Response rates - Dialogue v. CRM for Hotels

If Dialogue is to work for you - enabling you to manage negatives in private and get more positive reviews written - then 'volume of response' to the feedback invitation is one of the key factors.

One of the most frequent questions we are asked is "What about response rates?" and the answer is simple, even if the reasons behind it are not...

"Dialogue is about 10 x better than conventional CRM" 

That means if your current CRM (or Guest Relations Management, as some call it) is generating a response of +- 0.5% (one in 200 guests) then Dialogue is likely to lift that to 5% (one in 20 guests).

'How?' and 'Why?'

Anecdotal evidence gleaned by our moderators as they read each review and response indicates that it is Dialogue's independence that makes the difference. Guests are much more likely to respond to a request for feedback when there is a third party involved, and that third party reinforces a 'promise to publish'. This is backed up by pure logic when we compare pre-Dialogue CRM response rates for our clients; our independence is the only thing that differentiates Dialogue's results (in terms of volume) from the hotel's own CRM.

Why is this response rate so crucial?

If part of your focus with Dialogue is presenting the best possible face to the world (your potential guests and clients) then it is absolutely vital that...

• Your 'less than completely satisfied' guests have a channel to voice their opinion before they resort to posting a negative review*
• You can encourage more of your happy guests to post to TripAdvisor

To achieve both of these you need response - in volume and from both categories of guest - happy and unhappy. Dialogue will get you that response - and achieve both these objectives.

A case study

Let's take a client that ranks in the top 100 hotels in London...

In the last 12 months we have enabled them to manage over 80 negative reviews which, had they been published, would have ranked the hotel at either 3, 2 or 1 star.

On top of that Dialogue has achieved 43 reposts of 4 or 5 star reviews to TripAdvisor.

So - fewer negatives, more positives - Dialogue much more than paying for itself.

*This is about much more than just stopping the guest from posting a negative review, it is just as much about guest retention: having an effective mechanism that allows the guest to say "If you do [this] I'll stay again."

What to expect when you join - Estate Agents

2014 was the year that brought the benefits of membership for estate agents into sharp focus: up until then we had been concerned that populating external sites (Google, AllAgents etc.) would be a major concern. Whilst this remains part-and-parcel of our wider remit it is now abundantly clear that Dialogue has become the key tool in our cleints' armoury to...

• Drive enquiries through their websites
• Drive conversions

Both these bear closer examination (with no apologies at all for repeating and updating some of the content of previous blog posts). 

Driving enquiries 

You don't need us to tell you that the initial enquiry is your life blood, but to look at some agents' websites you might not believe it: the same hackneyed old self-serving blurb about how experienced they are (who says so?) and how much local knowledge they have (ditto).

Dialogue enables our clients to answer the questions that are right at the forefront of their potential clients' minds:

"What sort of job does this agent do for their clients?"

"Are they reliable?"

"Are they professional?"

Show Dialogue on your home page and potential clients will flow your way...

Reviews referenced three times

Driving Conversions

Dialogue is being used more and more as a tool to drive conversions. Showing credible client opinions to potential clients, opinions that address the concerns of those potential cleints head-on, gets the instruction...

Let's look at a 'real-life' example: you are with a potential client who is concerned that you may be like the 'other agents he's heard about' who don't follow through with great service once they have the instruction...

...so you show him this:

Helpful? To you both? You bet!

What to expect when you join - Hotels

It's way and above the question we are asked the most, and every year the answer gets better (and more precise). So here's 2014's version (if you want to know more detail on any of the points below, follow the links)...

• Your TripAdvisor ranking will go up - the average for hotels joining last year was by 16%. If you currently rank 300 (out of 1072) in London, by the end of your first year of membership you will be looking to rank at 250 or higher 

• Your Booking.com score will improve - by an average of 0.4. For example, if your hotel is currently scoring 7.9, by the end of year 1 with Dialogue you will be aiming to score 8.3 or higher
• You will get far fewer negatives posted to TripAdvisor - an average of 77% less. Let's put this in stark relief - if you had 10 'poor' or 'terrible' reviews on TripAdvisor in the last 12 months you should expect less than 3 in the coming 12 months (Dialogue will also make a significant dent in your 'average' reviews as well).
• You will get more positives posted to TripAdvisor - at least 25% more; one client has achieved 37%! And that, combined with the reduction in negatives will make a huge impact on your ranking which will, in turn, feed through into bookings
• You will be able increase guest retention - up to one in five of the reviews posted will contain an issue where the guest might reasonably not be expected to return - until you adopted Dialogue. You will be able to respond to these in private and reassure the guest sufficiently to a) prevent them publishing a negative review and b) retain their custom
• Dialogue works better than the alternatives - some hotels use in-house CRM to address the issue of reviews and some link to external review sites. However well these are currently working, Dialogue will achieve better results

So much for hard statistics, what about anecdotal reports from clients? These include...

• Reducing OTA commissions - having independently verified reviews showing next to your booking engine enhances the chances that your potential guests will book direct in a way that showing in-house generated reviews or an external feed can never do
• Being put in a much stronger position when (re)negotiating contracts. Looking better than your competitors always helps here; also: first impressions count, and not having a 1 Star review on page one of TripAdvisor makes a difference too
• Your potential guests will welcome Dialogue - for its independence and for the fact that the reviews are more representative. 

How does your hotel score?

Here's how we analyse our potential clients' review management. No-one has ever scored more than 8 out of 10 (more often well-managed hotels score between 3-5), so there's massive potential for HelpHound and Dialogue to improve your performance.  

And for those of you who struggle to respond to reviews...

There's Feedback Manager. And thanks to Cornell University's School of Hospitality and their research we now know that responding to reviews generates more (and better) reviews for our clients in the future.

Dialogue - by numbers [Hotels]

We know you love statistics - so here's a round-up of interesting numbers...

• 16% - the average rise in TripAdvisor ranking in your first 12 months of membership
• 4.6 out of 5 - the average score awarded to our clients by their guests
• 77% - the amount by which you can expect negative comments to TripAdvisor to reduce
• 12% - the amount by which you can expect positive (4 and 5 star) reviews to TripAdvisor to increase
• 14% - the amount by which you can expect bounce (potential guests coming to your home page and leaving without exploring your website further) to reduce
• 2.7 - the number of extra 4 star or 5 star reviews Dialogue will get posted to TripAdvisor per 100 rooms/month
• 3.6 - the number of guests per 100 rooms/month who will post a negative review (privately) into Dialogue and change their minds about returning when they read your response

Reviews - great in theory, powerful in reality

We spend a lot of our time discussing the whys and wherefores of reviews and review management with our clients; so much so that sometimes even we risk losing touch with the power of the real thing, and the profound effect that reviews have on us all - as potential customers...

We all know that great reviews drive business, but only when we see them does their impact really hit home. The reviews that follow are real examples (and just two of many thousands), both posted in the last week; read them and then ask yourself "Would I use this business?"

A hotel client: 

An estate agent client:

Would you book a room in this hotel? would you invite this agent to value your home for sale?

The most accurate impression - Dialogue or TripAdvisor?

In our opinion there has not yet been enough focus in the press on whether or not review sites give an accurate impression of a business.

Above you will see the ratings for a hotel: first from Dialogue and second from TripAdvisor. So let's look at the differences:

First: the method of harvest. We invite all their guests to post a review; TripAdvisor relies on guests volunteering to post a review. This results in three major statistical impacts:

1. Dialogue ensures a much more representative sample of the hotel's guests actually write a review. In this case 1664 reviews through Dialogue as opposed to 810 on TripAdvisor: double the number of guest opinions
2. Guests often use TripAdvisor to complain without understanding the background to their complaint; Dialogue allowed this hotel to respond* to 202 reviews which contained some form of criticism before then inviting the guest to post their final review
3. Dissatisfied guests are much more likely to post (to TripAdvisor), out of all proportion to the reality of a stay at any given hotel - by a factor of around 15:1. This leads to an inbuilt bias on TripAdvisor which is reflected in the average scores of any hotel

This resulted in the following breakdown of the 1462* final reviews:

• Excellent      783   
• Very Good    614
• Average        61
• Poor              4
• Terrible          0

*All reviews are first read by a HelpHound moderator; those that require input from the hotel are placed in 'Resolution' where the hotel and their guest can discuss whatever point has been raised. at the conclusion of this process HelpHound invites the guest to post their final review.

The conclusion we invite you to draw from this is that Dialogue presents a fairer and more accurate view of the hotel: according to TripAdvisor over 10% of their guests are unhappy (posting a poor/terrible review) - that's one in ten and is demonstrably misleading. With Dialogue every guest is asked their opinion, and any guest who is unhappy enough to want their opinion published has their opinion published. Dialogue enables a well-run and managed hotel to look just that. Dialogue is fair to both hotel and guest alike.

It only takes a single bad review...

Some of you will have read this - it ran in most national papers this week. Behind all the 'Basil Fawlty' journalese is an important point - that negative reviews harm your business:

'She said she has lost £2,000 in cancelled bookings since the scathing Michael W review - which she calls "The Valentine's Day Massacre".' 

Here's a link to their TripAdvisor listing.