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The Positive Side of Negative Reviews

by on Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

Actor, author, shortstop or chef, no one likes a negative review. But when we were developing the Zavee business model we decided early on that we would have to include negative as well as positive reviews. The goal we set for ourselves was to create a framework for reviews that were accurate, timely and fair – and that meant including negative reviews.

Our commitment to getting reviews right stemmed from our insight that reviews were another form of Social Media and, as such, were going to be a vital component of the Zavee experience and value proposition. We also learned, based on research with merchants, that many business owners who expressed concern about potential harm from fraudulent, malicious or even accurate negative reviews also intuitively understood the benefit of hearing about issues directly from the customer affected.

As marketers are learning, people will say whatever they want to whomever they want, and merchants don’t have the power to control their customers’ conversations. They can, however, do two important things.

First, they can listen, learn and respond. Thanks to Social Media, including reviews, merchants can make necessary adjustments to their business almost in real time. This is something that every business should be doing, all the time, through every available channel. Twitter and Facebook are great listening posts, but reviews are a channel that exists solely to provide feedback about the customer experience.

Second, merchants can participate in the conversation. By actively engaging with their customers merchants can address problems quickly and publicly; they can provide perspective that helps customers evaluate reviews; and they can favorably shape perceptions about the business.

  • Responding quickly is important because unresolved issues tend to fester. Responding publicly is important because it gives the merchant the chance to address at one time a concern that may be shared by many customers.
  • Actively participating is the only sure way to get the merchant’s perspective into the conversation. Both the manner and the substance of the merchant’s response can help customers determine how much weight to give a negative review, while the absence of a response does nothing but add credence to the reviewer’s complaints. A measured, factual response may not erase the impact of a negative review, but at a minimum the merchant will have extended the relationship with the customer and demonstrated both interest and respect.
  • Simply committing the time and effort to engage customers in conversation sends a positive message to all customers and can go a long way toward shaping perceptions of the customer experience. This can reinforce the positive experiences of current customers and build loyalty, but it also can lead non-customers to have a favorable impression of what it would be like to be a customer. In other words, an impressive response to a negative review can actually bring in new business.
Creative Commons 2.0

Reviews (via fengergold)

In benchmarking Zavee against other sites that feature reviews we observed a wide disparity in the treatment of key issues. Some sites filter reviews while others list them all chronologically. At least one site that uses filtering algorithms has had to defend itself against allegations that it improperly manipulated the placement of reviews. We decided not to filter or change the placement of reviews, because we believed that the less we intervened in the substance of reviews, the more confidence shoppers would have in them and, ultimately, in the Zavee brand.

We also observed that some sites permitted reviews (both positive and negative) that described experiences that had occurred long before the review was written. We thought reviews that were dated were so likely to be inaccurate that it would be unfair to both merchants and shoppers to have them on our site. We also were concerned, as many merchants seemed to be, that on some review sites there there were insufficient safeguards against fake reviews or even fake merchants.

We addressed these problems by requiring that any shopper who wanted to review a merchant had to have made a purchase from that merchant within the previous 30 days and by permitting only one review per purchase. Zavee solicits a review after every transaction, and the shopper’s My Zavee page lists recent transactions and the time remaining to submit a review. Zavee automatically rejects reviews that do not meet these rules.

We also were concerned about reviews that, while perhaps not fraudulent, seemed hostile or malicious. We initially considered moderating reviews, the way we moderate comments on Zavee Thinking, but we decided not to. There is nothing wrong with having editorial standards for reviews – we are, after all, responsible for the content on our site – but we thought the better way to deal with potential problems was to let shoppers and merchants have their say but remove reviews that violated our Terms of Use.

Because we passionately believe that reviews should be a dialogue, we also made it easy for merchants to post responses to shopper reviews. Merchants are automatically notified whenever they are reviewed and have 7 days to post a response. Responses appear with the original reviews and always show up together in a search. Shoppers can respond the the merchant’s response, and the entire conversation is threaded so it can be seen by everyone who sees the original review.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • You can’t control what your customers say, but you can listen, learn and respond to concerns – almost in real time.
  • Use negative reviews as a conversation-starter, not a relationship-ender.
  • How you handle unfavorable reviews can shape perceptions about your business, for future as well as current customers. Treat reviews as an opportunity to be impressive – you may be surprised by the results.

Update (4/14/10): MediaPost’s Marketing Daily reports that S.C. Johnson has been receiving substantial negative feedback, including reviews, about a new pet care product – and tells Marketing Daily that it is bringing the feedback to its product development team for consideration.

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Social Media Marketing Goes Mainstream

by on Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

Still think that Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the Social Media universe are just for geeks and kids? Think again. None other than The Washington Post ran a feature story yesterday about how marketers and their agencies are using Social Media tools for both word-of-mouth marketing and reputation management. Although the news hook for the story was a local (i.e., D.C.) restaurant joining one of the class action lawsuits against Yelp, the focus of the article was about how major marketers such as Chrysler, Sony and Domino’s are sponsoring tweets and giving samples to bloggers, as well as monitoring the Web for negative comments and reviews.

Entrance to The Washington Post

The Washington Post (via Dion Hinchcliffe)

The article cites Nielsen data that 70% of Internet users trust online recommendations and reviews (we cited the same study here), and quotes a Boston University professor as to why: “[C]onnecting with other consumers is more helpful [than traditional ad messages]. It’s more fun. Consumers love to interact.” The article also reports that digital word-of-mouth marketing is expected to top $3 billion a year by 2013.
The article describes at some length how marketers and agencies are using Social Media tools to influence customer perceptions, including by sponsoring posts and tweets. This is a controversial subject that has been discussed extensively online, including by us. Sponsorship raises issues about the nature of Social Media, including whether media such as Twitter will eventually become less effective if sponsored tweets become more prevalent.

Sponsorship also inevitably raises the issue of disclosure: when and how prominently to disclose, and whether even full disclosure can prevent consumers from losing trust in the communication and, by extension, in the marketer itself. All of the agencies mentioned in the story claim that they fully disclose any sponsorship, either with a hashtag such as “#ad” or some other signifier such as “(sponsored)”.

Interestingly, however, the Post reporter seems openly skeptical about whether the average user understands that these communications are sponsored. A writer for Time voices similar concerns. This is a perspective that we all would do well to keep in mind. Much of the online commentary about sponsored tweets and posts seems to focus on issues other than whether the consumer comprehends the disclosure. If it’s true that casual users might actually be misled (as opposed to merely annoyed) by sponsored tweets and posts, marketers should be extra cautious before launching a Social Media campaign that involves sponsored communications.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • It’s official: Social Media Marketing has arrived.
  • Users trust online recommendations and reviews. Let’s keep it that way.
  • Sponsored tweets and posts raise a lot of issues. If the risk of misleading consumers is one of them, it’s time to think twice about the tactic.

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Customer Service – For the Recession and Beyond

by on Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

Here at Zavee we spend a lot of time thinking about what smaller businesses can learn from larger ones. We also think a lot about customer service. The current recession seems to us an excellent time for businesses to focus on customer service. Commentators seem to agree. Their reasons may be obvious, but they make sense nevertheless:

  • Retaining existing customers costs far less than acquiring new ones
  • When competing for customers, businesses often have to choose between offering more value (e.g., by improving service) or cutting prices
  • A good customer experience makes future purchases more likely, while a bad experience does the opposite

These posts focused mainly on larger companies, many of which have downsized their customer service staffs. There are anecdotal indications, if nothing else, that customer service has suffered as a result.

City Light customer account operators, 1945

City Light customer account operators, 1945

On the other hand, some larger companies are maintaining or even improving customer service. We think that these companies will be well positioned after the economy recovers because they will have generated loyalty and improved the value of their brand at a time when some of their competitors were cutting service or hiding from customers. Some are using technology: Comcast and Best Buy are by now well known as pioneers in the use of Twitter to learn about and respond to customer care issues. Other companies, such as Southwest Airlines, maintain high levels of customer satisfaction by making service part of the organization’s DNA (although no one is perfect). And I have had at least one potentially negative experience with a rental car company turn positive simply because a well-trained senior manager was on the scene and jumped in with the right approach and a fair solution.

Smaller companies have both a harder and an easier time maintaining customer service in a recession. Harder, because increasing expenses during a time of weak revenues may be difficult to swallow. Easier, because the cost-benefit analysis is much clearer. Some large companies may believe they can afford to exchange so much in sales for so much in customer service expense, but most small companies don’t think that way. Although there certainly are exceptions, most small companies realize that they can’t afford to give up sales to save money. They also realize that good service builds repeat business and long-term loyalty. Finally, they should also realize that customers talk – which means that good customer service can generate referrals: the least expensive but most reliable way to acquire new customers. The good news for small companies is that maintaining and improving customer service doesn’t have to be expensive. Here are some low-cost approaches to customer service that businesses can start now and keep in place even after the economy improves:

  • Listen to your customers. There are many ways to listen: you can use applications like Facebook and Twitter; you can send surveys to customers by email; you can call them on the phone; and you can chat with them at the point of sale. As long as you are sincere and open you will learn a lot about what you are doing right and how you might improve.
  • Empower your associates. Your customer-facing employees should be encouraged to engage with customers at every point of contact and empowered to offer solutions to at least some concerns or complaints. Anything that can’t be handled at their level should be referred to the appropriate person and dealt with promptly.
  • Use technology wisely. At Zavee, we use a third-party application called Zendesk to help us manage customer service. Clicking on a “Help” link from anywhere on the Zavee site opens our Member Services page, from which anyone (even non-members) can read our content, engage with others in a forum or contact us with a question, comment or complaint. This system creates a numbered “ticket” for every interaction, which is automatically flagged for followup by Zavee but also gives the user a way to follow up with us. It turns everyone in our organization into a customer service agent, because we never know in advance who will be the best person to handle the next ticket that comes in.
  • Don’t go it alone. In addition to blogs and other online resources, local chambers of commerce are a great source of information from businesses like yours in your own market. If you are located in South Florida, we invite you to join Zavee. Our marketing tools help merchants understand their customers better and our networking tools improve their ability to communicate with and learn from customers.

The Zavee takeaway:

  • If you think the recession is time to double down on customer service, you’re right. If you think it’s time to cut back, think again.
  • It may be easier for you to provide excellent service than a larger competitor, because you are closer to the customer. That’s a key point of differentiation – make the most of it.
  • Customers talk. Make sure they have only good things to say about you.
  • Don’t stop once the economy improves.

Update (2/18/10): “Poor Customer Service Costs Companies $83 Billion Annually” provides a useful summary of an impressive global research report (pdf) on the high cost of poor customer service.

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Can Social Media Help Toyota Repair Its Reputation?

by on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

As most of the world now knows, Toyota’s US unit has announced the recall of approximately 2.3 million vehicles to repair a condition that has resulted in gas pedals sticking while the car is being driven. Safety issues are perhaps an automaker’s greatest threat, and Toyota clearly is taking the situation seriously. The company has even halted production of the affected vehicles until the problem can be solved. Nevertheless, according to auto blog The Truth About Cars, the Japanese business publication Nikkei (think Wall Street Journal) claims that the crisis “is seen as a major dent in the side of the leading Japanese automaker’s reputation as a builder of reliable automobiles.”

The Toyota issue is the largest product recall since the rise of Social Media, but it is not the first. In November, 2009, UK stroller manufacturer Maclaren recalled approximately one million strollers after reports that children were getting their fingers caught in the folding mechanism. The company put recall information on its web site, which, according to the New York Times, promptly crashed. Like Toyota, Maclaren’s stellar reputation resulted in a case of “the bigger they are, the harder they fall.” Time reported that parent blogs were merciless toward the company. Maclaren posted a video PSA to YouTube announcing the recall and the availability of a repair kit, but apparently did not take advantage of either Facebook or Twitter to communicate with parents.

Moving Forward?

Moving Forward?

Toyota is already receiving some criticism for being insufficiently engaged with its customers. The company has a page on its site dedicated to the recall, with links to FAQs and a video news release consisting of talking head sound bites from COO Jim Lentz along with ad-quality footage of the cars and the factory. The video is disappointing: Lentz’s comments sound blandly reassuring but never manage to engage. Today’s Ad Age reports that Toyota’s video is now on the company’s Facebook page, where it is said to have been well received. If the video is posted on the Toyota page, however, the company has not made it easy to find. Most of the wall postings appear to be from car owners and most are in the “I love my Toyota!” genre (it’s not called a fan page for nothing). There appears to be no company-supplied content relating to the recall (unless that video is there somewhere) and certainly no conspicuous attempt to leverage Toyota’s 70,000+ Facebook fans.

Toyota does have a presence on Twitter, but until yesterday the company was using the feed to point to information on the company’s web site. On Monday afternoon Lentz spent 20 minutes fielding questions on Twitter. The Q&A was announced only shortly before it began, and greater lead time might have yielded more participants. However, car bloggers such as @jalopnik and its editor @raywert were on the feed as well as several Toyota dealers. Although this was not the smoothest exercise, it strikes us as a good first step toward engaging with customers, not just making announcements to them.

Toyota is using a wide range of media to announce that it knows how to repair the faulty parts. Now let’s see how Toyota uses Social Media as it tries to repair its reputation.

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The Facebook Privacy Debate, Zavee and You

by on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

There is a fascinating debate underway over recent changes to how Facebook handles user information. This highly informative post on ReadWriteWeb summarizes the changes, which make many types of user content more publicly accessible, including to search engines, than before. Some of these changes can be reversed by the user, but others are permanent.

Apart from the practical consequences for some Facebook users, who never thought their content would be visible to their neighbors, employers, children, etc., the changes raise profound philosophical issues about the nature of privacy in today’s society. Every application that touches the social web confronts these issues. Zavee is no exception. As we developed our application we constantly asked ourselves whether we had struck the right balance between public and private. We are comfortable with the decisions we made, but it is always advisable to pay attention to a market leader like Facebook.

Facebook’s argument, as articulated by its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in this interview with Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, is that social norms are changing and Facebook’s changes are merely reflecting those norms, not driving them. He and other Facebook executives point to phenomena from blogging to reality TV to support the proposition that we as a society have chosen to live our lives more publicly. It isn’t that privacy is, in Arrington’s words, “really, really, dead” as much as it has been redefined.

via facebook.com

via facebook.com

Dissenters raise several objections to Facebook’s actions. Marshall Kirkpatrick is among those who claim that these changes are contrary to Facebook’s previous statements about user privacy and conveniently align with enhanced revenue opportunities. Nick O’Neill of AllFacebook and others argue that Facebook is actually imposing its view of privacy on its users by making it impossible for users to keep certain content out of public view. As O’Neill writes, “User privacy settings should theoretically reflect the ongoing societal shift without Facebook making any changes whatsoever. If users truly want to share more information with the world, they will.” Kirkpatrick also points to this paper (pdf) suggesting that the issue is not all or nothing: privacy is violated when content is published outside of its intended context, such as friends or family. However, the most profound argument from a philosophical standpoint is that privacy, in the conventional sense of being able to “define the boundary between our public self and our private self,” is a right that is an essential component of our conception of personal liberty. As Bruce Schneier put it:

Privacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect. . . .

A future in which privacy would face constant assault was so alien to the framers of the Constitution that it never occurred to them to call out privacy as an explicit right. Privacy was inherent to the nobility of their being and their cause.

Zavee’s business model is premised on what Howard Lindzon calls “User Controlled Privacy.” Zavee‘s value as a social shopping platform derives from shoppers who voluntarily exchange information with other shoppers so that all shoppers benefit from the community’s collective information, insight and experience. However, Zavee shoppers have a great deal of flexibility and control over the personal information that appears on the Zavee network, and Zavee never discloses the details of any purchase to any other shopper. Shoppers are free to include as much or as little information as they wish in their reviews, but otherwise their purchases and rewards are completely private.

We think this is an appropriate place to draw the line between public and private. For a different perspective, check out Blippy, a platform on which every purchase with a registered card is published to the entire network. Blippy appears to have met with some success, but it is not a path Zavee intends to follow.

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The Count of Social Media

by on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

Imagine having that on your business card! In a world of Brogans, Vaynerchuks and Mashables there is no shortage of candidates worthy of the title, but this post isn’t about any of them.

Anyone who has kids, or who was one fairly recently, will remember Sesame Street’s Lugosi-eque math whiz, Count von Count. The Count would count anything, anytime, anywhere. And he was much better at it than, say, The Spanish Inquisition:

Imagine, then, what the Count – let alone the Inquisition – would have to say about this: a Flash-based application that provides a real-time count of Social Media activity. Courtesy of Gary Hayes’ Personalize Media blog, here is Gary’s Social Media counter:

Visit Gary’s blog if you want to know about his sources, but the details are almost beside the point. Spend even a minute watching the numbers cascade and you are sure to be convinced – if you weren’t already – that Social Media is a communications channel (or group of channels) that marketers cannot afford to ignore. If you are marketer with a small company and a small budget, Social Media is perfect for you. If you are just starting out, take the simple advice that you’ll get from everyone: listen first.

And if you would like to learn about a Social Media marketing program exclusively for local merchants, feel free to get in touch with us here at Zavee.

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New Years Resolutions – And Lies

by on Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

What would the first week in January be without a post about New Years resolutions?  Mine aren’t of the “get to the gym” variety. Instead, my plan for 2010 is to use the web – especially Social Media – more effectively.

In part this means learning to avoid what Penelope Trunk calls The 4 Lies About Social Media. (In her post these are more “myths” or “mistakes” than lies. I don’t know why she calls them lies but being provocative is a good way to get noticed. It helps your Google page rank, too. Hence the title of this post, which originally was just “New Years Resolutions” – and another resolution: to get better at writing for search engines.)

In my quest to improve my social media skills this year I am very fortunate to be surrounded by a team of well connected and highly creative colleagues. I want to make it clear that my skills (and deficits) are my own; Zavee, collectively, is poised for the leadership you expect of us. Another way of putting it is, my real New Years resolution is to become as smart as my staff! With that caveat in mind, here are some of my Web-related resolutions for 2010:

  1. Take better advantage of Linkedin. Penelope says that Linkedin is a great scorecard for the size of one’s network but it’s a “lie” to say that it’s useful for building a network. The scorecard aspect is useful (e.g., for employers who want to learn about how connected a job candidate is).  However, Linkedin is not for conversations, so it is not a good way to build a network. I see her point about conversations – it may be the only thing you can’t do on Linkedin. On the other hand, Linkedin provides many opportunities to get found, get noticed and get followed. Unfortunately, I haven’t really figured out how to use Linkedin efficiently and proactively – how best to use features such as starting discussions and asking questions. Fortunately, my marketing people don’t have that problem. So my personal resolution is to follow their guidance so I can understand Linkedin better and use it more effectively.
    2. Stuart Pilbrow via Flickr

    Happy New Year!

  2. Build our brand with Twitter. Penelope says that networks require conversations but it’s a “lie” that Twitter is the place to have them. She says Twitter is better for finding and following people with similar ideas and interests. We do use Twitter to keep up with tweets about Social Media, loyalty marketing and other topics that interest us, and tools such as TweetDeck and HootSuite make it easy to manage different accounts, searches and lists. However, I know that I have a lot to learn about creating a presence on Twitter and achieving the kind of scale that will enable us to use Twitter to leverage the Zavee brand. Fortunately, our community manager has a great deal of experience with Twitter. My New Years resolution is to learn from her how to build a brand with Twitter.
  3. Make Zavee Thinking more relevant. Penelope says that blogs are networking tools, not personal journals, and I certainly agree. I think I’ve been disciplined in how and what we write about on this blog.  I write from the small business perspective, whether I am posting about trends and concepts or about tools and techniques. For 2010, however, I intend to focus a bit more on practical solutions for merchants, including by posting about how merchants can get the most out of Zavee. Even this post, which is superficially about me, is really about how I can better be the “lead blocker” for merchants who are trying to make progress with unfamiliar tools and concepts.
  4. Use our Facebook fan page to help build our member community. Penelope’s fourth “lie” is that social media is no place for business. In fact, businesses are finding new and interesting ways to use social media all the time, and social media channels are constantly developing business-oriented tools and features. One example is Facebook’s fan page. We have one, and we want it to be the destination for our Zavee community. One way to do this is to use Facebook to extend the content we can deliver on the Zavee site. Facebook is great for managing events and user-generated content, both of which are important to us.  We will have more to say over the next few months about our member community and how Facebook fits into our strategy. For now, we’ll just say that our final resolution for 2010 is to build our community as we build our business, which includes being smart about Facebook.

See? Nothing too difficult there! Maybe I have time to hit the gym.

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