Rebuild Google+ Local Reviews - iPhone Review Tip and More

[Linda Buquet]

As you may know car dealers were hit especially hard in the Google+ Local review takedowns/blocking.

I just stumbled on a post with a couple of really good tips. Now the post is directed toward car dealers that try to get reviews AT the dealership while the customer is there. It's assumes that's why many got taken down - due to having review stations on-site and all the reviews came from the same IP. So this post is about how to get around that by having customers review from their own device instead.

I don't really advocate on-site reviews at all. I think it can be a little coercive and intimidating to customers. So I'm not sharing this post to say here's how to get on-site reviews.

Sharing it to say IF you have a customer on their iPhone that WANTs to leave a review, here's a work around for them to be able to do so. (But the biggest, best tip is below that one.)

<a href="http://www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com/profiles/blogs/rebuild-google-local-reviews">Rebuild Google+ Local Reviews - Automotive Digital Marketing Professional Community</a>

Although this is the simplest solution, most buyers that are carrying smart phones are iPhone users. Google has unfortunately blocked iPhone users from leaving reviews via the mobile site. They trying to push iPhone users to download the Google Local application to leave reviews. This is very cumbersome at point of sale. What customer is going to put away their credit card, break out their phone when prompted to leave a review, download the Google+ Local app, sign in, and then leave a review!? Chances are you won't build many reviews this way.

There is a simple solution to cure the iPhone blockage. You simply have to point the customers device to the direct search site on Google local. This will give them the opportunity to utilize their mobile devices web browser and leave the review.

However like I said the BEST tip is yet to come. It was posted down in comments.

Comment by Carl Maeda on October 12, 2012 at 4:27pm

The worst part is that many negative reviews stayed up because customers who
were mad about something went home and wrote the review.

The easiest way to help ensure you only get good reviews is to always ask the customer before they leave the lot how their experience was at your dealership.
If they had a negative experience, try to resolve any issues before they go home.

That is SO true! The reason a lot of the BAD reviews stick is they are genuine and happen after the customer leaves and goes home.

Getting GOOD reviews is all about giving good service, so I love the tip about asking customers about their experience before they leave and if they had a bad one - go the extra mile - fix it,
make it right and they'll likely go home and leave a great review later.

What do you think?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

The worst part is that many negative reviews stayed up because customers who
were mad about something went home and wrote the review.

The easiest way to help ensure you only get good reviews is to always ask the customer before they leave the lot how their experience was at your dealership.
If they had a negative experience, try to resolve any issues before they go home.

This is a great point. We often get so caught up in the technical reasons why something like Google's review filter seems to be failing that we overlook what the most important part is - give great customer service, find out if the customer is dissatisfied and do what's necessary to rectify the situation to prevent the negative review from ever being conceived in the first place.