The FC Review Brigade

[CHR]

Frankly, people with gripes are more motivated to respond than happy customers.

We solicit feedback direct to us - both positive and negative. If there is a correctable problem, I want to know. It costs too much to acquire new customers to simply let them be displeased and move on to someone else. 99% of the time, any reason for displeasure is fixable.

From Marketing Pilgrim:

1) Customers are about twice as likely to write user reviews about good shopping experiences than bad ones. Likewise they are twice as likely to write user reviews about products they like than products they do not like. This is good news for retailers and should help alleviate fears about user reviewers hurting sales.

At least for me, I tend to give more weight to the negative reviews.

If I see many positives and a couple negatives, that won't sway me, especially if the complaints are vague, whiny or mean. It's the aggregate review rating (stars level) that can create a problem if folks don't read past the stars and into the review details.

I concur. In fact I never liked online anonymous reviews in the first place. I never found them useful either. Most of these reviews seem to be either (I suspect) self-congratulations or defamations.

The reality is that consumers love them and they won't be going away. The better sites will be getting rid of anonymity (to a certain degree) like Amazon has.

As far as abuse goes, I think Yahoo Local is the worst. They allow anonymous dings to reputations without requiring users to leave comments. So a malicious competitor can take a shop's single 5 Star review and cut the overall rating down to 3 Stars or worse. We got an anonymous ding last year and it has now happened to other shops in our town. (The cynic in me wonders if this is a way for Yahoo to suggest stores buy ads to counteract the effect.)

I have suggested Yahoo disallow anonymous ratings and urge other florists to add their votes and comments here.

The next wave will be product reviews on retail sites - Wal-Mart just added that feature because their users wanted it. In one case study by a different retailer, conversions increased 26%! by adding user reviews.

And that bolded line in Ted's post has some deep thoughts to it - why should we be praised for doing a good job? We should do a great job with every order!

I'm sure you guys receive 'atta boy' notes. Requesting reviews are simply a way to let those customers make their compliments public.

CNET did a story this week about Yelp and StartUp Journal did one a couple weeks ago about a spa owner who turned her negative reputation around by reading customer reviews and addressing real complaints about her business. Read more about reputation management here. Not every negative review is bogus.

And a good stack of positive reviews will be good defense from drivebys that black hats may pull on us.

And that's a great reason to get active on this issue.

 

[RJD]

The next wave will be product reviews on retail sites - Wal-Mart just added that feature because their users wanted it.

You're talking about two different reviews, here. Wal-Mart added reviews of specific products (as Amazon has had for years). These show up as a customer browses the catalog.

The reviews which started this thread are reviews of an entire business. These usually don't show up on the actual site--just the SERPs.

 

[CHR]

I've managed to write some reviews on my Google account. To view them, copy and paste this URL in a new window. -
google.com/reviews/search?hl=en&author=101265021661152162285&st=maps

As you can read, these are florists I've have first-hand experience with and in some cases have placed personal with, too.

With accounts on four review sites, I've done several others as well. Hope each of us can take a tiny portion of our day to say something nice about quality florists we know. I believe it will make a positive difference.

 

[Eric S]

I've got you beat!!

google.com/reviews/search?hl=en&author=105478746615697618656&st=maps

I don't know what the heck is going on but my outgoing is way up last month and this month.

But I will have to thank the florist that have taken the time to look at our site tell me what they can do and of course I always ask what is their price and how much for delivery. And what better way to thank them by given them an outstanding review about their order they delivered. Its a shame we can't get more people to do the flowers and lime arrangement.

But hey thats our product!!!

And of course I always tell them to visit us here on Flowerchat!!!!!

 

[CHR]

Well, heck. If you keep this up, we won't need wire service directories at all and can just search our collective reviews - starting with yours - for good flower shops. (We use many of the same one's you've included.)

Great job, Eric!

 

[Eric S]

Well you know.

Great minds think alike!

 

[Rhonda]

geez, you guys don't ever send to little ole Maine !! LOL
Great Job!

 

[Gigi]

I think Yahoo Local is the worst. They allow anonymous dings to reputations without requiring users to leave comments.

I'm wondering why it's allowed on flowerchat to leave anonymous ratings in the photo gallery. The only "bad" reviews I have received, a 4 and I think a 5 star rating were from "anonymous" without a comment. Shouldn't you guys be looking into that? and exactly who is allowed to log on as anonymous?

 

[CHR]

Gigi -

We used to allow the public to rate and leave comments in the FC gallery and hoped to get more exposure to people interested in buying flowers. Sadly, spambots started hammering the Gallery repeatedly and created hundreds of random ratings and spam links - nightly - which we had to cleaned out. We finally had to close off gallery comments to all but registered users.

A spambot rated one of my designs a '1'.

 

[Gigi]

Okay then thats great! Can you remove mine too then?

 

[CHR]

Done.

Now, will you write a couple nice reviews about your fellow florists? :>

Rhonda, you'll find that most of us send to shops within 50 miles of our stores, so we'll know more florists near us. Why not start a Maine Gang since ya'll know eachother's work?

 

[Mikey the Flower Guy]

Why not start a Maine Gang since ya'll know eachother's work?

'Cause in Maine, the designers ALL wear leather, and deliver on powerbikes, and are members of Gerbs Angels.

 

[CHR]

I'm off on vacation for the next 10 days. Just want to say that the Review Brigade is not a closed loop - a circle of friends - and is meant to be a pebble in the pond that spreads outward.

Say something nice about someone just becasue they did a good job. It feels good.

 

[Gigi]

Thank you !! Now if I can figure out how this review thingy works... I will for sure write some reviews. We are WS free and get to speak to some wonderful florist in North America, it would be my pleasure to help out this industry in any way I can.

 

[CHR]

It's been fun to happen across the nice things being said about florists by other florists out there.

Thanks! to you folks that have taken the time to get a login and write kind words about fellow professionals.

Would love to have some more folks jump in. Read the idea behind the project here and take a couple moments to recognize a great local florist or four.

 

[Tracy D'Amico]

DId a review for CHR, Bloomz, the Jersey kid, and a few others.If you see reviews about wonderful service, etc etc and don;t remember the order...don't strain your brain...it's me and my wonderful imagination at work! Let me know if you want me to write a review. Darn this is easy once you know what to do. Most of mine are thru smoogle-google under the "maps" category but I did an insider last night.

Hey! that's me up in there! I just found this review tonight - I forgot about superpages/insiderpages. Thank you Sher .... right back at ya.

tracy

Making this one of my nightly tasks, to review at least one business each and every day.......... maybe you're next:sofa:

 

[master J]

Lately, whenever I get a customer who raves about our web site or our flowers, I try to get them to do a review online, I send them an email with the links...

However, I feel I may be asking a lot to have them register on google or yahoo and write a review, IMO anybody who takes the time to do that is very thoughtful & kind!

I have noticed that some of my recent google reviews are not showing up?? its weird, there one day and gone the next?? I believe cathy(CHR) had mentioned that has happened too and eventually they should show back up....

I am trying to find the link that is easiest for people to write review from....which is the best source???
yahoo
google
insider pages

I'm hoping that one of the FC members could post what they send to somebody to have them do a review? When you email a customer a link, which link do you use and how do you word your email to get them to participate in a review....thanks in advance

 

[Queen of Weddings]

Yeah it can help but be very careful, I had another vendor put some terrible things about us up on some sites, of course you can montor them and take down the bad ones though..SHe was p...isc cause we had got this large event that she use to do, how was I supposed to know this???

 

[Eric S]

Just wanted to remind everyone about The FC Review Brigade. Usually what I do is I go over orders that we have sent out from the past month and look for any special notes from customers about these orders.

I am mostly doing reviews with google but there are others such as yahoo msn citysearch insiderpages. I think we are at 30 for our google reviews but there are more that I am doing right now.

 

[bloomz]

They are counting - I've heard a few times lately they chose us becuase of the reviews.

And it's pretty easy cuz the other florists in our area are asleep at the wheel as usual.

We totally get the Lion's (+ the Tiger's) share of intenet biz coming into our city.

Funny thing, none of them put any time, energy, or money into the internet cuz it doesn't pay off for them.

Ironic huh?