Recent news reports have thrown up a number
of stories relating to online, or should I say fake online reviews on sites
such as Amazon, Facebook and most prominently Google. The first report which
sparked my interest was an article on the Statesman website, about an Austin
gutter company filing a law suit over a customer’s negative online review.
The article relates to a review that was posted by someone going by the name of
Norma Lee and accused the company of bogus customer reviews on the site. The
company involved are filing a law suit against them for slander.
A second article a couple of weeks later on The
Denver Channel news website, told of a woman who has
admitted she was paid to post five star reviews on the Google feedback site
by a local business. This has then been followed by a number of reports of new algorithms to help locate and flag online reviews which were
likely to be fake.
Whether the above companies are guilty or
not of what they have been accused of is not something which needs discussing here, but the very fact they are being
widely reported demonstrates the high likelihood and sadly believability that some
businesses are carrying out this practice.
Undoubtedly companies are aware of the
value of online reviews and although these are isolated cases it is a worrying
demonstration of the length companies will go to and the risks they are willing
to take to create advocates of their service on the web. It is also hard to
argue with the value of these reviews; NICE Fizzback’s research points towards
online reviewers reaching a huge audience (especially on the aforementioned
sites) and also having an influence over the buying process.
But despite the benefits there is no easy or
crooked replacement to creating genuine customer advocacy both online and in
customer’s everyday lives. Ultimately, as our research demonstrates online
reviews are by no means the most influential of type of advocate that there is - and most of the above you cannot fake!
After all aren’t genuine advocates,
generated by an excellent customer experience the healthiest and most
profitable business model you can follow. And it is solutions such as NICE
Fizzback’s Customer Experience Management offering that enables business to
achieve this, by listening to the whole Voice of the Customer and driving
business improvements.
Tom Lynam
For more info on NICE Fizzback please visit www.nice.com/fizzback