The following transcript was taken from InSights, a staffing and recruiting podcast from Haley Marketing Group dedicated to providing quick-hitting takeaways on Social Recruiting, Content Marketing and Employer Branding. To listen to the episode, click play on the player above or visit the episode page [InSights] Optimizing Your Career Site
Brad Bialy: Matt, I saw a recent stat that 88% of people trust online reviews as much as they trust their best friend’s recommendations. How can we gather more positive online reviews on sites like Glassdoor, Google or Facebook?
Matt Lozar: First of all, that’s a wild stat.
Brad Bialy: It’s a stat. I saw it. It’s true.
Matt Lozar: It’s on the Internet, so it must be true. But if you think about it, your best friend could be your partner, it could be somebody who was in your wedding party, your college roommate, but Matt’s trusting Brad from Buffalo as much as my buddy Chris, who was the best man in my wedding. It happens though because I’m doing the same thing. We’re going to go to New York City in April. I’m looking at hotel reviews. I’m looking at restaurant reviews. I trust them as much as anyone else.
Matt Lozar: But to get back to Brad’s question of how can we really get more positive online reviews? I mean, step one is asking people. It’s most of the time we go to leave feedback when it’s negative. We don’t go to leave feedback when it’s positive.
Brad Bialy: There’s actually a report from Search Engine Land. This is from 2016, that says 71% of consumers will leave a review for a business if prompted to do so.
Matt Lozar: So that gets back to asking them, and then how can we do that? The first way is when somebody is in your office. They come into an assignment. Maybe in their paycheck environment. Through an email. Whatever communication you have with them. It could also be a text message. Make it easy. Remove friction to have them leave a review for your company on Google, on Facebook, on Glassdoor, wherever your audience would be finding reviews helpful, and ask them to leave that four and five-star review.
Brad Bialy: Yeah, and I want to back up for a second here, because those stats are a little wild. They’re high numbers. I’m going to leave a link to a blog post that I created for Haley Marketing Group here. The blog post is: What Are The Critics Saying About Your Staffing Firm? There’s a wide range of data in there if you want additional research and additional insight on that topic. But to Matt’s point, how you gather more online reviews? You ask for them.
Brad Bialy: If you know there’re candidates who are enjoying your services, that are enjoying the assignment that they’re placed on, ask them to leave you a review. If you have a client that you love working with, who enjoys the service and the level of candidate that you’re providing to their open opportunities, ask them to leave a review.
Matt Lozar: If we really want to focus on getting the most positive reviews, focus on people that are happier. We’re not going to be able to eliminate all negative reviews. If you just ask people to on their own time to leave a review on Glassdoor, Google or Facebook, so then it digs into the other point of what happens if somebody leaves a negative review? What’s the process? What’s the best method to handle that negative review of your company?
Brad Bialy: Yeah, if you receive a negative review, I would encourage you to follow a two-step process taught by Jay Baer of Convince & Convert. His book called, Hug Your Haters, and I definitely recommend that you check out that book. It’s all about managing your online presence. Within this two-step process, what happens is if somebody leaves a negative review, the first action is to respond and understand that they’re upset.
Brad Bialy: “Hi Brad, I understand you had a negative experience with us. We always strive to provide world-class service. We would love to chat. Give us a call, or shoot me an email directly.” Now, when you respond to somebody in an online review, you never want that response to come back in that public forum. You want their response privately, whether that’s through a phone call or an email, because otherwise, if they come back stronger, and they come back more negatively, that’s now public on any social platform.
Brad Bialy: Let’s say they do come back a second time, and they say, “I don’t want to talk. I had a bad experience.” What do we do in that situation? We respond a second time. “Brad, I understand you had a negative experience. We strive to provide world-class service. It seems like we fell short here. We would love to chat. Please give us a call, or shoot me an email personally.” If they respond a third time, at that point we let it go. We’ve done everything that we can to address the situation. We’ve done everything to showcase and show not only that individual but others, that we’re actively listening and wanting to provide world-class service and improve.
Brad Bialy: So, we’re going to stick that rule of twos, and we’re going to respond twice.
Matt Lozar: The last thing we want to do is to get into a back and forth online, as Brad laid out in his takeaway here for responding to the negative review, because you may have heard the term of Internet trolls, people that just to basically start online arguments. They may never walk into your place of business again. They may never have a personal interaction with you again, and they’re just trying to incite somebody at your company, maybe it’s your staffing agency, maybe it’s another person you’ve given this responsibility to, to monitor online reviews. If you get into a back and forth, more than a couple of responses, nothing positive is going to happen from that interaction.
Matt Lozar: So, we need to take it into the private setting and handle it. Not to open up a huge can of worms, but maybe there is a problem with your business that needs to be addressed, and their point could be very valid. Maybe your phone system doesn’t work well, or there’s just a bad part of your process. So, their response could be valid. If you can adjust it in a mature and responsible manner, that’s really the best practice.
Brad Bialy: Warren Buffett has a quote that I love, that says, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation, and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” You’ve worked countless hours, sleepless nights, weekends, to build the reputation of your organization. The last thing you want to do is get into a shouting match on Facebook because of an online review. Think about your online reputation, respond twice, and then let it go.