NPR reports on Fake Reviews

[ryan.leslie]

The article itself was pretty thin, but there are some great takeaways. Here is a link to the article (the audio version of the story is also available here if that is more appealing to you.)

Here are a few of mine:

1. This issue is clearly on the consumer's radar. Review collection and marketing is no longer the Wild Wild West Butch Cassidy, time to hang up your sixshooter! Consumer awareness generally ushers in federal enforcement of acceptable standards. I know I'm preaching to the choir here on Refresh, but some dealers are still engaged with companies that actively post on behalf of a consumer and that has to stop. Dealers should also have policies in place for their employees regarding reviews. All employees need to be aware of the FTC fines assessed for faking or incentivizing review content under the False Advertising Regulations.
2. Return to the ABC's: Authenticity, Believability, Credibility... 5 stars and 5 words isn't an authentic, believable or credible review! According to NPR, and I think this is reporting the obvious, consumers want a story. Your "ask" for a review should include a soft coaching to draw out the details of the experience. "HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!!! Jimmy was AWESOME and the best sales person in the UNIVERSE!!!!"= NOISE
3. Don't put all your eggs in one basket: Remember Aug of 2011? The uproar was Google no longer being able to aggregate review content from review sites into the Places page and snippets. Feels like ancient history due to all of the other significant changes in the last 12 months, doesn't it? Fast Forward to Aug 2012 and an aggressive algorithm wipes out tons of Google review content overnight. Both of these events are chronicled here with much debate and discussion, but the lesson is the same, just like the stock market, a diversified approach to review collection is SMART. NPR offers one more convincing argument for a diversified approach. They are encouraging consumers to consider the aggregate of reviews and not rely too much on a single source. In simple terms, loading up one site and ignoring the rest that index for your brand is a bad plan. You need to know what is being said and where so that you can actively request reviews on specific properties. It is also worth mentioning that the logical extension of this advice is that the consumer will begin to "consider the source." The differences between Expedia's and TripAdvisor's collection policy is outlined here. I believe we aren't far from true review sites making their collection policies extremely visible in order to distinguish themselves and establish credibility with the consumer.

What do you think?

(I'm always happy to take a call from a fellow DealerRefresher. If you'd like to discuss this in more detail please don't hesitate to call or PM me.)

 

[ddavis]

Ryan, Content is important. I write much better reviews than the customers.

 

[ryan.leslie]

I think you're joking ddavis, but without a liberal use of smiley face emoticons it is tough to tell

 

[ddavis]

I think you're joking ddavis, but without a liberal use of smiley face emoticons it is tough to tell

I added one.

 

[yagoparamo]

Dealer Rater is over and Korea is the new powerhouse in review fashion.

Check out the guy's forehead in the video image.

 

[ddavis]

Ryan, Having seen hundreds of reviews, there are a lot of comments that would be considered highly prejudicial in a court of law.

I often see "worst car buying experience in my life". Unless that person never buys another car, how can they be sure?

I'm seeing a lot of unnecessarily, hurtful comments and even name calling. They are being exposed to public ridicule. Dealers need an advocate or the ability to edit.

 

[yagoparamo]

Ryan, Having seen hundreds of reviews, there are a lot of comments that would be considered highly prejudicial in a court of law.

I often see "worst car buying experience in my life". Unless that person never buys another car, how can they be sure?

I'm seeing a lot of unnecessarily, hurtful comments and even name calling. They are being exposed to public ridicule. Dealers need an advocate or the ability to edit.

You are correct, it seems that is OK to blast the business all the way but not OK for the business to defend itself. The business is in the end a group of people that also get hurt by the comments and possible loss of revenue/jobs resulting from an untruthful review.

Specific to automotive, you can see a lot of comments from people that didn't buy a car (I didn't like the salesman, the sales guy was too pushy, etc) with trivial comments based on just one's personal experience and that can't be easily compared to others experience.

Control must happen on both ends. Right now it seems that the focus is on the business side and the customer can lie or distort the facts at will. Until rules/regulation applies to both ends one side will have find tricks to counter the others ability to manipulate and exaggerate.

 

[ddavis]

Yago, actually I was being sarcastic. My stores maintained a high CSI and good reviews. There are times when dealers are targeted by the competition, disgruntled employees and customers that no body could satisfy.
At one of my stores, the service manager was told that if he didn't fix a car for free, he would butcher the dealership on blogs and review sites.

Ryan posed a good thread and I hadn't thought about fake reviews being considered as false advertising.

I posted this once before but it is still current and gives you an idea of how consumers view reviews:

 

[yagoparamo]

Yago, actually I was being sarcastic. My stores maintained a high CSI and good reviews. There are times when dealers are targeted by the competition, disgruntled employees and customers that no body could satisfy.
At one of my stores, the service manager was told that if he didn't fix a car for free, he would butcher the dealership on blogs and review sites.

Ryan posed a good thread and I hadn't thought about fake reviews being considered as false advertising.

I posted this once before but it is still current and gives you an idea of how consumers view reviews:

I don't think is sarcastic at all as a comment.

Review leverage is becoming more common; "do this for me or I would leave a bad review" even in cases where the customer knows he is not 100% in the right.

Aside from competition leaving fake reviews, there is also the review from the guy that "didn't get what he wanted" (stay away from this dealer, they would not negotiate), the guy that gets pissed with no correlation to the service (they didn't have doughnuts in the waiting area), the no reason at all and unrelated to the experience (everyone was wearing a suit, didn't look friendly). All those are real.

How can a business expect to please everyone, specially a dealer that gets people from so many different areas of life (different countries, ethnicity, religions, economic power, education, etc) and where negativity towards the business seems to be present from the beginning to the end of the interaction?

 

[ryan.leslie]

Aside from competition leaving fake reviews, there is also the review from the guy that "didn't get what he wanted" (stay away from this dealer, they would not negotiate), the guy that gets pissed with no correlation to the service (they didn't have doughnuts in the waiting area), the no reason at all and unrelated to the experience (everyone was wearing a suit, didn't look friendly). All those are real.

I think you've illustrated the point of the NPR article quite nicely. The rating doesn't matter as much as the story! The consumer is smart enough to pick up on these nuances too, and they will quickly disregard the crazy stuff. Suspend disbelief for a moment and pretend you don't like doughnuts. I bet you'll quickly disregard a negative review that lists that as the only negative, right?

How can a business expect to please everyone, specially a dealer that gets people from so many different areas of life (different countries, ethnicity, religions, economic power, education, etc) and where negativity towards the business seems to be present from the beginning to the end of the interaction?

You can't please all the people all the time. We all know this to be true, consumers included, especially when it comes to consumer behavior. But that begs the question... Why pretend that you can by manipulating the content? We've talked about this before, but it is worth revisiting. Review "Syndicators" and exclusive use of platforms that allow you to filter out or hide the negative reviews do a tremendous disservice to the dealer. Those crazy people absolutely need to be represented in aggregate, and I think any purported objective review site that doesn't include some crazy people's reviews is likely to be marginalized for that reason alone. Not sure what Trust factor percentage Nielsen gave to "misleading marketing sites posing as objective review sites," but it is safe to say it is less than 25% .

Negative perception of dealerships is a problem, but it is one that is changing very rapidly for the stores that have adopted a "we will be reviewed publicly by every person we email, talk to on the phone, or greet in the showroom whether they purchase or not" culture.