Estate agents banned - the implications for every business

Today's Times piece is here, yesterday's PIE story is here

The article goes on to report that 'The two men were fined by the Competition and Markets Authority, alongside the other four estate agency groups, paying a combined £370,084 in September last year.'

Most of you will have read about this in the national press or one or other of the business forums. "But we are not involved in commission or price-fixing, so what has this got to do with us?" we hear you say.

Our answer: It has everything to do with you. Why? Because the government agency that imposed both the fine (the Competition and Markets Authority) and the ban is the same agency that regulates how businesses - all UK businesses - use reviews.

Put simply: if your business is inviting reviews from customers and is not...

• inviting all your customers to post a review
• at a time of their own choosing

 ...it is breaking the law.

Put even more bluntly...

If your business...

• is selecting customers to invite to write a review (commonly called cherry-picking)
• employing a mechanism that allows you to prevent those who write a negative review from having that review published
• is choosing the time you invite or allow your customer to write a review (e.g. only at point of purchase)

...it is breaking the law.

We estimate currently that - of businesses proactively inviting reviews to any platform, be that Google or an independent reviews site - over 90% are guilty of one or more of the three practices listed above.

Why? Because they know that a dissatisfied customer is so much more likely to be motivated to post a review and they feel that they are forced to take action to redress that balance. 

There is another way. We are often asked why our clients look so good and the answer is a simple one: first and foremost they are good businesses, focused on customer service at their core, but one of the things that reassured them when they joined HelpHound was our Resolution™ moderation mechanism which enables them to address factually inaccurate or potentially misleading reviews pre-publication. It expressly does not prevent a customer posting a review - even an inaccurate or misleading one - but it does enable the business and their customer to have a dialogue and 'resolve' those kinds of issues before the review is published for all the world to see (and it's just as popular with consumers as it is with our clients).


Further reading:

• The CMA rules - and our detailed analysis
• Resolution™ - an 'owners manual'

Why pay commission - when there is a better way?

  

So many websites exist with their core premise being to deliver leads to businesses of all sorts, from accountants to zoos, from hotels to estate agents, but they all contain one significant flaw: they are terrible value for money when compared with professional review management

Consumers think they are great - the aggregator/lead generator websites - but businesses are not quite so fond of them - for good reason: they soak up money.

Whatever business you are in, from hospitality to hairdressing, there is a site selling you customers. Needless to say, that's not quite what they tell their (your) customers. If you are relying on one of those sites to drive business we think you should be at the very least testing an alternative - professional review management.

We know you know, but just so we all start from the same point...

How these sites work
  
They promote themselves to the general public and then sell that consumer to you - usually for a commission (rates usually vary from 10% - 35% of the value of the service provided).

They claim to 'add value' in various ways - and some do. TripAdvisor's reviews are useful, and so is their forum, for instance. They may provide your business with useful software (for bookings or appointments, for example). And they will deliver custom (because their business model depends on that, at least). But all this comes at a price, and while it may sometimes be a price you are willing to pay, just like any marketing, if there is a less costly alternative, you will want to know about it.

The 'less costly alternative'

Professional review management delivers most of what your potential customers want from these sites: reassurance that they are choosing the right hotel/hairdresser/estate agent/plumber - and it delivers the customers to you with an important difference, and that difference is mostly in the way the business pays.

The commission model goes right out of the window - so you don't end up paying more and more for every customer. Your business is rewarded for success, not the introducing website.

Putting these numbers in context...

 We know some of these commission figures are lower than you may be currently paying, but we don't want to be accused of exaggerating

Now - compare these with HelpHound membership...

How much does your business need to earn to pay back our fee? Put simply: if HelpHound membership generates a single customer a month more it has paid for itself - any more than that - and the business is in clover.

Look at the numbers for these heating engineers...

And this estate agency...

Both these screenshots were taken directly from the respective business's own Google My Business report. Every business is sent this every month - so any uplift is immediately apparent. In both these cases the only variation in the business's marketing plan was the adoption of HelpHound (that, perhaps unsurprisingly, is why they have shared these reports with us).

So: whatever your business, join HelpHound and have us working alongside any other solution you currently have in place and see for yourself the value we can add - and there's no minimum contract period, that's how confident we are that you will be glad your business joined.

Three reasons to Join

We could simply ask you to speak to a client (and we will be happy to put you in touch), but before you do, just check out these three simple reasons to join HelpHound...

1. You will attract more business
2. You won't be breaking the law
3. You will find that staff morale soars

In more detail (you want more detail?!)...

Doing more business

  

This is a screengrab from a HelpHound client's Google My Business report, taken within weeks of joining

Other reviews solutions make a big song and dance about numbers - every kind of number except the one that counts: more business. Having lots of reviews is great, having stars in search is great, having lots of reviews on a site that doesn't show up as well as Google, maybe not so great. But, at the beginning and the end of the day there's only one number that matters: cash. The amount of cash that flows towards your business. And that is what we expect to be judged on.


Obeying the law

  We still meet people who don't realise that the CMA means business - its rules have the force of law (and if it's so easy to comply with them, why go to the effort of breaking them?)

Obeying the law is straightforward: you need to be enabling all your customers to write a review whenever they want. Simple, no? You would think so, but you might be surprised just how many solutions don't comply - and what do the words 'don't comply' mean? It's straightforward: if your business 'doesn't comply' it is breaking the law.


Staff morale

 How do you think this search feels when you work for Winkworth in Blackheath - or, just as importantly, if you work for a competitor?

As any sales director will confirm, staff morale is everything. If staff feel valued then sales performance is enhanced, it's as simple as that. And, with record high rates of employment in the UK today, how powerful a recruiter are great reviews?


The punch line:

One business* we were speaking to recently commented 'HelpHound is X% more expensive than [an independent site]. That X% added up to £10s a month - for ticking all three of these boxes (and more). HelpHound membership doesn't cost the earth, and there's no contract period for new members, so the message is loud and clear...

"Try us and see for your business"

*they joined, by the way.


How about joining - NOW?

1. You will notice the uplift from day one
2. You will be compliant with the CMA regulations from day one
3. Your staff will thank you from day one

Reviews rescue Paris taxi drivers - so what?

Here - for those of you that can navigate the Times's paywall - is today's article

First - the story. Parisians - and visitors - were being driven away from using Paris's licensed taxis, overwhelmingly owned by G7 - a business built by Andre Rousselet to the stage where it controlled 8,000 of the French capital's 20,000 cabs. Why? By dirty cabs, surly cabbies and some pretty dodgy practices.

  

This should become an increasingly rare sight in a licensed Paris taxi - thanks to reviews

Andre and his deputy, Serge Metz, looked long and hard for the solution to a problem that has dogged the existing taxi industry worldwide when faced with organised competitors such a Uber.

Their solution? Simple - take a leaf out of Uber's book and ask customers for reviews. Virtually overnight three things happened...

• cabs became clean(er)
• cabbies became polite(er) 
• customers became less likely to be ripped off

and...

• business began to flow back towards G7's cabs.

It is a great validation of M Rousselet and M Metz's open-minded attitude that they adopted this course of action. Needless to say it has not been popular with some of the old-school Paris cabbies whose habit of living in their cabs and taking customers to the Gare du Nord via Versailles, whatever their starting point, had become ingrained, but it enabled the management of G7 to quickly identify those die-hards and apply pressure in cases where it was needed.

The point of this story

Too often, businesses and their management see reviews as either...

• a nuisance to be ignored, or
• something to be paid lip-service to, in the hope that they might just drive business (why, if that were not the case, would so many businesses not engage with reviews?)

The message from G7 is that reviews can do all this and more - they can be used to motivate staff to provide a better service and then monitor that service to ensure consistency of delivery.

Professional review management will drive business, and will make your business look great against its competitors, but that's not all: it will also provide your business with a great way of ensuring your service is delivered consistently, across locations and staff.


 
 

There is a better way - seriously!

Here are two examples of businesses that presumably think they have reviews taped - but don't. They differ in the detail, but the results end up being very similar - they put customers off the business that's paying for the opposite.

The cruise line

In today's Times there is a double page advertisement - and prominently displayed in the bottom right corner, where advertisers know their readers are most likely to look, an invitation to check out the business's reviews on a reviews website...

  With a page at the Times costing well north of £20,000, this is serious spend in anyone's book

Before we look at that site, let's take a look where the overwhelming majority of consumers look these days - Google...

Now the reviews site...

 And a simple scroll down...

You can see from the time stamp on these two reviews that we have not 'cherry-picked' them - they were the two most recent reviews when we visited the site today

With one in five of their reviewers - 22% to be precise - rating them one, two or three stars (and a three star customer is hardly going to be writing a glowing review - or returning) then the business is effectively paying to promote the opinions of its dissatisfied customers. Laudable you might say - offering their prospective customers a range of opinions - except for one thing: some of those opinions are either misleading, inaccurate or factually incorrect. This helps no-one, not their prospective customers nor the business itself. There is - as all our clients know - a better way.

The other very simple questions we are asking ourselves - given that P&O could very easily invite its customers to write a review to Google is 'Why pay to have the same result on a site with less visibility than Google?' and 'Why does the bottom right of your advertisement not say 'Customers rate P&O cruises **** on Google'? Would your prospective customers not be just as happy reading Google reviews - that anyone can write, whenever they choose?


The estate agent

This one is a little more complicated, but bear with us, it may well result in you choosing the right reviews system for your business. 

Since we have no evidence to say that anything the business has done was willfully non-compliant we have redacted the business's name, but rest assured we have a file containing all the relevant screenshots.

The facts of the case...

Here is a screenshot of the business's Google score today...

What is so interesting - or unusual about that? The first thing is the pattern of reviews written to Google. here it is...

  All posted on 3 September - along with dozens more

The second thing is the date they contracted a reviews site? You guessed it - around the end of 2016 - how do we know? Because they issued a press release (Oh! And 342 reviews - nearly 10% of all the reviews they have - almost all 5 stars, were written in a week between 3 and 10 September)...

 Note the date of submission - alongside dozens more

The pattern on Google is interesting as well...

Another interesting set of statistics - before they joined the site the breakdown of their reviews was as follows...

And now?

Now we can say for sure that joining the independent site improved their image there - but on Google? We have said it before, and we will continue to say it as long as it applies...

"Adopting an independent reviews site drives unhappy customers to write their reviews to Google"

Further Reading...

• Everything a business does that is reviews-related must be complaint with the CMA rules - here's a summary of them.
• More thoughts on the impact an independent reviews site has on Google scores and reviews

Getting reviews - the Rule of 50%

 Attitudes to being asked to write a review are changing all the time - for the better: consumers now mostly understand that reviews are part-and-parcel of the modern business landscape - and that they need them as much as we do!

Low customer turnover businesses need to really work at getting reviews

If you are a high value/low customer turnover business - legal, financial services, estate agency etc. - you should read on (hotels and restaurants need read no further).

Take estate agents: it is not unusual for a single branch, especially in pure sales, to have transactions in single figures per month. For that kind of business it is essential that every opportunity is taken to maximise the chances of a review being written, both to their own website and to Google.

The rule of 50%

This 'rule' means getting:

1. Half of all your customers/clients to write a review to your website, and then...
2. Half of them - those who write a review to your website -  to copy their review to Google

It is as simple as that. And it is being consistently achieved by clients who follow these guidelines.

But it does mean adopting a positive attitude:

• So what if my client has never written a review in their life? I have worked/am working hard for them - it's the least they can do
• So what if they don't have a G+ account? It takes a minute to open one (and Karen at HelpHound will do it for them if necessary)
• Remember that clients are flattered to be asked to write a review
• Bear in mind that if they really don't want to/or physically or mentally cannot bring themselves to - then they simply fall into the 50% who we expect not to anyway - don't harass them!

Points to remember:

• Warn your customer that you will be asking them to write a review, to your own website and to Google, when the transaction is complete, make it clear that just as they expect you to work hard and be professional for them, you need them to write these reviews, it's part of an unwritten contract between you
• Don't rely on the email alone, it won't work unless it is followed up with a phone call - that's how the results below were achieved - for a single branch of an estate agency...

Notes for management

We have already said that this won't work without staff engagement, and the same goes for management. Our success stories all stem from businesses where management has understood everything in this article and then provided support and guidance (and sometimes incentives*) for staff.

Also remember that HelpHound are always on hand with advice and ideas.

For more on the customer journey, from initial search to enquiry, read this.

And for those of you who like graphics: here's a really helpful infographic from ReviewInc.

 This chart usefully backs up our rule of 50%. It shows that most people - certainly more than 50% - are happy to write a review is they are a) asked in the right way and b) that request is reinforced personally, face-to-face or by phone.

So: aim high and you will achieve the results you need.


*Staff incentives. There is nothing wrong with providing incentives for staff as long as you remain complaint with CMA regulations, so the incentive must not be for positive reviews alone, as those regulations specifically - and quite rightly - prohibit cherry-picking (we have seen more than one example of a business where a negative review specifically refers to incentives 'for a positive review').

Are your Google reviews undermining your marketing?

We see so many examples of this. But first let's look at what a customer journey should look like...

First, the business markets itself...

Next, the potential customer, responds to that marketing - often as not by searching for the business online...

Then they either...

• feel confident enough to make contact or
• visit the business's website, where they will find...

 And...

 Reassurance that the reviews are independently verified alongside evidence - equally reassuring - that anyone at all can write a review

But this is what so many look like (marketing email received this morning)...

 Followed by this in search...

It has been proven that click-throughs drop for every 0.1 a business's score drops below 5.0 - for every 0.1!

Now, before you leap to the conclusion that so many potential customers are bound to - that the business is as bad as its Google score/negative reviewers say - pause and remind yourself of that central tenet of review management...

"If the business is not proactive then the way is clear for its minority of dissatisfied customers to dominate its image"

...but what is beyond doubt is that it is each business's responsibility to find a solution to this crucial aspect of their marketing. And, as HelpHound clients - like Greene & Co - know, that solution is just a call away. Phone Fiona Christie or Karen Hutchings on 0207 100-2233 and they will set you on the road to impressing your potential customers.