In the world of reputation management, we’re often focused on the important star reviews and how they look in Google searches for our name. While this is an extremely important aspect of automotive reputation management, it’s not the most crucial goal of a strong reputation management service. At the end of the day, we want to make people happy.
This might seem like a no-brainer statement, but it seems to be missed by so many companies in our industry. The primary reason that my company acquired a stake in eRepBuilder was because we have found that their way of addressing unhappy customers’ needs for the dealers is the best first step in preventing reputation disaster.
First and foremost, you must identify those who had a bad experience at the dealership. Sometimes, people aren’t willing to express their displeasure while at the dealership, but they’ll certainly let their friends and family know about it at the least and they may want to burn the dealership with a scathing review on public sites. Our goal and the goal of the dealership is to identify the unhappy customers and take action to make it right.
Dealerships cannot wait until the negative review comes online before trying to correct the situation. They must be proactive in their efforts to identify those who were less than satisfied. The process by which we do it is similar to many of the reputation management companies out there, but with one major exception.
Most will send out a “survey” in an effort to prevent prompting a negative review. They will lead with an email to get the sentiment of the customer, then turn around and only encourage those expressing positive sentiment with a second email wanting them to fill out a review online. Those who were not satisfied will get a different email altogether asking them to contact the dealership directly.
This is called filtering. It’s frowned upon by most of the major review sites and can actually get a dealership in trouble if an unnatural trend is discovered. Rather than risk getting caught filtering, dealerships should do what eRepBuilder does for clients.
There should be a single email. That way, everyone has equal opportunity to leave a review. Some dealerships may be scared of this, thinking that if someone is unhappy and they see the link to Yelp, Google+, or DealerRater, they might actually click on them and fill out a bad review. However, eRepBuilder has a bold call to action on the review pages and emails prompting those who had a bad experience to contact the dealership directly.
This prevents filtering – the single email gives everyone ample opportunity to leave a good or bad review. However, that singular prompt to contact the dealership within the same email makes it more appropriate and encourages one of the two actions from the customer depending on how they feel.
People aren’t stupid. They know that there are review sites out there and a prompt within an email to leave a bad review is most often bypassed by unhappy customers in favor of opening a direct line of communication. Most people who leave a bad review do so because they were not given a channel through which to easily contact the dealership to express their dissatisfaction in that manner.
Once unhappy customers are identified through direct communication, the dealership now has the opportunity to fix the issue or simply to apologize for the incident or trigger that made the customer unhappy in the first place. This is the most important step. Do what you can when you can to make it right.
The biggest trap in the automotive reputation management world is when dealers are made to believe that the dangerous two-step filtering process is the right way to go. It isn’t. It’s dangerous. More importantly, it betrays the opportunity to make things right. Some people may express their dissatisfaction through the initial email, then not want to be bothered by the second email asking for more details. Using eRepBuilder takes away from this concept altogether.
If you make things right based upon empathy, hard work, and a sincere desire to earn their respect, unhappy customers can often easily be turned into raving fans. That’s the real goal.
Keep it simple. One email. Find upset customers. Make them happy. Reputation management shouldn’t be about stopping negative reviews. It should be about improving relationships with all customers whether they were initially happy or not.
]]>
It came about like a whirlwind. A partnership was budding. Product enhancements were being discussed. Next thing you know, Dealer Authority acquired a stake of our company to help build the strongest automotive reputation management solution to market.
The official release will go out next week but we couldn’t wait. As discussions progressed through the first half of the NADA Convention in New Orleans, it became clear that the synergy was too strong and the directions were too well aligned for us to wait until after the show.
Dealer Authority and their founders, JD Rucker and Tyson Madliger, bring their expertise in search and social to our suite of reputation management products in order to form the first complete solution. While many vendors in the industry offer monitoring, review growth, social media, and search engine optimization, eReputationBuilder will be the first to align the disciplines together to make them work in harmony for the dealers’ benefit.
We’re excited to have put the deal together so quickly. More news coming, including a rebranding and additions to the team, but we couldn’t wait to let everyone know now. Come see us at NADA at booth #4401.
]]>
If you listen to Yelp, they will tell you that you should never ask customers to review you. Their perspective is on that says that if people want to leave a review, that they will do it on their own without prompting. This is true when it comes to some businesses – restaurants, hotels, services such as hair salons. In the automotive industry, Yelp and other review sites seem to have a misconception of their role on the internet. For most business types, they are not a place where people leave reviews. They’re a place where people vent.
When you finish a satisfying meal at a restaurant, for example, there’s a natural tendency within active Yelp users to leave their opinion. It’s a habit. If you look at the list of places that the average active Yelp user reviews, the majority of them will be restaurants. That’s just the way it is. Many of them eat out multiple times per month and leave reviews everywhere they go. It’s a habit.
Buying a car is a different experience. There is no habit upon which to fall back since it’s not something people do every week, every month, or even every year. As a result, there is no natural tendency to want to leave a Yelp review about a car dealership. They could be more satisfied with their experience than they were with any 5-star burger joint they ate at for lunch that day, but they are much less likely to think along the lines of leaving a review after buying a car than after eating some french fries.
Yelp doesn’t agree. It’s not that they’re naive, nor are they completely self-serving in their opinion. Their goal in the long run is to get as many people as possible authentically reviewing as many businesses as possible as often as possible. They must also be protective about their turf. Review sites have been getting some negative press over the last year as businesses and marketing agencies have been getting caught leaving fake reviews. The best thing they have going for them is credibility and they must maintain it as long as possible, if not indefinitely.
We understand Yelp’s position. We really do. In fact, we agree with it in many ways, particularly for everyday businesses like restaurants and dry cleaners. However, buying a car is not an everyday experience and should be handled differently.
Asking for Yelp reviews must be done the right way. This isn’t a bulk play. It can’t be. Dealers and other reputation management companies often blast out poorly worded filtering emails asking people to share their experience in a survey. If the survey comes back positive, they’re sent a second email asking them to review the dealership on Yelp and other review sites. This is bad. It’s called filtering. It won’t last forever and will likely be a black eye for those who are participating once word gets out.
We believe the best way to get reviews is to ask transparently. One email. No filtering. Yelp and other review sites should be emailed out “blind” without knowledge of whether the customers were satisfied or not. Now, obviously this won’t work for dealerships that truly have customer service issues, but if a dealership is treating customers right and delivering an excellent experience, there’s no reason why the reviews need to be filtered. Does that mean some reviews will come back negative? Yes. Is it a terrible thing if a bad review slips in amongst several strong reviews? Absolutely not, and we’ll cover why this is the case in a future post.
The important thing is to know that filtering is bad. That does not mean that you shouldn’t give a special method through which unhappy customers can contact you directly. We believe that dealerships want to hear directly from their customers who were not satisfied, so we include that option in every email. However, testing the waters with a survey is the wrong way to go about doing this.
Asking for Yelp reviews isn’t bad unless you’re doing it the wrong way. If you do it properly, your excellent customer service will be rewarded.
]]>
Ever since the rise of the two separate disciplines of social media marketing and reputation management, there has been an open debate about whether or not to cross-classify the various platforms encompassed by them. Is Facebook a component of reputation management? Is Yelp part of social media marketing? Are they really just a singular entity with different components?
The connections are clear. Facebook has reputation attributes to it. People can review businesses on the platform. They talk about businesses all the time on social sites – it’s not limited to Facebook.
The inverse is true as well. Sites like Yelp do have social components to them. People can become friends with other Yelpers. They can like their reviews and share them on social sites.
Add Google Local to the mix and now you have a full-blown social/review hybrid.
There is no doubt that reputation management and social media markting are similar enough to classify them together in the same way that cars and trucks are both vehicles. With this stipulated, it’s fair to say that there are two disciplines operating in the same field that differentiate themselves through goals and techniques. Managing reputation is a completely different set of strategies than marketing on social media.
Should companies specialize in both? Can they specialize in both and still offer the right level of service to each? Our opinion is that, despite the similarities, there is no way for a company to serve both masters without sacrificing quality unless they separate the disciplines and operate them independently. The social media marketer, if they’re really worth their weight in gold, cannot keep up with the changes and demands of reputation management and visa versa.
It is for this reason that we’ve chosen to specialize in reputation. While we are pursuing a partnership with a social media marketing firm, reputation management is simply too specialized to start delving into its close cousin on the marketing side.
We specialize in managing reputation, delivering the highest level of service and expertise in this challenging discipline.
]]>Peter_Martin_DD15_OnlineReputation
DD15_Best_practices_to_doubling_your_Internet_closing_ratio_90_days
]]>