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

Trust - is EVERYTHING where reviews are concerned

If you cannot trust reviews, what is their point? Our answer: there's no point at all.

  

It's not often that the Times makes reviews the subject of their leading article, but they did today - and the punchline is, as you can see, that you can't trust them, and, for 'proper scrutiny of products and services, read actual journalism.'

You might expect us to launch into a defence of reviews, but we are not going to. Why? Because we agree with much of the thrust of what the Times is saying.

Before online reviews there was advertising and there were testimonials and there were reviews written by journalists. At least with advertising you know the business is putting its own spin on the message, and with testimonials it's the same - have you ever read a critical testimonial? And, while we're sure the Times' journalists have never been guilty of this - there were reviews written by journalists who had benefited from the product or service under review. From free holidays to long-term 'loans' of products from food-mixers to motor cars.

So along came the web - and with it, online consumer reviews. But there were, and still are, reviews and reviews. 

In theory:

Reviews should be the answer to all consumers' prayers: honestly held opinions, freely available for all to see before a product is purchased or a service is contracted.

In practice: 

It's - still - a minefield. Why? Because of two things: human nature and the business interests of those publishing the reviews.

Human nature

It's not compulsory to write a review when you've purchased a product or stayed in a hotel. So who does? Leaving aside those kind folk who see it as their life's mission to help people they have never met find the ideal toast-rack, it is much more likely to be someone who is dissatisfied (about 15 times more likely according to Cornell School of Hospitality's research). And this tilts the playing-field away from the product or service. In the world of online reviews if a product or service scores 9 out of 10 (or 4.5 out of 5 in Google's own world) it's probably pretty near perfect. Just because you cannot please all of the people all of the time - one person's ideal hotel is another guest's hell-on-earth. 

But - on this benchmark - why are so many businesses we see on the web pretty near perfect in terms of their reviews and scores? It would be charitable to think that, because businesses mostly strive to be as good as possible, for purely commercial reasons, then most of them come close. 

Just for a moment let's look at a recent example of a business where the online reviews are in conflict with one of the Times's august journalists:

  Before you leap to point out that he's just reviewing the breakfast, the full article makes plain that he's reviewing his stay as well

And here's the same Hotel on TripAdvisor:

And here's a guest review written a week after Mr Coren stayed:

We're not saying this review is fraudulent, just that, with TripAdvisor doing as little as they admit to doing currently to check the veracity of their reviews and reviewers, it could be. As could any of the other reviews - written by the business (positive) or their competitors (negative).

What can we learn from this? It would be nice to be able to say that Giles Coren and 'aday375' (for that is the TripAdvisor reviewer's username) have differing requirements and standards, but, unfortunately it's not as simple as that. Because we don't know for certain that 'aday375' is a bona-fide guest. And this is of fundamental importance as far as HelpHound is concerned: if the review platform cannot stand behind its reviews, or is not doing its utmost to ensure that all its reviews - and reviewers - are genuine, then we think consumers should be encouraged to view it with a deal of scepticism. 

As regular readers of this blog are aware, we have written about this aspect of TripAdvisor - and other review sites - for as long as we can remember. And, again: for as long as we can remember, TripAdvisor have been responding with the same platitudes as this quote in today's Times:

 "Because we have been tracking reviews for 16 years, we can spot what is normal reviewer behaviour and what isn't. That said, the world of fraud is an ever changing landscape."

Not good enough TripAdvisor.

For reasons better known to TripAdvisor, in spite of their acknowledgment that 'fraud is an ever changing landscape', it is just as easy to write a fraudulent review now, in 2016, as it was in the early days of TripAdvisor. A reviewer can still register with any old Hotmail email address, you can still hide behind a 'MickeyMouse123' username, you still don't have to provide any evidence that you have stayed at the hotel you are reviewing - you don't even have to provide evidence that you have visited the country where the hotel you are reviewing is located! We know, because we opened a new TripAdvisor account today.

It may have been 'good enough' in 2002 when technology was clunky, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook was still in high school and G+ was not even a gleam in Google's eye. But it is definitively not good enough now. There are myriad ways that a company like TripAdvisor (profit of $63 million on turnover of $1.4billion at last count) could give its reviews, and its reviewers, more credibility. So why doesn't it? Is is because of Abraham Lincoln's old adage that 'You can fool... all of the people'? Or is it, more prosaically, because its share price is influenced by the volume of reviews that are written?

Our message to TripAdvisor: Invest in credibility or, one day, 'all of the people' may rumble you.

It's not only TripAdvisor. We know of another popular review site where, for fairness's sake, any paying business member can appeal a review that they consider unfair, misleading or inaccurate and it will be suspended pending a response from the reviewer. So far so good, but unfortunately our old friend human nature plays into unscrupulous businesses' hands here as well: they found that if they appealed every negative review, very few reviewers would bother to engage with the review site a second time. These sites are now known in the trade as 'nine-out-of-ten' sites because all their savvy business clients score - you guessed it - nine out of ten!

There is a flip side too: sites like Yelp believe so fervently in freedom of speech that a reviewer who has never used or visited a business can trash a business's reputation simply because they don't like something the business was reported as doing in the press.

It gets worse before it gets better: there's one big US site that provides a feed of reviews for it's business customers to display on their own websites. Again: so far so good, until you realise that the business can choose which reviews to display. Sigh!

Thank you Google

Thank goodness, from the consumer's point-of-view, that Google got stuck in - better late than never - to the world of online reviews. They made some of the same mistakes in the early days, but they have upped their game recently. At least there are far fewer 'A Google user' anonymous reviews now compared with the early days. But there are disadvantages: it is still very difficult for a business to appeal against a review that is unfair or misleading. 

Given the power Google has in influencing consumers - with a huge amount of real-estate on page 1 of search devoted to Google reviews, we think they could usefully loosen up their appeals process to allow patently false reviews to be appealed (we had success for this client whose hotel had been maligned by a sofa-bound TV-watching critic, but only after the hotelier had resorted to the national press and we offered to help).

So what about our clients' reviews?

As you might imagine from reading everything we have said so far, we have put a lot of effort into making sure the reviews that our clients display give a fair and accurate impression of our clients' businesses. After all, it's our name on the review on their website.

Let's follow our process right through from invitation to final review - and question every stage:

Stage 1. Our client - the business - sends an invitation to its customer to write a review. Or someone - who may of may not be a customer, visits the business's website and clicks on their 'write a review' button. 

How does HelpHound know that the business is inviting bona-fide customers to post reviews? If a business really wanted to get fake favourable reviews published in theory they could - by seeding their mailing list. But we have a strict two strikes rule at HelpHound. If a business is found to have in any way encouraged a fake review they receive a written warning, if they repeat the behavior they are put into purdah pending an investigation (no more reviews will be published). If the investigation establishes that there is malice aforethought (as opposed to an intern 'trying to be helpful') their membership of HelpHound is terminated.
 
Stage 2. Our moderators read the review and then send an email to the reviewer so they can verify that they are the author of the review. If the review contains abuse or allegations of illegality we respond to the reviewer inviting them to re-submit their review. In the case of illegality they will be informed that they must seek legal advice.

Why won't we accept abuse? We don't consider that abusive reviews help anyone - consumer or business. If a consumer wants to abuse a business, including using 'foul and abusive' language there are websites like Yelp that will happily publish their views. The core ethos of HelpHound is built around the concept of businesses and consumers working together to ensure, as far as is possible, a satisfactory outcome for both. That does not mean that the consumer cannot rate the business one star as well as giving it a thorough going-over, it just means they have to use the kind of language acceptable in a family newspaper.
 
Stage 3. Either: Positive reviews are published to the business's HelpHound module displayed on their website, whilst simultaneously an email is sent to the reviewer telling them that their review has been published and inviting them to copy their review to a second platform of the business's choice (Google, or Facebook or TripAdvisor - or any other open site).

Can the business/reviewer respond? Yes. If the positive review is subsequently established to be inaccurate or misleading can it be deleted? Yes, but the reviewer will be invited to post a revised review.

Stage 3. Or: Negative reviews are sent to the business for comment. An email is sent simultaneously to the reviewer informing them and reinforcing their right to have their final review published, whatever the business's response to the reviewer - we call this system Resolution™ because it is specifically designed so consumers can resolve issues with the business concerned. In theory the correspondence between the reviewer and the business has no cut-off point. In practice it is unusual for either party to communicate more then once or twice.

What if the reviewer insists on having their original review published? That's their right, and a proportion do. The business also has the right of reply and the reviewer has the right to edit their review.    

Can a complete outsider influence our moderation policy? yes, anyone - absolutely anyone - can flag any published review on a HelpHound clients' site and it will be reviewed.

And finally...

There is a downside of this for HelpHound: we cannot work for or with a business that is not seriously committed to excellence in customer service. Because bad businesses will look bad thanks to our system. Their customers would rightly insist on their negative reviews being posted - and they would end up scoring badly. But that's the only way we are happy to stand four square behind what we do.

At HelpHound we have done our utmost to make this system as fair to all parties concerned as we possibly can whilst retaining everyone's trust. Resolution is very popular - we often get positive comments from users - and effective. But if you have any suggestions about how we can refine or improve it please comment.

Trust - the cornerstone of Reviews

We were speaking to the CEO of a large and well-respected web design business recently when he referred to one of the mass-market review sites as 'That 9.7 site'. What did he mean by that? He went on to say 'I have never come across a client of theirs who looks bad on the web - the same with the 5* brigade.'

What did he mean?

He meant that credibility - and trust - were the cornerstones of any review strategy, and that he would not recommend any such strategy to his clients unless he could be convinced that it passed those two tests.  

We all hear stories, from friends and colleagues, about 'fake reviews', so let's take a moment to look at the various kinds of fake review:

1. The 'self-review': this is the most common - a positive review by the business owner, an employee of the business, or someone else with an interest in making the business look great online. There are many stories of hoteliers engaging in this on TripAdvisor
2. The 'fake negative': written by a variety of interested parties - disgruntled ex-employees, employees or agencies of competitor businesses. Again, not uncommon on sites like TripAdvisor
3. The 'rant': often written by someone who does not approve of something the business has done in the public arena, or the actions of one of its employees. Sometimes politically motivated, sometimes written to support the opinion of a friend or pressure group

Now let's look at what the various sites do to combat these:

Amazon: if a business employs an outside agency to 'puff' its products on Amazon, Amazon will sue. Amazon says that, since early 2015, it has sued over 1,000 people who posted fake reviews for cash. Now, the company is going after the retailers themselves. Amazon said that it intends to eliminate incentives for sellers to buy fake reviews for their products.

Yelp: Yelp claims its review filter eliminates [some] fake reviews. Unfortunately, because Yelp guards its filter algorithm more closely than Coca Cola guards the recipe for Coke it makes it difficult for any outside agency to comment on its efficacy. All we do know is that businesses that make the news almost always get flamed/trolled. Here is an example - of a small business that complained to Yelp about what they considered to be an unfair review - other Yelpers from across the country piled in and wrote one-star reviews of a business they had never used.

TripAdvisor: TripAdvisor makes no bones - it advises users to read reviews with caution. The Sunday Times - no fan of TripAdvisor since it set up its own fake hotel many years back (and got it into the top ranked hotels in London) constantly runs exposes like this. TripAdvisor does operate a 'red flag' system for hotels that it considers are writing their own reviews, but it is rarely used. It is possible to contest negative reviews if they contravene TripAdvisor's T&Cs - we have a great track record of appealing unfair negatives on behalf of our clients.

The smaller independent review sites: One of the simplest systems used by the smaller independent sites is the 'invitation only' review. This works well for products - the consumer can be sure that the reviewer purchased the product in question, but has two drawbacks: the review is only written within days of purchase, when the shoes/shirt/kettle are shiny and new and a disproportionate amount of reviews are actually reviewing the delivery service not the product. Five stars are awarded because the product arrived the next day, one star because it arrived late. This system - which we call 'closed' - also works well for a hotel site like Booking.com, where the product and service have been consumed or used before the reviewer is asked to write their review, less well for ongoing services where a consumer's opinion may change over time.

Now for the big daddy of them all - Google:

Google reviews are important for both business and consumer because they are invariably the first (and often the only) reviews the consumer will read. In the early days - remember Google places? - anyone could write a review (or even just leave a star rating) of any business, whether they had used it or not. Thankfully those days were put firmly in the past when Google dovetailed Google Places (and Maps) withe Google Plus (G+) and Google for Business. Now a Google review must be attached to a defined Google user. That does not mean that it's no longer possible to leave a fake review, but it means that anyone doing so must jump through quite a few hoops, and, probably most important of all, leave an online trail that will either identify themselves to Google as a malicious reviewer or as connected with the business. We have several cases on file at HelpHound where we have been able to prove that a (negative) review was written by a competitor or a (positive) review was written by someone connected to the business. But that is the key: they are identifiable and appealable.

Here is the story - that reached the national press - of a malicious Google review where we conducted a successful appeal on behalf of the business.

What about HelpHound?

The $64,000 question for us and everyone who relies on us - both our clients and their customers.

If we take a quick look at the HelpHound process:

1. The business sends an email to its customer inviting the review, or the customer sees the 'write a review' button on the business's website
2. The review is moderated by HelpHound
3. Positive reviews are posted to the businesses website
4. Reviews containing criticisms, inaccuracies or potentially misleading statements are forwarded to the business for comment - after which the reviewer is invited to post their review to the business's website
5. All reviewers are invited to copy their review to Google

How does this prevent a fake review being published? In one of two ways: if the review falls under 4. above the reviewer will be contacted by the business - this immediately eliminates fake negative reviews. If the review is positive, it could, in theory, have been 'seeded' by the business (the business could have emailed a 'tame' reviewer who would then pose as a client and write a glowing review). But remember that HelpHound:

• moderates reviews: and our moderation system is very good at spotting anomalous reviews
• has a 'flagging' system, where anyone reading a review on a client's website may, at any time, flag that review for further investigation
• has a 'two strikes' rule: that any client who is guilty of seeding their reviews is given one warning and then excluded

This latter point bears further examination; some have asked 'Why two strikes, why not just one?" The answer is simple: we understand human nature - and there is sometimes a fine line between enthusiasm and outright fraud. We have seen cases, admittedly not many, where employees of client businesses have written positive reviews in what they considered to be good faith: they had bought or used their employers product or service. We have a firm rule that states that in this instance the employee must indentify themselves as such in the body of the review and, if that review impacts on their employer's overall score, it will be discounted.

We have seen an example of an independent review site where the site requires proof-of-purchase before they will publish a review, but we discounted this as, besides placing a heavy administrative burden on the reviewer, it eliminates what we call 'collateral customers' - those who have used a service without being the person directly paying for it: guests at a wedding or a dinner at a restaurant,

It would, however, be perfectly possible for someone in no way connected with either
HelpHound or our client business to write a positive review, but - we ask ourselves - why would they?

So: back to the original point: credibility and trust

Anyone looking at one of our clients' websites is able to read or write a review at the click of a mouse, whenever they wish: we feel this goes a long way to establishing the crucial elements of credibility and trust that drives business through our clients' websites

We believe that a HelpHound verified review has as much credibility as any review on the web today, and more than most. 

  Creating a great first impression with Google reviews is a high priority for most of our clients - and rightly so

We believe that Google reviews have credibility in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of consumers, which is just as well, because they are the reviews that every consumer sees in every search, whether or not they are actively looking for reviews. But without someone like HelpHound acting to make sure that inaccurate and/or misleading reviews don't make it that far, the credibility of Google reviews is diminished. HelpHound + Google = credible and trustworthy reviews where businesses, consumers and Google need them most - on the business's own website and on Google.

Learn from Uber and AirBnB

Both Uber and AirBnB were early adopters of reviews - they knew they were a major key to the credibility of their service; how else were they going to gain that crucial element of trust from their potential users?

here's Uber:

 If a review can instill trust in a £10 cab ride, think what it can do for any other transaction

And AirBnB:

With most successful businesses there is one key element that ensured that success. With Facebook it was the introduction of the 'relationship status' field (remember Bebo - Facebook's predecessor? No - not many people do!). Without reviews Uber and AirBnB might still be struggling startups.

So: if you are in a business where trust is a key element of your potential customers' decision making process (and we are struggling to think of a business where it is not) you need to think seriously about adopting a credible review management system. Otherwise, one day, you may find your business in the same hole that London cabbies and small hoteliers find themselves in today.

Postscript for our clients: Are you impressed by Paolo's responses? Then check your module to make sure that your responses are right up-to-date.