posted by Dave Taylor
There are many companies who seem to have the attitude that customer review sites are just a bunch of noise, populated by complainers and ignored by the vast majority. That might be true today, but over time, I think it’ll become of critical importance for companies to be paying attention to this data.
To demonstrate how the future might well look, let me show how a quick Google search for a restaurant’s address caused me to change my lunch plans…
A colleague had sent me email saying “let’s have lunch, you pick the place” and I remembered that a new Mexican place had opened up here in Boulder called Agave. The signage was good and I thought it’d be a nice chance to try somewhere new and hopefully add a venue to my favorites.
To confirm the address, I searched for the restaurant in Google (“agave boulder co”) and when it showed me the location, it also showed me the following tip:
As you can imagine, that little snippet was enough to make me want to learn more. Who wants to have a meal at a place where the service is “horrible”? I clicked on the “A” button and got a bit more info:
Seven reviews for a brand new restaurant? That’s worth checking out, so I clicked on “7 Reviews” and found that while there was one good review, there were plenty more from people who had experienced bad service and – worse – bad food there too:
Suffice to say I was turned off and decided then and there that Agave wasn’t going to be the restaurant for us to use as our meeting spot.
Here’s where it gets interesting, though, because immediately underneath the bad reviews was the following:
I looked at the nearby places and thought “Larkburger!” and that’s where we went.
The important takeaway from this – particularly so if you are the owners of Agave – is that customer reviews really do play a part in your business success and while it might only affect a small percentage of potential customers today, I promise that as we move more and more into a mobile always-on world, this sort of experience will make or break a retail outlet, whether you’re a cafe, tire shop or restaurant.
And as for us? I’m sure we’ll have a great burger and fries at Larkburger.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Next to Last // Feb 6, 2010 at 5:19 pm
There are no brick and mortar businesses anymore. Everything is connected. Ad dollars are wasted and poorly directed if retail owners don't keep an eye on the net and social media realities. This is only the beginning. When smart phones reach 50%+ and location based marketing rule consumer spending, things will change again.
2 Justin Rosenthal // Feb 6, 2010 at 9:30 pm
Dave… totally agree & love the post.
Jeff… Wise consumers of social media will need to know how to distinguish between a one-off comment from a pissed off customer or competitor and the voice of the masses. For example, reading the Yelp page for Agave (in Dave's post) shows 4 of 5 stars (based on 8 reviews), versus 70% who like it on UrbanSpoon (based on 20 votes), versus 80% for The Med in Boulder (based on 676 votes). I'm much more likely to trust the percentage for The Med, because of the sheer number of votes.
Social media sites are giving us the number of votes for a reason; so we know how reliable their numbers are.
That said, newbies could definitely be thrown if there isn't much data for a business on a given review site.
For smart businesses, this means that (if you're confident that your customers like you, which is far from a given) you can insulate yourself from negative comments from the very occasional pissed off customer or from your competition by encouraging your loyal customers to review you.
For dumb businesses, this means that (because your customers almost certainly don't like you) you are screwed whether you have a few or many reviews, which, in the end, is good for the customer and good for the economy. B2C therefore is increasingly a sink -or-swim situation, thanks to social media, and that makes me, as a consumer (and a producer) very happy.
3 Jeff Meier // Feb 6, 2010 at 5:24 pm
I liked this article very much, but a person who reads reviews with interest, I am often struck with the wide ranging view points that our society has on everything these days. Sure if the service sucks for one customer, you then read a comment about how great it was in another. Does one negative cancel one positive? I will bet it takes 10 postive comments to overcome one bad review. So if I was a competitor and wanted to hurt someone, well only a few negative posts could seriously impact a business. Plus does the review actually lead to an improvement? I would appreciate the business answering the complaint, and being allowed to show they have addressed the problem, instead of the post being left to there to cause someone to change their mind, simply based on the power of one persons opinion of a service or product. If however you read a general trend, then I give the review much more credence. Is this not just a version of Cyber-Bullying??
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