Episode 052 - How To Get & Manage Reviews

I mean, when you go to TripAdvisor and you're looking at, you know, hotels and things like that, you see that it was actually user-submitted. You know, Google reviews, Facebook reviews, all those type of systems are the way to go. They're authentic. And there's nothing to say that you can't either take a screenshot of that later and put it as an image on your website, or even if you want to have it built in your design, you can copy and paste, but link to the original reviews, right? Give credit to that. So we know that in today's world people and businesses and products live and die by reviews. Consumer reviews, TripAdvisor, Amazon, all those different places and reviews that are there. I strongly believe you need to be getting reviews, that customer proof, that social proof and all that kind of stuff. And that's what we want to talk about today. So we're going to be talking about some topics around how do you get them? But also, what happens if they're not ideal, right? And I know a lot of people just like cringe, and I've had clients that like, I don't want to ask for reviews because what if there's a bad one, right? So, so do you have any questions? Because this was a topic that you came up with.

Mm-hmm. I guess, you know, the best place to start is just how do you go about getting reviews in the first place?

Absolutely. And that's a great question because a lot of times what I've seen is You know, small business owners will actually just send an email out to a client and say, hey, can you give me a review or testimonial, right? I think they're interchangeable in that regard, and they'll just get them to email them back. And what they'll do is then they'll copy and paste it and put on their website. I have a problem with this. The problem is that it's not authentic, right? It's— there's nothing to say that that review hasn't been doctored or fabricated or whatever. And when I go to a website and I see that the review has been written there and it says by, you know, Sally and wherever, you're like, did she really do that? Right? So I mean, when you go to TripAdvisor and you're looking at hotels and things like that, you see that it was actually user-submitted. You know, Google reviews, Facebook reviews, all those type of systems are the way to go. They're authentic. And there's nothing to say that you can't either take a screenshot of that later and put it as an image on your website, or even if you want to have it built into your design, you can copy and paste., but link to the original reviews, right? Give credit to that. So that's, that's important. Um, you know, we're seeing the, the increase of video reviews, the technologies out there, uh, for that. VocalVideo is a company that makes it extremely easy for people to leave video reviews for businesses, whether on their phone or on their computer through their webcam. Um, and that's huge that way. So have a process in place. So, you know, just like you would with a marketing campaign or a way that you deliver your services, you should have a follow-up after to ask for that testimonial and review. And again, we keep plugging Keep because Keep actually has, you know, integration with Google My Business, which is where all the Google listings are. And, you know, when you finish with a client, you can go in there and say request a review, pre-populates an email, sends it out, and then they click, they leave it directly with Google, and you'll get notified when they actually leave that review. So I think you need to be having that process of asking people for that, right?

So What do you think is the best form of a review? Like, would you prefer in an ideal world for every client to, you know, send you a video review? Or would it be like on Google My Business? Or, you know, like, what's your ideal?

I think every business is different. You know what, I know that the clients that I'm sending it to aren't going to do a video review. I'm personally just trying to build up our Google profile and everything more so than Facebook reviews. Because I think in my opinion, Google's going to stick around longer. There's people, you know, abandoning ship from Facebook, and you don't really have that validity there as much as Google. People search Google, it's kind of like the king of everything. So what I tend to do is I'll ask for the review, and then I'll see what the review comes in. And if I say or feel that, you know, we could benefit from going a bit deeper, I will then request, hey, you know, I love your review, thank you so much. Would you be open to tell a bit more of the experience in video? And I've done that with a couple clients. Because nobody wants to go read a Google review, a text review that's like 1,000 words long, right? It needs to be short and concise. But maybe we'll then go a bit deeper in the video side, you know. And in the, the online world, there's something called NPS, which is called the Net Promoter Score. And it's a promotion of— I mean, you may see this and you may have experienced this in, in business. You get these emails and it says, you know, how likely are you recommend our product services to a friend? And it's like a 1 to 10 scale. And basically what that means is You know, an 8 to 10 is like the best. You know, 1 to like 6 is like not great. And then there's like that, you know, 7 or 8 or whatever. There's a middle road there that's like neutral, right? And the idea is it's a calculation and businesses, especially tech businesses, will actually like track this very highly. Like in their sales room, they actually have the percentage score of what people are doing that. Um, and you know, we have campaigns in Keep that we use for clients that will actually request that. Um, and the best part about it is if they leave that 8 to 10, it can immediately then ask them for a Google review. If they're in the subpar one, neutral, you may be like send them an email and say, how could we do better, right? And if it's in that 1 to 5 or 1 to 6, it can notify the business owner. It's like, this person has had a bad experience, reach out to them and try to fix this, right? So there's that, that way of doing that. So there are systems and processes to kind of protect you from those negative reviews as well.

Right. Okay, now two questions have popped into my head since then. So first, when you get those reviews, like a video review, say, where are you using those?

Yeah, that's a great question. So, you know, what I would suggest is you immediately then take that review and you can use it on a YouTube channel. You can put it on there. You can collect them and compile them and then make kind of like a collection of testimonials and run them for video ads if you want to start to promote your video or your business in a retargeting sense. So if somebody comes to your website, visits it, and then maybe they get retargeted or they hit your Facebook page, then they get retargeted with an ad of a collection of testimonials, that social proof that's there. I mentioned about putting it on your YouTube account. Not necessarily, you might want to not publish it, make it public there, because it might not really go in line with what the center, the ideal of what your channel is, right? For us, we're giving tips, so we would never publish a testimonial video. We'd mark it unlisted and then embed it in the website and use YouTube to play it. That does two things. It gives you a better experience for people to hit play and watch those testimonials, but you're also getting your view counts up. So, um, that still tracks in there even though it's not public. So if you're trying to monetize your YouTube account after you get, you know, 1,000 followers, and I think it's like 7,000 hours of, you know, per month of time, it's going to help in that as well.

Right. Okay, so then my second question was, when does it become appropriate in like the client relationship timeline to, to ask for those reviews?

I think every business has a variation upon that. You know, let's take for example, you know, a car dealership. When are you, or when is your client at the highest point of happiness? Right? So it's the moment that they deliver that vehicle. Right? You know, it's like you got something new, it's great, it's fantastic. You're probably not going to ask like a year down the road or 6 months down the road, right? Because, you know, the experience they had is not as fresh, right? Um, you know, let's say you're a construction company and you're building properties. It's not after they sign the contract, it's when you deliver the keys to the house and they move in and they've been there, maybe they're there for a week or whatever, let them move in. So you'll know the time frame of that. Um, when I do it is when the client pays the final invoice, because in our business The only time they're paying the final invoice is when we finally delivered the product at the end, right? So whether it's a video or a marketing campaign or anything like that as well, if you're in a retainer type business like we've got clients month to month, usually what I'll do is wait till we're several months into it and just, you know, ask for that review, see if they're open for it. So you kind of got to play it by ear as to when the best time is to do that. But in most businesses, usually the time that you pick is the same time for everyone. Mm-hmm.

Right, so. Yeah, now something that just popped in my head too is a story you told not too long ago about— in, in one of the podcasts— about how you had this phenomenal experience, um, when you were buying a car, um, and then, you know, the follow-up was not so great.

Yeah.

So just touching on that, I'd say, you know, keep in mind that, you know, you have your review at your, you know, the point that your client is the most happy and, you know, feeling great about the company. But then, you know, they also can provide a review after that and come back and change.

And if you're leaving Google reviews, they can go edit their reviews later. They can go back and change it. Yeah, right. So, you know, even if you think you're being sneaky and kind of snatching them at giving that review at the good time, and then you're going to kind of let it degrade, right? They have that control to go back and change it. Right? So, and I've seen that happen with people when I'm reading reviews, they're like, you know, we've edited this experience kind of thing because it was, you know, it wasn't as great later on.

Yeah, just recently I was reading an app review actually, and, you know, the top review was from this person saying, you know, like, I love this app, blah blah blah, it's great, 5 stars. And then about, you know, scrolling through, about 4 down, it was the same person coming back saying, I actually want to take back what I said before, which, you know, you know, kind of speaks louder than the initial review because you're like, wow, this person took the time to come back and tell people like, do not buy this app.

Absolutely. And what people like is for you to respond to the reviews, positive and negative. We'll get to the negative in a second. But if you don't have your Google My Business account claimed, it's free. Just look up Google My Business and, and you can actually register for it. It allows you to get notifications every time there's a review, but you can go in there and actually respond to those reviews, thank them for it. If it wasn't a positive one, you can actually apologize and then try to communicate with them that way. So I think that's gonna lead into where we're going in this episode with what everybody's listening going, yeah, reviews, reviews, they're great, but what if they're not so great, right? And I think you gotta look at what's the motivation behind somebody leaving a negative review, right? A lot of times they're, not, you know, in a happy place. Like, they're frustrated, and frustration is the biggest reason that people do that. And there are people that will either leave a review because they want you to know, right? That's, I think, their main thing is they want you to know they're unhappy. It's the people that don't leave the review that are having negative experience that you should have a bigger problem with, because they're still telling people about it. You just don't know that they are, right? And you have no way to respond to them. Right. So I think, I think giving somebody the avenue to actually say, hey, I had a bad experience, and if it's legit, great, fix it, right? There are people that will actually just try to maliciously troll you and say, okay, I have a bad experience. They've never been a customer, right? They're just, for some reason, they have a beef with you and they're going to try to take you down, right? And in that case, you can report that to the systems and say, you know, you know, fill it out, you know, this is not a client, this is fraudulent, all that kind of stuff. And in most cases they'll take it down. But if it's a legit one, my advice for that is immediately respond when you get notified to it that, you know, apologize that this has happened and open an invitation to either, you know, reach out to them and say, hey, I'd like to follow up and just see what happened, how can we do better, right? I think the biggest thing is use that experience to improve what you're doing. But the one thing that I think when you're trying to resolve that, that you should take as a tip is ask that person, what can we do to make this better? What can we do to resolve this? Let them tell you, because in most cases, what they're willing to accept to, you know, kind of, you know, fix that problem is far less probably than what you would be willing to give them if you're like, hey, I'm going to give you a $100 gift certificate or whatever. I don't know what the situation would be, but let them kind of pick that.

Yeah, right. Yeah, definitely. Now, something that I've kind of thought of is, you know, we talked in a couple episodes back about fact versus feelings. So is there ever an instance where you wouldn't reply to a negative comment, say if there was, you know, no legitimacy behind it or it was just all about feelings and there was no mention of something that was done wrong. It was just, you know, nasty, I guess you could say.

I mean, if you know, and you should know if this person is actually a customer or client because you've got records, right, and you're tracking all that in your Keep app, right? You should have all that. You know, if it's like a feeling, people are allowed to have feelings. It's okay for them to express that. You know, be empathetic. You know, sorry, you know, that you had that experience, and I, you know, I would feel that exact same way if this happened to me. Right? Go on their same level with that because, you know, they want to be understood. Never get defensive, right? That's only going to spark them even further. And that's why I mentioned, you know, address them first and try to take it offline, right? Don't get in the review kind of responses or Facebook comments and start to like go back and forth because people are just watching for this little dispute to happen, right? So you want to just, you know, address that. You know, like I said, if they're— if it's completely fraudulent and there's no substance behind it, then you look at trying to get it removed. Right. Right. And in that case, don't respond, right? Because if they're fraudulent, they want to fight and they're going to respond back to that, right? So basically, just go through the methods that that channel has to try to report it. And, you know, a lot of cases they'll ask for proof that, you know, in which way that it's there. So, you know, that's, that's one of the important things to look at is don't be afraid if people are going to give those negative reviews, right?

Right. So how do you keep up to date and make sure that you're seeing every review that you get?

You know, whatever the platform is, I mean, if it's Facebook, you will get a notification that somebody left a review. If you have your Google Places listing claimed, you will get an email that somebody has left a review. And we get emails every time, you know, the clients that we set up the accounts on Google for, you know, I see those reviews coming in as well. So you just can't ignore it. And be aware, and there are review systems out there that allow you to go in and see them all. There's a nice one called NiceJob that actually links with your QuickBooks account. So every time, and you can set it up to automatically go and ask the request. So every time an invoice is paid, it will send out a request for a review. It can send out by text message and then by email, and once they leave the review, it'll stop asking and things like that. Or you can go and manually do it. But it allows you to go in and see all the reviews, respond to them in one dashboard, which is really quite cool.

Right. Okay, now what happens if, say, you know, you missed a review? So it's been a couple weeks or even maybe up to a month and you're like, oh, oh no, I haven't responded to this, and say it's negative or positive?

I don't think anyone, you know, the negative ones, maybe they're a little more, you know, wanting you to, but I think a positive review, I don't think anybody sits there like, I can't wait for for them to reply, right? So I mean, if it's a negative one, and just say, you know, I'm sorry, I missed this, apologize for getting back, but I wanna, you know, fix this issue with you. Just be real behind it, right? Don't lie, don't try to be like, hey, thanks for the horrible review and whatever, but, you know, we're all human, things are busy.

[Speaker] Right, okay, now my last question I'd say is, you know, we've talked about the really bad, we've talked about the really good, so how do you respond to that client that says meh? You know, it was okay. How do you respond to that?

I've— I guarantee you'll probably not see too many of those. Okay. Right. And I think a lot of it comes down to how you ask for it. You'll get reviews, not as many of people that'll just kind of self-do it. You know, they'll more do that if it's a negative thing. But if you want to reach out to clients that have great experiences, you kind of want to position what you want that review to be. 'Cause you don't wanna put somebody that's submitted a review and says, "Yeah, Blue Cow was awesome," right? That's not, there's no substance to that. So what I tend to ask people is like, if we're doing marketing or we're doing a certain project with them, can you give us a review and just kind of explain what it was like working with us? Or what's your business like now versus before we started to work with you, right? Get them to tell that story.

[Speaker] Right, so providing a prompt for them to—

[Speaker] Yeah, right, 'cause a lot of people just don't know what to say. Right? So they'll just do like a generic kind of statement, but getting to explain that, or, you know, what's the biggest thing we've helped you overcome? What's the biggest challenge you don't have to face anymore? Things like that. You'll know your clients better. And that's why giving them a— or having the ability to send those manually through, you know, a system where you can go in and kind of put in that context based on that project that you did in there. Yeah.

And I think even just from a, you know, a customer perspective. Like when I've been a customer and been asked for a review, if I just get a, you know, request for a review, I'm like, ignore, ignore. It doesn't matter how good it was. Maybe that makes me a bad customer, but I think that idea of actually prompting somebody and personalizing it and saying, you know, I know we helped you with this project. How did we impact your company? And give them like actually an question they can answer, I think is something that would, you know, provide incentive for me. And also, you know, we know people are lazy, they don't want to put in that extra effort. So if you make it easier for them, you know, they're going to be more likely to do it.

Absolutely. And, you know, I mentioned the company called Vocal Video for those video reviews. What they've done is they've built a system that allows you to create these, these collection pages, and you can put in questions so you can ask the person You know, you know, tell me a bit about your business, right? Next question is, what was it like, um, you know, working with us? Or, and the next question could be, you know, explain to us quickly what it's like now in your business now that we've helped you. You know, whatever it is, you can put these questions. And when they click on it, what it's going to do in the app is it's going to say the question, and then it's going to count down 3, 2, 1, and then you record the answer to that question, right? Then you hit next, next question. And what is really cool is it then takes those video answers and it creates a social video clip automatically. The question comes up, the video, it's all edited, there's music, there's titles, everything is there. It really kind of streamlines that whole process for you. So that's extremely important. And before we finish, I think another thing that you want to be aware of is not coming up with an incentive program for reviews, right? It's not like, leave us a review and get $50, because what you're doing now is you're buying reviews, right? The better experience is ask for the review and you want people to give it to you out of the goodness of their heart. Then it's okay to reward them later without them knowing. Just be like, send them something in the mail, right? Send them a gift card or a thank you or whatever, um, and do it after the fact because now you're upping that experience. They didn't expect it, um, and they'll, they'll love that part of it versus, you know, get this. But a lot of e-commerce, it's like leave a review and get $5 off your next order. I mean, you can do that, but I don't like that part of it, right?

No, it feels wrong, I think. Right. Yeah. And, you know, circling back to authenticity, not really in line with that.

That's right. That's right. So, you know, and Google from a user standpoint has gamified their review system, right? The more reviews you give, you work your way up in ranks. It tells you, hey, your reviews are helping people. It's been viewed 6,000 times or whatever. And it actually incentivizes me to actually leave reviews from places that I've visited. And what's even cooler is it's tracking where you're at. And people are like, I hate being tracked, but you know, I go to a restaurant and I come home and I get a pop-up notification. It's like, you know, were you at this restaurant? Yes. It's like, tell us about the experience, and then I can leave a review. It knows that I've been there based on my geographical location, which I think is great from a marketing standpoint that way. So, but yeah, in your business, you must have something to get reviews, you're going to probably sell more than if you didn't have reviews. We had a client who we did a proposal for. They initially came back and said, hey, you know, can you send us some examples of work you did for other clients? And then a couple hours later accepted the, the proposal without us sending that because they said, we went and looked at the reviews you, you had from clients and they're just glowing. So we knew we had the work with you, right? So the reviews close that deal for us, right?