sunday, september 24, 2017
Online reviews: why you can't escape them
Online reviews are becoming increasingly popular. There are now few sectors that escape them. Many of our customers are reluctant to encourage their customers to post reviews. Whatever your industry, whatever your business, you're unlikely to escape reviews. So get used to it.
Online reviews
As with everything to do with customer satisfaction, the tourism sector seems to be at the cutting edge when it comes to online reviews. A B2C sector par excellence, it even has its own benchmark sites such as TripAdvisor, Booking, Hotels.com and Expedia. Recently, even sites such as Facebook have got in on the act.
Other sectors also seem to be catching on, such as car garages, banks and insurance companies...
The more customers a sector has, the more competitive it is, and the greater the chance of online reviews.
You, in turn, will be exposed to it
Make no mistake about it. Whatever your sector, you too will one day be exposed to online reviews. Do you think you're protected? Perhaps you think your customers won't waste any time talking about your service? Or that your customer base is too small?
But the Internet has ushered in a new age. Consumers are taking over. After tourism (hotels, restaurants), there are now banks, ISPs (Internet Service Providers), insurance companies... Better still, all the new services between private individuals (Uber, AirBnB, BlaBlaCar, OuiCar for example) integrate, right from the design stage, a public review system where everyone rates everyone else. Did you know that at Uber, even the drivers rate the customers?
Some are watching helplessly as this revolution in lifestyle takes place. Given the rapid changes of recent years, it's best to be prepared.
So how do we react?
Many of our tourism customers have tried to resist the rise of TripAdvisor and Booking. We've even seen some hoteliers actively resisting these platforms. Some giants like Accor have created their own review platform. But resisting by ignoring the phenomenon is probably the worst possible reaction. Whether you like it or not, your customers are writing reviews on these sites. And your reputation is affected by this movement.
From my point of view, you really have 2 options:
- Encourage your customers to leave a review on a public review site (such as TripAdvisor), as SatisFactory offers at the end of a questionnaire, for example. Our studies have shown that the average rating rises significantly. A higher proportion of satisfied customers leave a review.
- Develop your own private review system (using SatisFactory Reviews for example). You avoid the pitfall of being dependent on a service that may be free, but whose data can be used against you.
Conclusion
Online reviews are a new phenomenon. But in just a few years, this phenomenon has become part of our landscape and our consumer reflexes. As a company, don't wait to be caught up in this movement - anticipate it. Define your strategy for collecting and publishing reviews. And encourage your customers to publish reviews.
