our members and regular readers of this blog. 

But what about businesses on the receiving end of fake, false, malicious or just plain inaccurate or misleading reviews? What is the real-world impact of these all too often seen reviews on businesses? 

Sometimes we hear businesses say 'As long as we score 4.5 we're happy'. It's a natural response to something most businesses feel they have little control over. But this attitude denies the power of a single review to halt a business in its tracks, to stop the phones ringing or to see the clicks dry up, never mind unsettle existing loyal consumers when they see them as they are googling your business to find your phone number.

Let's look at what over ten years of fielding calls from seriously concerned business owners and managers has taught us...

1.  A well-written 1* review will be read, and re-read, for months and years to come

This is what we call a 'killer review'; it is written by someone who is not disguising their identity, is a frequent Google reviewer and a trusted Google local guide; it makes  believable statements about the business and their interactions with their customer. It will have lost the business enquiries and future business

 

That feeling you get when you first see that review - or are sent it by Google? That sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach? It's the reflection of the reaction of your potential customer: 'Oh dear! I'm not sure I want to use a business that even one customer has had such a negative experience of.' 

Note the stress on well-written. You can discount rants - most consumers see through those these days. 

 

2.  Once a review is published the horse has bolted

A business's chances of getting Google remove a review are negligible (but see 'appeals' in 3. below and Google's own T&Cs here) unless the reviewer has contravened one of those T&Cs; such contravention does not cover criticism of the business, however misguided, unfair or just plain factually incorrect that may be. 

It is therefore essential to have some mechanism in place to enable the business to respond to such reviews before they are published.

 

3.  1* reviews are always read first, no matter the business's overall score

The business can be scoring 4.9, but if that one negative review is written convincingly it will lose the business significant amounts of enquiries.

What can the business do? It can appeal to Google to have it taken down, as long as it contravenes their terms of service (we draft appeals on behalf of clients all the time) and it must respond to the review. Not with a 'never heard of you...' but addressing all the points made in the review, however unfair or inaccurate they may be, calmly and coherently. And sign off with a name, not 'customer services'. You will never convince that kind of reviewer to change their review or take it down, so your response is aimed solely at readers of the review.

 

4.  1* reviews, providing they are not obvious rants, are believed by consumers 

It is tempting to say 'we run a great business and all our other reviews confirm that' but leave a well-written one-star review unaddressed and it will hurt your inbound enquiries - for the foreseeable future (a one star review written five years ago, if it is one of a few, will still be being read today).

 

5.  The higher-value the service the business is offering the more diligently the 1* reviews will be read.

We estimate that all the one star reviews - within reason, but certainly up to half-a-dozen - of the following services will be read by a potential customer/client/patient... 

• financial services, investment management, accounting 

• medical and healthcare 

• legal 

• business services - such as employment agencies, PR and marketing consultants 

• high-value transactional businesses - such as estate agency  

all of which involve transactions with at least £4 zeros on the end, not to mention 5 or 6. 

Put yourself in the position of...

• someone investing a sizeable lump sum
• someone with a life threatening medical issue
• someone looking for a family lawyer for the first time
• someone considering moving from one advertising agency to another
• someone looking for the best local estate agent to sell their major family asset

...and we're sure you will agree that spending a few minutes reading reviews is the very least they will do, even if the business has already been personally recommended or has the best marketing on the planet.

 

The solution 

All of the above are the reasons why our clients value our moderation so highly. By moderating every single review written through our clients' websites we can ensure that the accuracy and relevance of each and every review is of the highest order. Moderation cannot absolutely guarantee that no rogue reviews will ever be published - that would be against the CMA regulations which categorically protect the consumers' right to have their opinion published - but we estimate (and we have over ten years' experience to back up this contention) that our moderation resolves the issues contained in over 95 percent of such reviews before they see the light of day.

Of course consumers can always write a review direct to Google, but by inviting them to write a review through your website you will succeed, far more often than not, in channelling their review in that direction, and therefore benefitting from our moderation. You will also have the moral upper hand when responding to those reviews which still go direct to Google: 'We did invite you to post a review...and we would have been able to resolve [whatever issue the review raises] at that point if you had accepted our invitation.'

The fact that the overwhelming majority of such contentious reviews are, by definition and by their very nature, one or two-star also enables us to accurately estimate that HelpHound's moderation increases the average client's Google score by between 0.2 and 0.5 - so from, say, 4.3 to 4.7 or 4.8. That in itself will ensure the business rises up the rankings in local search.

Think of moderation as an insurance policy: it protects your business's hard-won reputation against damage - its as simple as that.

Further reading

• Moderation - a full description
• The CMA regulations - why UK businesses that select customers to write reviews are breaking the law
• Results - the good news!

Looking the best your business possibly can

We've already established in the previous article that scoring 4.0 on Google will leave a business languishing at the bottom of the Google rankings in most business sectors, certainly in the sectors that are key for professional businesses: financial, medical, legal, estate agency, recruitment etc. To even begin to make the top 5 in local search a business needs to score 4.7 or more.

Now let's look at the solutions many businesses in these sectors are currently adopting in order to achieve such scores.

1.  Cherry-picking

Everyone's favourite: simply hand-pick happy customers and then invite them, and only them, to write a review. How do we know? Easy. It took us less than a minute to find this example and then about the same amount of time to establish that this law firm is cherry-picking by analysing the pattern of its reviews: out of a total of 46 reviews five are older than 3 years and two - both rating it 1* - were posted after 2019. It almost certainly cherry-picked its happy clients in 2018, achieved a perfect 5.0 with 44 reviews and hasn't asked anyone for a review since then.

And - be sure - if we can tell so can the CMA. Cherry-picking is illegal.

2.  Gating

Really just a sophisticated version of cherry-picking: send a questionnaire out to every customer asking them to rate the business and then only invite those who respond with 10 out of 10 or 5 stars to write a Google review.

There's a variant that involves using one of the diminishing band of review sites - get the customer to write a review there and then only invite those who have posted a 5* review to the review site to copy that review to Google.

Again: illegal.

3.  A moderated system

Moderation: 'the act of having an independent agency read and check every review before publication' is the only sure-fire - and legally compliant - way of ensuring a business looks as good as it deserves. 

Why? Because moderation focuses on identifying reviews that contain errors of fact and statements likely to mislead the reader. 

And, by their very nature, those kinds of reviews also tend to be ones that carry the 1* ratings. If they can be corrected before publication, then the business's score will rise.

There's a reason we are able to drop the anonymity of the business above: that's because they are fully compliant with the law - the CMA regulations. They don't cherry-pick and they don't gate. They are able to sleep at night for two crucial reasons: they don't fear the CMA will come knocking and they know that unfair, inaccurate or misleading reviews will benefit from moderation.

We often meet people who say 'but we can respond to our Google reviews and correct errors of fact and any misconceptions then'. So you can, but by then most of the damage is done: the score is set in stone (as well as the impact it has on the business's overall score), irrespective of your response (Google* won't change it, even if you have cast iron proof that the review is in error); as well as that the harmfully and unfairly negative review will stand and will be read by your prospective customers. 

Why not just invest in moderation and that concern - and the potential harm caused by a factually incorrect or potentially misleading review - goes away?

*Appealing against a Google review. In short: unless the review has contravened one of the following...

...you will struggle. That doesn't mean you shouldn't appeal, we conduct Google appeals on behalf of clients on an almost daily basis and are sometimes surprised when one that does not fit neatly into one of the categories in the above checklist succeeds, but you will note that the following are not prima facie grounds...

• errors of fact
• misleading statements

...and that's exactly why moderation is so valuable.

Results

We estimate that our clients score between 0.2 and 0.5 more on Google than if they had simply gone it alone - compliantly. That may not seem like a lot, but in the context of a competitive marketplace where over 90 percent of potential customers are influenced by Google scores and reviews and almost all businesses score above 4.0 it is almost always the difference between being at or very near the top of a ranked Google search and at or near the bottom.

Conclusion

If your business falls into either of categories 1 or 2 above - don't panic, you're not alone! - but you need to seriously consider 'going straight' by adopting a moderated system - as soon as possible. If your business has yet to engage with Google reviews for fear of the damage factually inaccurate or misleading reviews might do to your Google score then solution 3 is for you.

It's not only the CMA you need to be concerned about, your competitors will soon cotton on - if we can easily identify businesses that are cherry-picking so can they, and they won't hesitate to use that information in competitive pitches in order to devalue your Google score.

Spin that around and be able to say 'We invite all of our customers and stakeholders to write reviews, so the score you see and the reviews you read are a genuine portrayal of our business.' And you will find out just what a business winner moderation can be.