Reputation Management Software Feedback & Verification Features
September 14, 2017
One of the challenges businesses face in dealing with online reviews is what is also at their core: user generated content.
Simply put, people can say what they want about you, and often you have little recourse. This is particularly frustrating when you don’t believe the reviewer was even a real customer.
At Marketing 360®, we develop Top Rated Local to give business owners more control over the reviews and rating the receive, with the main goal of ensuring reviews are legitimate and helpful to other consumers.
Top Rated Local offers business owners several ways to verify reviews and illicit more positive feedback.
Review Challenge Feature
Initially, it’s easy for anyone to leave a review on Top Rated Local. You don’t need any type of account or special email ID. You just find a business and leave a review. A confirmation link is sent by email. This streamlines the process for reviewers.
However, the business can also do a challenge verification on any review they get. The challenge sends an email to the reviewer that requires them to restate the content of the review and confirm they want it posted.
This feature is most often used when a poor rating is given that is either from an unknown person or with vague details. In some cases, business owners use it to verify the content of poor review, in which case the reviewer can verify:
People who leave fake reviews are far less likely to notice or take the time to verify their review, helping us eliminate spurious content.
Manual Verification
On Top Rated Local, any person can leave a review without creating an account. The only step involved is to click on a link (sent by email) to confirm the review.
However, about 50% of people miss or ignore this step.
When this is a positive review, the business owner wants to get it live, otherwise it sits in pending reviews.
On Top Rated Local, you can now manually verify any review:
This is another element of control that ensures your best content gets published.
Low Rating Feedback
Most business owners are not overtly against negative reviews. If they come in the form of constructive criticism, they can be beneficial.
The problem is that with user generated content, you often get vague or inaccurate remarks. Often, people need just a bit more encouragement to provide useful feedback.
That’s the idea behind the low rating feedback feature. This is simply a popup that asks the reviewer to provide more detail on why they’re rating the business poorly. It’s an internal message that only the business owner will see:
Online reviews continue to evolve for both businesses and consumers. They are undeniably popular and garner a high level of trust from consumers, which makes them vital content for businesses.
The tools we have in place and continue to develop with Top Rated Local all have the main goal of improving review content for everyone, mainly by verifying its source and encouraging reviewers to be honest and specific in their review.
The end result is improved service levels from businesses and greater ease at finding top rated performers for consumers.