It is so important that every business obeys the law concerning reviews

We heard it again today: 

"Why can't we just invite happy customers to post reviews?"

And it's a perfectly reasonable question when asked by a perfectly reasonable business.

But we don't live in a world populated entirely - or even mostly - by perfectly reasonable businesses.

The reason the CMA rules categorically state that...

• if a business invites any reviews at all it must enable all of its customers to write a review

• no business should control the timing of the writing of a review - consumers should be able to write a review at a time of their own choosing

...is precisely because of that.

So here's why the law must be enforced - and obeyed:

Unlike reasonable businesses there are businesses out there, many of them (most in some areas of business) that would - and do - manipulate reviews in their favour, against the interests of their potential customers.

To make it quite clear why the law does not allow businesses to 'just ask happy customers to post reviews' let's take an example: 

Your nearest-and-dearest is diagnosed with a severe illness and you urgently need to find a specialist. You google and you find three such specialists in your area, but one scores far higher than the other two, with far more glowing reviews, so you - quite understandably - choose them.

Six months later you see a report in your local newspaper:

'Medical specialist fined heavily by the CMA for fraudulently misleading patients with their reviews'

You read on:

'Their reviews were written by friends, a marketing agency based in the Philippines and other untraceable 'patients', as well as a tiny minority of genuinely satisfied patients who had been hand-picked and then cajoled into writing a positive review. Patients whose treatments had less positive outcomes had not been contacted at all.'

Are we thinking along the same lines now? Reviews must not be manipulated - at all. Otherwise consumers, when faced with headlines such as this, repeated constantly in the press and online:

...will simply end up ignoring reviews altogether. And that would be a bad thing, for businesses and consumers alike.

The good news

The reason many otherwise honest businesses have flouted one or both of the CMA's core rules referred to above is simple: fear. Fear of receiving reviews from customers that have not understood the product or service they have bought and then resort - in the main - to Google to air their real or imagined grievance.

Google, rightly, will not engage 'in matters of commercial dispute'; in plain English: the customer's opinion - and review - stands unless the business under review can provide proof positive that the review is either malicious or, for example: written about the wrong business. 

Note: If you think your business is the victim of an unfair, inaccurate or misleading review(s), read this or simply contact us, we will almost certainly have a solution for you.

In other words, once a review is on Google it's there for the life of the business, with few exceptions. 

The solution is there for any business that requires it: moderation. And for that, you require an independent moderator. And guess what? That's exactly what HelpHound does.

Moderation

Moderation: the act of mediating between reviewer and reviewed business to ensure the veracity and accuracy of reviews pre-publication.

The regulators, quite understandably, don't like businesses moderating their own reviews, and nor, surprisingly enough do consumers. When we first introduced our moderation service we were concerned that consumers might see us 'acting in the best interests of our paying business clients'; but the reverse has been the case: reviewers are pleased - and often relieved - when we alert them to the fact that something contained in their review may possibly mislead a fellow-consumer who may well come to rely on it. We also correct spelling errors and basic grammar before publishing reviews.

There's much more on moderation here. Suffice to say, it's the key to engaging - proactively and compliantly and perhaps most important of all from a business's perspective: safely - with reviews for most, if not all, of our clients.

In conclusion:

There's now no reason to break the law. Review management is so inexpensive and has so many positive benefits - on top of the 'sleep at night' knowledge that there will be no knock at the door from the CMA - that adopting it should be a foregone conclusion for any well-managed business. 

And woe betide your competitor that keeps on ploughing the non-compliant furrow when they do get that knock!

Further reading: 

• The CMA regulations - that apply to every business trading in the UK - explained in full.
• Moderation - and why it is such a vital component of successful review management
• ABC of reviews - the authoritative guide to everything review-related, for those who want to understand reviews in depth

ABC of Reviews: 2. The Law

It should be so simple. The law states - unequivocally - that any business that invites any customer reviews, to any platform (and that includes Google and the business's own website as well as sites like TripAdvisor, Trustpilot and Feefo) must comply with these two basic rules:

• all customers of the business must be able to write a review at a time of their own choosing
• the business must not selectively invite customers to write reviews

But what do we see, on a daily basis?

1.  businesses selectively contacting 'happy' customers asking for a review - leaving a paper trail for the regulators (and plenty of evidence for their competitors).

This is the single most important breach that businesses will attempt to justify. We hear variations on the following:

• surely they don't expect us to invite [insert name of customer the business knows will write a negative review]?
• but if we invite everyone won't only our unhappy customers will write reviews?
• but we know [insert name of competitor] is being selective, so why shouldn't we?

None of these are defences against breaching one of the CMA's core rules.

This is just one paragraph from the open letter the CEO of the CMA has published. For the complete text and an explanation of the rules, see this article.

2. businesses controlling the timing of the invitation, commonly immediately after the transaction has taken place - paper trail ditto.

The objective of the CMA regulations is to ensure that reviews are a) helpful for consumers and b) not manipulated by the business. Again we hear:

• our customers are happiest just after we have delivered our goods/services
• we want to ensure we get reviews from bona fide customers

Both are fair comments. Let's examine them in a little more detail: in the case of a) nowhere in the CMA regulations is there an allowance for businesses 'maximising' their chances of either getting a review or getting a positive review. The consumer comes first and last as far as the CMA is concerned. With b) the CMA's rules are designed so that all stakeholders are treated equally, not just the 'registered customer' on the business's books, and that means anyone who comes into contact with any business in any way. This, therefore, includes those who contact the business and decide, for one reason or another, not to proceed with a purchase or go as far as using the business's service. 

There is a subset of the above that has achieved some popularity, and it's known as gating. Gating is the practice of using a mechanism - this can range from a simple email to a more complex 'customer survey', or even an app or a reviews site - to identify the aforementioned happy customers and only then invite them to post a review. This is not only illegal in the UK but also expressly contravenes Google's terms of service (when Google finds evidence of this it simply deletes all of the business's reviews - and there is no appeal).

Here's an example of a single business that appears to have all the bases covered (!) ...

Twenty-two reviews on Google with a score of 3.6, forty-four on Trustpilot and a (trust)score there of 3.5 and then twenty-seven on Feefo (an invitation-only site - see CMA regulations above) with a score of 4.9. Guess which they are using in their current TV marketing campaign?

The solution?

We will cover this in detail in this series of articles. Regular readers and clients already know the answer, but, in a nutshell, if we discount 'doing nothing' as a potential solution the only way a business can be compliant with the CMA regulations is to either have a Google reviews widget on its website or to adopt proper full-time review management. As we say: more later.