Review Management Stress Test

[ryan.leslie]

Many of you have already been introduced to Mike Blumenthal's work through Ed Brooks. I read his blog religiously and to be honest, most of what he writes about is WAY beyond my ability to comprehend. But I have to share this recent post.

Parts of the post are intended to be humorous. Mike is applying Cosmo's famed questionnaire model to diagnose Review Management Stress. If you don't have time to read the whole thing here are some really thought provoking excerpts that could be unpacked at length here in the forums. Warning: This is straight talk from a REAL authority on Google's Local offerings from OUTSIDE of the automotive vertical. He appears to disagree strongly with some of the things that are being pushed down within the vertical...

Here's the link to the original article:
9 Questions To Assess Your Review Management Stress Levels | Understanding Google Places & Local Search

Did your reviews get reduced by more than 20% of the total by the new Google review filters?
Google wants solid review content from trustworthy reviewers. If more than 20% of your reviews were taken down in the past 6 months either your methodology is too aggressive or you are asking the wrong people to leave reviews.

Are you asking questions like: Why is this happening to me? Doesn’t Google care?
...if you are asking these sorts of questions 1)you are driving yourself crazy and 2)you are focusing on the wrong things.

Did (or does) your listing have 100% or more reviews than your nearest competitor on Google?
If you are focusing all of your efforts on Google your review count was (and probably is no longer) way ahead of most in your industry. Google isn’t stupid. If you have a ton of reviews at Google and no place else you, are clearly soliciting reviews and Google’s spam review algo will catch more rather than less of these. If I can see it, you can see it and Google can see it, do you think that clients can’t see it? They too know you are cooking the books.

Do your clients often complain that their reviews are not showing at Google?
This is a failure on your part in two ways. You shouldn’t be sending all of your customers to one review site and when you do send them someplace, you should send them informed.

Customers should have a choice as to where to leave reviews. They will choose based on their comfort level. If you advise them upfront that Google and Yelp might bury their reviews if they are not active users of those services then they can make an informed choice and not blame you for either’s policies. And remember a single review at CitySearch is infinitely more valuable than 10 reviews that don’t show at Google and/or Yelp.

Have you thought: I should focus my review efforts on Yelp instead?
Right, this thought proves your mental state to be less than stable. You will get a fraction of the exposure and twice the grief with Yelp. Yelp should be in your review management plan but remember: Yelp is for Yelpers. Sending anyone else there is an act of pure futility. And selecting Yelp as an alternative to Google is going from the mental frying pan into the fire.

Are you handing users an iPad or directing them to an onsite workstation?
More & faster is not better with reviews. In fact very slow and very steady is best. With an onsite review station you run the risk of violating your client’s trust and having Google take your reviews down. There are a few limited situations where this might make sense but certainly not in most businesses and not in most offices. You are trying too hard and it will lead to both your and your client’s frustration.

Are you sending out more than 20 emails a week requesting reviews at Google?
Google doesn’t seem to take reviews down strictly because they were solicited by email. The algo is likely more sophisticated than that. However your foot print will be way too obvious if you are asking for reviews in bulk. 1)you will be getting too many reviews in too short of a time and 2)the reviewers are not likely to be ones that Google already trusts. The simple change of giving the users 4 or 5 places to leave reviews with reasons why they might pick one over the other would quickly solve the problem.

Another alternative would be to just hand a piece of paper with the same instructions. Remember you don’t need a million reviews to stand out, you need as many as is typical of your industry and they need to reflect positively on you.

Email review solicitation can work but it is important that you give clients lots of choices, that the process engenders reviews elsewhere and that the emails are spread out over time and not bunched heavily.

Are your following up only with happy customers and not every customer to ask them to leave reviews?
At the end of the day the purpose of reviews is to inform other potential customers about your services. The process of asking for reviews can and should be used to improve your services. If you are running your business well then giving voice to every customers that is willing to speak out is the best way to build a predominantly positive review corpus, gain an understanding of what needs to be improved and finding future customers that are right for you.

 

[eddyshaf]

Ryan - this is AWESOME - highly advise taking the short time to read the entire post...made me think of a few people back at the old home front - especially the part about Yelp -

 

[terrencegordon]

Ryan, good post! If you were to give percentages to the top 4 or 5 review sites for dealers to send their customers to, what would that breakdown look like? I would assume DealerRater to be in the mix?

Thanks!

 

[ryan.leslie]

Ryan, good post! If you were to give percentages to the top 4 or 5 review sites for dealers to send their customers to, what would that breakdown look like? I would assume DealerRater to be in the mix?

Thanks!

Not always!

There are always extenuating circumstances so please don't consider this a hard and fast rule, but I generally suggest that dealers put on the customer hat and search for their business, or better yet, ask if they can look over a spouse or relative's shoulder and ask them to search for the business. The 4-5 sites that are most important are usually self-evident with that test. The web is intergalactic and hyper-local simultaneously. I'm not saying ignore the rest, but focus on the ones that are visible.

Whatever you decide, I think it is a real mistake to only try to get reviews on Google and Yelp. Your success rate is going to be low with that strategy and your team is likely to give up. I think Mike is right on about the mental state of business owners that are pushing people to Yelp because they lost Google reviews. Yelp is for Yelpers. With any site that you want people to share on you should read through the TOS and make sure your collection initiatives are in adherence to their policies. I think you are going to see a boatload of filtered reviews behind a Captcha on Yelp for GM dealers in the coming months.

My opinion only, but I'm concerned about processes that try to separate the sheep from the goats through a pre-screening in the hopes of filtering out "bad reviews" on 3rd party sites. It is all the rage it seems. There is nothing inherently wrong with it, but Google has said not to solicit reviews. Reading Mike's original post I suspect it'll be about a week before they sniff out a similar referring entity for every submitted review. Just don't be shocked at the second round of disappearing review content on Google.

Last thought since you kind of asked, I do believe in what we do and hope that dealers that aren't partnered with us will see what other dealers here on Refresh have had to say about DealerRater, both as a company and a service.

It makes me angry that according to GALLUP Car Salespeople have a trust factor lower than Congress and haven't polled out of the single digits in 35 years. I believe that real reviews from real people and real reputation management is what will fix this perception issue, NOT stacking the deck and gaming a system. It makes me angry to think about the quality sales professionals, some of which I call friends, that are lumped in with the "car salespeople" stereotype.

DealerRater isn't perfect, but we've been at this for 10 years and we do somethings very well for our partner stores. If you think about review sites like horses in a stable, DealerRater is the dependable workhorse you know you can always rely on. Our TOS is clear, you don't have to look hard to find a review that is 8 yrs old or older. We don't just change our mind and remove things. We also have a model that mirrors our industry. In addition to our technical efforts to control fraud, every review is read and scrutinized by a real person. We don't need to put abstract rules about how many reviews a user needs to write in order to not get filtered. Lastly, we have almost a million reviews collected and 1.4 million eyeballs on our content each month. With that trajectory and 61,000 dealership employees sharing their own personal review page to earn the trust of their prospects, I'm really hopeful that the next Gallup poll shows our industry in a more favorable light.

 

[ddavis]

It makes me angry that according to GALLUP Car Salespeople have a trust factor lower than Congress and haven't polled out of the single digits in 35 years.

Ryan, As long as we are dealing with a negotiable product, it is never going to change. What's most important is their attitude about the salesperson, that is in front of them.

 

[ryan.leslie]

Ryan, As long as we are dealing with a negotiable product, it is never going to change. What's most important is their attitude about the salesperson, that is in front of them.

I hope you're wrong Doug, I really do. I'd like to think that the availability of data has to move us to a tipping point eventually. But I respect your opinion. I guess the silver lining is that those professionals that prove themselves to be honest and trustworthy to the consumer will continue take business from those that don't even know they are losing it.

 

[ddavis]

Ryan, I was sure, that the internet would change the way people view car people. It hasn't happened.

I guess the silver lining is that those professionals that prove themselves to be honest and trustworthy to the consumer will continue take business from those that don't even know they are losing it.

I couldn't agree more. On one side you have a culture of excellence and on the other we have Ali Baba and the forty thieves. I don't understand those people. My grandfather used to say, "he would rather climb a tree and tell a lie than to stay on the ground and tell the truth". On DealerRefesh, you hear the importance of having buy-in. The crooks have it.

 

[Kelly Wilson]

On DealerRefesh, you hear the importance of having buy-in. The crooks have it.

errr..they bought it

So if the internet hasn't changed the opinion yet, is there hope with Gen Y?

 

[jssimonton]

There are always extenuating circumstances so please don't consider this a hard and fast rule, but I generally suggest that dealers put on the customer hat and search for their business, or better yet, ask if they can look over a spouse or relative's shoulder and ask them to search for the business. The 4-5 sites that are most important are usually self-evident with that test. The web is intergalactic and hyper-local simultaneously. I'm not saying ignore the rest, but focus on the ones that are visible.

This is exceptional advice. Sometimes we forget the consumer in the process of developing plans to reach consumers. Thank you Ryan!

 

[ed.brooks]

Ryan, As long as we are dealing with a negotiable product, it is never going to change. What's most important is their attitude about the salesperson, that is in front of them.

Doug, the problem doesn't lie in the negotiability of our product, it lies with our methods. Real estate is negotiable and yet real estate agents are seen to be fairly trustworthy. Their national association even made a word, REALTOR, trademarked it, and after 60 years it caries a degree of trustworthiness and professionalism that must of us would kill for.

I'm in agreement with Ryan, transparency is our friend. As much as the old school folks want to keep customers in the dark, transparency will win out. Dealers that embrace the internet and transparency will win customer trust in the long run.