Uncategorized – GatherUp

Dealing with Fake or Malicious Reviews

GatherUp — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 16:59:00 +0000

Malicious and fake reviews are more and more common these days. It’s estimated that about 4% of all online reviews are fake, and they can have a real economic impact — influencing around $791 billion annually on e-commerce spending in the U.S. alone.

On a local level, malicious and fake reviews can do real reputational harm and create a disconcerting fog around the legitimacy of a business. Consumers themselves are becoming much savvier at identifying fake reviews, and 71% say they’ll stop visiting a business if they find out it has fake or compensated online reviews. Just another reason you should NEVER buy reviews.

It’s within this ecosystem that local businesses — while trying to legitimately get Google reviews and other quality reviews — have to ensure they’re not accidentally encouraging fraudulent review practices and that they’re dealing appropriately with the reviews that could cause harm.

If your business has had a flurry of malicious or fake reviews lately, or you’re worried about getting your first one, read on for some important information and tips.

Where do fake reviews come from?

Many fake reviews come from review farms that get paid to encourage buyers to purchase a product and leave a 5-star review, after which the buyer gets a full refund — and the star rating of the product or business gets skewed. These groups advertise their services on popular social media sites, attracting unsuspecting businesses that think they’re engaging with a marketing firm.

Other groups use bots to auto-generate large numbers of malicious or fake reviews that look like they come from real people.

Fake reviews can also come from actual disgruntled individuals — sometimes a past employee with a bone to pick or a former customer who had a negative experience at one point and is out to smear the business.

Businesses themselves can influence reviews in a misleading way, even if that’s not their intention. For example, offering incentives is a valid way to encourage customers to leave any type of review — if growing the volume of reviews is the goal. But what can happen is that when a customer gets rewarded for writing a review, they may feel the need to write a positive one, even if they didn’t have a particularly positive experience.

If you offer incentives for reviews, it’s extremely important to be upfront with the customer that they’re under no obligation to leave a positive review, and that you sincerely want their honest feedback.

How to identify a fake review

If you suspect you’re getting fake reviews, here’s how you can more accurately identify them:

Closely read the review’s content: Watch out for brief, overly enthusiastic reviews that don’t provide any concrete details about the product or service. Also, if the review clearly isn’t about your business — i.e., it attributes products or services to your company that you don’t sell, or it mentions other “facts” about your business that are verifiably untrue — the review is probably fake.
Consider the writing style: Bots or overseas review farms often show their hand by using words, phrases, and grammar that aren’t typical of English speakers in the U.S. If anything seems off with certain words or phrases, take note.
Check out the user’s image: Doing a reverse search of the user’s image can show you if the headshot is a stock image or otherwise comes from a source that has nothing to do with your industry, business, or typical customers. Bots often scrape headshots of random people they find on the internet.
Look up the user’s name: Search the user’s name to see if you can find a local match, which indicates the person could be a real customer. If your search doesn’t turn up anything, or if the user is associated with a social media account that doesn’t appear to be real, this is a red flag. You can also check to see if the user has a history of posting negative reviews about other businesses or if they use the same language over and over again in multiple reviews — which suggests the work of bots.
Notice the time span: Getting a whole bunch of reviews all at once is a sign that the reviews are probably coming from bots as well, which auto-generate tons of reviews and then spam review sites or business sites with them.

It’s important to understand that fake reviews can be either positive or negative. But it might be tempting to think that all negative reviews must be fake. Sure, disgruntled people or brazen competitors can leave malicious reviews on purpose to hurt your business too. We’ll discuss what you can do about that in greater detail below.

But sometimes a negative review is just a negative review. Be careful not to automatically associate “negative” with “fake” as it can lead you to ignore legitimate complaints and problems that need attention.

How to respond to malicious or fake reviews

Let’s be honest: negative reviews — especially the truly scathing ones — feel awful. But there’s a difference between a customer who’s really ticked off and wants the world to know, and someone who is trying to maliciously defame your business by saying something false about it with the express intent of causing harm.

In the first case, there’s not a lot you can do. The Consumer Review Fairness Act prevents businesses from taking legal action against customers who leave bad reviews. And you wouldn’t want to do that anyway, for the reasons we discussed above. Sometimes a bad review can be a blessing in disguise by drawing attention to an issue that urgently needs to be addressed.

The much better option is to reply to the review (with one caveat we’ll point out below). We always fall on the side of responding to every review — good, bad, or neutral — since it makes your business more credible and trustworthy and shows customers that you care about what they think.

But there may be a rare occasion when replying to a particularly negative review just ends up throwing gasoline on the fire and threatens escalation. If that happens, use your best judgment. If you feel the user isn’t open to your efforts to apologize, correct the situation, or otherwise engage with them, then leave it alone or offer to continue the discussion offline. Be courteous and helpful — don’t be rude or defensive — but also be cautious about engaging in a public back-and-forth that could cast further negative light on your business.

In the second case, if you think someone is truly defaming your business, use the following criteria to determine if libel (the written form of defamation) has occurred:

A statement in the review is provably false; for example: the user accuses your business of charging them twice for a service.
The statement is written as a fact, not an opinion or a criticism.
The statement is published publicly — e.g., on a review site or your business site.

If the review appears to be libelous, you can potentially sue for defamation. But you’ll need to get legal advice about your particular complaint and who it is — whether it’s a business entity or an individual — that you can actually sue, which can sometimes be a murky question in a bot-filled world.

Legal action aside, what if you simply want to remove a review?

How to remove malicious or fake reviews

Removing a review isn’t a matter of snapping your fingers. And remember that most review sites don’t allow you to remove reviews you just don’t like.

That being said, review removal is possible and even necessary in some cases. Google and other popular review sites have specific rules around when reviews can be removed. Let’s take Google’s rules as a starting point.

Google says you can remove a review if it violates any of their prohibited or restricted content, which includes:

Civil discourse that includes harassment, hate speech, offensive content, and personal information
Deceptive content that includes fake engagement, impersonation, misinformation, and misrepresentation
Mature content that includes obscenity and profanity, sexually explicit content, adult-themed content, and violence and gore
Regulated, dangerous, and illegal content that includes restricted and dangerous content, illegal content, child safety considerations, and terrorist content
Off-topic content that impacts the Information quality such as advertising and solicitation, and gibberish and repetitive content

To report or remove a review that falls within Google’s prohibited or restricted content:

Find your business profile on Google
Click Reviews
Find the review you want to report
Click More > Report review

You can also do this from Google Maps:

In the Google Maps app, click your profile picture or initial at top right to open your Business Profile
Click Reviews
Find the review or user you want to report
Click More > Report review
Or click the name of the user, then click More > Report profile

Another popular review site is Facebook, which also has rules, or “community standards,” about content that can be removed. These include content that:

Deals in violence and criminal behavior
Puts the safety of users at risk
Qualifies as objectionable, such as hate speech, graphic violence, and sexual solicitation
Doesn’t meet integrity and authenticity standards

To report or remove a review that doesn’t meet Facebook’s community standards, you can:

Click “Reviews” underneath your business page’s cover photo
Click “…” in the top right corner of the review you want to report
Select “Report review”
Select the category of why it violates community standards
Follow the rest of the instructions you see on-screen

How to reduce or avoid malicious or fake reviews

Many review platforms — including the big ones outside of Google like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Trustpilot, and even Amazon — are acutely aware of the need to fight fraudulent reviews. While they begin to beef up their own practices for combating the problem, there are steps you can take as a business to avoid or at least reduce problematic reviews too — and some of them you may already be doing:

Lead with transparency: Let your customers know how and from whom you collect reviews and whether you offer incentives. Consider adding a badge or some sort of indicator to reviews that come from verified customers.
Monitor your reviews across the internet: Set up Google alerts so you know whenever a review gets posted somewhere about your business. That way you can identify fake reviews much faster and take action.
Flag fake reviews ASAP: Though it can take time to report a review and hopefully get it removed, it’s still important to flag malicious or fake reviews right away and get the process going. There’s no guarantee the platform will remove a review, but it never hurts to ask and be persistent.
Provide a great customer experience: When your customers are happy, they’re naturally going to leave positive reviews and assign high star ratings. Genuine positive reviews from real customers can help tamp down the noise of any fake reviews that slip through.

Get more genuine reviews with GatherUp

Building a body of quality reviews from verified customers is an important way to boost your local business in search rankings, increase conversions, and enhance your online reputation. And while getting a negative review here and there is common, getting positive reviews is what everyone is after. Just make sure the reviews are legit!

With GatherUp, you can automatically request reviews from your customers, so you can build up positivity in a genuine way. GatherUp also helps you:

Manage and monitor reviews across Google and other third-party sites with alerts so you know what your customers are saying about you and can respond right away
Reply to reviews more easily with AI-generated responses
Turn customer feedback into valuable insights that help you improve the customer experience

To learn more about how GatherUp can support a trustworthy review strategy, contact us today to schedule a demo.

6 Best Industries for SMS Marketing

GatherUp — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 18:23:50 +0000

Though SMS has a wide variety of applications, there are particular industries in which SMS can really shine. Though we share just some of the best industries for SMS marketing to connect with customers and leads, we argue that every business can benefit from it.

Local businesses operate in a highly competitive world. As such, you want new leads and existing customers alike to recognize that your business is responsive, understands their needs and concerns, and is committed to providing a superior customer experience. How you communicate that to them makes an important difference to business growth and maintaining a competitive advantage.

SMS marketing — or text message marketing — is an effective way to reach and engage with customers. The immediacy and relevancy of texting get right to the heart of how so many people prefer to interact and communicate with businesses today.

Here are some of the best industries for SMS marketing, including examples!

Home services

Home services businesses — such as roofing, electrical, cleaning, and others — are some of the most competitive in a local area. As a result, it’s one of the best industries for SMS marketing.

Using SMS for your home services business allows you to grow your business even amidst the heavy competition by being as useful, responsive, and friendly as possible. When customers decide to go with your service or another’s, they’re usually looking for quick answers, exact information, and the feeling that you care about earning their business.

With SMS, prospective and existing customers alike can get a sense of how you’ll interact with them in everyday scenarios. And it’s that authentic, helpful, conversational tone that comes across in a text that can be the deciding factor.

You can use SMS to:

Send quotes and estimates
Respond to customer support requests
Offer promotions or discounted services
Confirm and remind customers of appointments
Ask for feedback or reviews

Guide: SMS Marketing for Home Services

Download Now

Healthcare

Healthcare businesses can use SMS just like other businesses to market and advertise. But there’s an important secondary function as well: establishing trust with patients and customers.

One of the biggest advantages to using SMS in healthcare is that it’s such a quick form of communication that doesn’t require a lot of time or effort. This matters when a patient has a concern and needs an answer fast. Waiting for an email or a phone call can feel agonizing, and all too often the patient feels like they’re just a number on a list — someone will get to them eventually.

In contrast, a text can be sent and received quickly, providing a caring touch point and relevant information when the patient really needs it. The personalized, emotional connection created by a text seeds trust and helps patients feel more at ease that they’re not just a nameless, faceless person. Just be sure the texts you send are HIPAA-compliant.

You can use SMS in healthcare to:

Announce promotions or discounts on specific visits and procedures
Ask for patient feedback
Notify patients that lab or test results are ready
Confirm and remind patients of appointments
Provide links to helpful resources and educational materials

A Comprehensive Guide to Texting Patients

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Restaurants and retail

The restaurant and retail industry probably comes to mind first when you think of the best industries for SMS marketing — largely due to the growth in texting that occurred with restaurants through the COVID-19 pandemic.

But both restaurants and retailers have two big goals: keep a consistent customer base and avoid losing revenue however possible.

SMS helps restaurants and retailers engage — and re-engage — with customers and earn more sales. As more consumers shop digitally, they’re also looking for personalized, in-the-moment deals they can use right away. SMS is an excellent way to adapt to these behaviors and give your customers the convenient experience, information, and value they’re looking for.

Reaching customers on their phones, in the exact right moment with the exact right message, can mean the difference between a completed sale or an abandoned cart, a successful in-store promotion or ho-hum results, and/or a customer’s satisfying visit to your restaurant or a missed opportunity.

You can use SMS to:

Remind customers to complete orders
Provide order status updates
Offer deals or discounts at peak shopping or dining times
Announce sales and promotional events
Ask for feedback or reviews
Confirm and remind customers of reservations
Announce product or menu updates

A Guide to Texting Diners and Buyers

Download Now

Real estate

Real estate agents have to move fast and stay flexible as they work with sellers and buyers to get properties listed and sold. Because of this, real estate is the largest user of SMS marketing.

The speed and efficiency of SMS make it an invaluable tool for real estate agents to directly communicate with leads about important information and updates that may otherwise go unnoticed on a website or get missed in an email. This helps build relationships with your leads in which they know they can depend on you to keep them apprised of time-sensitive information that can impact their decision-making.

Just as importantly, because texting has such a wide reach — a single text can be sent on a mass scale to everyone in your contact list — it’s much easier to advertise a new listing. More people can see the ad in real-time and may be inspired to take action right away, helping you close more deals faster.

You can use SMS to:

Send property information
Schedule showings and open houses
Send updates about price changes
Advertise new listings
Follow up after showings

Automotive

Similar to home services, automotive businesses face a lot of competition. You’re challenged with standing out from your competitors and staying engaged with your customers.

Growing your automotive business is easier when you use SMS to support your efforts. You can provide ways for prospects to opt-in to get your texts, then get them in the door by offering discounts or free gifts to them as first-time customers.

At the same time, you can text repeat customers with special offers or invitations to join rewards programs, which can increase customer retention and loyalty. And texting customers about a service that was just completed is a convenient notification method when they’re on the go and don’t want to worry about waiting around for or missing a phone call.

You can use SMS to:

Remind customers of scheduled maintenance
Allow customers to schedule a service
Send discounts and coupons
Alert customers that their car is ready to be picked up
Announce special sales and promotions

Hospitality

Last, but not least, another ideal industry for SMS marketing is the hospitality industry. Hospitality businesses like hotels and tour companies need to cater to guests’ needs and respond to requests on the spot.

SMS marketing is an efficient way to interact with guests quickly, ensure their needs are being met, and help them feel comfortable in your facility or with your hospitality service. Instead of creating and managing a dedicated app for your hotel or service, you can adopt an easy-to-use texting platform to communicate directly with your guests and help them avoid the sometimes time-consuming or annoying steps of having to download and figure out yet another app.

You can also rely on SMS to run promotional campaigns and send special offers to one-time guests that inspire them to become bigger fans of your brand and turn into repeat customers. When they feel special and treated well, they’re more likely to recommend your hotel or service to others — helping to expand your customer base and earn more revenue for your business.

You can use SMS to:

Book, confirm, and manage restaurant reservations
Receive and manage room service orders
Allow customers to book other services like transportation or tours
Ask for reviews on third-party sites like TripAdvisor
Announce special offers and promotions

How GatherUp can help

GatherUp extends the impact of SMS marketing by combining your SMS marketing strategy with your reputation management. With GatherUp, you can gather and listen to customer feedback, then engage with them through strategic SMS campaigns. You can send targeted text campaigns, track performance, and glean valuable insights to drive better customer experiences. Using GatherUp for your SMS marketing needs allows you to:

Easily obtain written explicit consent to build and maintain a compliant SMS subscriber list
Create segmented lists of customers for more personalized communications
Test and schedule messages to improve engagement rates
Use customer feedback and insights to inform your SMS campaign strategy
Incorporate Net Promoter Score data to identify and win back your detractors, thank your promoters, and influence your neutrals

To learn how GatherUp can support an SMS marketing strategy for your local business or agency clients, contact us today.

If you’re just starting out and learning about what SMS marketing is, we’re here to help! Check out all of our resources on the topic below:

Third-Party vs First-Party Data vs Zero-Party Data: Which is Most Valuable?

GatherUp — Thu, 24 Aug 2023 19:13:45 +0000

Data comes in all shapes and sizes. But as we know, not all data is created equal. The source of data is usually what determines its value — this is where the conversation on third-party data versus first-party data versus zero-party data begins.

What is Third-Party Data?

Third-party data refers to information that companies gather from external sources, rather than directly from their consumers. The data encompasses a broader audience then what a business may have access to on its own. Companies often acquire third-party data through marketplaces or exchanges, including data sourced from APIs or third-party cookies (FYI: third-party cookie tracking is going away).

Examples of third-party data:

Demographic Data: Like what you’d obtain from the census
Behavioral Data: Data you’d get from third-party cookies that provide insight into user preferences, browsing history, clicks, and online activity patterns
Psychographic Data: Insights into individuals’ personalities, values, interests, and lifestyle choices obtained from surveys or focus groups
Firmographic Data: Data you buy from a marketplace or source online, such as company information like industry type, size, revenue, and location
Social Media Data: Insights gathered from social media platforms, including user engagement, followers, likes, shares, and comments

Benefits & Drawbacks of Third-Party Data

Third-party data provides businesses with access to a high volume of data, enabling them to pinpoint trends and gain valuable industry insights. Third-party data can provide businesses with the next best alternative if access to internal or competitor data is limited.

However, the problem with third-party data is that it’s not always the most accurate. The way it’s aggregated can result in inconsistencies. Further, third-party data can quickly become outdated if it isn’t real-time or regularly updated due to changes in consumer behavior or external factors.

However third-party data is still useful. Especially when combined with first-party data. It can enrich your understanding and provide additional context for unknown insights.

What is First-Party Data?

First-party data is the information that comes directly from your customers through your resources. This data is typically gathered from sources your organization owns and controls, such as its website, mobile app, email interactions, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and other touchpoints.

Examples of First-Party Data:

Website Analytics: Data collected from website interactions, such as page views, clicks, and time spent on pages.
Purchase Data: Information about consumers’ purchasing behavior (e.g. transaction history, product preferences, and buying frequency) you’d likely buy from a syndicated data source
Surveys and Questionnaires: Responses collected from user surveys and questionnaires designed to gather specific insights.

Benefits & Drawbacks of First-Party Data

First-party data is crucial for creating personalized experiences, optimizing marketing campaigns, and making informed business decisions. It usually doesn’t cost you as much to collect, and is more reliable since it’s coming from your systems — you know where the data is originating.

Overall, first-party data is valuable because it offers insights into the behavior, preferences, and characteristics of your customers. However, it has its limitations:

This data can be incomplete or biased: It provides insights solely from existing customers or users, potentially leading to a skewed understanding of the broader target audience. Additionally, first-party data’s accuracy can be compromised due to inconsistent engagements, seasonality, and subjectivity.
It comes with privacy concerns: Handling first-party data entails privacy concerns and regulatory responsibilities, requiring resources for compliance efforts.

To address some of these limitations, businesses often supplement first-party data with other sources — third-party data. Using both forms of data helps mitigate biases, provides a more holistic view, and can overcome the limitations of each type. By incorporating third-party and zero-party data, organizations can enhance their customer insights and make better-informed strategic decisions.

Zero-party data takes things a step further.

What is Zero-Party Data?

Zero-party data is information that consumers explicitly share with a business. In other words, they’re offering it up of their own volition. Unlike first-party data, which is collected through user interactions and behaviors, zero-party data is provided directly by the individuals themselves, sometimes in exchange for personalized experiences, offers, or other benefits. This type of data can include preferences, interests, opinions, and other details that individuals willingly disclose to a business.

The best example of zero-party data is feedback and reviews. The comments, ratings, and feedback provided by customers on products, services, or an experience is a prime example of zero-party data.

Benefits & Drawbacks of Zero-Party Data (Why it’s Most Valuable)

Zero-party data is typically more accurate and reliable than even first-party data because it comes directly from the source and customers are actively involved in sharing the information they feel is relevant and valuable to them. In other words, zero-party data is the least biased.

With first-party data like surveys, depending on how you ask a question and when can lead to biased answers. And unless customers are offering up information, sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know. For example, you could ask customers what options they prefer in a survey, including what you think is an exhaustive list — but with zero-party data, you don’t have to guess, you’ll know.

Zero-party data is highly valuable to businesses as it enables them to create more meaningful and relevant interactions with their customers. When used appropriately and transparently, zero-party data can foster stronger customer relationships, enhance personalization, and improve the overall customer experience. However, businesses must ensure that individuals know how their data will be used and provide clear value in return for sharing this information.

As a result, the biggest drawback to using zero-party data is following privacy laws and compliance requirements when it comes to actually using this data.

How to Leverage Zero-Party Data — With GatherUp

Organizations that are leveraging all forms of data from third-party to first-party to zero-party data will be able to gather the most relevant insights for strategic decision-making. But as the world continues to evolve when it comes to technology and information sharing, zero-party data will become the most critical.

With third-party cookie tracking going away, and new privacy concerns and regulatory laws cropping up, businesses face more challenges trying to track and understand consumer behavior. This is where being able to ethically and legally source zero-party data will become a competitive advantage.

GatherUp is already sitting on mountains of zero-party data.

We make it easy for you to automatically gather zero-party data from customer reviews and feedback and engage with your customers in meaningful — compliant — ways. Schedule a demo with one of our product experts to learn more!

3 Tips to Get Reviews as a New Business

GatherUp — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 16:09:54 +0000

Customer reviews are at the heart of building up your customer base and enhancing your business reputation. But it’s not just a matter of sitting back and hoping that reviews materialize. It takes a little effort upfront to get the review flow going, but once you do, you’ll be rewarded for it later. Here’s how to start getting customer reviews as a new business.

1. Set up a Google Business Profile

If you don’t have a Google account yet, create one using your business email domain. Then follow the steps here to set up and verify your Google Business Profile.

Make sure to include your hours, contact information, website, location, and a few pictures of your actual business. Then, most importantly, verify your profile – verified businesses on Google are twice as likely to be considered reputable.

Keep in mind you only need one Business Profile for the metropolitan area your business serves. Google could suspend your account if it finds more than one profile for your business in the same area.

As you may learn, there is a lot that goes into a Google Business Profile. It isn’t something you set and forget. You should be constantly updating and managing it. To learn more about how to optimize your Google Business Profile, watch our on-demand webinar that covers how to do so in depth.

2. Ask customers for reviews

There are many ways to ask customers for reviews. Some of the most common are via:

Email:

Email remains the most popular way to ask for reviews.
Make sure to collect customer emails during the purchase or billing process so you can follow up with a review request.
Send an email with a quick survey, or provide a link where customers can write a review.

Website:

Include a prominent request for reviews on your business’s website so that any visitor can see it and follow up.
Make it as easy as possible by linking over to your Google Business Profile page where the customer can quickly write a review and post it – here’s how to get that link.

Text message (SMS):

The use of text messages to ask for reviews is on the rise.
Treat it like an email request by including a quick link for the customer to click on.
Some extra steps are required to get permission to communicate with customers via text, so it may not always make sense to reach out this way.

Social media:

Request reviews on the social media platforms where your business has a presence—such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.
Start by asking an informal question about your business, products, services, or the customer experience, and use the responses you get to tap specific customers for a review.

In-store signage and paper:

Display signs, banners, or brochures in-store (if you have a physical location) that share information about how customers can leave a review—or at the bottom of a receipt or invoice. Use a QR code to make the process easier.
Verbally reinforce the information when customers come in or when handing them a receipt before they leave.

Or do all of the above with a review generation tool:

Use a digital tool like GatherUp to efficiently request and manage customer reviews in one place.
The same tool also lets you respond to reviews and showcase the best ones—see how it works.

Who asks for the review can make a difference as well. It may make sense for review requests to come from you, your salespeople, or your customer support team. More important is you ask for a review at the right time. Some of the best occasions to ask for a review are:

Immediately after a customer makes a purchase or a service is performed
If an employee at your business had a particularly positive interaction with a customer
If an employee was able to promptly solve a customer’s problem and the customer expressed gratitude

3. Provide great customer service to drive reviews

It’s all well and good to ask for reviews, but sometimes customers feel like it’s a hassle or an extra step they don’t have time for—or they may rapidly lose interest if the review process is way too cumbersome.

Making the review process as quick and straightforward as possible is job one. Beyond that, it’s also a good idea to always try and provide exceptional customer service. One of the top reasons customers leave is a review is to acknowledge and reward a business that went above and beyond. Though it may sound too simple, sometimes treating the customer exceptionally well is all the incentive they need to leave a positive review and share their experience with others.

To learn more about how to launch a successful review strategy for your new business—or for your clients, download our full New Business Guide to Google Reviews.

How to Get Google Reviews as a New Business

GatherUp — Fri, 07 Apr 2023 18:17:54 +0000

Starting a new business is exciting and nerve-wracking. One of the most important things you can do to ensure your success is by knowing how to get Google reviews. But when you have to struggle to keep up with Google on top of everything else, the challenge can be more than most business owners have time for or know how to deal with.

Google is still the top search engine in the world. That means if you want more eyeballs—and more traffic to your business—you need a Google Business Profile, which lists important details like your website, physical location, contact information, products, services, photos, and more. It’s also where prospective customers can see reviews about your business.

Where it gets tricky, though, is when Google makes changes to its algorithms that impact your business—especially the customer review process, upon which so much depends.

A New Approach to Get Google Reviews

A prime example of a recent Google change is its new AI-based review filter, which went into effect in 2022. The filter appears to target Google Business Profiles that are less than a year old (regardless of how long the business itself has existed). It also seems to target businesses that serve customers in places other than their physical locations and/or businesses that specifically solicit reviews.

In an apparent effort to get rid of spam reviews, the AI-based filter is using automated logic and learning to judge the content of reviews and identify and remove the offensive ones. But the judgment isn’t perfectly applied and can result in credible new reviews getting removed. To that end, lots of real businesses that receive and depend on new reviews have been caught in the filter.

In practical terms, if you have a new business listing that’s under a year old, you may be getting reviews, but Google could be filtering or removing them—making it harder for people doing a search to see what others think about your business.

And yet Google is critical to gaining the business traction you need. Not only can Google customer reviews attract new customers, but they also improve your online presence by establishing your business as credible and trustworthy and providing the social proof people look for when researching a new business or brand.

A big part of your review strategy needs to be avoiding the pitfalls of Google’s filters and algorithm changes. Easier said than done, of course, since businesses don’t really have advance notice when Google imposes a change—and it can take a while to adapt your tactics whenever they pivot.

Download the Full Guide

Want all the help you can get to launch a successful review strategy on Google and avoid the traps along the way? Get all the info you need in our comprehensive New Business Guide to Google Reviews.

Get the Guide

However, there are some general rules of thumb that can help. Here’s how to get Google reviews and position your business for greater review success and deal more effectively with Google’s recent changes:

1. Set realistic expectations

When you create a brand-new business listing, it can take a few months for your review strategy to start delivering. You won’t see results overnight, but if you follow this advice, you should start to see a ramp-up in your Google reviews over time.

2. Take it slow

Go slow when soliciting reviews by limiting the number of requests you send out on a given day. You don’t want to irritate your customers by asking them for reviews too often. Check if reviews start to trickle in—a good ballpark number is to get one per month—then as you start to receive more reviews, you can dial up your solicitations. You may still need to adjust how much you solicit along the way. This will help you avoid a sudden increase in the velocity of reviews you’re getting that can trip Google’s filter. Too many reviews at once can lead to Google’s algorithm deleting them—even if they’re real.

3. Address review problems

Losing just one review if you only have 10 can impact your rating and perception on Google. So if your reviews seem to be disappearing, it’s reasonable to check with Google to get them restored; you can follow the instructions for restoration here. But as your body of reviews grows, it will hopefully become less of an issue if Google removes one or two.

4. Spread the review wealth around

Google is a big game to be sure, but it isn’t the only game in town. Think about using a review management tool like GatherUp which helps you capture and track first-party reviews and request that customers leave reviews at a variety of sites—not just Google. This allows you to grow a body of reviews for use on your website and in your marketing materials in a slower, deliberate, and more varied way. This approach also frees up your business from Google’s grip without discounting it completely.

Get More Google Reviews with a Review Management Tool

Customers frequently look to Google’s reviews and ratings to find local businesses and decide whether or not to shop at them. But when you’re just starting out, it can take time and effort to figure out how to get Google reviews in a way that can make a real difference to your online presence and business reputation—not to mention your bottom line.

GatherUp’s review management platform helps you generate quality first-party reviews so you can use them in addition to Google reviews to market your business effectively and earn more customers. To learn more about how to launch a successful review strategy for your new business—or for your clients, download our full New Business Guide to Google Reviews.

How to Use Customer Reviews to Improve your Business

Holly Stanley — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 12:32:25 +0000

Your customer reviews are an underrated key to improving your business’s offering and boosting customer experience.

Both positive and negative reviews can be a great method of identifying what customers want from your business. Online reviews will highlight areas of your business that require attention and improvement whether that’s better customer service or more accurate service quotes.

When you clearly understand what customers want and expect from your business, you’ll find it easier to make improvements and maintain a stronger base of loyal customers.

In this article, we’ll show you how you can use customer reviews to improve operations departments, implement improvement plans, and boost your online marketing campaigns.

How Can You Get All of Your Reviews in One Place?

Your online reviews can be scattered all over the internet. Sure, you can set up notifications from each one individually, but to see larger trends across all of your sources, it makes sense to congregate them all in one centralized location.

Storing all of your reviews in one place will help you more effectively analyze positive and negative reviews. Once you’re able to identify different trends within your customer reviews, it’ll be easier to take the correct steps to use them to improve your business.

How do you get everything in one place? You have a couple of options:

1. Copy and Paste Them From 3rd-party Review Sites

Depending on your business’s industry, you probably receive reviews on multiple major and industry-specific 3rd-party review sites.

A few examples of major review sites include:

Google
Yelp
Facebook

First of all, you should make sure you’ve set up or claimed an account for your business on all of these 3rd-party review sites.

There are also a variety of industry-specific 3rd-party review sites:

Avvo – for lawyer reviews
Healthgrades – doctor reviews
Zillow – real-estate agent reviews

Industry review sites can surface even more valuable insights, because they offer a more qualified reviewer who had the insight to discover your business via the industry-specific listing.

Once you have accounts on each of these review sites and some customers have left some reviews of your business, you could simply copy and paste the reviews into a centralized document.

While this technique is a great way of starting to analyze customer reviews, you may find it time-consuming to manually monitor each review as you begin to accumulate more customer reviews.

2. Use a Review Management Software Platform

Review management software platforms automatically track and filter customer reviews, saving your team countless hours in the long-run.

If you don’t want to set time aside each month to copy and paste reviews, a review management platform could automatically store and categorize them in a central dashboard for you.

On GatherUp, use custom filters to display reviews that are relevant to different ratings, activities, and locations. This is particularly relevant for franchise businesses who want to find ways to analyze how their different locations are performing.

Using Customer Reviews to Improve Operations

Customer reviews provide an invaluable insight into what customers think and feel about your business. When you know how to use customer reviews, it’ll be easier to make improvements across the whole of your business.

Firstly, you need to understand what you’re trying to identify in your reviews. Are you looking for areas where your service team could improve? Do you want to find out if the wait times in your store are too long?

Use Reviews to Identify Areas for Improvement

While negative customer feedback is never going to be pleasant, all businesses will receive it at some point. In fact, 19% of the reviews the average business receives are negative.

When used properly, negative reviews are a powerful way of implementing change across your business.

Here are a few ways to identify areas for improvement in your customer reviews:

1. Manually look for trends

Go through your customer reviews and see if there are any recurring topics that customers mention about your business.

If one customer has talked about slow customer service, chances are that others have mentioned the same issue.

Keep a tally of how many customers are complaining about each issue to understand which ones are the most prevalent.

2. Use tools to identify recurring review themes

Tools can help streamline and automate the process of looking for repeat themes throughout your reviews.

With GatherUp, our Insights Report uses AI to identify keywords in review content and uncover information about your business. This saves you time from having to go through all customer reviews yourself and figure out repeat trends.

Powerful filters let you auto-tag content and detect selected keywords in 1st and 3rd-party review content. Since customers tend to be more honest in 3rd-party reviews, this feature is particularly powerful for uncovering their most common reasons for praising or complaining about a business.

Take a look at some industry examples of how these tools could help your business:

Hair salons

Hair salons will likely want to find out which stylists consistently provide top-quality service and whether customers leave your premises feeling positive about their new cut or color.

Within the Insights Report, we can see the impact of the most commonly used keywords within the reviews for Prestige Salon in Watertown, South Dakota:

Color coding and strong visual formatting make it easy to see that ‘amazing job’, ‘prestige’, and the stylist ‘Haley’, are the most commonly mentioned keywords in the salon’s positive reviews.

Within the dashboard, you could also use filters to identify and segment ratings like Facebook recommendations:

Google currently offers review attributes for 275 industries and counting. Review attributes are great for pinpointing what customers found to be the most memorable positive or negative elements of your business.

Typical review attributes include “cleanliness”, “professionalism” and “punctuality”.

Within the customer activity dashboard, use filters to identify different Google review attributes:

Take a look at our (almost) complete list of Google review attribute categories to see if your business’s industry is on the list.

Restaurants

Your top priority may be providing top-quality customer service and an overall enjoyable dining experience.

If you were concerned that standards were slipping in one of your restaurant franchise’s locations, you could set up filters to identify when someone includes the words ‘rude’, ‘slow’, or ‘long’.

Take a look at this example of the Boston based taco franchise restaurant, Bartaco:

For executive and operations teams, the business report could help you compare the Boston location of Bartaco with other Bartaco franchise locations:

HVAC Services

HVAC businesses may want to prioritize punctuality, satisfactory completion of the job, and responsive customer service.

Within GatherUp, you could set up filters to detect keywords like “affordable”, “tidy”, “rude”, or “slow”:

Analyzing these keywords would help you understand where your HVAC business is doing well and which areas could be improved.

A Reviews Report would also help you see all your 3rd-party reviews in one place:

All of these reports are easily downloadable as CSV documents so you can share them among your team members and create an actionable improvement plan.

Implement an Improvement Plan Based on Review Insights

Once you’ve identified where your business could make some customer-oriented improvements, it’s time to make an improvement plan based on your review insights.

1. Share feedback with operations teams

Multi-location businesses can evaluate how services and products are performing based on their location. For instance, franchise grocery stores may find that one branch excels at providing friendly and efficient customer service while another branch may consistently receive complaints about long lines, slow service, and out-of-stock products.

Take a look at this glowing review of a local grocery store branch:

These details are all vital for operations teams who can effectively manage resources to go to the right place.

If customer reviews constantly show that a branch suffers from long lines and slow service, you could adjust the staff rota so more employees work during busy times.

2. Use reviews for business development

Customer reviews can inform your business development team and help them improve and refine their offering.

Reviews can help you understand how customers have responded to pilot programs, services, new locations, or promotional programs.

Take a look at this detailed review of a newly opened branch of Nekter Juice Bar:

3. Motivate your customer-facing team

Reviews are invaluable for motivating, inspiring, and helping your team to improve.

Start by reporting positive feedback back to team members to encourage them to keep up the good work.

Perhaps your business reviews consistently identify the names of your customers’ favorite staff members:

Always share these positive comments with team members so they know their work and contribution to your business is valued.

Negative feedback on the other hand can work as a great base for guiding future training sessions and resource direction.

For example, if you run a local cafe franchise and customers complain that team members don’t know the answers to their menu-related questions, you could provide your team with more training sessions so they are better prepared to answer customer questions about your recipes and menu.

Make Customers Feel Valued

Customer reviews give you a unique opportunity to show your customers that you value them and their feedback.

Reply to Customer Reviews

50% of customers expect a response at least some of the time to a review. Responding to reviews allows you to thank your customers and show them that you value their honest feedback.

On another note, businesses that reply to their reviews at least 25% of the time, average 35% more revenue.

Whether you’re replying to a positive or negative customer review, always respond thoughtfully and start your response by thanking your customers for taking the time to write a review and explain how you value their feedback and how you plan to implement it in your business.

While the customer was a bit disappointed in the following review, the business owner did a good job of explaining why things didn’t quite go to plan:

Learn more about how to reply to reviews, try out our 100 free review response templates and check out our brand new Inbox features which helps you put those review response templates into action.

Implement the Changes Customers Want to See

Regular customers appreciate it when businesses take steps to improve their offerings to match what they want.

While first impressions matter, your most valuable customer reviews will likely come from those regular customers who already know your business well.

They are likely to write longer more detailed reviews that include more specific elements of your business.

Take a look at this detailed review of an HVAC business which calls out the positive experiences the customer had with each of its different staff members:

Remember that negative feedback can become positive when steps are taken to act on it. Customers who leave negative feedback will respect your business more if you’re able to act upon their suggestions and make positive changes.

Here’s a negative review for the same business. While the review is critical of the HVAC business, it’s also an opportunity for the business owner to demonstrate they care, make amends and show the customer how they plan to improve next time:

Market Your Business With Customer Reviews

Customer reviews are one of your business’s best evergreen marketing tools. They help show potential customers why they should choose your business over the competition.

It takes time and effort to build up a solid collection of great reviews. They don’t come easy, businesses have to work hard to earn, gather, and manage them. To maximize your reviews and squeeze the most out of them, make sure to use them in your marketing material.

Use Reviews as Social Proof

Positive customer reviews act as powerful social proof for your business. If potential customers see rave reviews, they’ll be much more likely to trust your business.

Reviews act as endorsements that your business, product, or service is great, and the overall customer journey satisfied your previous customers.

Displaying recent reviews on your business’s website is one of the best ways of showing potential customers why your business is the go-to choice.

Take a look at how California Pools uses customer reviews as social proof on their website:

We recommend using reputation and review management software to help you efficiently display 3rd-party reviews on your business’s website.

At GatherUp we aim to get 5X the value of the reviews you gather from your customers. Once you’ve gone to the hard work of earning them you should squeeze all the value out of them.

1. Use GatherUp widgets and tags to display 3rd-party reviews on your site

Instead of having to copy and paste 3rd-party reviews onto your site, you could set up tags and widgets so that relevant customer reviews automatically appear on your site.

You could also set up a tag widget so that reviews related to specific locations or team members appear on your site. This is particularly helpful for franchise businesses and real estate agents looking to differentiate themselves from competitors.

Personal reviews that acknowledge specific elements of your business are essential for convincing prospects to choose your services over those of a competitor.

Learn more about adding review widgets, tag widgets, or review badges to your website.

2. Filter 1st-party reviews by subject

Grouping your reviews by theme is a great opportunity to bring social proof to any web pages about specific products or services.

Prospects may be looking for reviews about a specific element of your business. You can make it easier for them by pulling those relevant 1st-party reviews together on the same page.

Some industry examples for themed reviews:

Reviews about a yoga teacher on an instructor page for a gym
Reviews about boiler repairs on a boiler service page for an HVAC business
Reviews for a real estate agent on their team member profile page

Take a look at this personalized review of a real estate agent that would be a great addition to a team member profile page:

Create Social Media Content From Reviews

Reviews can also act as social proof on your social media channels.

Create visual social media images using quotes from your best reviews and post them on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Reviews also make a great addition to your email marketing campaigns.

Try using GatherUp’s social sharing feature to convert your reviews into engaging social media content.

Learn more about how you can use reviews in social media content to win more customers in our guide to how social sharing images benefit more than social media.

Final Thoughts

Customer reviews provide businesses with an invaluable insight into how customers feel about their business. Providing customers with what they want and need is key to continuously improving your business and maintaining a loyal customer base.

When you effectively analyze customer reviews and implement a solid improvement plan, you’ll boost customer experience and ultimately improve your business.

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