How yelp can squander your customer’s goodwill.

One of my clients decided to register on Yelp and asked her customers to submit a review.  They took time out of their busy schedules, registered on Yelp (they never heard of it before) and submitted their opinions of her business.  The reviews are stored in the Yelp database, but are not showing up under her business because Yelp considers those reviews to be suspect.  She does not feel comfortable asking her customers to spend more time writing reviews on another site, so now she is left in a very difficult position.

Not all business transactions are made in dollars and cents, many of us deal with business and products because we feel good about the product, the owners, the service or the overall experience.  In the business world this is called goodwill, and FASB (the standards accounting board) even has ways to calculate a goodwill for your balance sheet in certain financial situations.  The field of marketing is all about how to promote the “goodwill” of business or product to prospective customers. Business owners, know the goodwill factor of their customers and even trade on it, by asking them for recommendations, reviews, referrals, etc.  They have to careful to not demand too much of their customers, or else goodwill can turn into resentment and lead to a decrease in business.

My client “banked” her goodwill by asking her customers to write a review on her business on Yelp.  She did not offer them anything, but rather explained that she claimed her business on Yelp and would appreciate reviews there.  She could have picked another review site, but she learned that Yelp was reputable site and she trusted them to post her reviews.  These were honest and authentic reviews, from real everyday people, who have never heard of Yelp before.  Unfortunately Yelps algorithms/processes/policies can not distinguish between honest first-time users and complex pay-for-review operations.  Of her 10 reviews, none are visible under her business.  Not only can they not be seen by anyone, they also can not be accessed for reposting on to another site.  The goodwill she used is gone, and the time and energy her customers spend to review her business was wasted.

Why can’t she simply ask her reviewers to repost their comments on another site?  She is concerned that if she approaches them again, they may start to feel used and resent it.  The original conversation probably went something like this:  ”Hey you have been coming here for a while, can you please write a review of my business (your honest opinion) on this cool website, Yelp, I learned about recently?”  Its a bit awkward to follow that up with ” Thank you so much for writing that review, unfortunately Yelp thought your review was fraudulent and suppressed it, so now can you please rewrite it on this other review site?”

Yelp is one of the top business review sites, but as its reach expands beyond social media savvy business and reviewers, this issue will grown.  Not all reviewers or business owners know about Yelp, so some exchange of information (about Yelp) between the two will occur.  So I strongly urge Yelp to take another look at their processes and policies, because in this particular case they have lost goodwill with both the listing business and its reviewers.

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