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Book Review: Prove It by Melanie Deziel

November 13, 2022 //
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Prove It by Melanie Deziel with Phil M Jones: Exactly How Modern Marketers Earn Trust, is the follow-up to Ms. Deziel excellent The Content Fuel Framework which I reviewed last year.

Like its predecessor, Prove It is a how to guide that many marketers will find familiar for the ideas and concepts are not really new and are the fodder that modern marketing is based on. However, like her previous book, what Ms. Deziel and Mr. Jones do in Prove It is to create an overarching framework and concept that put these ideas into context and provides a guide to future ideas and processes.

The main thrust of Prove Its is that today’s customers don’t want to be told why they should buy a product or service but to be shown why they should with concrete and provable examples. This process then becomes the underpinning for a brand as a whole. Where Prove It really works its magic is by showing rather than telling. It uses the slogans and catchphrases that the reader will be all too familiar with to make its points crystal clear.  “Fifteen minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance” for example is Geico’s way of proving that they are easy and convenient to deal with while also potentially being able to save the customer money – ‘give us a little of your time and we’ll lower your car insurance rate.’

Prove it is full of these examples for every type of business or service and how these claims can be discovered about your business, and how that discovery process in turn leads into a marketing / branding strategy. The book also encourages the reader to back up these claims with documentation and to use this a method of re-enforcing the brand’s identity by doing so. Where Prove It really scores on this front is by pointing out that businesses often already have access this documentation in other forms. Reviews on sites such as Yelp, customer service surveys, or just by talking to customers themselves can yield not only great content but can also provide witness to the claims that a brand is making and therefore backup the branding process itself.

What I personally found very interesting was a dissection of how Apple ‘coached’ its client base to not necessarily believe the claims of its competitors when it came to the differences between using a Mac or another computer brand with its “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” series of TV ads. The idea that an ad can be coaching a customer to ask the difficult questions that the competition may not want to answer is fascinating and subtly brilliant.

Prove It is a short and engaging book for both marketing professionals and beginners alike. It demystifies how modern advertising and content marketing work. This is not a nuts and bolts “place this type of ad at this type of time” kind of book; but more about mindset. This is a book to understand how to sell a product or service so that a customer can easily identity the ‘why’ they are prepared to buy.

To sum up it so very worth your time and its place on your bookshelf.

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Categories Books, Business, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media

Book Review: Social Media and Marketing for Veterinary Professionals by Caitlin DeWilde, DVM

September 17, 2022 //
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Writing an accessible and thorough book about a complex and everchanging subject, such as social media, is a daunting prospect – particularly when your audience is a niche one such as veterinary medicine. Dr. Caitlin DeWilde; however, has done just that.

With the look and feel of a textbook, but the format a “Dummies” or “Idiots how to” book, Social Media and Marketing for Veterinary Professionals is a how to guide to all the major Social Media platforms and to all the tasks needing to be understood for someone who is not a marketing professional or even someone that interested in social media or reviews.

With chapters dedicated to each of the major platforms making up the first half of the book this can at times feel redundant; however, the thoroughness will be welcomed by those feeling out of their depth in a brand-new field and the dedication to not making assumptions is more than admirable. The second half of the book is a much more interesting read for the existing user, touching on issues such as retargeting (when online ads seem to follow you around the internet), review bombing, return on investment (ROI), and general advertising strategies both online and in print ads.

Filled with footnotes, the book is impeccably researched as would expect from someone with Dr. DeWilde’s reputation as “The Social DVM.” The index is a little thin, but it at least has one and it covers most of the things that one is likely to need to find in a hurry. What is a surprising addition is the over 80 QR Codes that link directly to an online resource for forms and other digital content. It is a little disappointing that the QR codes only take the user to a menu structure that the reader then must navigate through to get the required content. But this is a minor quibble and is a great use of a technology that is often used and abused. The fact that these online resources exist at all, and are included in the price of this volume, more than makes up for any navigation quibbles.

While I waded through all 200 odd and large format pages in three or four sittings, this is actually a book to tackle one chapter at a time, or to dip into as required. Growing your knowledge with your own experimentation and reading. While there is some building on what has come before, the chapters generally stand on their own and therefore can be used as a reference book if so desired.

Whether it be new managers suddenly saddled with a topic they know nothing about, staff members who have only ever used social media for their own personal networks, or those looking to build their own personal brands online there is now a guide for you with no translations from other industries required. To the vast majority of its readers, the subject of this book will always be a side interest to their main passion – whether it be veterinary management or veterinary medicine. We don’t often get resources geared towards niche areas within other niche areas. It is great to see this one.

Dr. DeWilde has literally written the book on using social media as a veterinary professional.

And it’s a good one.

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Categories Books, Business, Content Marketing, Management, Marketing, reviews, Social Media, Veterinary

The Karen Effect – The Fall of Reviews

April 9, 2022 //
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Does anyone care about reviews anymore?

Well – yes we should, however, even amongst those of us who care about reviews, we quite possibly care a bit less.

Why?

As the always insightful Mike Blumenthal says in this article about the fall in user and review growth on Yelp and this article on the fall in reviews on Google Local, things are not looking great for the review space. It cannot all be blamed on COVID-19. The trends of reduced new user numbers and a significant slowing in the rate of new reviews was well in place before the pandemic.

So, what is going on?

I believe what we are seeing is what I have dubbed “The Karen Effect.” The origins of the term “Karen,” meaning in rough terms a middle-aged white woman demanding to speak to the manager, being overly officious / unreasonable, or just being downright racist, is not exactly known. However, the term Karen exploded in usage during 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and the summer of the Black Lives Matter protests after the killing of George Floyd. Karen today could mean anyone, of any gender, losing their temper over or generally overreacting to a perceived wrong.  

This rise in petty unreasonableness and overly bad behavior, towards those working in service industries or retail, during the pandemic has in turn given rise to another phenomenon: the sharing of this behavior online. I wrote about my fears about clients trying to leverage live streams and social platforms in an aggressive manner in this 2016 post. While this weaponizing of the documenting of interactions with a business has been successfully attempted, it has also backfired.

The first time I became aware of the potential for this tide to turn was after seeing this 2014 viral video:

This is an all too familiar scene that could have happened yesterday rather than eight years ago. A customer, believing they have been wronged, exacting their revenge on social media and in doing so exposes their own failings and unreasonableness. It also highlights the extremes to which employees will go to try and address customer complaints and keep their cool while doing so.

This is the Karren Effect.

What does this have to do with reviews?

Videos of front-line employees being polite, following their business’s policies, and trying to help a customer are not great social capital. In fact, they are boring. Watching a customer “lose their sh*t” over a perceived wrong is great social capital and in turn adds a measure of retribution for someone being punished for bad behavior. This, of course, is not always the case. Some businesses screw up, act badly, and can be badly represented by employees. But since the rise of the Karen, and the flooding of social media showing just how bad things can be, would you trust a stranger’s opinions about a business? Particularly a negative opinion? The embrace of video on social media, and everyone having a high definition video camera in their pocket, or more likely in their hand, has meant that good content can be generated from bad behavior – although generally not for the person behaving badly.

Likewise, influencer marketing and the dubious reputation that it has in many circles has also not helped the review space. While many social media influencers go to great lengths to inform their followers as to when posts are a paid promotion and thereby stay on the right side of the law, others do not and also try to leverage their “influence” into free products and services.

Influencers who try to abuse their Influence has also fallen foul of “The Karen Effect.” Most social media users have little tolerance for influencers those who abuse their power – a power given to the influencer by those same social media users – and businesses despise them. This leads us back to reviews. If influencers, who by definition are known to their audience, are not be trusted with their opinions due to undisclosed commercial relationships, how can review platform users trust complete strangers – regardless of whether the review is good or bad?

The Karen Effect is the loss of trust in the opinions of strangers.

One can hope that the Karen Effect leads to a resurgence of the Better Business Bureau (BBB) or gives rise to another organization of a similar ilk. I have always bemoaned that most of the complaints about Yelp and Google Local were effectively dealt with by the BBB and that it was businesses, by not supporting them, that led to their diminished standing today and the rise of Yelp and Google Local.

It seems that people are looking for someone to trust online. They are finding other users online lacking. It will be interesting to see what fills the void.

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Categories Business, COVID19, Customer Service, reviews, Social Media

Reviews are Broken, Here’s How to Fix Them

February 3, 2018 //
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To the casual observer, the world of online reviews has never been healthier.

We are constantly asked to leave reviews, or check-in, and the worst excesses of Yelp and the businesses that try to control posts, seem to have been brought under control.
However, all is not well in the world of online reviews, if it ever was.

The story of the gentleman who created a fake restaurant and got it to become the Top-Rated restaurant on TripAdvisor really should have us never trusting a review site ever again. The story is extraordinary in many ways. That the gentleman concerned made a living writing fake reviews for restaurants, and then was able to manipulate the system to such an extent that a non-existent restaurant, that nobody could find (and they tried), are just two. That the whole thing went on to become such a phenomenon that he effectively had no choice but to create the restaurant to service the demand, is just the icing on the cake.

Yelp, that boogie man to most small businesses, are increasingly cracking down on those who request reviews. Always against Yelp’s terms of service, the practice of asking for reviews is considered best practice by most marketing professionals with the occasional caveat for Yelp. One look at the unregulated, and widely gamed world of Google Local reviews, where a significant proportion of reviews seem to be highly suspicious, and that lack even the admittedly flawed tools that Yelp uses to protect their review ecosystem, should give one pause. The wild west of Google’s review space is so out of control that businesses that do not game the system are at a distinct disadvantage.

It is actually to Yelp’s credit that they do care about their review ecosystem. It is easier to report a Yelp review that a business has issues with, than with any other platform. Yelp also takes seriously the practice of Yelp Bombing and the Weaponizing of Reviews;

particularly when it comes to a business in the news. However, far too many customers use Yelp as a threat, or even as downright extortion, on a daily basis. Even with Yelp’s reporting tools, the rules are still so arcane and at times they can seem downright arbitrary.

To add to the bad news in the reviews world we have to add the knots that both Glassdoor and Indeed are tying themselves up in by trying to have their cake and eat it. Glassdoor, which created a space for employees to share salary, benefits, and culture reviews about their former, and current employers reads more like a platform for griping from former employees unless your company is of sufficient size to generate more than just a handful of reviews. In order to monetize their site, Glassdoor are now encouraging employers to advertise on their platform with limited success. Why would an employer help pay for a site that essentially tries to undermine the narrative that an employer tries to portray to new hires?

Indeed, the highly successful job board that bases its pricing model on an adwords like format, now want to try and imbed employee reviews about the companies posting jobs. Effectively Glassdoor is trying to become Indeed, and Indeed is trying to become more like Glassdoor. What both companies are only now coming to realize that businesses are generally not fans of an unregulated review space, which all too quickly devolves into a method for revenge for former employees who feel wronged. Which in turn means employers can feel they have no option but to try and game these sites themselves. Plenty of new employee orientation sessions now include a “write a review” segment.

So, the review world is a mess. How to fix it?

In a twist worthy of one of its own plot lines, the dystopian science fiction anthology show “Black Mirror,” currently on Netflix, potentially shows a way out of the quagmire of everyone trying to manipulate the review space to their own ends. Titled “Nosedive,” the Black Mirror episode is set in the near future where everyone is concerned about their social media profile, which affects everything from their job to where they can live, and follows a young lady trying to leverage a wedding invitation to increase her social standing. However, things do not go as planned.

What is interesting about the episode is the idea of a single social profile that has, for want of a better word, a points system based on karma. Be nice to gas station attendant and your karma goes up. Be a jerk and it goes down. Of course, things work both ways, but it does highlight the problem with the review space as it currently stands. With the possible exception of Facebook, the vast majority review sites do not require, and sometimes do not even allow, real names. None of the review platforms allow for business to review customers, and while on Yelp and Google, one can see what their history of reviewing is like, there are no consequences for constantly leaving bad reviews, or trying to blackmail a business.

Lyft and Uber do have a review platform that works both ways, between customer and driver, however this is less of an open system than just a general ranking. It is a step in the right direction though and one that the more traditional review sites could learn from.

Facebook is probably in the best place to implement a customer ranking, or even a review ranking system. Facebook is become ubiquitous in so many areas. For those who have read Ernest Cline’s superb “Ready Player One” will recognize that Facebook is essentially placing itself as an equivalent of “The Oasis:” a portal on an online virtual reality environment where people work, learn, and play.

There was a time when if a customer had a problem they would complain to what was essentially an independent body, who would help to try and come up with a compromise to customer service issues and arbiter disputes. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) did not fair well in the internet age and is now pretty irrelevant with most customers now turning to Yelp or Google.

Businesses are mostly at fault for not doing a better job of embracing the BBB, however, with the swing firmly going in the other direction now, and the space being corrupted out of all reason and sense by both businesses and customers, things have to change if reviews are to be of any relevance or even any use.

The days of the BBB do seem rather quaint, but maybe their model was right after all. I look forward to a level playing field with or with out a referee.

And remember to leave me a review!

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Categories Business, Customer Service, Marketing, Search, Social Media, Uncategorized

Everything You Hate About Yelp, And Then Some!

September 22, 2017 //
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(image courtesy of https://pixabay.com )

I’ve written a lot about Yelp.

Why I think Yelp’s business model is flawed, how I’ve pretty much come to terms with Yelp on a daily basis, and how to defend yourself from Yelp Bombing when things really go wrong. However, there is a new review demon out there, and they are making all the same mistakes as Yelp and the other review sites, but unfortunately, they also are adding a raft of new ones. This is the rise of the job boards allowing for reviews of employers from “in theory” former employees.

Indeed.com, and Glassdoor.com, are the two that have recently come to my attention, but I am sure there are other sites going down this road and it is such a flawed idea that it is actually quite amazing that it got past the development stage.

Glassdoor, is a site whose purpose is attract reviews of employers by former or current employees. They actually do a reasonable job of allowing a platform for employers to promote what they do, the benefits they offer, and the company culture. Glassdoor also state that they perform checks to ensure that reviews are genuinely from employees, have a flagging system for reviews with issues, and also have a platform for companies to respond. Glassdoor also offers companies the opportunity to place job ads through their system as a source of revenue – if not the only the only one.

Indeed.com has followed a slightly different path. They have an extremely successful job posting board, with fantastic SEO properties at a reasonable cost. I’ve used Indeed.com for years. However, Indeed.com now offers users of their site to review employers.
So, what is the problem with job sites allowing for the reviewing of employers?

Let’s, for a moment, think about those who go to job board sites on their free time. By definition, those people are either out of work or looking for work so they can leave their existing job. There is absolutely no reason for a happy and content employee to visit one of these sites. This is in stark contrast to Yelp and other consumer view sites. People tend to have just one job, but everyone uses multiple businesses every day. Therefore, the majority of people in a position to review on a jobs site are those who have either chosen to leave, or who have been terminated from a job. The number of terminated employees who have warm feelings towards their former employer, regardless of the right or wrong of their termination, are pretty minimal. There is a reason that it is against Yelp’s terms of service for former employees to review a business they used to be employed by.
Reviews are anonymous. It’s hard to respond to a review that states “I was wrongly terminated” other than with the most generic of responses when you have no idea who the employee might be.

In addition, most HR departments and employers decline to give any kind of review about an employee’s employment due to the legal consequences of doing so. It’s hard to see these kind of reviews as anything other than an attempt to entrap an employer. Much like Yelp and the other online review sites, the sample volume is pitiful – only more so. If an employer has 200 employees, but only three reviews, how is that in anyway a representative sampling.

Finally, employers are the ones being asked to pay for this system. What is in it for employers? Sure, great reviews might help attract new talent, but not in a system that seems geared towards creating bad reviews. Indeed.com, for example, at the time of this writing has no flagging system for bad reviews and no way of communicating about a review other than sending an email to Indeed.com’s main customer service department. Indeed.com’s reps, much like Yelp.com’s reps, state there is nothing they can do about a product they are asking employers to pay for.

Now gaming this system would be a pretty straight forward process. These sites are actually asking for employees (current and past) to review their employer and unscrupulous employers can bring pressure to bear on employees, whether perceived or actual. But then what is the point? If the sites want genuine reviews, this is not how you go about getting them – it might not even be possible. There is a reason why LinkedIn, for all its faults, has never gone down this road other than with personal endorsements. You can read a lot into a lack of endorsements on LinkedIn.

Because of the legal climate, former employees get little in the way of references from the majority of employers. It could be that if both employers and employees genuinely want an open review ecosystem then that could be possible. But that would mean that employers would have to be free to review former employees. That is not going to happen any time soon and I’m not sure anyone wants to see what kind of bloodbath that would cause.

Company reviews from jobsites, as they currently stand, are untrustworthy at best, and perhaps a platform for dishonesty and disingenuous communication. They should be treated with scorn by both employers, who are being asked to pay for them, and jobseekers to whom they do a disservice.

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Categories Business, Career Advice, Management, reviews, Search

Weaponized Reviews – A Survival Guide Part Two

August 14, 2017 //
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Reviews are here to stay, and that’s a good thing. But how do businesses defend themselves from those who would abuse the review system for their own ends? In this three-part series, I offer practical advice on how to handle Yelp bombing campaigns and how to mitigate their effects. In part two, we look at how to hopefully prevent, and then handle a weaponized review campaign going viral. You can find part one, on prevention and initial responses, here and you can find part three on the other tactics undertaken by Yelp bombers, other than just posting reviews, and coming to a resolution, here.

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(image courtesy of http://pexels.com )

Whack-A Mole

After you have responded to the initial review, you now have several reviews all referencing the same issue / incident. The good news is that most review platforms care about their review eco-space and you can report these reviews as violations of their Terms of Service. Brevity is the key. Don’t explain why the reviewer is wrong just explain that the review is essentially a duplicate and part of a campaign or a review by someone who is not a customer.

Make sure to start checking your other platforms for reviews, respond to the first one with your measured response, and then report any duplicates. Don’t forget about other opportunities to post on your social media pages and channels. Yelp Tips, which can only be viewed on mobile devices, are often forgotten. Posts to your Facebook page, or check-ins on Facebook and other location based services, are also areas that need to be monitored. Other than the initial measured response, do not engage on that platform any further. If a customer has a genuine question then of course you should answer, but it ideally should just be a version of your measured response.

Going Viral

Making something go viral, for any reason, is hard. You should take solace in this. As a marketing professional, I have only had one thing go truly viral, and that is not so unusual. An amateur trying to make something go viral will have to be very lucky indeed. However, we do live in an age of ordinary people with extraordinary social reach. If review / story has legs and starts to go viral, you need to be prepared.

Banning people from your Facebook page, and other social media channels, can be counterproductive. In the minds of those posting, it just proves that you have something to hide. Take the moral high ground and post your measured response on your social media channels and your website. This can be a little risky as you are letting your clients and followers know about something you have been trying make go away. It can also be a hard sell to those you report to. It does, however, have the advantage of letting you shape the story rather than letting others shape it and just leaving you to respond.

A great example of this working is how FedEx responded to one of their drivers caught on camera throwing a computer monitor over a fence. By responding publicly, with an apology, and what and how they were going to change, the story went from a FedEx driver throwing a package over a fence as an example of how packages are delivered, to how FedEx’s quick response was indicative of their customer service and culture. I believe one of the genius elements of FedEx’s response was to make a video statement so that their own video could be played alongside the video of their employee throwing the package. This looked a lot better than an uncomfortable interview, or a written statement.

By taking the moral high ground and being open, you may not convince your initial detractors that you are sorry / wanting the resolve the issue, but you may well persuade some that are on the fence about the issue. You will also give ammunition to those in your network, that support you, to help defend you. Your existing loyal customers will often be your biggest defenders and cheerleaders, but they need guidance. For this reason, I am not a big fan of disabling reviews on Facebook pages and the ability of users to post – but that is decision that needs to be based on the individual situation.

The Press

News organizations, and particularly local TV news, get pitched multiple times every day by people angry by how they feel they have been treated by a business. The good news for businesses is that it takes a lot for a story to be picked up, and anyone who is waging a campaign against you is unlikely to get past their screening process. The bad news is that news organizations need human interest stories, and if the customer is credible, and has a story with legs, then the media may get involved.

It is important that whomever answers the phones in your company, and your entire frontline staff for that matter, understand how to deal with the press when they come calling. “I know that the management will want to talk with you and address the situation. I am not the right person for you to talk with, but let me get you someone who is.” is an example of how to correctly respond to an enquiry. “No comment” is about the worst thing that anyone can say to press. The lack of a comment becomes the story. It makes it look like whomever has said it has something to hide because they don’t want to speak.

When talking to the press be very brief. The longer the answer you give, the more chance there is for something to be taken out of context. If you do not speak to the press; however, you will not make the story go away. Reporters have deadlines, so be cognizant and respectful of that. For the most part reporters are not looking to burn anyone, but they do want a story – try to make it yours, and not defined by someone else.

Unfortunately, once the media gets involved with viral story, it can self-perpetuate a Yelp bombing campaign with others who have read about / or seen the story leaving reviews. Again, Yelp itself is pretty good about dealing with this. If you send a link to the story in the media story when flagging the review Yelp can suspend all reviews to your account until interest burns out.

If you have stories, or additional tips on how to solve Yelp Bombing / review campaigns, please let me know in the comments. If you have an ongoing issue, please feel free to reach out to me.

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Categories Business, Customer Service, Leadership, Management, Marketing, Search, Social Media, Veterinary

Weaponized Reviews – A Survival Guide Part One

August 5, 2017 //
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Reviews are here to stay, and that’s a good thing. But how do businesses defend themselves from those who would abuse the review system for their own ends? In this three-part series, I offer practical advice on how to handle Yelp bombing campaigns and how to mitigate their effects. In part one, we look at how to prevent, and initially respond, to weaponized reviews. In part two, we look at preventing and then handling a weaponized review campaign going viral. In part three, we look at other tactics undertaken by Yelp bombers, other than just posting reviews, and coming to a resolution.

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(image courtesy of http://pexels.com )

Nobody in business likes getting bad reviews. Anyone who pours their heart and soul into an enterprise can feel dispirited, and treated unfairly, when receiving criticism; particularly when you have not been given the chance to try and resolve the issue.

Like it or not, reviews are here to stay. They are a fact of doing business today. To deal with everyday review issues, I highly recommend Jay Baer’s excellent “Hug Your Haters,” which I reviewed here.

Unfortunately, however, there are people who try to turn reviews into a weapon. This is usually achieved by posting multiple reviews, sometimes across multiple platforms, using multiple different accounts, giving the impression of a serious issue or to destroy the businesses review platform rating. This can be to extort money and / or services, or as an act of revenge. This kind of review warfare is also sometimes known by the term “Yelp bombing.” This series, hopefully, will give you some grounding, and tools, to help protect yourself, and your business, from weaponized reviews.

It is important to recognize the difference between a Yelp bombing campaign and a review going viral. If something is going viral, it is because strangers like, or are outraged by, what they see or read. When it comes to a concerted attack, there may be a hope that the attack will become viral, but it is originally perpetrated one person, or a small group, trying to exert influence. This could be a customer, a former employee, a competitor, or just a bully trying to change something about you or your business.

Prevention

It is a cliché, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Have a complaints procedure for your clients. Empower your staff to solve small issues before they turn into big issues. Listen, learn, and respond to your reviews. Try to divorce yourself from the idea that you are right and they are wrong. It does not matter if you win the argument in your place of business. If you turn your customer into an enemy, and they then bash you online, you have lost.

Usually, apologies cost nothing. Make them sincere and swallow your pride. If the dispute cannot be resolved with an apology ask a simple question: “how much am I willing to pay to not have this appear on Yelp or other review sites?” Whatever the answer is, there is your budget for resolving this complaint.

Obviously, you have to have claimed your business on all the major review platforms. Going through this in detail is really outside the realm of this article; however, you should receive an email, or alert, anytime someone posts a review on Yelp, Google, or Facebook. I would also strongly suggest that you have a Google Alert running for mentions of your business name, names of key personal, or anything else that someone may use to identify or describe your business. You can setup alerts here: https://www.google.com/alerts

Stay away from controversial subjects with your online presence. Businesses should standup and be counted for causes and ideas they support, but go into it with your eyes open. With any controversial subject, there is the potential for someone to become upset and try to change your stance by methods other than debate or no longer giving you their custom.

Assessment

Despite your best efforts; however, you find yourself a target of a Yelp bombing campaign. It is important to note, that while the term “Yelp bombing” has become a generic term for an online review attack, Yelp is actually the platform you want this kind of attack to take place on. Yelp tends to have the best tools and resources for a business to protect itself. I am not a big fan of Yelp, you can read my feelings about Yelp and why I dislike their business model here, but when it comes to Yelp bombing they really do have their act together.

The first signs of a campaign against your business will usually be you being alerted to, or reading, a 1-star review. Speed is of the essence. If the review is seemingly out of nowhere, then reach out to the reviewer apologizing for their experience and asking if you can help to resolve the situation. If the platform allows it, message the reviewer privately. Don’t be afraid to ask them for their name so you can look into the matter.
If, despite your speedy response, more reviews are posted, then you have genuine situation on your hands.

First, breathe.

It is easy to feel panicked and that events are completely out of your control. You need to be the one with the cool head. People undertaking a Yelp bombing campaign are not doing so from a particularly rational place. This usually shows up in the writing and the nature of the complaint.

Read the review(s). Does the client have a point from reading the review? Is it a good story? If you were not connected to the business would you want to learn more? Remember right and wrong does not enter into your assessment of the campaign. What you need to assess is whether the story has “legs.” Is what has been written true? If someone reads this who knows nothing about your business will they believe it? Get other people’s opinions – this will help bring some perspective. If you make the assessment that the reviewer has a point and that the story has legs then there is the potential for it go viral, which is what you are trying to stop.

First Responses

Do not, I repeat, do not be in too much of a hurry to tell your side of the story. However, while it is important to not to lash out immediately with why your customer is “wrong, crazy, or clueless,” it is also important that your response is prompt and the correct response.

If the reviewer is not communicating, then start to craft a public response that addresses your position in very general terms and that you are happy to engage further via a different channel. I am a big proponent for email as this new channel. Email keeps the communication out of the public eye, unless someone posts it, it takes the heat out of conversations, and it gives you a written record. I know others feel that responding by a phone call, or even meeting in person, are better solutions. I would suggest that you choose whatever you are the most comfortable with.

Your response should be read by multiple other people and you should all agree that it is reasonable, conciliatory, and addresses the reviewer’s primary complaint. If the campaign against you has legs, and starts to go viral, your response will also be featured so it is important that the response is the right one.

It should also go without saying, that you should never retaliate. You need to be the adult, and it needs to be clearly seen by any 3rd party that you are conciliatory, level headed, and just trying to resolve the issue.

If you have stories, or additional tips on how to solve Yelp bombing / review campaigns, please let me know in the comments. If you have an ongoing issue, please feel free to reach out to me.

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Categories Business, Customer Service, Leadership, Management, Marketing, Search, Social Media, Veterinary

Book Review: Hug Your Haters by Jay Baer

February 17, 2017 //
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(Clicking on the image above will take you to Amazon where a tiny percentage goes to help my movie and book buying habit.)

 

Please don’t buy this book.

I’ve seen Jay speak a couple of times and the most recent time I was intrigued by the study he conducted with Edison Research that forms the back bone of “Hug your Haters.” The study asked two basic, yet fundament, questions in this new age of online reviews and online customer service:

1: How has the proliferation of social media, review sites, and other online forms changed the customer expectations of what good customer service really means.

2: When interactions between brands and humans are played out on the public stage, how must brands perform to in order to satisfy not only the customer, but the customer’s audience.

Hug your haters is a guidebook, informed by real data, on how to best handle complaints in this age of onstage public complaining. When I read a new business book it will sometimes take me down a particular intellectual path, other times it will provide nuggets of useful information that I can use, and sometimes I will disagree with it to such an extent, that I cannot wait to be done.

Hug your haters is different.

Hug Your Haters, for me, is validation of what I have come to believe over the last few years. Negative reviews are a chance to shine. Upset clients can be loyal clients if you can turn them around. Onstage interactions with upset clients is chance to show all those watching that you care enough to listen, empathize, apologize, and try to fix individual complaints.

It is amazing to read a book and have the author focus on a point of technique, where Jay talks about shock and awe was my favorite moment for this to happen, and realize “hey I love to do that – nice to know I’m not the only one!” Although the book primarily focuses on online strategies for customer resolution, is does deal with offline issues and really provides a blueprint, with real world examples, of how to provide customer service in almost any sized business. The basic philosophy is simple – answer every negative complaint, every time, in every channel. By doing this the author, and I agree, believes that customer service can become marketing.  This is because, more often than not, these interactions are conducted in public with an audience.  

If I have to have a complaint about the book it is that Jay lets Yelp off the hook far too easily. My own personal feelings about Yelp have evolved over the years; from outright despising them for their failure to engage with their clients and critics which you can read here, to acceptance with a few reservations which you can read here. However, the issue that Yelp arbitrarily filters out reviews from real paying clients, but does not seem to have the same scruples when it comes to negative reviews from people you do not recognize, and refuses to engage about what has happened, still stands.

However, this really is a minor quibble about what is without doubt the bible of how handle customer service in the modern age. It is not for the faint of heart. Following Jay’s playbook, you will encounter managers, owners, and employees, who feel that you are opening the company to being taken advantage or creating a culture where customers are rewarded for complaining. And there are some merits to these fears; however, these are far out-weighed by the rewards.

For me this book is validation – thank you Jay.

For others, it is heresy.

For most it will be revelatory.

But I like my competitive advantage, so please, don’t buy this book.

 

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Categories Books, Business, Customer Service, Management, Marketing, Social Media

Learning to Live with Yelp

September 3, 2016 //
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By Mike Falconer

The most popular post to date on my site is: “Why I hate Yelp (and you should too!).”

I still do by the way; and everything is that post still stands today three years later; however, I have grown to accept it as part of the daily life of being in business and feel that, a few road bumps aside, I’ve made my peace with online reviews and even with Yelp.

That mighty sound a little contradictory, but the bottom line is that reviews are here to stay so we all have to deal with it.

“Scott, we have a Yelp problem. We keep getting these horrible reviews what can we do about it?”

” – Build a better product.”

Scott Stratten @unmarketing

There is no strategy or tip that I, or anyone else, can give you that will fix your business and your online reviews overnight (those that promise to do so are scamming you). If you are a horrible business the chances are you will have horrible reviews online.

Now you can write your own reviews, and risk the wrath of companies like Yelp or Google which are filled with people smarter than you or I (sorry it’s true) who spend a lot of time and energy trying to foil the attempts of those gaming their systems. If you are really unlucky you could also find yourself the subject of a FTC investigation and slapped with a serious fine. It has happened a few times already to those trying to buy or reward those for reviews (many thanks to he great Mike Blumenthal @mblumenthal for this awesome nugget of info and indeed for solidifying my thoughts on Yelp, and online reviews, in general) and expect it to happen a lot more when the government figures out how prevalent it is and how much money can be made. But why bother? It is simpler, easier, and better for your business to just fix the problems in the first place.

Think Yelp or Google (or whatever review site you feel tortures you on a regular basis) does not accurately reflect what your clients think of your business? Prove it! Survey your clients. Make it easy for them to complain and give you feedback. Have a policy to deal with complaints. And, of course, read, learn, and above all, reply to your reviews. If your survey results really are different from what you are seeing from the review sites then publish the data and be honest about what people were complaining about and what you are doing to fix it.

When I started reviewing my business’s clients what I found from the was that they wanted to respond. The feedback I got was overwhelmingly positive, and it allowed me to fix issues, even minor ones, quickly before they blew up online. It also provided real data about what problems we did have and where we were excelling.

A splash page with links to review sites helped make it easy for those who already reviewing us privately to review us in public. As a rule I and not a big fan of asking for reviews – particularly when companies just try to flood one channel. (400 reviews on Google and 10 on Yelp just makes you look shady.) However, a simple splash page with three or four links is tasteful and is the least spam-like way I have found and does not seem to offend anyone.

Unhappy clients will, of course, still happen. How you respond to them is all important, not just for the client, but your future clients who will read your response and see how you deal with complaints.

Apologize – it costs you nothing.

Try to resolve the issue – D’uh!

If you can’t resolve the issue – apologize again!

Do not get into a protracted fight online – would you rather be right or have an unhappy client, a bad review, and maybe worse? Genuinely apologize and try to make things right.

And never, never ever, send, say, or do anything that that you are not completely happy with being splashed all over the Internet. “If you take your review down we will give you your money back” means you care more about the bad review than the unhappy client. If the client deserves their money back – give them their money back!

I am a big fan of responding to even positive reviews – a simple thank you goes a long way. The interesting thing about responding to every review and trying to keep clients happy is that it is not just new clients that notice. Potential new employees use the tools available to them when researching their potential new employer. Those tools are Yelp and Google.

While I still hate Yelp – it really is a flawed product. It exists because customers used to basically be powerless. The balance may have shifted but I know at my business we try to solve issues, I know that we sometimes succeed and sometimes we fail. We are not perfect, but we have not stopped trying and I think even those that view us on Yelp can see it.

And I can live with that.

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Categories Business, Customer Service, Management, Marketing, Search, Uncategorized
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