I love cooking shows. I can sit for hours and watch someone truss a game hen, chiffonade some shiso leaves and perform miracles with pork hocks. What I can’t abide are those gusto-dramas (my term) that masquerade as reality TV, that in turn masquerades as entertainment. The formula works thus:
- Established family restaurant is floundering
- The younger generation wants to try new dishes and gussy the place up a little.
- One of the older generation considers that a betrayal
- The other of the older generation dithers and self-medicates with tequila.
- Enter a celebrity chef, who also acts as therapist, marriage counsellor, referee, decorator and mentor.
Fast forward to minute 23 and the restaurant reopens with a new look, new menu, teary admissions of intransigence, an inexplicable line-up to get in, and another great brand moment for the celebrity chef.
There is one episode of these gusto-dramas that sticks in my mind and it’s the story of a family pizza joint that at some point in the very distant past was named by a local newspaper as the best pizza in town. But times had changed, business had declined and the owner, still convinced it was the best pizza in town, was waging war. Not against the much better restaurants up the street, but against the handful of people who had bothered to comment on Yelp about how terrible the pizza was.
That restaurateur was quite correct in blaming the Yelpers for the lack of bums in seats, but he was woefully misguided in the use and abuse of online reviews. Which brings me to the point: Too many marketers are wasting calories trying to improve the reviews on Google, Amazon, Yelp and other platforms, instead of tackling the real issue, which is that your pizza is no longer cutting the mustard.
There are few things more dismaying than seeing a 1.7 /5 rating on some social platform. It’s even worse when your competition is ringing in at 4.8. Before you grab the Nyquil and a bag of Cheetoes and head back to bed, take a few minutes to dig a little deeper. How many ratings do you actually have? Five? Ten? Less? If you’re a B2B brand, you probably have a handful of ratings, at best. Even in B2C Land we’re not usually talking about a bunch of big numbers. Which is why when you have a small number of people voting, each vote carries an enormous amount of weight, especially if the scoring is an unweighted average (at least the dreaded NPS system puts some smarts into it). So one unhappy person giving your brand a 2.2, takes the happy vote of 4.7 and produces the uninspiring result of 3.45. Toss in a not-bad 4 (which is actually an A, if you care about such things) and your score creeps up slightly to 3.6. Now leave someone on hold too long and grab yourself a nice 1.8 and here you are down at 3 even.
If you have fewer than 50 to 100 actual ratings, you don’t have a statistically useful number, and the law of small numbers can lead you to some dark corners indeed. Let’s take a look at your shiny competitor: Hmm. One rating. A 5/5. Mazel tov! They’re kicking your ass because some summer student didn’t know better. Is it fair? No. Can we control it? Not so much, at least, as it concerns our competition’s enthusiastic interns.
Here’s what we can control: the quality of our product, the quality of our customers’ experiences with that product and our response to the brutal unfairness of unweighted scoring. Looking at this last thing, I’m going to suggest that the ratings, while meaningless in the aggregate, are still a gift, with a big, fat red bow on top. The mere fact that one of your customers has taken the time to let you know what’s going on, is a good thing, even if they are unhappy. Indeed, your Porcupines are much more likely than the happy people to help you understand how badly you suck. So look past the terrible rating and read the actual comments. I’ll bet there’s a reason you got the score you did. This is the qualitative nugget you need to help turn things around. Spend your time analyzing why you scored what you did, and not which little star they clicked.
Now use this insight, along with something a little more helpful, like user acceptance testing, focus groups and valid quantitative data to spend your calories on fixing the stuff that is broken. Whether that’s your unreliable product, hideous user documentation, rude customer service or unintelligible billing, building a decent product is really the only thing that is going to turn around your ranking in these platforms.
But let’s look beyond these platforms for a minute and consider the extent to which they actually influence a purchase decision. In the case of pizza, probably a lot. There’s lots of competition, it’s fundamentally local, and the opinions of others have some validity when it comes to the quality of the food and the service. Plus, people looking for a meal out are likely browsing around on Google, Yelp and Trip Advisor, which are purpose-built for that kind of thing.
What if we’re selling warehouse fixtures, systems integration services or industrial solvents? How influential are the four people who, absurdly, decided to rate you on Google? Do P-Cubers consider Google rankings in their purchases of these things? If not, and this is important, where do they do their due diligence? They absolutely do it. The buyer journey always includes at least a short detour through some kind of dark alley of due diligence. This is where your real influencers can be found. They’re not sneaking out back for a smoke by the dumpster, they’re chatting with a new friend at a conference, or answering a question on a LinkedIn group, or grabbing a bite with a former colleague. They’re doing due diligence in a way that can’t or at least should not be subject to your manipulation. This is where all that nonsense about influencers starts to get silly, but that’s for another day.
If brands, like that poor pizza guy, can put customers ahead of their self-esteem, things will probably work out without the help of some disgruntled ex-employee on loose on Google.
Related Posts
Stop Letting Your Customers Talk to Strangers
The Distance Between Decision-Makers and End Users is Key
BizMarketer is written by Elizabeth Williams
I help companies have better conversations
Drop me a line at ewilliams@candlerchase.com
Josh Cobden says
Great post, Elizabeth. I agree that marketers should pay attention to reviews. According to our latest Environics Communications CanTrust Index, 47% of Canadians say they trust online reviews from consumers. While that may not seem like a lot, it is the fourth must trusted source behind trying the product themselves (76%), a recommendation from someone they know (74%) and editorial content, such as a newspaper (52%). What’s interesting is that the trust levels in online reviews have dropped 4% in just one year, suggesting that people are wising up to fake reviews (good or bad). Males, people 55+ and those from Quebec are significantly less trusting of online reviews, according to our study.. Your advice to focus on what you can control (product quality, user experience) and use these as useful, but not conclusive input is excellent.
Elizabeth Williams says
Thanks for reading, Josh. Interesting that editorial still scores so high.