Health, safety, and trust will be at the forefront for any type of business. You will also need to understand how your customers feel about your new ways of doing business in case you need to make changes and improvements. 

Grocery stores and big box retail have remained open and many have implemented a number of changes such as using Xpress-pay. They provide guidelines and messaging that any businesses looking to re-open can implement and fast track. As a recent survey shows, grocery stores lead in consumer safety confidence with 54% of consumers feeling safe to shop. Small businesses should be looking to achieve the same high level of safety and trust as the leaders in consumer confidence.

Internally you are already working extremely hard to put together the best process and plan to execute on.  But don’t forget that you need to market and message these changes to your customers and prospects and that you really need your customers to market these changes for you, as well.

Many consumers will be apprehensive during re-opening, so you need do all you can to build their confidence and trust in your business, staff and these new processes.

The bottom line is if you aren’t getting these new operating details right, your competitor might be and they will be aggressively fighting to win that business from you.

Health & Safety

Depending on your business type you might have small adjustments regarding your health and safety from COVID-19 or you might have massive changes.  You have created new processes for cleaning, disinfecting, spacing, capacity, employee health checks, and possibly the requirement of a mask.

You need to be communicating them to your customers in as many ways as you can to build their confidence and set their expectations. The last and most important step is to make sure they actually feel safe thanks to your changes.

Asking your customer post-experience if they felt safe, if your staff followed guidelines you communicated and allowing them to share details about their experience are a must. You can market and message all you want, but you need your customer to validate it, feel it and tell others so as to gain the confidence of others.

Sample health and safety questions you might want to ask with a 0 to 10 rating scale are:

Q: Rate how well did our team follow our COVID-19 guidelines?

Q: Rate how you feel about our process for your health and safety?

Q: Rate your feeling on our social distancing guidelines and signage:

Getting this feedback internally will allow you to track how well your changes are being implemented, executed and received by your customers. Did you meet their expectations?  Having the ability to make decisions and change quickly is needed to ensure your customers feel safe daily. 

GatherUp’s Ultimate Mode with survey questions allows you to ask these types of questions in a short easy survey post experience with the ability to still ask for reviews.

Making And Evaluating Changes

Whether you have stayed open during the pandemic or are now just re-opening, the way you conduct business has changed.  It’s very likely that this event has fast-forwarded technology decisions you thought you’d make in the next decade into a matter of weeks.  Online ordering, e-commerce, virtual customer experiences, and delivery/pick-up all were on your long-term radar but now have been deployed or soon to be. 

Embarking on these new processes, tools and methods for the first time requires a quick feedback loop to ensure you are getting it right or can make changes on the fly to keep customers happy. You need to be asking your customers how you are performing and clearly messaging that you want to hear from them.

Some sample questions you might want to ask your customers with a 0-10 rating scale are:

Q: How would you rate the ease of our process? 

Q: How would you rate the speed of our service?

Q: How would you rate your overall satisfaction?

Q: How likely are you to purchase again from us in the coming weeks? 

These simple questions and the ability to capture 1st-party reviews will allow you to quickly assess your process and needed changes.

Here is a quick example survey using GatherUp and one of each of the above to help you capture Net Promoter Score, COVID-19 Guideline satisfaction, process evaluation and feedback (1st-party review) and then ask for a Google or Facebook review on the next step.

Messaging Your COVID-19 Guidelines

Our inboxes were filled with COVID-19 emails from CEO’s of brands we previously purchased from in the first month of the pandemic. Airlines, hotels, fast-casual restaurants, and retailers were quick to address changes in their business processes, cleaning and safety and wanted their customers to hear from them. 

While this messaging has declined, the re-opening of the economy and especially small businesses requires a new push of messaging from your business.

As businesses re-open, consumers will be seeking out knowledge and confidence in your guidelines and processes before they visit or purchase from you. Making this information highly visible on your website, Google Posts, social media channels and Google search results are your best messaging opportunities. 

Centralizing Your Coronavirus Guidelines On Your Website

Putting up a Covid-19 page seems like a must right now.  Any type of business will benefit from centralizing this information to answer consumer questions, preparing them before they shop with you, and reinforcing your dedication to health and safety.

Again, bigger brands have led the way here.  Publix and Target have dedicated sections of their website and use pop-up messaging on their site to drive users to this page.

 Target has gone a step further and has also made the COVID-19 resources they created available to other businesses to establish their own safety tool kit.

Many small businesses have done the same and your business should too. Here are a couple more examples from a law firm, plumber, and a physiotherapy clinic. 

Use your website and a dedicated page to keep customers informed, set the tone for your dedication to safety, and it as the best resource for your business.  This page can help consumers coming from signage, social media, Google Posts, search results, and I will touch on these next.

In-store Signage

Big box retail has stayed open this entire time and has led the way with many signage and way-winding elements for their customers.  

Signage for occupancy, distancing, lines, aisle flow and checkout rules have all been put in place by leading retailers in order to guide safety for customers and employees. 

Small businesses can take cues from this and utilize signage outside their business and inside their business. If you have a business with a line outside to limit capacity, messaging that you have a web page dedicated to all of your health and safety guidelines or the latest updates are on your social media channels will allow consumers to read up before their experience.  

Social Media Has Many Benefits

During COVID-19 many have flocked to social media to stay connected with friends, family, co-workers, and local businesses. Facebook especially has reported large rises in their traffic. Using Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to keep your customers informed, updated, and to stay top of mind is needed right now. 

Using social media to spread your message on your new policies and how you are re-opening is crucial.  Just like your signage, directing them to a page or blog post on your new guidelines, processes and other information during the Coronavirus is a great move.

Below is an example of Walgreens using their Twitter account to message their customers on health and safety measures for their stores.

On top of that, getting your customers to talk about how you are servicing them during this is even better.  Here is a recent Google review for my local wine bar that a customer left clearly outlining that it’s been her best ordering and pick-up process to date. Being able to share content like this is fantastic as it’s your customer sharing how you exceeded their expectations.

Consistent posts and varied content on your social channels is a good idea right now. A combination of topics is a great approach and creating posts around these topics would be smart:

• COVID updates, visuals of your store, staff and guidelines being followed
• Marketing, sales, offers
• Quick how-tos on new processes, ordering online, by text, etc.
• Daily “look-ins” on the business, what’s happening, what’s new or different
• Supporting other local businesses in mentions or shares

Increasing your social posting and management at this time might have you seeking a tool to handle the increase of posting.  Traject Social is a great option to consider for social media management to help you plan, post and report with efficiency and a broad tool set.

Leverage Google My Business Features

Google has been responding to the needs of small businesses by creating many different features in their Google My Business (GMB) offering.  We covered these in our Local Search AMA webinar last month and you should be leveraging a number of GMB features right now.

The first is GMB adding a special COVID-19 Post type that appears higher in the GMB panel in your search results.  While you can only use text and link out to a web page with this addition, it’s great visibility to get prospects and customers to your dedicated COVID page.

If you are a food, drink or restaurant business GMB added new attributes to easily showcase if you offer take-out, delivery, and dine-in.  If you are re-opening your dine-in options, you will want to ensure this attribute is correctly checked. 

The GMB Product feature can be utilized to showcase your online ordering capabilities as well.

Google also just announced this week the addition of another COVID-19 feature called “Support links” to allow customers to support a business (not a customer support link).  With this feature, merchants will be able to add a donation link, gift card link or both to their profile. They can also share a personal message in their post to inform customers how funds will be put to use. These support links will be visible to consumers later this month.

Reviews Bolster Trust Like No Other

With most of the marketing and messaging mentioned above it’s you, as the business, controlling it.  That leaves room for a consumer to doubt or expect a gap in what you will say you are doing and what is actually happening. 

Enter reviews, the biggest way consumers can gain trust and confidence in your execution of everything you are saying. 

Earning reviews from your customers as you re-open during COVID-19 that cite your adherence to policies, praise, consideration, and safety will be huge.

On the flip side of this, reviews that convey the opposite could be extremely damaging. The Google review below shows how a change in safety and how your staff executes on your guidelines can become a poor review.

Consumers are seeking information in every aspect related to the pandemic, so you better think about how they will research your business. Relying on updates and accounts from your current customers engaging with you will be a very trusted real-time source. 

Change, Listen, Adjust In Re-opening

Tieing all of this together in successful and short cycles could be the key to making to the other side of this all. Making changes, listening, adjusting, messaging and ensuring safety will be on repeat in the coming weeks and months.

If you have all of the right elements in an agile process that can adapt, you are giving your business the best chance you can. Keep going and good luck.

Our line-up won’t disappoint as our Mike Blumenthal hosts Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky, Darren Shaw of Whitespark and Aaron Weiche of GatherUp for an hour-long webinar covering local search and digital marketing with an AMA (ask me anything) format.

Local Search Topics

We’ll work to cover as much ground as possible in the webinar with information for SEO professionals, agency owners and in-house teams. Each speaker will bring you 3 of their top moves right now as well as the AMA format. We’ll cover:

• Google My Business and listings
• COVID-19 adaptation and local digital marketing
• Reputation Management
• Agency tips and ideas

Ask Your Questions Now

Use the form below to ask your question for the webinar now.  We will be taking both submitted questions (below) and LIVE questions via Zoom during the webinar.

These sorts of extreme reactions to enforcing basic Covid-19 safety practices in a business attract attention and raise the stress level for most businesses who already feel beleaguered.

But how common are these review attacks?  Were these sorts of violent anti-mask sentiment a real threat or an outlier? Were they common and how common were they compared to other mask complaints?

The Review Stats

We decided to look at ~38,000 reviews across 9 different business types with 3,641 locations written during the past 90 days to find out how common mask* complaints were and to explore the relationship of Coronavirus practices to reputation in general.

We examined reviews from salons recently opened in the south, home services, businesses that stayed open as critical like Walmart & HomeDepot, and a range of foodservice providers including pizza delivery, a fast-casual chain, and a refreshment “bar”. 

To answer my original question, we found hardly any of the agressive anti-mask reviews amongst the 37,754 reviews that we looked at. We found six to be exact. Although four of these six were muted in nature, this one, written about a Home Depot, stood out as being on the fringe of the anti-maskers: 

What we did find though was that most reviews that mention masks were criticizing the store for their lack of hygiene and occasionally complimenting them for the same. In fact, Covid reviews that included the word mask accounted for 2%, 724 in total, of all reviews written during the period for these businesses.

Of the hygiene-related reviews, the significant majority, 564 reviews, were critical of the business for poor Covid hygiene practices or enforcement in one form or another. The 6 anti-masker reviews constituted about half of 1% of the mask reviews and a nearly infinitely small percentage of the overall reviews. 

These legitimate criticisms came in a number of shapes and forms and demonstrate the concerns (and compliments) that consumers have. They offer every business a path forward. 

We just need to listen. What folks are saying is pretty clear. Here are some representative reviews expressing common concerns.

Hypocrisy In Implementation Was Not Tolerated

Consumer review:
“A business requires customers to wear masks or they will refuse service, which is understandable. But what’s the point if the employees don’t wear masks themselves??? And no, wearing a mask around your chin and exposing your mouth and nose is not actually wearing a mask!“

It only makes sense that a business holds itself and it’s customers to the same standards.

Careful What You Advertise

Consumer review:
“Clearly not providing safe service.  Sat 4/25 order was retrieved from back and handed to me by a girl with face completely uncovered , her face mask was down around her neck the whole time I was there.  Another guy was running around with nose exposed.  Actually went there because of the safe handling commercials..  silly me…we won’t be returning.“

If you advertise your “best practices” you have even more to account for as you have set an expectation for the brand. 

Style Is Out Of Style When It Comes To Health

Consumer review:
“The mandated masks REQUIRED by stylists are see through. This place will be closed by a case of covid in days. Mark my words- bye bye roots.Grossly irresponsible owners. My nail tech does more. Heck the people at my supermarket do more. Enter at your own risk! The see through masks with their LOGO are mandatory. Don’t wear them and you get fired! I cancelled my appointment.  I work in spa industry,  this was so far from acceptable.“

Even though a business, in this case a salon, is in the “beauty business”, the need to put safety and health after above beauty is even more critical. Compromises of that standard simply for appearances’ sake are ill conceived. 

If You Are Going To Do It, Do It Right

Consumer review:
“All the customers are wearing masks. The employees had masks but several were not wearing them at all. Many had the mask below their nose to breathe easier. There is clearly no supervision by management.“

This was the most common complaint whether in food prep, retail, home services or beauty. Employees should wear masks at all times and wear them properly.

Take Responsibility 

Consumer review:
“I’ve had issues with delivery drivers failing to provide the items that I purchased, though they were kind enough to pay for them out their own pocket, but upon speaking to management about it to make sure employees double check their orders, I was told that isn’t their issue. Now with this COVID issue every delivery driver I’ve had come to my door is not wearing gloves and masks, and the latest who came to my door on 04/29/20 was clearly ill and coughing, no face mask and no gloves. I called management to report this and was rudely told that its not their problem and that me ordering delivery is at my own risk.”

There is no hiding in this pandemic and passing the buck to a delivery person, whether that reflects the legal relationship or not, is perceived as company management shirking its duties. And it is.

For Some It’s The Only Important Thing

Consumer review:
“This summer I am rating businesses employees warring masks that’s all. With COVID 19 no one is immune. This place gets 1 star got a few employees not warring masks.“

Reviews As A Public Service

Many folks see writing reviews as a public service to communicate to their community and to the business about the ups and downs of the shop down the street.  In fact, our research shows that as many as 18% of consumers write reviews for that reason.

During the pandemic writing reviews about in-store Covid practices to alert other consumers to the danger is their way of helping.

It’s not just the need for staff to wear masks

Consumer review:
“While I really appreciate that all the employees are wearing masks, there is still a problem with a number of customers not wearing masks.  I had a bad experience shopping there yesterday with some customers getting to close to me not wearing masks and it wasn’t an accident either. These people were intentionally getting close and seemed to get a kick out of it…. I am a local general contractor and go to this particular store at least a couple times a week. I don’t feel safe shopping at Home Depot now and refuse to return until all customers are required to wear masks.  If Home Depot does not follow through with protecting their customers AND employees I will refuse to shop there forever.”

Consumers expect to transact in a safe environment. That is more complicated than ever these days, but this consumer, rightfully so, expects the business to hold everyone in their store to a reasonable standard of safety. Obviously the company is risking both short and long term losses if they fail. 

Doing It Right

Consumer review:
“Very sanitary, tables are spaced out to metro you away from other customers while drinking in, every employee had gloves and masks on and as soon as a customer got up to leave an employee was at their table right away sanitizing the seats and table. Very pleased and I felt safe to dine in there. Will definitely be back.”

Consumers were willing and desirous of highlighting the good. 39% of reviews that mentioned masks did so to compliment the business for a job well done. 

What’s A Business To Do?

It is both unfair and unfortunate that businesses exist in a world where they are the arbiters of appropriate social standards. Even in states where masks are required when in doors for shopping, many governmental bodies have left enforcement to the uneven hands of business.

Regardless of your local enforcement and customer behaviors, the moral and ethical business issues around customer and employee safety are clear. No business should  want to be the source of a community outbreak or employee illness or worse death.  The legal landscape around doing business safely in this ever changing world of covid risks is still ill-defined but it is unlikely to look favorably on businesses that knowingly put the community at risk, 

But put all of the moral, ethical and legal considerations aside for a moment as you consider your store policies AND how you implement and enforce them. 

Just Consider One Thing: The Voice Of The Customer 

Despite reports in the press of widespread mask opposition the overwhelming majority of consumers that are concerned with masks indicate that Covid hygiene is their highest concern. Those that have left reviews indicate that businesses have not been rigorous enough in their implementation and enforcement of Covid hygiene practices. Reviews have always been hard for your business and now, harder than ever.

And we are not talking just a majority compared to anti-maskers in the sense that it is 60,70, 80 or even 90% of those concerned speak up. We are talking about 99.2% that comment about safety vs those that are opposed to mask-wearing.  

Clearly anti-maskers have a presence in our media and to a much lesser extent in our society but they are very, very small component. The rabid anti-maskers are not just outliers but outliers of the outliers.

However, anti-maskers may be portrayed in the media as present in our society they don’t seem to do any shopping and are certainly not writing reviews. Their actual presence appears to be so small that any business would be unwise to cater to it in their planning. 

It appears from our research that a business has no choice but to implement the most conservative and health driven recommendations in requiring masks and safety. But equally important is that they follow them rigorously and insist that customers do as well. 

*We used the word “mask”  as a proxy for all reviews about Covid-19 practices. While this has proven to be largely accurate it tends to undercount the total somewhat.

Update 7/14/20

Finally, finally there are reports starting to trickle in of furloughed medical reviews. H/T to Jim McDannald, DPM of Podiatry Growth for pointing this out. Reviews in medical categories that were left between 3/20 and 6/17 went into limbo and their reappearance is the last missing piece in Google’s return from their cessation of review publishing at the start of the Covid crisis. You can follow the many ups and downs below of the slow and winding path back to a working review and Q & A system on Google.

Update 7/9/20

We are getting there. Almost back to normal. Google Q & A has been fixed by Google so we now are once again able to give, respond to and monitor Google Q & A on all locations, even medical facilities. Both the front end link bugs AND the API have been repaired and are working normally.

With the return of Q & A to fully operational status, the only missing piece are the reviews furloughed for medical categories that have not yet returned. So while you can leave a new review for a medical practioner, Google has not yet chosen to display provided during the 3/20 to 6/17. Hopefully soon.

Update 6/17/20

There are reports that reviews are starting to be allowed to be left for some of the medical categories that have been absent up to now. There has been no indication that furloughed reviews have returned yet.

Some general observations about the on-going return of Google reviews and Google Q & A:

1- The return of Google reviews and Q & A is on a rolling schedule per category and country. While they might roll out in the US or in specific categories they might not yet be rolled out to other countries or all categories.
2- There will be no notification from Google when “furloughed” reviews have been published. So any reviews that your customers left during the furlough period will just show up in your GMB dashboard. This makes GatherUp’s review monitoring which includes alert emails and the activity dashboard more important.
3- The Google Q & A rollout so far is more limited than reviews … restaurants and shopping and a few other categories and only in the US.
4- So while things are returning, it is still wonky and you need to realize that you might be in a country or category that has not yet been fully turned on.

Update 6/09/20

Google has noted that review replies, user reviews, user photos, and Q&A are now available in all countries with some exceptions:

The following services are still currently unavailable:

• Reviews, photos, and Q&A for businesses in a narrow set of medical categories, such as hospitals and doctors’ offices
• Video uploads
• Q&A via API (there is also a Google bug that is preventing scraping as well)

Update 5/29/20

We started seeing Google Q & A return to a few more categories in the U.S. today with them now visible in car washes, plumbers and hvac categories.

Update 5/18/20

Review counts, at least in the US, have normalized and now reflect the actual number of reviews that a business has. All of the reviews received during the “furlough” are now counted accurately. Review counts often lag behind the actual number of reviews.

Update 5/15/20

Google new review alert e-mails have returned but they are currently delayed by up to a day. This recently received alert (rec’d at 11 am) was from a review left early yesterday.It is unlikely that you will get notified for older reviews that show back up so you want to be sure to check your listing or your GatherUp Dashboard. GatherUp alerts are coming through in a timely fashion.

Google Q & A, which returned to shopping and restaurants on 4/23 has still not returned to other categories.

Update 5/14/20

We are seeing both our own Google reviews for GatherUp and many of our client’s furloughed AND new reviews coming in hot! And this is in almost all other categories and not just shopping or restaurants.

Update 5/13/20

We are starting to see the ability to leave new reviews for lawyers, dentists and service businesses. That is beyond just retail and restaurant reviews that could be left previously. The “furloughed” reviews have not started to show back up for these new categories.

Update 5/8/20

Reviews that were “furloughed” (ie accepted but not shown in the later part of March) have been returning for shopping and restaurant categories.

Google Q & A which reappeared on Google for shopping and restaurants categories on 4/23, disappeared on 5/2/ but has returned once again on shopping and restaurants. Roughly half of all Q & A has returned..

Update 5/1/20

Furloughed reviews have started to return. We are starting to see reviews left during Google Review shut down. This review is dated 4/05, during the height of the shutdown and it was seen via the API today. Like new reviews and Q and A these are coming back to shopping and restaurants first.

Update 4/17/20

Reviews can now be left on shopping and restaurant business categories worldwide. Other categories have not yet been turned on.

Update 4/13/20

We are seeing new reviews consistently posting for restaurants and major brands. None of the reviews that were furloughed during the hiatus have yet to return.

Update 4/9/20

Some new reviews are being published, sort of. It is too early to tell when all new reviews will be published as some still are being temporarily filtered but some are being shown. It is likely that it will be off and on for the next few days but you should start seeing them reliably.

Update 4/9/20 – 9:00 PM

Google has updated their GMB Covid-19 page to indicate that leave a review functionality is rolling out on a region by region basis:
“Review replies are now available. New user reviews, new user photos, new short names, and Q&A will gradually return by country and business category.”

 Update 4/7/20

Google has reopened the ability of businesses to reply to reviews via the API within GatherUp as well as the Google My Business dashboard and app. They have also noted that new user reviews, new user photos, new short names, and Q&A will gradually expand by country and business category over this week and next.

Update 3/31/20

On Friday, Google changed the messaging upon leaving a review and now Google has now indicated that they will in fact attempt to republish reviews and review responses that have been filtered during the Covid crisis. Their aim is to moderate and publish that content as they resume normal operations.

Update 3/22/20

Google has apparently removed visibility of all existing Google Q and A from business profiles. Initially they had just limited the ability to leave new ones and respond. Google has indicated that these will return but timing is not at all clear and it is likely to occur after reviews have been fully restored.

Original Post on 3/20/20

On the Google My Business Covid alert page, Google has just stated that: “New reviews, review replies, and new Q&A will be unavailable during this time”.

They have noted that they have taken steps to reduce the number of staffers that come into their offices and as a result are focusing their few remaining staff on Google Maps and Local search information “quality and reliability”.

So existing Google reviews, replies and Q&A are all still displaying, but for the time being no new ones will post.

Google is noting that:

We will prioritize reviewing all edits for critical health-related businesses. At this time, we will also prioritize reviewing open and closed states, special hours, temporary closures, business descriptions, and business attributes edits for other verified businesses. 

The approach that Google seems to have implemented is that a user can post and see the review themselves but the review is not visible to the public. 

Our api based responses for both reviews and Q&A are received by Google but not showing publicly. 

We do not know if Google will show these reviews in the future but given the many other demands on them I wouldn’t count on it. And it is prudent to stop asking for google reviews. 

We will update this post if or as more information becomes available on this.

“I was denied service because I wouldn’t wear their socialist mask.  I will never ever shop at Menards ever again.“

Or this?

“Totally against healthy people lowering their immunity and being forced to breath in harmful air wearing mask. This takes away fresh air needed by every living person. Why do scientists wear complete suits with oxygen ports to work with harmful viruses yet a mask that doesn’t keep out any virus. If everyone would just research truth they would see this for what it is. Control and stepping on our constitutional rights.“

My recent exploration of Menard’s and the world of Covid reviews reminded me how reviews have become a central forum for folks, rightly or wrongly, to express their politics.

Menards has received this type of review in great numbers. When I pointed a number of them out to Google, they noted that reviews like the above violated their content and review policy that explicitly prohibits “political, social commentary, or personal rants”. The rules indicate that: “Content that does not meet this standard will be removed.” And many of these sorts of reviews were in fact removed from Menards. 

So let’s take a look at how to assess Google reviews like this and the steps you can take to have them looked at and possibly removed.

What Should You Do With A Google Review That Violates Their Policy?

Don’t despair. You will probably need to step back and take a breath. We live in a tumultuous time and folks seem to feel free to express their politics within their online reviews when they should be highlighting your policies and practices. 

By all means keep asking for new reviews, if your plan to get that terrible review removed comes to naught you will have that many more positive reviews for your prospects to look at. 

At least in the case of the political anti-mask type review criticizing your masking policy, recognize that you are on the right side of the business case and on the right side of the consumer case. Having someone criticize you for having too strict of a policy is likely to be a net plus for your overall business on both the income and customer satisfaction fronts. 

Initially, at least, you should NOT respond to the review. Google, if they see you have responded, will assume that the review is legitimate and will ignore future actions you might take. 

Read The Guidelines

Next step is to familiarize yourself with Google Maps’s general user generated content guidelines  as well as the review specific guidelines. 

Where Should You Flag The Review?

Once you have put everything in perspective your next stop should be to report the review to Google by flagging it within your Google My Business Dashboard. You could flag it within Google Maps but Google Maps gets 20 million edits a day and the flag might get lost in the confusion.

Flagging the review in Google My Business is Google’s recommended best practice path and the choice with the highest likelihood of having the review successfully removed.

How to flag a review for removal

Here are the steps to get the review removed:

1. Navigate to business.google.com, login and locate your business
2. Select Reviews from the left hand menu
3. Scroll to the appropriate review and remove any owner response you may have left
4. Click on the 3 dots in the upper right of the review and select “Flag as inappropriate”
5. You will be presented with a dialog box noting that the review must violate Google’s content policy. Click Continue
6. A final dialog box asking what is wrong with this review will be presented. The choices do not match the stated reasons very well so select “Offensive or sexually explicit” and click Report

Because these flagged requests are actively reviewed, there is no need to flag the review multiple times.

Google will email the status of your request

One of the significant advantages of reporting your reviews via the Google My Business Dashboard is that you will receive communication from Google as to the status of the request.

Within a few minutes of the request you will receive an acknowledgement from Google My Business indicating that your request is being assessed.

They note in the email that within 3 days you will have your decision from Google.

It often doesn’t take three days and you will often hear back in as little as several hours.

If You Are Turned Down, What’s Next?

Hopefully, the response back will be positive. But if it isn’t you have several choices for your next steps.

One is to respond to the review and move on. 

If you firmly believe after further examination of the Google content guidelines that the review violates one of the stated terms, you can take your case to the Google My Business Forum. Share the review content there and if one of the Google Product Experts there agrees with your assessment, they can escalate the review for a final look. 

Getting reviews removed for any reason other than the stated violations in the guidelines is unlikely to happen. You need to realize that it doesn’t matter to Google whether the person actually did business with you or not. Google’s only criteria are whether that person had some direct interaction with your business and there was an obvious violation of the above reasons. By obvious, I mean that the review content itself indicates the reality.

While it might not seem totally fair, if the reviews do clearly violate one of the stated guidelines Google will in fact remove them. Regardless, if the review is reported via the GMB Dashboard, Google will inform you within that 3 day time frame of their decision to either remove or leave the review up.

The reasons for a business to implement strict masking hygiene for clients and staff have become increasingly clear. There are moral and ethical reasons; customers, despite some complainers, strongly prefer a rigorously enforced masking policy; and the business case is clear, there is significantly more economic upside to requiring masks with nearly 80% of consumers indicating either the same or a greater willingness to spend with a business that has a strict policy. 

Absent a vaccine for COVID-19 in the short term, there is an increasing likelihood of businesses being in the business of enforcing masking standards. 

As your business moves towards requiring both employees and customers to wear masks we think that listening to the voice of customers and avoiding some obvious pitfalls can make for a more successful transition to customer safety and comfort. But there are mistakes that can be made along that path and understanding what they are can make the transition easier.

8X The Negative Reviews

In my initial research looking at over 40,000 reviews at 9 different companies/sectors, it became obvious that the vast majority of complaints revolved around businesses either not implementing adequate mask requirements for customers and employees or not enforcing them adequately when they did. Over 99% of the complaints about masking fell into that category.

But I was curious why a business like HomeDepot would have 8 times the complaints per location as Walmart. That lead me to research Menards. a chain of home improvement stores with over 350 locations mainly in the midwest, as a possible point of comparison to Home Depot.

Menards had EIGHT TIMES as many complaints as Home Depot. What was going on?

In researching Menards reviews and the policies they reflected, there are lessons to be learned that can smooth any business’s path in this complicated environment.

Where Things Went Wrong

Initially, I suspected that this 8x increase in masking complaints was largely precipitated by Menards early implementation of a strict masking policy for customers on May 4th, 2020. Costco, another early business to to require masks of customers and employees only saw a 2X increase in mask complaints during that period.

Both Costco and Menards were open during the whole period when many other non-essential businesses were forced to close and both started requiring masks at the same time. 

During the April 11th through July 11th span that we examined, 24% of Menard’s 10,418 reviews were 1 and 2 star reviews .  While during the same period, Costco saw 14,127 reviews of which only 7% were negative during the same period. 

Menards saw their 90-day review average drop to 3.7 stars from their historical average of 4.2. The rating drop is large in itself and equally important is that it dropped below the critical range that consumers trust, below a 4.0 rating.

Costco, on the other hand, dropped from 4.6 to 4.5 during the same period. This one point drop is consistent with the drop we saw in most national brands in our earlier research on customer attitudes to covid hygiene.

You can see in the Menards review aggregate summary that overall review ratings dropped across the board.

Pre-Covid Reviews

Post-Covid Reviews

A quick search of the Menards’ review corpus indicated that they had managed to get almost 5x as many mask related complaints as Costco. Menards suffered many of the same complaints about hypocrisy and even enforcement that I had seen in my earlier analysis of Home Depot, Walmart and Dominoes. They were however, in addition, also receiving a significant number of anti-mask complaints as well as complaints on many other fronts.

To start the investigation into understanding the details of the reputation hit, we explored their historical Insights report in GatherUp. This report provides sentiment analysis around the verbiage in their reviews as opposed to the ratings. It provides specific topical trends of what consumers liked and disliked about the company based on language sentiment.

Menards, as a brand and one that offers very low prices and rebates, historically has been well received in their market. Folks appreciated their prices, deals, and staff. Prior to COVID, even the negative sentiments did not drop to basement bottom levels.

But a quick look at the sentiment of their review corpus for the 90 day period from April 11th until July 11th indicated that masking certainly was playing a large role in their review score decline.

But Menards Insights report showed that the top 10 sentiments surfaced by our natural language processing were all negative, something I had never before seen. Even the brand sentiment had dropped and it became clear to us that problems went beyond just the masking issue.

1-star Google review from Alex F.
“Don’t bother going here.  Associates not required to wear masks but customers are required?  Several associates, including Jake, either not wearing a mask or wearing it improperly.  Wanted a grill, ordered off of Amazon cheaper and with less hypocrisy. Sign not posted very well, associates very confrontational.  Nobody practicing “social distancing”  Please close this store if you are afraid of the virus!I’ll never come back, congrats!PS go to Lowe’s, no mask rule there.”

While the mask requirement was having an impact on both Menards and Costco, clearly something beyond inconsistent enforcement and the act of requiring masks were having large impacts for Menards.  Why was Menards an outlier that had moved so far beyond both Home Depot AND Costco in terms of generating negative reviews?

We embarked on a two pronged approach to understanding the Menards situation; examining their reviews globally and individually AND running a large scale national consumer survey to help us understand how much of the Menard’s story was demographically related. 

Menards home improvement super stores are focused in the midwest but stretch from West Virginia to Wyoming and from the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Wisconsin to Kentucky. Their target demographic is lower middle income men in the DIY category in the 35 to 45 age range. 

That demographic certainly put Menards at a disadvantage. In our survey of consumer attitudes towards masking and its impact on spending we found that men, people under 45 and folks from the Midwest were all more likely to stop doing business or spend less with a business that strictly enforced masking. And in Menards case, of their 842 mask complaints 76% were written by men*.

Unlike my previous sample of reviews from leading US Brands, almost 3% of all Menards’ reviews left during the period were rabidly anti-mask. And some of them were real “corkers”:

1-star Google review from Rob V.
“Chinese Communist store making people buy Chinese masks for a dollar, otherwise are not allowed to shop inside.“

1-star Google review from Phillip J.
“I was denied service because I wouldn’t wear their socialist mask.  I will never ever shop at Menards ever again.“

But the fact that Menards was seeing 5 times as many mask complaints and 3.5 as many more complaints over all than Costco pointed to the fact that more was going on than could be predicted by the 6-10% differences in their demographic profiles. And an analysis of their reviews helped me understand the other issues at play. 

I started reading the reviews that came in during the post covid period of April 11th to July 11th and certain issues beyond simple masking became obvious.

Based on the reviews I was reading, I used GatherUp to identify, via our “auto-tag” feature, reviews around the topics of children being banned from the store, rude employees, health issues related to masking and finally their policy to require a mask purchase if you didn’t have one.

All of these tags, each representing a potential issue for Menards, seem to pile in on top of the mask complaints.  And all fell not just into negative territory but to the lowest levels of sentiment, well below their review average for the period and well below the general sentiment. We had found our answers. Let’s share some examples.

A Failure To Communicate

When implementing a policy like requiring masks a company needs to over-communicate. They need to relay the expectations and obligations of all involved. Menards did not seem to properly communicate the new policy.

1-star Google review from April H.
“We are new to Nebraska and are buying a home. We needed a new washer and dryer etc for the home. A work colleague suggested that we try Menards first bc they usually are cheaper.  We went last Friday just to check it out and get almost past the desk past the doors and a worker yelled very loudly at us and everyone stopped and looked at us. Saying “Do you not have a mask?” I say No do we need one? And they say yes. So we just turned around and left. Outside the doors, I stopped and looked all over and there are NO Sign anywhere posted saying you’re required to wear a mask. We also looked all over the front of the building still nothing!! There was absolutely no need to be rude and hateful and yell and embarrass us in front of everyone. We don’t mind wearing a mask. Thats not the issue. But we can’t be psychic that one is required if it’s not posted.“

Selling Masks Is A No Sale For Reputation

Unlike Costco, which initially gave away free masks, Menards insisted on charging $1 for a mask. Making a mask available at a low price is not a terrible thing in itself but the act was seen as profiting off suffering and its immediate implementation did not give consumers time to understand the new rules. During times of crisis and stress absorbing the cost of the mask is a cheap way to be perceived as gracious and understood as willing to educate. Charging for it, had the opposite affect:

2-Star Google review from Alicia R.
“I love this store, however they currently want to require you to wear a mask, which is not really my issue…..they want you to purchase it. Im walking in to spend well over $1000 today for a company I work for…..not even for myself….. and you want me to buy a mask? What great customer service. I wonder how much money they’re making off of this pandemic. Not cool menards….“

1-star Google review from Ricky R.
“They could put it on their website that you have to wear a mask there. Drove clear to lancaster  to find out i couldn’t get in without one. I thought they would give me one NO they will sell you one. Another way for them to make money thats ok i went to lowes and spent my $ 700.oo  Didn’t get treated like I have a disease there.”

The Problems With Front Line Staff Being Enforcers

Consistently and with a common voice, consumers felt that the front line employees were rude and heavy handed. Unlike Costco where mask issues were quickly delegated to better trained staff, it appears that Menards expected minimum wage staff to both educate and enforce around their new masking requirements. This is expecting a lot and given the intense stress of the moment more than they should or could handle. 

I spoke with one customer who attempted to go into Menards, having forgotten their mask and he was physically shoved back out of the store. Here is what he told me:

“I went to Menards during the quarantine to pick up an air filter. When I got out of the car, I saw that there was a sign stating no kids were allowed in the store. I was alone, so I went towards the front door. “

“I was met by an employee who asked if I had a face mask, I said No but stated that I would buy one in the store… She stated that I couldn’t come into the store, told me I had to leave, she grabbed my shoulders and she physically turned me around.“

“The whole thing caught me off-guard. I didn’t expect that kind of reaction, and I certainly wasn’t happy about the way she treated me. So I left and got what I needed from Home Depot. I’m not a regular at Menards. That said, no other business treated me this way during the quarantine.“

We saw similar sentiment, time and again in the Menard’s reviews:

1-star Google review from Jim B.
“Went to Menards on Fathers Day. Security at the door was very rude. Rudely told us we could not enter the store without masks and we can buy one if we wanted to enter the store. Went back to our vehicle and got the masks. Went back into the store and said we now have masks on. He then mumbled something under his breath. We asked him what he said and he told us if we didn’t want to wear a mask we should go to another store.  Told management and the guy acted as if he didn’t want to hear it. All I can say is that we will be doing our shopping at Home Depot and or Lowes.“

Too Many Policy Changes at Once

It is not clear the logic, perhaps it was safety and perhaps it was to minimize shopper density but in the same timeframe Menards prohibited children under 16 from entering the store at all. With kids at home due to school closings and some shoppers being single parents, this presented a huge issue that managed to offend a large number of customers.  

1-star Google review from Cassie B.
“My daughter and I went into menards both wearing masks and then we’re rudely kicked out of being yelled at for my daughter not being 16. So concerned with safety yet ok leaving children alone in cars. Not returning. Lowe’s has now has a new customer.“

1-star Google review From Nicole L.
“During Covid-19 I went there to fix my toilet with my daughter and was told no kids allowed. We had our face masks on and planned to run in and out. I’m a single parent, to fix my toilet I had to leave my 9 year old little girl in the car. Unacceptable. I couldn’t believe it.“

Rules Are For Fools (at least some times)

Rules make all sorts of sense as a way to get consistent behavior across a large number of employees and locations. But a business needs to understand that while generally useful, their rigid and unforgiving enforcement particularly in the face of health related issues can be construed as overbearing and inappropriate. It may even be illegal in certain circumstances. In NY State, for example, those with health conditions that prevent a mask from being worn, are exempted from the mask wearing rule when entering a store. 

1-star Google review from Wendy A.
“Today I was rudely told to leave the store in front of other customers by 4/5 people and one of them ran from behind the return desk got in my face told me to leave because I did not have a mask on. I told her that I cannot wear a mask because of medical reasons and I did not have to tell them why because of the HIPA law. She continued the raise her voice at me and I asked her to shut up. She followed me and told me she did not have to shut up. “ 

1-star Google review from Johny R.
“Very disappointed that I was asked to wear a mask even though I have a medical condition which prevents me from wearing a mask. Therefore I was not allowed entry into the store I will be following a complaint with ADA. It states in the guidelines that people may be exempt from wearing a mask that has a medical condition but obviously you cannot follow the rules.“

What Can We Learn From This Mask Mess?

Menards made several tactical errors in their implementation that are instructive and led to a literal pile on in their reviews. While this article centers on mask requirements, it’s easy to see these missteps applying to any policy or experience change for a business.

• Too many policy changes at once
• Poor communication around these policy changes
• Heavy-handed and ill-conceived enforcement
• Initially requiring an additional mask purchase
• Disregarding the legitimate health issues of some customers

We have the benefit of hindsight on what must have been a very stressful situation for Menards and their employees. Clearly it was for their customers as well.

But here are some ideas for your own plan:

• These changes are hard for people, communicate early and communicate them often
• Provide some sort of transitional educational period like Costco where you offer free masks
• Be a little flexible and recognize that a few customers legitimately can’t wear a mask
• Make accommodation for parents with children that is not so onerous
• Put in place a plan to monitor customer sentiment and respond quickly before things get out of hand

Where Do We Go From Here?

Clearly the question of masking has become a flash point. But as Menards and Costco established a path, we can watch and learn from what they have done. We think that it is only a matter of time before most businesses and governments require masking in public spaces.

1-star Google review from Blake S.
“Requiring people to wear masks or they’re not allowed to enter your store sounds like a communist country to me.  You just lost a customer for life. Well good think Home Depot is next door.“

Many Menards shoppers threatened to take their business elsewhere. Meanwhile Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Home Depot and Kohl’s are all now requiring, not just requesting, that customers wear masks. While enforcement is still erratic they are helping prepare customers for a broader and more consistent requirement.

As the pandemic persists, and more and more business enforce masking, I believe that some of the anti-maskers will come to realize that if they want to buy something, they will have to wear a mask. As Covid spreads they will hopefully realize that wearing a mask isn’t a communist plot, but rather a communal effort to protect your neighbor. 

As a country we are slowly lurching toward a social solution to a physical problem. We are experiencing pains and embarrassment along the way as we each come to the conclusion about masking in our own time.

Unless a vaccine happens tomorrow then there seems to me a certain inevitability to masking. It took almost 10 years for seat belts to become mandatory in every state. It was messy and slow. We are seeing the social agreement around masking, in all of its messiness, taking place before our eyes, in a matter of months. 

And given the nature of federal behavior on this issue, responsibility for enforcement will fall to business. If that turns out to be the case, it makes more sense for businesses to make this move smartly and avoid some obvious pitfalls.

————————

A note on methodology: To answer these questions and hopefully a few more, we brought 100 Menards locations from around the Midwest and an equal number of Costco locations spread around the United States into GatherUp. We loaded all previous reviews but paid special attention to the reviews provided during the April 11 – July 11 timeframe as they compared to prior periods. Like in our previous study, we ignored reviews in the 3/11 through 4/11 timeframe to minimize the impact of the early covid days.

*This is a very cool API that can be integrated with Google sheets to analyze likely gender by name. You only get 500 free and then you will need a plan for more.

* This is a rhetorical question to which there is no good answer. 🙂

Review Rating Drop In Major Brands

We took a look at Google ratings for these five brands: Home Depot, Menards, Costco, Walmart and Dominos. When comparing a pre-Covid 90 day period to a post-Covid 90 day period the brands we examined experienced a loss in their average review rating. Home Depot took the biggest loss dropping 0.3 while Walmart, Costco and domino’s dropped 0.1 in this timeframe. But Menards suffered the dreaded drop from a 4.0 to a rating beginning with a 3, a line you really don’t want to cross.

While most of the complaints in negative reviews revolved around the lack of consistent Coronavirus hygiene, not all of them did and the complaints from anti-maskers can be worse in some situations than others.

Consumer Survey On Businesses Requiring Masks

This raised the question of establishing a baseline for consumer attitudes towards masking. As our society moves towards widespread use of masks what impact would requiring masks for customers have on business? Would already distressed sales become more or less difficult as businesses took the lead on the question of mandatory masks? Are consumers more or less likely to support the decision by businesses to require masks?

While our earlier review research indicated that the vast majority of reviewers wanted businesses to provide stricter Covid hygiene, we wanted to understand exactly what that meant and what percentage of consumers overall might think masks are ill-conceived. We conducted two recently finished surveys that ask the question:

While the picture drawn is not as rosy as seen in our previous analysis of 40,000 reviews, 55% of shoppers indicate that they are more likely to do shop with businesses that have stricter mask hygiene. Another 27% indicated that stricter masking requirements would not impact their willingness to do business. Only 18.6% are less likely or unwilling to do business with firms that enforce masking.

Despite high visibility in the press, those that seem vehemently opposed to masks are a small minority and it would appear that over 80% of US adults are either more likely or equally likely to do business if the business enforces stronger masking criteria.

While they are a small minority, they do leave reviews in political (?) opposition to companies that require masks.

A Larger Survey Shows The Difference

When consumers were forced to choose between the options of doing more or less business the difference is more obvious. In this survey of 2,500 adult US internet users, respondents were offered More, Less as fixed choices and Other as an open-ended option. Roughly 80% indicated that they would be either more likely for them to do business or that it would have no effect if the business enforced stricter masking standards.

Feelings On Masks And Business Vary By Gender, Age & Region

We did see some interesting regional, age and gender differences in the responses.

Gender

Men more frequently answered that they were less likely to do business with companies that had strict mask enforcement by a 7% difference, although a majority of men were still more likely to do more business with companies that were stricter.

Age

Understandbly, due to higher risks, folks over 45 are more likely to do business with businesses that strictly enforced masks for employees and customers than those under 45. Again though the large majority of 18 to 44-year-old shoppers desire stricter standards at just 6% behind the 45 and up age group.

Region

The survey also surfaced distinct differences between regions of the United States. Not surprisingly, the Northeast was quite a bit more likely to do business if strict masking protocols were followed at 80.6%, while the Midwest was the lowest region at 68.4%.

One can reasonably guess that the impact of Covid-19 in the Northeast early on in the pandemic (notably New York City) is responsible for this.

What Does It Mean For Businesses And Their Reviews?

We think that there is a certain inevitability of businesses requiring that mask be worn by both employees AND customers. The moral, legal and consumer attitudes all point in that direction.

The early adopters of strict masking did suffer some arrows. Menards* and Costco both started requiring that masks be worn by all in early May. While the nature of their reviews might be different they suffered no more of a reputation loss than companies that had not required masks.

Walmart and a number of other large chains have recently started requiring that masks be worn and many of these larger businesses have asked that the governments step in and set clear standards requiring masks of all.

What Should A Business Do Regarding Masks?

As the larger businesses pave the paths, if the government has still not acted, smaller businesses will have to also start enforcing masking more broadly. There may be a few insults hurled their way but in the end most customers will appreciate the clear and unambiguous standards of masks for all.

In our last piece, we noted that you should head the voice of the customer and start implementing more rigorous masking.

Now we are saying that you need to “play the odds” and go all in on requiring masks for both employees and customers. If 71% of customers indicate that they will do more business with you, then that is the group you should be catering to. Obviously the question is larger than the plusses and minuses of a financial ledger but if you need one more reason, then the business case is clear.

Unfortunately, there is very little middle ground in this pandemic and by committing to a forceful, full on mask policy going forward you will be maximizing your chance to keep and attract more customers.

——-

*Note that even the headline seems biased against Menards’ corporate decision to require customers to wear masks in early May

We recently came across a client of GatherUp who leveraged our feature set to discover they had an issue with the consistency of their staff using masks, gloves, and social distancing contrary to their customer’s expectations. It was resulting in low review ratings, disappointment and most importantly customers feeling unsafe.

The business where this took place is a ~100 location fast-casual restaurant franchise. We’ve opted not to name them but they did share some of their insight and comments about what took place to help other businesses understand how they discovered and solved their issues using GatherUp.

Net Promoter Score – The Canary In The Coal Mine

The first tip-off came when their Net Promoter Score (NPS) went down 11 points during the start of COVID-19. This change, in a usually steady NPS rating, caused the team to start looking into the “why.”

“We noticed a dip in our NPS score by a few points during COVID and we wanted to get to the bottom of the issue. We had seen a lot of reviews coming in mentioning staff members not wearing masks (the local mandate was not requiring masks at this point) and we had our suspicions that these reviews were dragging us down,” shared their team.

Tracking And Reporting On Your Review Content

After forming a quick hypothesis that masks and other Coronavirus hygiene guidelines might be an issue the team took action to use other GatherUp features to dig deeper and analyze their reviews for what was happening.

Step one was to create an Auto-tag for the keywords of masks and gloves to isolate these terms for tracking and analysis. The Auto-tag feature allowed them to create a list of keywords that GatherUp automatically detected and then tagged those reviews that matched the criteria so that they could track their occurrences.

Step two was to use the Insights Report powered by IBM Watson to understand the impact this was having on the customer experience.

The team stated “After setting up a ‘Mask’ tag we used the Insights Report on GatherUp to see where those reviews fell on the spectrum when compared to other KPI tags. Turns out, our “Mask” tag fell right next to our “Bad Service” tag (tracking the keywords: angry, bad, bad service, mad, rude, terrible, unhappy) – not good! This was one of the deciding factors in issuing a policy for all stores nationwide to wear masks.” 

Below is the Impact Chart from their GatherUp Insights Report outlining that reviews mentioning “masks” or “gloves” showed up in 234 reviews and those reviews averaged a 3.0 rating. As they shared, only the tag “Bad service” has a lower average with a 2.8 rating in 357 reviews. Both of these are well below the brand’s average review rating of 4.6, dragging down their reputation.

We also wanted to share some insight into how this client acquired this extremely valuable customer experience data.

182 of the 234 reviews receiving the “mask” tag were 1st-party reviews. Just 52 were 3rd-party reviews on Google, Facebook, and Yelp. This accentuates a point we often raise that 1st-party reviews are the real key to listening to your customers. Without the volume of 1st-party reviews and NPS as the first signal, this business’s learning would have been much slower or they possibly might not even been aware that this was a big issue. You can’t risk that.

For the well run business, reviews are the end point of the customer path deriving from multiple entry points that are both proactive and passive. Leading the way as an entry point was their website that uses our feedback locator. Customers, in their frustration, felt the need to seek out how to talk to the business directly to be heard. Without that channel, they might have gone straight to Google or Facebook to share their concerns and causing increased damage to their online reputation.

These three points are key and core:

1. Listening to your customers is more important than where they post it.
2. Make talking to your business easy. Proactively ask for feedback and make it simple for customers to find how they can talk to you.
3. Read #1 and #2 again until you fully accomplish this.

Taking Action Thanks To Data

This quick case study outlines the importance to have the right tools to turn hunches into data and then into action. By leveraging Net Promoter Score, review monitoring, auto-tagging, and reporting this business was able to quickly identify and take action to correct an issue.

These quick cycles of listen, learn and adapt have been key for so many GatherUp clients during the pandemic.

“During COVID we had to react quickly to what was happening in the restaurant world. How can we make the experience better for guests who are still coming in and supporting us? Is there something holding them back from visiting that we were missing? The ability to tag and filter all reviews from different platforms and get a quick snapshot of where guest sentiment is trending is very valuable” shared their team.

As the client so aptly noted: “Information is power, and in a few minutes you can see what your guests are saying about you and use that feedback to generate positive change.” .

We agree and love seeing our platform help turn losses into wins.

In related reputation management news, Google paused publishing new reviews on March 20th. It is likely Google will be publishing the reviews received during this time at a later date. In the meantime there are other places you might want to consider listening.

More consumers than ever are flocking to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to share their thoughts, ideas and yes, sentiment about local businesses.

Know What Your Customer Thinks

What your customer thinks is more important than where they post it. You need to be tracking that sentiment whether it’s from a review site like Google or to you directly in a 1st-party review or customer feedback.

Regardless of whether you are accepting customers or not at the moment, you should use review monitoring to listen to every site possible and to everything that is being said.

GatherUp’s Pro plan allows you to monitor up to 10 review sites, Facebook recommendations and Twitter for keywords. You can also use our fellow Traject company social media tool Traject Social to listen and post on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Now is the time to add monitoring for all the review sites beyond Google where folks are talking like Facebook, Yelp, BBB, vertical review sites in your technological industry. Many times these sites pick up the extremes of consumer feelings and what they’re looking for, for example if they are into technology, then they’ll most likely be reading boss laser reviews.

For those businesses that are still active, asking your customers directly (a 1st-party review) is more essential than ever. You will find that asking your customers straight up for direct feedback will uncover thoughts, ideas and sentiments that users didn’t feel comfortable sharing publicly. You will discover that these 1st-party direct reviews tend to be more balanced across the spectrum and often provide more valuable feedback to your business.

Bring Your Reviews Into One View

Within hours, you can be getting all of your reviews from across the web into one single dashboard that can be an incredible management tool. You will be able to see the aggregate ratings of your business locations across multiple sites and multiple locations.

With this data in one spot you can take the 10,000-foot view or you can drill down to an individual location, groups of locations or even specific services (using our auto-tagging feature).

At the highest level we have seen restaurants use GatherUp to quickly spot any reports of illness or poor food prep to identify quality issues or weak points in the delivery of service. We are also seeing businesses track the mention of COVID and Coronavirus in their feedback and reviews.

But at a more granular level you can compare locations or groups of locations to each other to understand why some seem to excel and others seem to languish.

Fortify Your Listening

Whether you are currently working with new customers or not, you should take the time to add additional review sites for monitoring, ask for Facebook Recommendations (and authorize your account with us to reply in GatherUp), add Twitter monitoring and start listening to what your customers are saying wherever they are speaking.

There is a future and it will be populated with businesses that listen to their customers.