After attending an E-Commerce and Online Reputation Management seminar in Chicago this past week, I became somewhat alarmed at the stats given in regards to online reviews. Allow me to elaborate.
According to the host at the seminar, 86% of consumers read online business reviews before making purchase decisions, 90% say they trust these reviews and 74% of consumers choose companies and brands based on what others say online about their customer service experiences. Although, the numbers weren’t overwhelmingly shocking, they still caused an eyebrow or two to be raised in the room.
Why are these numbers concerning you may wonder? Well, take into account places like Yelp.com. Yelp tends to filter reviews for a variety of reasons, one of which being if the review came from a new or newer Yelp user.
Yelp states they filter these reviews from one, two or three time users to avoid fake reviews from business owners writing reviews of their own place or competitors trying to hurt the competition (amongst other reasons). However, many legitimate people only leave reviews sparingly. Let’s face reality, it takes time to write a review and not everyone in the world has the luxury of that time on a regular basis. Therefore, more often than not, true reviews (good or bad) from REAL people are filtered on a daily, no wait, a minutely basis with Yelp.
Additionally, Yelp tends to put more weight on the Yelp Elite (people who constantly post to Yelp and meet other “Yelp Criteria”) and Yelpers who may not be “Elite” but post reviews on a regular basis. Ok, that doesn’t sound too bad, but when delve into further, many times these “Yelpers” are just people with nothing more than a chip on their shoulder, too much time on their hands and an internet connection. When looking at their profile and number of reviews, in many instances, the majority of their reviews are all negative. So, I pose the question, how “fair” and unbiased” are the reviews left by these folks?
Then, not to add insult to injury, there are Yelpers who purposely leave negative reviews in an attempt to “extort” the business they reviewed. They demand something, either a gift card, free meal, discount off their next visit, etc in exchange for a follow up 5-star review. Sometimes Yelpers try the extortion tactic before leaving a review, stating they need some type of “freebie” to keep them from posting a negative review.
And, last but certainly not least, there is the question about Yelp’s own business practices and ethics. There has already been one class action law suit against Yelp accusing Yelp of filtering positive reviews and leaving up the negative reviews for businesses who refused to pay for Yelp’s montly advertising package. Again, there are countless blogs and websites stating that after a particluar business declined service with Yelp, all (or most) of their positive reviews, no matter how long they had been posted, disappeared to the filtered page. Then, subsequent reviews, if positive, were filtered, and negatives allowed to post for all to see. Here is just one example of the many Yelp Complaints websites.
What I am trying to say is that review sites like Yelp (and I’m sure there are others) need to be taken with a grain of salt. If you are a consumer looking to check out a business, read BOTH the main reviews AND the Filtered Reviews! Keep in mind, that any business, no matter how wonderful they are, cannot please 100% of the people 100% of the time. Everyone will receive a bad review here and there. See how the company deals with the reviews. To me, that means more than 10 positive reviews.
Finally, use your own head to form an opinion. Don’t solely rely on others. If you are reading a review and the entire review is just horrifically bad, stand back and ask yourself, “Is this person over exaggerating just because someone didn’t kiss their ass the way they thought their ass should be kissed? Could this business really be that bad, because if they were, how on Earth are they still in business?”
Reviews can be helpful….but they are not everything! Common sense, though, will never go out of style.
