How do you use review sites?

[Mikey P]

I should start asking my new customers, who say my reviews got them to call, about their review site perusing habits..

How about you all, when vetting a restaurant or proctologist, how many reviews do you read?

Are pictures important?

Do you read the 1 stars first? I do, when I'm using Amazon and researching products I notice the 1s tend to come from people who've had the product for a while. The 5s tend to come from people who just opened the box.


So with service reviews I would think that those that mention a history of prior use with the company hold more weight than the solicited "John showed up on time, is personable and the carpets look just like new"


Ramble over, and out..

 

[Charlie Lyman]

I skim through them and make a judgement based on them all. If a 1 star review of a restaurant says something dumb like "the waitress didn't smile" then i disregard that one. If there are a bunch that say the wait was long and the food was cold or the seats had holes, then i wont go there.

 

[SamIam]

I skim through them and make a judgement based on them all. If a 1 star review of a restaurant says something dumb like "the waitress didn't smile" then i disregard that one. If there are a bunch that say the wait was long and the food was cold or the seats had holes, then i wont go there.

Good discernment

 

[steve_64]

I could care less what other idiots think. I don't even ask my friends opinions because they are usually wrong too.

 

[icleancarpetz]

When seeking experience from a product or service....I go straight to the negatives first. From there you can pretty much determine if it’s a legit experience or just a ‘it product was missing screws’.

If the problems are consistent with most reviews, then I simply move on to the next product.

Reviews are important. Consumers including us have no other way of knowing how dependable that product or service is going to turn out. Google reviews are tricky. While some are real others are fake. If a guy has thousands of reviews and operating in one area or one location, RED FLAG! This is true especially if it’s a franchise....franchise owners can ‘borrow’ reviews from other franchisees. Google reviews can be purchased from over seas companies that specialize in fake reviews.

Yelp is about the most helpful reviews. It’s almost next to impossible to fake a review on yelp. Great for sonsumers wanting to get reputation of a business. However, Yelp has a scam going on in which they strong arm you the vendor into buying their product. If you don’t pay their fees, they will take all your positives reviews and place them under a colum down below of your page that says ‘current reviews that are not recommended.’
Do a search, ‘Yelp is a scam’. Good for consumer but bad for you the business owner wanting to put up a page through them.

 

[Lars]

As a business owner, I know you can’t make everyone happy. There are always going to be negative people who will never be happy with anything you do. You can see from their other reviews they write that they complain about everything. As long as you have plenty of glowing reviews, most people can read between the lines. I feel bad for the restaurants... everybody is all of a sudden a Fing food critic

 

[Dolly Llama]

My review viewing won’t fit the “service” biz, because I still live by referrrals when choosing butcher, baker or candlestick Oh-Pee’er

For products (which I do buy online) I look at the neg reviews for a pattern of common product fails /warts or if vendor has a poor rep for shipping/supplying/custy support fails


..L.T.A.

 

[Mikey P]

Same here, the negatives tell all

 

[Acp]

if its a negative and they wrote a 10 paragraph novel, with lots of CAPS... then I write that one off as crazy customer.

my favorites are when they say they have been using us for 5 years, or 3rd time... and pictures of the work posted by the customer are always great.

 

[Old Coastie]

I miss the one bad review I ever got.
It was a real moneymaker.

 

[BIG WOOD]

I think people are starting to read between the lines on these reviews. At first, they read them like it was the Bible of business quality. I’m glad those first years of star ratings are over

 

[NobleCarpetCleaners]

ditto what Larry C. said.

IMO reviews have become word salad. They will if not sooner become meaningless (again IMO) and a chasing after the wind. They do mean something to Yelp and Google because it is a huge part of the chicanery for sales. They still build on it and want us to get all excited or worried about it. I purchase industrial things and other things off the web and focus mainly on negative to weed out the clueless people before I read the 5 star hype. Hell the 5 star hype is often as stupid as the 1 star. Nothing beats a tried and true referral. They "tend" to be hopeful.

Today I had a 12 min ph call with a HomeAdvisor sales idiot. I wuz waiting on a custy and I wuz bored. Apparently they don't honor email opt out and call list as well. Had fun pissing him off that they were no different a pimp then the Angie List pimps. Really he was pissed and wanted to be clear he didn't want to be compared to Angie's. End of the day the entire internet has become a pimp.

 

[The Great Oz]

I read several reviews to get a general feel for what people liked or didn't like, dismiss the nuts, and look for an overall balance tilting toward the happier side. I give a thousand percent more credit to any business that responds to their reviews.

If the gurus haven't said this enough, I think it's critical to respond to all reviews, good and bad. Responding nicely to a flake makes you seem reasonable in comparison. Even saying you're sorry your service didn't meet that customer's expectations, with no offer of doing anything about it is better than nothing. Responding to a positive review with something like, "Thanks so much for the kind words. We look forward to working with you again." does several things: It's a response, the very basis of social marketing; It shows the review was important to you; most importantly it will encourage more positive reviews. Try it.

 

[steve_64]

I read several reviews to get a general feel for what people liked or didn't like, dismiss the nuts, and look for an overall balance tilting toward the happier side. I give a thousand percent more credit to any business that responds to their reviews.

If the gurus haven't said this enough, I think it's critical to respond to all reviews, good and bad. Responding nicely to a flake makes you seem reasonable in comparison. Even saying you're sorry your service didn't meet that customer's expectations, with no offer of doing anything about it is better than nothing. Responding to a positive review with something like, "Thanks so much for the kind words. We look forward to working with you again." does several things: It's a response, the very basis of social marketing; It shows the review was important to you; most importantly it will encourage more positive reviews. Try it.

I've been thinking about this lately. I'm going to give this a try.

 

[Jim Morrison]

If a business doesn't have a lot of reviews I like to see how active the people are who leave the reviews. If all the reviewers are people with one or two reviews in their profile that can be a red flag. I live in a pretty small area so huge amounts of reviews aren't the norm.

For the most part I agree with Bryan. There is the odd company with crappy customer service responding to all their negative reviews as if big changes are around the corner.

I'm a tripadvisor guy when it comes to finding accommodation and restaurants, Love it!