Positive negatives

Managing your online reputation is just as much about 'not getting bad reviews' as it is about 'getting great reviews'. Our clients know this because they see the negatives, but, except in very rare instances, no-one else - except the business - does!

That's because Dialogue is so effective at diverting comments that would otherwise be posted about their businesses. We'll expand on this crucial aspect of our service here.

Dialogue managing negative comment  

No business is perfect, and Dialogue acknowledges this by giving you and your customer the opportunity to resolve issues in private. How effective is this? 

We process many thousands of reviews on behalf of our clients every year and the most recent figures we have (for the year to 1 October) show that for every 100 negative posts through Dialogue, less than 3 end up being a published review - not only on Dialogue, but anywhere else on the web.

We also monitor our clients' reputations on the sites that matter to them (TripAdvisor and the other OTAs for hotels, Google, AllAgents and ReviewCentre for estate agents, and so on) and it's here that providing a channel for your less than completely satisfied customers comes into its own. All our research shows that if those customers receive your email promptly, they will resist the temptation to post publicly. 

Volume v. the Killer Review

We see them both: if you run a hotel you know you are unlikely to satisfy all your guests all of the time; if you are an estate agent you know that there will be times when someone in the equation is less than happy.

Regular readers of this blog will understand what we mean by a 'killer' review: it's a review that, all by itself, shown up in a Google search or on a specific site, has the ability to severely impact a business. 'Volume' is the 'drip' of negative reviews (none of which may be individually that harmful) that gives potential customers cause to look elsewhere; it will impact rankings and scores and generally make your business look worse on whatever site that 'drip' appears.

Dialogue addresses both. It gives the potential poster of a 'killer review' and the simply 'disgruntled' a channel to voice their concerns. Most important of all it gives them a channel that they positively welcome. We see comments like "I'm so glad you asked me my opinion" all the time.

Numbers

The average hotel receives about 8 negative reviews through Dialogue for every 100 reviews posted. That's 8 potential one or two star reviews to TripAdvisor managed in private - and with the added bonus that in the majority of cases the guest can be encouraged to 'give the hotel a second chance' and return to stay again.

The average estate agent client receives less (about 3 negatives per 100 reviews) but they tend to be potentially more damaging, simply because of the nature of the business - large financial transactions with potential legal implications.

So: we, like you, like to focus on the positive applications of Dialogue: driving more business to your door. But to do this effectively we have to be just as effective at managing the negatives.