How 'Helpful' votes let you know your reviews are being read

'Helpful' votes have been compared to Facebook 'likes', but we think they are a more powerful indicator than that. Let's examine the psychology behind them in a little more depth...

Why would someone reading a review bother to vote it 'Helpful'? Statistically (we have these stats from TripAdvisor) less than one person in ten who reads a review goes to the length of voting. So the review needs to be really helpful (at least)!

For instance: we see a difference between our estate agent clients and our hotel clients. Estate agent reviews get proportionately more helpful votes (they have many fewer customers). Why? We are guessing, but we think it's because choosing and estate agent is such a big financial decision - and therefore the advice and reassurance gained from reading reviews is critical to the potential seller who is reading them. There's £hundreds of thousands at stake, not just hundreds, and verified reviews are massively reassuring.

That's not to say our hotel clients don't get them (one has just surpassed the 5000 'helpful' mark), but just one agent has had over 400 helpful votes in the last 6 six months alone. 

Helpful in deciding to contact the business?

Helpful in deciding to book that hotel?

Helpful in deciding to instruct that estate agent?

We'll let you decide.

Hotels - review management - a checklist

One of our clients asked for a simple checklist, here we share it with you all:

1. Maximise email harvest: no email address, no communication with your guest - not just for Dialogue, but for your own marketing
2. Email on checkout: not the next day, and certainly not a week later - a dissatisfied guest may not wait to post elsewhere on the web
3. Respond to all reviews on TripAdvisor - immediately - it looks great to potential guests and it's proven to both impress future guests and promote better reviews in future
4. Respond to all reviews in Dialogue - immediately - they've effectively written direct to you and, whether the message was positive or not, they will be expecting a reply
5. Promote your reviews on your website - your guests' opinions influence potential guests when they visit your website: make the most of their impact by promoting them - on your home page and on other frequently visited pages
6. Use Dynamic Display to attract attention to your reviews: not just on your home page but anywhere a potential guest can see them
7. Ask guests if they have read your reviews on check-in: and then tell them that you will be asking them for their opinion when they check out - this greatly improvs response rates
8. And finally: engage all your staff. Reviews should be important to everyone from the GM to the housekeepers

Dialogue - addressing arguably the biggest issue facing estate agents today

This post was prompted by a recent discussion in the Estate Agents UK Networking Group in LinkedIn entitled 'Google "estate agents are"'. So we did...

(If you are upset by this - just google "bankers are")

But there is a serious message here: up until now agents have addressed the 'professionalism' question in many ways:

• Professional qualifications - RICS/NFoPP etc.
• Membership of professional bodies - RICS/NAEA/ARLA etc.
• Membership of marketing bodies - e.g. the Guild of Professional Estate Agents
• Industry awards

But do your potential clients understand any of the above? The issue facing estate agents is that the average consumer (your potential client) has their opinion formed by a never-ending stream of negative comment, and everyone gets tarred by it. So much so that some agents are even calling for mandatory government regulation.

We don't think this is needed (and if the experience of the financial services industry is anything to go by, it should be avoided at all costs). 

So what is needed?

Let's first remind ourselves of the profession as a whole's perceived failings:

1. Greedy (just want the commission) - never a mention of the hours spent on fruitless non-completes
2. Lazy (get paid lots for little work) - little? early mornings? late nights? weekends?
3. Dirty tricks - valuation, acting for the seller/working for the buyer
4. The criminal minority - hardly a month goes by without an agent appearing in court - it's never "insurance broker convicted of..." is it?
5. Misleading marketing claims - the ASA weekly sanctions report almost always include an estate agency

And above all - the business model, which invariably means that you can't win in the eyes of cynical commentators (or clients): If the house sells (or lets) straight away there's resentment at the fees relative to the hours of work you put in, if it takes a long time you overvalued/didn't work hard enough; you all know the story. 

All of which conspires to make people wary that you may be working in your best interests, not theirs.

So: who is best placed to convince clients that your agency is professional?

You are!

How?

By using Dialogue to allow your own clients to tell their (and your) story to the world.

Have a look at this client's website, and then ask yourself what impression it creates in the mind of the potential client.

For an example of a multi-branch agency client click here.

Spend a minute reading the individual reviews; how valuable do you think they are in attracting enquiries and then converting business?

 And now read what David Simpson of Shepherds has to say:

Get HelpHound's Dialogue to enable your clients to help you stand apart from the negative noise.

Key articles for Hotels

Here's a quick guide to the 'must read' articles for hoteliers, and a simple description of our services:

What does Dialogue do?

Dialogue enables you to take control your hotel's online reputation

Blog post: "Dialogue - managing OUT the negatives"
Blog post: "Success secrets - hotels" 
Blog post: "Shock/Horror! - Dialogue clients look better"

What are the results?

Dialogue gets you great reviews to your own website, great reviews to TripAdvisor and reduces negative posts to TripAdvisor. Your TripAdvisor ranking increases

Blog post: "Dialogue - 100% success for a new client" 
Blog post: "Results just keep on getting better"
Blog post: "How would you like great reviews like these?" 
Blog post: "Why has our TripAdvisor ranking fallen?" 
Blog post: "Hotels - predict your ranking on TripAdvisor"

Dynamic Display - what is it?

It draws attention to your great reviews 

Blog post: "Results - simply astounding"
Blog post: "Dynamic Display - an important update"

Feedback Manager - what is it?

We respond to all your reviews in Dialogue

Blog post: "Feedback Manager - an important addition"
Blog post: "Why do so few hotels respond to reviews on TripAdvisor?"

Why can't/shouldn't we do it ourselves?

Because doing it yourself lacks the single most important ingredient in the eyes of your potential guest: credibility

Blog post: "DIY reviews - why don't they work?"

How much does it cost?

From 5p to 9p a day per room - depending on the services you choose

Blog post: "Is your hotel's reputation worth as much as a chocolate on the pillow"

Why do our guests need Dialogue?

They welcome the opportunity to (a) thank you for a great experience and (b) tell you about any issues they experienced during their stay

Blog Post: "Why your customers need Dialogue" 


There's much more - just click on 'Hotels' in the cloud to the right (for clients of ReviewPro and similar services there's a relevant post here, for instance) or speak to your business member advisor.

Is your hotel's reputation worth as much as a chocolate on the pillow?

Often when we quote a hotel we express the cost of Dialogue in terms of 'pence per room night' 

Last week a client said to one of our membership advisers: "why wouldn't I value my hotel's reputation above a chocolate on our guests' pillow?" and it struck a chord.

Why indeed? 

We compared the two, and guess what?

They cost the same!*

Dialogue costs between 4p and 9p a room/night (depending on your room rate). How much are you spending on chocolates?  

*And that's for ONE chocolate - if you give guests two (or more) Dialogue's relative cost falls even further!

TripAdvisor - trust being chipped away

Here's a pretty extreme example of fake reviews on TripAdvisor - a whole fake restaurant - the 'restaurant' in question (actually an alleyway in Brixham, Devon) - managed to rank 29 out of 60-odd restaurants...

Read the full article here.

DIY reviews - why don't they work (2)?

Some hotels collect their own reviews - so?

We have addressed this point before, but we were doing some background work on a well-known hotel group recently and one of our researchers noticed a trend: the reviews posted through the group's own review-gathering service (and the resulting scores) were worse than those on TripAdvisor, so we mined deeper. 

Examples:

Hotel 'A': TripAdvisor 4/5; group's own system: 3.7/5

Hotel 'B' TripAdvisor 4.5/5; group's own system: 4.1/5

Hotel 'C' TripAdvisor 4.5/5; group's own system: 3.9/5

Why? We mined down a little further; and this is what we think is happening:

The group has made a tentative entry into the world of reviews (this is understandable) and so they (again, understandably) thought it would be a good idea if they initially restricted invitations to post reviews to their 'loyal' frequent stayer guests.

So why would their 'frequent stayer' guests rate them lower than all their guests on TripAdvisor?

To find the answer we read the content of the negative reviews. As with many large multinationals they rely on corporate contracts for a large proportion of their business, especially in popular business locations. And this is where the problem (at least in part) lies. If your employer dictates where you stay it would seem you are more, not less, likely to be critical.

We came across many reviews along the lines of "I wish I didn't have to stay in [name of hotel]." or "It wasn't my choice." Interestingly, these reviewers were much more likely to give 'location' a low score: they would rather have been somewhere else in the city (and some of them would probably rather have been tucked up in bed at home)!

There was another subset as well: weekend stays from frequent business stayers using loyalty credits for a leisure stay. They often commented that their significant other was disappointed. Staying for business and staying for pleasure are not the same thing. Comments like "it's OK during the week when I only need a bed for the night, but [unforeseen issue] arose when [my wife and I] stayed at the weekend."

These reviewers are using the hotel's in-house review offering to vent. And not only against the hotel, but against their employers as well. The trouble is it's the hotel's online reputation that suffers.

The first thing this group needs to do is open up its invitation to review to all its guests. Then they need to completely re-evaluate the concept of in-house reviews.

Why re-evaluate?

Because our extensive experience and research shows that independence is a key criteria:

• in the mind of the guest being invited to post a review; they feel encouraged by the fact that the review and the whole system is being overseen by an independent agency (after all, that's what makes TripAdvisor so popular), and it's a big part of why response rates to Dialogue are so high

• and just as importantly, in the mind of the potential guest being shown the review - independence here is critical to credibility (we live in an increasingly cynical world)