Your business and reviews in 2017

This article is intended for those businesses who have yet to adopt a review management solution as well as those currently using one of the many independent review sites. Where the points we make may require detailed expansion we have linked to relevant articles.

  There is now so much evidence - here Microsoft is putting its name to an article extolling the virtues of engaging with reviews - that the question for businesses is not now 'Should we?' but 'How best can we?' (and not just for SMEs!)

1. Reviews drive business. There is no longer any argument amongst marketing professionals on this point. If your business has great reviews it will attract more business than an equivalent business with no - or negative - reviews
2. Negative reviews deflect business. Also beyond doubt: a well-written negative review of a product or service - even one - will deflect business as well as impacting on your ranking or score. As the New York Times says "...studies show that consumers overwhelmingly choose businesses based mainly on star ratings..."
3. Reviews should be displayed on your website - consumers want to see what your customers think of your business, not what you think of your business!
4. Google is - by far and away - the most important place after that - you must find a mechanism to get reviews to Google - safely and reliably, and with complete credibility
5. Respond to your reviews: this has three important effects: it impresses those potential customers that the business cares about customer relations, it allows the business to correct errors of fact and it warns any future reviewer that they should state their opinion accurately
6. The mechanism you use must comply with the law. Mechanisms that allow your business to select customers to write reviews do not comply
7. Your customers should be allowed to write a review at any time - If they cannot your business is a) not complying with the spirit of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) rules and b) giving dissatisfied customers no option but to post their review to Google or another 'open' site
8. Google reviews are exploding across the web - businesses that had none this time last year often now have dozens. Consumers are learning to write Google reviews in their millions. The mechanism you choose to get reviews to Google is now more important than ever before, and should be chosen with care
9. Service businesses, especially, have been slow to adopt review management - mostly because of understandable concern over the potential reputational damage misleading or inaccurate reviews might do. The rapid growth in Google reviews means that 'review denial' is no longer an option. All businesses will need a review management strategy in place for 2017, otherwise they risk their dissatisfied customers dominating their online reputation
10. Independent review sites are now no longer an effective solution - partly because few of their mechanisms pass muster with the CMA, but mostly because they lack visibility in search. There are very good reasons why the biggest independent review site of them all - Yelp - has ceased sales and marketing in the UK and Europe  
11. Businesses with no review management strategy will increasingly suffer by comparison with those of their competitors that adopt one - It is essential that you look at least as good as your competitors in search and on your website, and it is just as important that the strategy you do adopt is beyond criticism
    
12. Businesses that adopt the wrong review management strategy will suffer in the same way - we often come across businesses that have expended significant resources engaging with reviews, but unfortunately in the wrong direction, resulting in their reviews remaining all but invisible or their mechanism being disparaged by their competitors

Adopt the right strategy - and look like this...

...on your own site - and on Google. With HelpHound.

Purplebricks in the news again - our take on agents' comments

Here's the article on PIE. We suggest you read it first, then we want to focus on some of the comments made by agents. Here we go:

Point: agents should respond with their own 'propaganda' - their clients' opinions of their service - on their own websites and on Google. If you, like the agent who made the comment above, have 15 years' of blameless trading under your belt you should have no problem inviting and displaying them with confidence and credibilty.

 

 If a potential client visits your site and sees a significant number of independently verified reviews how much more likely are they to ignore other agents' marketing and pick up the phone?

Point: Boards are great, but agents should acknowledge that the first port-of-call for fee-earners these days is the web, even if the boards have made a great first impression. Looking great there - with great reviews and rich snippets and a great Google score - should be a high priority.

 It doesn't matter how the potential client finds out about you - board, local reputation, referral, personal knowledge, previous client, sponsorship, advertising, PR - they will invariably search for you on Google. When they do you want to look like this

Point: without knocking specific sites, regular readers will know what we think about independent review sites - if you don't you can read this - and that we advise our clients to focus on looking great where it matters most: on their own sites and on Google.

To summarise

By adopting professional review management you will ensure a safe and steady flow of reviews to the locations on the web that matter - your own site and Google. 

Results: your should notice the difference immediately. You can't possibly get the instruction without the enquiry, and looking great in these two locations will drive enquiries - guaranteed.

How could a review like this not result in phone calls - and support commission rates?

On top of that you will have a cast-iron resource to refer to when the subject of fees is raised - what better justification for your fees than your clients' own comments.

Reviews made simple - the HelpHound solution

You would be forgiven for thinking that reviews are a minefield:

• which site?
• independent site? 
• closed site?
• Google?
• unfair reviews?
• inaccurate reviews?
• fake reviews?

Just look at this - pretty typical - example of a search for an estate agent:

A minefield - for the business and their potential customers - five - yes five! - different independent sites with varying numbers of reviews - and one review on Google (and no score, because the business has less than 5 reviews there)

Search results like these don't help anyone - business or consumer - they simply cause more confusion when all the potential client is looking for clarity.

And now look at a HelpHound client:

 

121 Google reviews and a score of 4.8. Three solid gold rich snippets - and three great scores from their own HelpHound verified reviews in organic search. All together giving their potential clients ample reason to make contact

Clarity - and confidence. Consumers know and believe Google reviews - partly because of the Google brand and partly because of familiarity.

The key difference? HelpHound has given the business the confidence to ask its clients for reviews. Because the business will be given the opportunity to address inaccuracies and misleading statements pre-publication on its own website, the business is reassured that is much less likely to suffer unfair harm to its reputation.


N.B. HelpHound, because of this mechanism, can only work for and with businesses that are fully committed to very high standards of customer service. But that's great for everyone - because they know that this defines HelpHound clients as businesses that do take customer service very seriously indeed.

 

Finding a reliable financial adviser

Financial advice - it's something most people need at various stages in their lives. So how are financial advisers helping the public choose them?

On 10 December the Times ran an article headlined "Routes to the best financial advice". It listed several sources that consumers might use - we say 'might' because the one source that is proving more popular with consumers than any other - worldwide - was notable for its absence. That source? Google reviews.

We will go into the reasons why financial advisors of all stripes have not gone down the Google route once we have analysed the advisors recommended by these aggregator sites (we searched for advisers in central London).

Unbiased

Top three results:

True Potential

 - no Google reviews

Wilcocks & Wilcocks 

- no Google reviews - and unhelpfully - remember our search criteria: central London - with offices in Liverpool

Financial Moves 

- no Google reviews - in fact no Google knowledge panel and no website (as far as we can see), but one review on a website called VouchedFor (see below)


VouchedFor

'Find top-rated financial advisers'

Stadden Forbes 

- no Google reviews

Wilcocks & Wilcocks 

 - as for Unbiased above

Buckingham Gate

- no Google reviews


FindaWealthManager

Only one suggested adviser:

Charles Stanley

 
  - no Google reviews

Moo.la

Not yet launched 


Money Advice Service

Does not recommend specific advisers.

But does have Google reviews - of its own:

But we don't think any of these are very helpful!

 

So why no Google reviews?

Because the businesses have not asked their clients to post reviews to Google.

Why not?

The main reason has to be fear (it cannot be that the businesses don't think looking great on Google will drive business - in 2017 there's no argument about that). Fear that clients, who often misunderstand the nature of the financial products or services they have bought will, in turn, post misleading reviews. 

The solution?

It cannot be to remain in what we call 'Google denial' (meaning ignoring Google reviews). Eventually clients will find their way to writing reviews of these businesses, and the chances are that those reviews will be uncomplimentary. Why uncomplimentary? Not because the businesses are bad at what they do but because unhappy consumers are up to fifteen times more likely to post a review. Look at what has happened to a major international car hire business in the last 12 months. Just half-a-dozen - mostly unhappy - customers are now dominating each branch's online reputation.

HelpHound will ensure that the business has the opportunity to address any reviews that contain inaccurate or misleading statements pre-publication. The prospect of misleading or inaccurate reviews appearing - either on the business's own website or on Google will be minimised. If you run a great business your business will look great - on your own website and on Google, guaranteed.

A realistic parallel

Estate agency shares many similarities with financial advice: both are businesses that consumers use at a financially critical time in their lives. But there is one demographic difference which had led estate agents to lead financial advisers in the reviews sphere, and that is the average age of their customers. Estate agents first encounter consumers as tenants, commonly when renting at university or when they first leave home to enter the world of work, and younger consumers tend to be more web-savvy and, as a result, less intimidated by the concept of writing a review. 

So where better to look to forecast what will happen when that generation begins to write reviews of financial advice? Estate agents are beginning to realise the benefits of actively engaging with reviews:

This business won't mind admitting that they were initially intimidated by the idea of inviting their clients to write reviews to their website and to Google. That is a big part of the reason they became clients of HelpHound. We look forward to the day when forward thinking financial advisers look the same - on their own websites and on Google.
 
The out-turn?

Consumers will have the confidence - provided by their fellow consumers - to choose a financial adviser with far more certainty than they do currently.

A HelpHound client offers Christmas thanks to its reviewers

Tatlers are fully aware of the power of reviews - and they have taken the opportunity afforded by the Christmas issue of their online magazine to thank their reviewers.

And here is the source - on the home page of their website:

Just one more example of the way our clients use their reviews to reinforce the bond between them, their customers and their communities.

Here at HelpHound we wish all our clients and their staff a very merry Christmas and a prosperous 2017.

The Great Divide - between reviews of products and reviews of services

There is a yawning chasm in the world of reviews - and it's between 'product' (often online) businesses and lower-volume/higher value 'service' driven businesses. 

If you run a service business, especially a professional service business - estate agency, wealth management, legal, architectural or similar, you need to read on.

Product and online

In this category come the obvious candidates: businesses that sell physical objects, be they clothing or household goods - the likes of Boden or John Lewis. Let's take those two examples:

Boden

Sell clothes. And they incorporate reviews into every product line in their catalogue: 

What do these reviews tell the consumer? That customers liked/disliked the product. What do they tell the business? The same - and it's a very useful feedback mechanism - maybe Boden need to look at stocking that skinny belt next season?

What does a Boden online customer not care about? Service is what. OK, if the delivery is messed up or the item falls apart after one wash and is not replaced immediately that might just fall under the heading of service, but it's overwhelmingly about the product.

John Lewis

Same here - except for one important difference: John Lewis, aside from their own brands, stock other manufacturers' products:

 John Lewis - and their customers - are reassured by the 47 reviews here. John Lewis know that the product is popular, even post-sale, and the customers can mine down to find the odd niggle that prevented the toaster scoring a perfect five (in this case it's 'value for money'). Simply put: reviews drive sales.

And if those products don't score well, John Lewis can just discontinue that line.

Now let's look at services...

You may have shopped at John Lewis all your life, but if you stopped using them tomorrow they're not going to miss a single customer that badly. But service businesses are a whole different ballgame. The cost of acquisition of a client in estate agency or wealth management is of a different scale, and maintaining that relationship - landlord/investor - is critically important for the service business. Equally importantly, the relationship - being an ongoing one - will almost certainly be more nuanced - have more 'ups and downs' in plain English - than a single-event product purchase.

Before HelpHound - and more importantly, before Resolution™ - service businesses had two options:

1.  Do nothing. Not as disengaged as it sounds: simply inviting every customer/client/patient to write a review could do the business harm, and we are speaking about well-managed customer-focused businesses here (otherwise you would not be reading this). The point is that with a service business every review counts, in both directions. One negative review of a toaster will not usually harm sales - one well-written (but maybe unintentionally inaccurate or misleading) review of a service business has the power to deflect significant business. So 'doing nothing' has served many service businesses well - until now - because few people were writing Google reviews - again: until now.
2. Employ an independent review site: these appealed in the early days, especially when they showed well in Google search. But since Google began to dominate in search their value has dwindled. Even the biggest general review site of them all, Yelp, has retreated from the UK and Europe with its tail firmly between its legs, having unsuccessfully appealed Google's dominance to the US Senate.

Now that Google reviews have gained traction - and, as the man said: 'You ain't seen nothing yet.' - 'Do nothing' is no longer an option. It is just too high risk a strategy to continue ignoring Google reviews until your business has been give a handful of 1* ratings on Google by a tiny minority of customers you never even knew you had. Last month we met a business that had over four hundred positive reviews on an independent site, but twelve 1* reviews on Google (all written in the last 12 months) - and you probably don't need us to tell you why we found ourselves in their offices.

Add to this the CMA's continuing interest in ensuring that a business is not - wittingly or unwittingly - manipulating reviews to its advantage.

Here's a checklist of the reasons that most service businesses have not adopted a review management policy, or the right review management policy, up until now:

✓ Fear - of the harm that unfair negative reviews could do

✓ Uncertainty - as to the accuracy of the reviews their customers might write

✓ Concern - over the longevity of such reviews - remaining on the web for all to read for ever

✓ Confusion - over the right solution to adopt - independent review site or Google?

✓ Misunderstanding - of the law surrounding reviews

HelpHound provides professional review management, which addresses each of the above as follows:

• Fear: we moderate all our clients reviews before we publish them on their websites. If we consider that a review is in any way inaccurate or potentially misleading we send it to the business for immediate response to the reviewer
• Uncertainty: this is removed by the same mechanism
• Concern: reviews last forever (until Google review that policy), so you need to know that your review management system gives your business the very best chance of being reflected as it is in its reviews, HelpHound is that system
• Confusion: it is our job - as unbiased review managers - to ensure that our clients are given the best advice at all times. We will only suggest a solution that has the best possible chance of presenting your business accurately for the foreseeable future, and, if that solution changes, or requires modification, we will advise accordingly
• Misunderstanding: the CMA is dedicated to ensuring that a business's reviews give a full and fair picture of that business. This means that they are looking to see if a business allows all of its customers to write a review whenever they like. Those two words - all and whenever - are crucial. For example: all of your customers can write a review to Google whenever they like, so inviting only 'happy' customers to do so will rightly be seen as against the spirit of the CMA rules

So - if your business is in the service sector in 2017 it needs full-time professional review management. With that you will get credible reviews to your website and reviews to Google - safely - and you will be helping prospective customers choose your business.

Reviews and the Law - an important update

One of our most important roles as review managers is to make sure our clients comply with the law as it relates to reviews - in letter and in spirit.

The law?

Most businesses, when we first meet them, are unaware that reviews are governed by legislation. But, just as with almost every aspect of business life these days, they are. On 1 April 2014 the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) took over many of the functions of the Competition Commission and the Office of Fair Trading.

Under CMA rules - which are enforceable in law -  it is illegal for a business (or their agents) to:

• post fake reviews of their own business
• post fake reviews of another business
• not publish negative reviews
• offer inducement - money or gifts - in exchange for reviews

In addition, it is illegal to do anything to intentionally mislead the public (consumers). This may include:

• describing testimonials (selectively invited customer opinions) as reviews
• selectively inviting customers to write reviews (what regular readers of this blog know we describe as 'cherry-picking')

Common practices that flout the letter or the spirit of the CMA rules

We see examples like the ones below nearly every day. They are mostly innocent, resulting from ignorance of the rules. Just as important, they do the business no favours in the eyes of the sophisticated consumer (or competitor).

This is a screenshot from an estate agent's website. We cannot be absolutely sure that they are contravening the CMA code, but the fact that the 'reviews' themselves are not independently verified and that all twenty-one of the reviews displayed were written on the same day over six months ago might lead to understandable concern.

• inviting testimonials from customers and displaying them as reviews
• selecting 'happy' customers to write reviews, and, by definition, positively excluding 'unhappy' ones - whether to the business's own website or to an external site

HelpHound's standpoint

Our systems are expressly designed to comply with the CMA rules, in word and spirit. This is why Resolution incorporates the 'promise to publish' and why all our clients incorporate a 'Write a Review' button into their websites, offering anyone the opportunity to write a review, whenever they choose to do so (and as often as they wish). 

It is also why the invitation to copy the review to Google (or the nominated external site) is automatic - not at HelpHound's or our client business's discretion.

Your questions answered

Can you expand on HelpHound's 'promise to publish'?

Anyone - and we mean absolutely anyone - has the ability to write a review to a HelpHound client's website. They don't have to wait to be invited - and they will always be invited to publish their review.

How does that work in the context of Resolution?

Here's a detailed overview of Resolution. Resolution is designed to fulfill two purposes:

• to make sure our clients' reviews portray as accurate a picture of their business as possible, for the benefit of future customers
• to show to potential customers of the business in question that they will be able to write a review - and have that review published - at any time during (or after) their relationship with that business

So a customer can write an intentionally misleading review of our business and have that review published?

In theory - yes. It's the price paid for complete transparency (and the credibility that flows from that transparency). In practice it very seldom happens - and if it does happen the business always has the right-of-reply. 

Resolution is designed to minimise the chances of an inaccurate or misleading review being published by allowing the business and the reviewer to engage pre-publication. But the reviewer will always be invited to post their review. In the many years of experience we have of operating Resolution (and the many thousands of reviews that we process on behalf of reviews and our client businesses) we can count the instances of a reviewer persisting in publishing a review containing an error of fact on the fingers of one hand. Inaccurate or misleading reviews benefit no-one - and that's the reason for having Resolution in the first place.

Are there any more safeguards?

We will do our best to establish that the reviewer has (or has had) a relationship with the business. If we can establish that the reviewer has purely malicious intent we will revert to the reviewer and ask them for more particulars of their relationship with the business. No-one - not HelpHound, nor our clients, nor - most important of all, consumers - benefits from the kind of reviews that have got sites like Yelp a name for publishing false and malicious reviews. 

In summary

This as much about compliance with the law as about being - and being seen to be - open and honest. Our advice can be summed up with two 'Don'ts' and two 'Do's':

• Don't confuse testimonials with reviews - a business cannot, by definition, publish its own reviews without verification by an outside agency
• Don't select - 'cherry-pick' - those customers who you invite to write reviews
• Do allow all your customers to write a review
• Do allow them to write that review at any time they wish

If you follow these simple guidelines you will find that your business is rewarded by those consumers who appreciate openness and honesty.