The power of Google - Fake Google Business reviews....
We all know about the power of Google business reviews. Certainly as a selfstorage operator, having a relatively small customer basis with overseeable churn, for a product what is almost always found via Google, negative reviews are painful as we all know we have to work hard for positive (4+ *) reviews. Just experienced today the negative side of the story where a customer in one of our stores (we have 22 stores open for business), who was moved out for delinquency issues (amongst others had falsely recalled 2 of the last direct debits) and was not happy we terminated the contract and was not prepared to discuss the case in any realistic way. Yes I can understand that such customer has a bad customer experience although he is 99% responsible for that himself, however what then happened is extremely sour for us. Not only did he give us a 1* review with some negative language added, but he also copy-pasted the same language and review to 14 (!) other Lagerbox locations where he has never been a customer and obviously no customer experience. Knowing how hard it is to deal with Google with issues like this one (and here it is obvious!) we lose time in the process to get the review away (if at all possible) and thus losing (substantial) money on such case. Any experience in dealing with similar issues? How has Google reacted here? Go after the customer in respect of legal action (we have details) or waist of time, money?
Commercial Real Estate Broker I Passion for Hospitality I Love California I
6 年Peter - I own a hotel and I feel you and hear your pain. We encounter this kind of issue once in a while. Here is how I deal with this issue - we try hard to do a good enough job so that we have more than enough positive reviews and don't bother too much about the few negative reviews. But we reply to all reviews - the good, bad and ugly ones. We are sincere and direct in our replies - for the bad and false negative reviews, write back saying why this is an unfair review. Hope this helps. It has worked at our business wonderfully. Best regards, Rick??
helped 50+ self-storages choose the right tech ? Self-Storage Automation Consultant
6 年Possible quick fix: According to?https://support.google.com/business/answer/4596773?hl=en and?https://support.google.com/contributionpolicy/answer/7400114 at least the duplicate reviews could be flagged as "Spam and fake content" - which they are. It should be obvious to a moderator at Google that they've been duplicated. Just be sure to be thorough, they might only give you one chance to appeal. As a long-term solution I'd recommend to establish a reputation management strategy that identifies clients which are particularly likely to leave a good review and asks them to leave one at your locations's Google Maps entry (or other social media, if relevant). Making an effort to collect positive reviews will minimize the impact of single negative reviews.