I think it's fair to complain about a system and suggest ways that it could be improved.
The reviews can really make or break a small business. Imagine a small business owner who's invested their life savings into a business. Next, they have the bad luck of running into 2 or 3 dishonest people in a row, they all leave bad reviews and the business is sunk.
An inferior business owner might have the good fortune to run into several people willing to leave positive reviews.
Over time, things are likely to even out, but the cost of capital is so extreme right now, many people don't have the opportunity to wait.
Yes. I absolutely agree.
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"If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?"
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Seriously, I think the best way to deal with a bad review is:
1) acknowledge the bad review with your own message and say you will reach out
2) go through the complaint with them and understand it
3) Implement what needs to be implemented
4) Follow up with the customer
5) If the customer is at that time satisfied their actions had a result ask them to respond to their own review and provide an update <-- I feel this has more impact then having them simply removing the review.
If you are a good business the handful of negative reviews don't tend to have a major impact on the overall rating. It isn't going to drop you from a 5 to a 2. Might bring you to a 4.5 but that's still good.
Last edited by ernie; 07-18-2018 at 11:30 AM.
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One of the things I particularly dislike is trying to gauge in a review whether that person has the same expectations for a product or service as you. A $5 widget of some kind that I expect to just get a job done and never use it again versus somebody who thinks that $5 is a lot of money and expect the widget to last forever. For food services, I don't really care much about service, it's really only about the food for me, not the surroundings. I guess I would just like to see reviews and reviewers qualify their expectations in some way.
I think one way to help get rid of false reviews is to make it so that people have to link their facebook profile when posting the reviews. Most people who post on Google or Yelp use some silly avatar photo and a nick name. Get people to use their real name alongside a real photo and I think you'd see improvements.
Everyone is a brave SJW when hidden behind the mask of anonymity. But I find people, for the most part, kind of smarten up when their real reputation is on the line. Obviously there are those that don't care and will still make stuff up. But for example the Calgary Sun comment section is usually squeaky clean now that you have to use your real name. Before it was a cesspool of racist and sexist comments.
To address the OP, I use the ratings as a guideline but it's never the determining factor is deciding if I should get something. If I read the comments and it's bad comments about how it was poor service, grumpy employee etc, I accept that as the human aspect of dealing with other people. People have bad days, and sometimes you just happen to talk in at the wrong moment. I'm more concerned about comments that talk about the product not being as described, the quality, or if it breaks quickly. For the most part I really couldn't care less about the 'customer service experience'. I have no problem buying a 2-3 star products if I see that most of the negative comments are something customer service related.
I agree that customers probably have too much power these days when it comes to influencing a business' reputation. But at the same time, that's the digital age we live in and companies need to learn to adapt. Not directed to the OP, but companies need to stop whining about so-called false reviews, and actually address the issue that would make someone do that in the first place.
Last edited by Huntingwhale; 07-18-2018 at 12:25 PM.
I also think that certain businesses lend themselves to more bad reviews than others. For example, I recently upgraded my GDL license for a regular Class 5 and the business I did so at had a ton of bad reviews which left me nervous going in. However I also understand that anyone who failed their driver's exam was likely to leave a bad review.
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I also think that certain businesses lend themselves to more bad reviews than others. For example, I recently upgraded my GDL license for a regular Class 5 and the business I did so at had a ton of bad reviews which left me nervous going in. However I also understand that anyone who failed their driver's exam was likely to leave a bad review.
Thats definitely another bad thing about online reviews. They tend to be written angry.
If you've pissed someone off they're going to let you and everyone else know through the miracle of the internet, but if you've done a good job then thats just to be expected and nobody will ever know.
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Like most, I tend to take reviews, good or bad, with a grain of salt. I tend to read over the first page or so of reviews, and also keep an eye on the date, making sure the reviews I'm looking at are current.
The only place I'd like to be able to see a business be able to manage reviews is after they become the 'victim' to some kind of internet mob and are getting reviews by people who have never even been there, may not even be in the same province, state or country. I've seen companies that had a 5 star rating tanked to 1 overnight by this sort of mob, and it usually ends up with reviews being removed (as in the ability to leave them at all) which doesn't benefit an actual customer (but makes complete sense for the business to do)
All reviews good and bad should be removed after some time period. Businesses evolve or regress over time and really how accurate is any review after 3-6-12 months? I guess it would vary depending on the industry but the point still stands.
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I think one way to help get rid of false reviews is to make it so that people have to link their facebook profile when posting the reviews. Most people who post on Google or Yelp use some silly avatar photo and a nick name. Get people to use their real name alongside a real photo and I think you'd see improvements.
Everyone is a brave SJW when hidden behind the mask of anonymity. But I find people, for the most part, kind of smarten up when their real reputation is on the line. Obviously there are those that don't care and will still make stuff up. But for example the Calgary Sun comment section is usually squeaky clean now that you have to use your real name. Before it was a cesspool of racist and sexist comments.
To address the OP, I use the ratings as a guideline but it's never the determining factor is deciding if I should get something. If I read the comments and it's bad comments about how it was poor service, grumpy employee etc, I accept that as the human aspect of dealing with other people. People have bad days, and sometimes you just happen to talk in at the wrong moment. I'm more concerned about comments that talk about the product not being as described, the quality, or if it breaks quickly. For the most part I really couldn't care less about the 'customer service experience'. I have no problem buying a 2-3 star products if I see that most of the negative comments are something customer service related.
I agree that customers probably have too much power these days when it comes to influencing a business' reputation. But at the same time, that's the digital age we live in and companies need to learn to adapt. Not directed to the OP, but companies need to stop whining about so-called false reviews, and actually address the issue that would make someone do that in the first place.
Some reviews are not 'so-called' false reviews, but legit false reviews. It's quite common for competitors to get their friends/relatives to leave truly fake reviews for the business they're competing with. You can usually recognize these because they will name drop the 'awesome' competitor in the review.
All reviews good and bad should be removed after some time period. Businesses evolve or regress over time and really how accurate is any review after 3-6-12 months? I guess it would vary depending on the industry but the point still stands.
I agree with that. I hate it when I read some reviews and then discover they were from 2014 or something.
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Totally. There's a surprising lack of compassion for the businesses and the humans that run them here. So many negative reviews are factually incorrect, embellished and can border on malicious. There is literally no recourse for the company aside from responding, but that doesn't affect the star rating.
I don't buy this argument and if your business is receiving a significant number of bad reviews, I'd review what I'm doing before writing negative reviews off as "factually incorrect, embellished bordering on malicious"
Unless a business is being targeted, I believe that (assuming a reasonable sample size) the average rating will provide a pretty accurate picture of the business' attitude towards customer service.
Like another poster mentioned, when I check reviews, I look through the list of ratings with comments. I generally ignore any bad outliers, but if bad reviews aren't outliers, I will avoid the business.
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I actually agree with Sliver in a lot of ways and just a scan of some of the reviews shows how out of touch A LOT of people are. One of the most frustrating thing is when people leave reviews that are not in line with reality of either the business, the experience or they dock stars for things that aren't easily fixable. The business, its owner and the employee's have to end up dealing with it in the long term. Some examples are below and keep in mind that they MAY be absurd, it doesn't mean it hasn't affected the ratings.
A friends pizza place: "Amazing crust, loaded with toppings and TON's of cheese. Picked up hot and enjoyed the 20% discount. Probably the best pizza I have encountered in Calgary, too bad it's far away from my boyfriends house. 3/5
Another friends pizzeria: " The gnocchi used to be amazing, now its like potato soup!!"
"People are right about this place, the pasta, the sauce, the and the wine are all over hyped!" "I always look forward to the veal parm for my birthday dinner and of course they are out of it, again........ what a week"
The above pizzeria DOES NOT SERVE PASTA OR VEAL. They serve pizza and salads, end of story. The reviews go on and on about this stuff but the issue is the names of the business have a similar name but nobody cares, let the online reviews harm the reputation of someone else's business, nothing you can do.
The best ones are people who dine out and pretend they are big shots. They always claim they can cook a better steak, better plate of pasta, a healthier and tastier salad etc. They then rage about the 4 steaks, wine, appy's, tax and tip and "how on earth did it reach $300?" and than leave a bad review. Is the point of going out, really to compare to your cooking? Is it fair to compare how much a bag of spaghetti costs and how much Safeway sells a NY strip for and than apply that level of thinking to a for profit business who pays staff, rent, utilities, taxes?
I know that there are legit reviews out there and people do have bad experiences but come on. You click on some people's names and they seem to want to do nothing but bitch and complain to every single place they interact with. Why live life like that?
Full disclosure: I don't review anything, I frankly don't care and I consider myself a savvy consumer and go to places that I have had positive experiences with. Some people sit there and rank gas stations, every corner store for a jug of milk, dock points for the long line at some ice cream shop when it's 30 degree's out. It's gotten to be too much!
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I actually agree with Sliver in a lot of ways and just a scan of some of the reviews shows how out of touch A LOT of people are. One of the most frustrating thing is when people leave reviews that are not in line with reality of either the business, the experience or they dock stars for things that aren't easily fixable. The business, its owner and the employee's have to end up dealing with it in the long term. Some examples are below and keep in mind that they MAY be absurd, it doesn't mean it hasn't affected the ratings.
A friends pizza place: "Amazing crust, loaded with toppings and TON's of cheese. Picked up hot and enjoyed the 20% discount. Probably the best pizza I have encountered in Calgary, too bad it's far away from my boyfriends house. 3/5
Another friends pizzeria: " The gnocchi used to be amazing, now its like potato soup!!"
"People are right about this place, the pasta, the sauce, the and the wine are all over hyped!" "I always look forward to the veal parm for my birthday dinner and of course they are out of it, again........ what a week"
The above pizzeria DOES NOT SERVE PASTA OR VEAL. They serve pizza and salads, end of story. The reviews go on and on about this stuff but the issue is the names of the business have a similar name but nobody cares, let the online reviews harm the reputation of someone else's business, nothing you can do.
The best ones are people who dine out and pretend they are big shots. They always claim they can cook a better steak, better plate of pasta, a healthier and tastier salad etc. They then rage about the 4 steaks, wine, appy's, tax and tip and "how on earth did it reach $300?" and than leave a bad review. Is the point of going out, really to compare to your cooking? Is it fair to compare how much a bag of spaghetti costs and how much Safeway sells a NY strip for and than apply that level of thinking to a for profit business who pays staff, rent, utilities, taxes?
I know that there are legit reviews out there and people do have bad experiences but come on. You click on some people's names and they seem to want to do nothing but bitch and complain to every single place they interact with. Why live life like that?
Full disclosure: I don't review anything, I frankly don't care and I consider myself a savvy consumer and go to places that I have had positive experiences with. Some people sit there and rank gas stations, every corner store for a jug of milk, dock points for the long line at some ice cream shop when it's 30 degree's out. It's gotten to be too much!
And then there are the people who review recipes...saying, they don't like an ingredient so used something else, they were out of some other ingredient so again used something else...and on they go
and then conclude they would not make the recipe again when they have not made it in the first place.
