Brian Gubernick breaks down why 5-star reviews aren't about the product. Research shows a 13-to-1 ratio of experience mentions to product mentions in restaurant reviews. The gap between 4 and 5 stars comes down to responsiveness, empathy, and personal attention, not competence alone.
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Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast. We believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. You would think that 5-star reviews are all about the, the thing that you deliver— the, the design, the marketing campaign, the the transaction, the program, whatever it may be, the product. But when researchers actually dug into thousands of 5-star reviews on Yelp, they didn't find people actually obsessing over the product or the service. They actually found people obsessing over people. They were obsessing over the service, the experience. And I think that that matters for you because as entrepreneurs, I think many of us get stuck believing excellence alone, excellence in service or product alone, is what earns loyalty. But the reality is excellence without experience will rarely get you that top review, will rarely get you that, that 5-star. So let's back this up a little bit. There was, uh, there's actually a handful of different studies analyzing reviews, and I'm going to focus on Yelp. And it found that high-star review, high-star levels like 5-star reviews, it was the service and the overall experience that dominated the narrative. As a matter of fact, one study I saw said that it was 13 to 1 for restaurants in 5-star reviews. For every 14 reviews, 13, 5-star reviews, 13 mentioned people or experience before they mentioned the food. Only 1 out of 14, as it pertained to 5-star reviews, mentioned food first, which to me was pretty fascinating because when you think, well, 5-star reviews of restaurants, it's got to be about the food. And yes, while the food is important, when it came to 5-star, it was all about the experience. It was all about the people. When there were positive reviews in general, you would find words like friendly, and attentive. Those words would show up more than any sort of technical description of the food. So, the translation here, the fifth star, it's not about competence. It's actually about experience and connection. Now, I think there's a really good lesson here for all of us because I'm going to guess most of us listening are not restaurant owners. But we are service providers, and I think competence as a service provider, you know, a strong performance or a steady performance with respect to your craft, to me that's kind of table stakes, that's baseline. Nobody hires you expecting to, you know, expecting to work with you and you don't know your craft, right? When you're hired, there's an expectation that you know what you're kind of doing. What separates the 3 or 4-star review from the 5-star review is how the clients feel served. It's, it's the responsiveness, it's the empathy, it's the personal attention. So, for example, if you have 2 consultants or salespeople that deliver identical analysis, One of them emails a PDF, but the other actually walks the client through it all live, anticipates objections, and then checks in multiple times, follows up a week later, let's say. It was the same exact work product, but it was a totally different experience. And as a result, in those two scenarios, it would be a totally different review. So now knowing this, how might we as entrepreneurs here at the No Days Off podcast and the No Days Off Nation, how might we as, uh, entrepreneurs apply this in our world? I think there's really 3 things or 3 ways that, that we can begin to flip from this service as a deliverable to service as an experience. I think number 1, a great exercise for all of us, would be to go to your reviews. I'm going to guess many of you are not necessarily reviewed on Google, but Maybe you're reviewed on— I'm sorry, reviewed on Yelp, but maybe you're reviewed on Google or Zillow or wherever it may be. Audit all those reviews, audit those testimonials. Look at the, let's say, last 10 or 20 client reviews or referrals. When you review them, are they praising your expertise or are they actually praising your attentiveness, care, accessibility. Again, is it your expertise? Is it the service that you delivered per se, like the, the, in terms of your technical craft? Or was it the experience, the attentiveness, the accessibility, the care? So audit those testimonials. I think the second thing that you can do to flip from a service as a deliverable, deliverable to a service as experience, I think you can start to engineer more service touchpoints. What do I mean? Build moments of more intentional contact into your workflow, like the old, like, just checking in sort of calls, the proactive updates, the handwritten notes. Like, remember, it's the experience getting you the 5-star. So how do you increase or improve upon that experience? Not necessarily the delivery of the standard service. That was expected from your profession. So number 1, audit your testimonials. Number 2, engineer service touchpoints. And then number 3, make people visible. What do I mean? In client-facing businesses, encourage your clients to name your team members in their feedback. Again, many of us are asking for reviews, Encourage clients to name the team members in their feedback because that recognition is what's going to drive repetition from your people. So an interesting way to apply this, you're going to be asking for reviews, maybe encourage the people reviewing you, assuming they had a great experience, to call out the individuals they worked with. Because when your, when your agents or your, your salespeople or those on your team within your company when they see their name, that recognition drives repetition. So my action item for you as we begin to wind down for today, this week, don't add more polish necessarily to your service. Yes, we should always be training and getting better at our craft, but let's not focus as much there today or this week. Let's instead add one new touchpoint. One new touchpoint that makes your client feel more taken care of. So again, it's not improve your service per se this week. Instead, let's figure out some new touchpoints to introduce or train around for our respective teams. Maybe that's some sort of status update that wasn't the norm, or maybe it's a quick, you know, thinking of you text. Challenge your people to like just send a thinking of you text. Or maybe just circling back after delivery of something that's not the standard practice. After the week's over, then review your notes. Do you think that those touchpoints, did they deepen the relationship? Did you get some feedback as a result of it? Did it change how your client began to respond? Just take notes of that. Because in, in service businesses, I think 5 stars aren't about what you did. It's really about, or they're really about, how you made people feel while you did it. So a lot to think about here. Again, just an interesting thing to consider when you review, uh, like Yelp and things of, things of that nature, specifically around, around food and restaurants. Maybe dive into that yourself and take a look, but definitely spend time taking a look at your reviews, and I think you're going to find something pretty interesting. Again, it's all about the experience. That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.
