There was an article recently in the Wall Street Journal about online reviews. The only thing surprising about any of it is that anyone would be surprised by any of it.
Being persuaded, coerced or intimidated to give a positive review isn’t a new phenomenon.
After all, in 2018, a restaurant manager appeared at a customer’s house late at night in order to procure a positive review,
While last year a doctor sued a patient for leaving a bad review.
The only thing one can be certain about online reviews is that they are critical for your brand which is why dedicated review sites such as Trip Advisor, Yelp, Booking.com, Glassdoor, Trust Pilot, and Rotten Tomatoes are so important.
This in turn is what leads people to make silly decisions and do something that is only bound to backfire.
A business shouldn’t see the ability to be reviewed as a threat but as an opportunity. The goal should be to provide the best product or service available even if there wasn’t the ability to write a review. A business shouldn’t want to win people’s business and then scare them away with a horrible experience – rather they should become repeat long-term customers who fuel word of mouth business.
Shortsighted brands are focused on the amount of stars they’ve received as opposed to looking at what the reasons behind a negative review are.
This though doesn’t help solve the reviews system which is clearly broken. If you are looking up a new restaurant to try, the reviews are useful, but only if you can have faith in them. If you can’t trust any of them because you’re worried they’re fake, it’s a problem.
Sure you could go out and try it for yourself but that may come at the cost of a negative experience.
Given what is at stake here, the various platforms need to do better at there being reviews people can trust. If a shed that never served a meal can become the top rated restaurant on TripAdvisor something is seriously wrong.
Should a reviewer have to provide proof of purchase in order to post a review? If so, this would eliminate a lot of the fake reviews. It makes it a lot harder for a bot or AI to post a review about their hamburger and fries if they never ate it.
Fixing the review systems isn’t easy but given how much is at stake, it has to be done.
