Tourism businesses | Managing your online reputation and why it’s even more important now!
Good morning and welcome to this second and the latest series of digital webinars delivered by VisitScotland in conjunction with Business Gateway's Digital Boost programme and part of a programme or part of a package of webinars aimed at supporting tourism businesses as they recover my name is Andrew Craig from VisitScotland i'm industry development manager at VisitScotland and today i'm joined by Rene Looper who is the founder and MD at two mains social media which is based in Inverness. Hi Rene, hi everybody just to remind us today that all your microphones and webcams are in off mode but if you want to ask any questions at any point during today's session you can use the go to webinar control panel and there's a little section in the control panel headed questions and you can put any questions in there to VisitScotland and during the session and we'll have 5-10 minutes at the end to cover any questions that you might have we are recording at today's sessions session and you'll be able to watch it again or if you have to dash off you'll be able to see it on visitscotland.org within the next five to ten days or staff members that VisitScotland add subtitles to the recording and for accessibility reasons so that it makes it that'll go up in in due course and you'll be able to see it and we'll also be distributing a link to the slides and from Rene's presentation and at the end of the webinar as well as via a follow-up email that will go out and tomorrow so any queries about social media sorry about managing your online reputation why it's so important then please ask them via the questions tab and go to and go to Evernote’s control panel and then one final thing beforehand over to to Rene is that we're also offering the opportunity to participate in a free VisitScotland digital review with one of our industry relationship managers and these reviews will assess elements of your digital output including suppose not limited to social media managing your online reputation online bookings your presence on search engines and website performance as well and those are free you'll see as soon as you leave the session today you'll receive a little notification on your screen and that will give you the opportunity to register to sign up for one of those free digital reviews with the member of staff from VisitScotland and then just so actually said one just before a password to VisitScotland this the usual screenshot from digital boost or the digital boost home page it's a program that delivers a lot of free services including up to 21 hours of specialist digital support and workshops on a variety of digital topics in fact all of the topics that we're covering in this series of webinars can be booked on the Digital Boost website just now and then there's also online guides on 21 digital topics and video tutorials online digital topics as well so that's enough definitely enough for me for now and i'll pass things over to Rene who is here representing two main social media and he's going to lead today's session so rainy i'll hand things over to you fantastic thank you very much Andrew and welcome everybody i'm just gonna share my screen with you should be able to see my first slide and thank you very much Andrew for inviting me for today's presentation and today's presentation that online reputation is close to my heart and i'll tell you why but today's agenda as you can see on the screen as well is about online reputation obviously people talk about you but where is not just TripAdvisor and thank you very much and online reviews managing online reviews personalisation and the quality insurance scheme coveted 19.let's see if I can go to the next slide yeah next slide is
actually a little bit more about myself I’ve seen the delegate list I’ve seen the businesses that are taking part today and I recognise some names of recognising businesses because I used to work myself in the tourism sector we used it on the Clooney bank hotel in forest which you can see on the screen if you're looking for a nice place to stay in Moray Spey Side find them at Luna bank hotel in Moray and we run that for seven years and in those seven years I became very much into the whole tourism bits and online reviews as well so I know how harmful it can be and how it hurts if you get a negative review so I totally understand that the way that hospitality nowadays and regardless if you're running a hotel a restaurant or an attraction or you're a tour guide online reputation is becoming more and more important especially now I have to say where customers are finding out about your online reputation online when they're having a nice cosy evening the next couple of slides are more scene setting in in in that sense before we go to the nitty-gritty event online reviews but we all know these statistics you know if you make a customer unhappy in the real world they might tell their six friends nowadays if you make customers unhappy online they have the opportunity to tell a lot more people 6 000 friends that's actually in a quote from amazon in essence but yeah it is it is more and more important to have a good online reputation online and what I’ve learned in the in the tourism industry as well when I worked in the in the hospitality sector is i'm just gonna do here slides there we go reputations can take a long time to build and very quickly can be destroyed by having one person being very negative about your server's offering in that sense and that's why it needs to be managed in that sense and i'm actually looking forward to the q a question and answer at the ends because love to hear your own experiences and like Andrew said as well you know if you agree with what's on the screen or you don't agree with on the screen please put that in there in the chat and Andrew will look at the questions that are that are coming out but I’d like to have that conversation later on as well what always say and it's a bit cheesy have to admit but you know the best form of marketing is word of mouth marketing the best form of marketing is indeed word of mouth marketing however it's it can be pretty slow before the time people tell all the friends of family it’s the cheapest form of marketing in that sense but also the slowest form of marketing and that’s where online reviews is the word of mouth is actually moved to word of mouth marketing told you it was a bit cheesy apologies for that but we all understand reviews are more and more important for the for the consumer for people who are booking your hotel your attraction your restaurant and so on but also hotels you can't book a hotel or a restaurant or anything else nowadays and asking people to sort of write a write a review the next slide is it's talked about you know a lot of people would actually pay more for excellent customer service and agree with this slide but I also disagree with the slide because offering customer service you can have a five-star experience in a two-star hostel and one-star experience in the five-star hotel it's not related think to the price that you pay and it shouldn't be related to the price that you pay for a product or a service customer service should be integrated into the into the culture of a business and regardless if you're selling hotel rooms for 400 500 pounds or for 50 pounds you know customer service needs to be part of that of that offering in that sense I hope Glasgow tours is on the call on the webinar today because I’ve got a screenshot for them and Glasgow tours I’ve never heard of the company before so what did I do I went to google like most people do and type in the name of the business and page one of google comes up obviously with your website your website is seo optimised your website comes up but apart from that there is trip advisor coming up actually underneath your website which is good TripAdvisor New Zealand comes up halfway the pageandtripadvisor.com and different variations of trip advisor as well so the first impression of your business is not your website it's actually google you might have a fantastic website you know all the right things it looks fantastic but if you're if the first impression of your business on google or other search engines is not that great then people move away very quickly however in this case and in most of the cases have to say the first impression is very good only see five star reviews there so that gives me the trust that this is a good company to deal with on the right hand side you see those big arrows about own this business and people also search for the reason I did them there is because it says own this business i'm not sure if the owner of the business has actually claimed that google my business listing because that's what it is but if they have they could do a lot more with it to indeed optimise your google my business listing there's another webinar for that so don't go into detail but there is a lot more people can do with that right hand side of the of the page and just so you know how important that is when you a digital conference two years ago in Edinburgh a two-day conference and there was someone on the on the on the stage from google who said this was two years ago 47 of people that do a search on google are actually not clicking on the link because they can find the information on the right hand side the telephone number the opening times if you're open June covets what are the rules et cetera so don't ignore the google my business and if you don't have a good reputation online on the right hand side at the bottom it says both people also search for which means your competitors have a place there as well good my business is extremely important like I said before I’ve got some screenshots of their reference watches who know very well Mary if you're on the call welcome 72 mainly five star reviews cant house again five star reviews and culture actually thought it was Netherlands but it's more blemisher also got great reviews there as well and this is the point that i'm going to ask Andrew to put up a poll we have a couple of questions for you about how you're dealing with the reviews so the first question that i'll launch today that we would like you to respond to is just asking you about what type of reviews you do respond to so select only one do you respond to only negative reviews only positive reviews both positive and negative reviews or do you not respond to any reviews at all and if you can click what you respond to that will be superb okay and we'll share the results there ready here we are so only negative reviews is it seems it seems one good thing is that everybody here responds to reviews of some sort so nobody is not responding if that what makes sense nobody is not responding to any reviews so the bottom one there so some folk only responding to negative reviews but the majority 89 both positive and negative reviews I’m delighted to see that and 90 respond to both positive and negative reviews and like I said i'm delighted to see that because the amount of people sometimes speak to say well no we don't respond to the views because then you get in a conversation that don’t really want or don’t respond to the good ones and ignore the bad ones and think so well done the next question yeah so the next question is what percentage of those reviews therefore do you respond to you respond to them all or you see the options there and you can still again select only one and there we go so again very healthy and all of you are at least responding to for those that are responding 50 percent 22 percent 75 percent of 22 and then 100 of reviews 56 if you respond to all the reviews that you receive that's very encouraging isn't it ready very good very good this can be a very short session actually and then finally you can select as many of these as applied to your business which review platform do you direct your guests or visitors towards if you're asking them to make a review and TripAdvisor google Facebook or the review platform provided by your booking system so if there's certain times of year or certain types of visits so you maybe say okay well these we'll put them on to you know ask them to make a review on google or yeah perhaps if they've got if they've made a booking in their email address as a Gmail account then you might want to say okay you've got a Gmail account already so nice and easy for you to put google review something along those lines right we'll see that wow yeah that's incredible 44 yes like I said I guess people that are online are already doing the right sort of stuff so it's like I said could be a very short session today a nice spread Vinnie okay ready I’ll hide that and let you continue perfect thank you very much that worked really well and just got back slightly responding to reviews is extremely important and I don't have to tell you that because most of you do that but I’ve seen reviews bad reviews where actually the business owner turned a negative review into a positive because the way they responded unfortunately I’ve also seen business owners that made a negative review into a double negative or an even more negative review by the way they responded as well so yeah it's not just the review it’s the response to it I think I think extremely important now when people search on google they get the google my business listing when people do a search on Bing the other search engine they don't have the google my business listing it actually links to TripAdvisor and as you can see I did a search for another organisation the national Wallace monument so I hope you're online as well and it shows the Trip Advisor listings over there and there as well so it's all about reviews nowadays and I don't have to tell you that nowadays you can spend a lot of money and resources on trying having a good reputation marketing trying to convince people you're a good business but most people look at the reviews on amazon on google my business on TripAdvisor et cetera again after I’ve used some examples of businesses that signed up for it so again I hope they're here these are social media reviews so on Facebook they've got reviews as well and Facebook is a little bit messing with the reviews you do get almost on a daily basis people complaining about hey we've got 125 star reviews and all of a sudden it says five people gave you five star reviews while they're still there so there's a little bit of issue there with Facebook but overall again a very positive experience and again don't just like people that giving you a five star review or less response to those reviews even on Facebook and yes that takes time but built in time in in not just posting content on social media but engaging with people as well especially people have given you a nice and nice review so responding again I can't emphasise enough how important that is the next slide is a company called or a platform called yelp when I mention yelp to people they most people are not aware them or have seen them on the on page one of google but they're not quite sure what it is yelp is a is a review site like TripAdvisor but you can erase any business or servers on yelp so it's not just the hotels the restaurants the attractions etc you can rate your local shop your dentist and I’ve seen years ago I’ve seen a review of someone that took the time to write a review about a petrol station on the isle of Skye who does that right you get petrol but sure enough people seem to have time to write reviews and they do that and if your customer is American or are American’s they yelp in America is big and again you know things about your customers are do you get a lot of visitors from the from the us they are most of them are aware of yelp and are using that and this this screenshot will show you some people that Matthew for example have highlighted his he had the time to write 1739 Idon't know where people get that have the time to leave you to do all these reviews but they do yeah so be aware that people not just writing reviews for of your business on TripAdvisor on google my business on Facebook they find other platforms as well depending on the platform that are used in their in their country right inside again a company that signed up and hope they're here fantastic seven star reviews and oh i'll just go back and sure enough Pamela who works at that business is responding to that review actually the same day as it was posted in a nice personal way and again emphasise it again responding to reviews is extremely important let's tackle the elephant in the room TripAdvisor reviews I mean here are some examples of you know you can't please everybody most people love loch ness but hey it's just a lake for some people you can't please everyone and don't even try and what for some people can be a negative thing for other people can be a positive thing I mean I don't have any kids if I like to go to restaurants I tend to go to a restaurant that you can have a nice time without and he gets shouting running around so if I see a restaurant with a negative review about there is no menu for the kids grades that's what i'm gonna put my so you know you can't please everybody and you can actually make use of you know having a worst according to this woman we have we are terrible on TripAdvisor and have a couple when I speak to businesses about TripAdvisor they usually say or is very positive or very negative there's no in between well that that depends and the average score is actually 4.08 in that sense so a lot of people do write positive reviews in that sense so it's not just for the for the negative and extremely positive it's actually quite up quite high up there so don't be afraid of negative reviews how no matter how good you are there will be at some point person coming that is not pleased and writing view etc just to emphasise it's not just for hotels seventy percent post reviews about attraction sport represented bad restaurants on TripAdvisor as well and you get beautiful reviews and wonderful pictures of food there from Anderson’s restaurants in in Granton or both of carton actually but yeah it's reviews so what happens when people are not that pleased and you can see a couple of examples there as well where people write fantastic reviews five star reviews and another person who probably was there on the same day writes a negative review etc I’ve highlighted the way they up their contents their review on trip advice and mobile more and more people because they're there write a review on their mobile they don't have a negative review then get into the car drive home open up the desktop and then write to the view they write a review there and then so be aware of that thing and no doubt you are and again on the right hand side you can see someone that is quite recently not happy with the way people the hotel are doing with coke 19 they're not taking it seriously and a response from the from the general manager just to explain the other side of the story and I think that's very important don't give customers just one side of the story and and by responding you you give the other side of the story as well and what like about trip advice that's that's ends of the discussion there is no yes no yes no which can happen on Facebook because people can respond to to reply as well so make sure your response is is a good one best way to respond to negative reviews take a moment remember when we got our first negative review was like a warrior on the keyboard and my wife looked over my shoulder I said I wouldn't post that and she was right the next day I was a lot milder and realised you know but my answer is going to be on the internet for years to come so take a moment really take a moment sleep over it discuss it and if you're not the person to write a reply ask someone else to do it you can be do it a lot better don't take it personal in that sense although it doesn't hurt have to have to say be personal don't use the same answer over and over thank you very much for your fine starter for you we hope to see you again in the near future and the next one who says the same etc so try to personalise it because that will give other people a more sense of what you're what your business is like don't stand back show empathy address the issue directly and make it good obviously a question that I get asked quite often as well can you get bad reviews removed well you know if it's a genuine complaints then no you can't remove it best way is to respond however there are some reviews that trip advice will review if people use language that they shouldn't use online you can report it if it's intolerant language when people talk about certain people about staff members religion politics all that sort of stuff can be removed but you know that's obvious and if it's irrelevant and I hear that as well where maybe a restaurant is not run by the hotel that is part of the hotel and TripAdvisor or the shop or something like that that should be appearing on their own entry as well so it's not relevant to your business you can you can remove that as well and on the next photo slides i'll show you how to how to do that so you can report a trip advice interview if it has one of those things that it shouldn't be there report it and then they will take actions on to see if it's indeed not suitable to be on a family-friendly website like trip advice the other question I get a lot is don’t understand the ranking that TripAdvisor use I’ve got 125 star reviews my competitor has five star reviews and he gets a higher listing than myself which I don't understand nobody knows for sure it's a bit like google how do you get the page one nobody knows for sure however the number of reviews are important so it's the quantity of the reviews the quality of the review so it's more positive it seems to be that you're getting a higher listing and the recency after of the reviews and that's where my next point about asking people for a review is coming in as well if you don't ask you don't get so asking people for the review is extremely important getting the most out of TripAdvisor is obviously check your reviews respond to all reviews which most of you do anyway so well done like I mentioned before don't allow people to see just one side of the story be honest important gorgeous virtues don't try to if you messed up be honest and don't try to sweep it under the carpet and actually and that's what we did with the Cluny Bank hotel as well use reviews for team training and you know it's we looked at if the quality of the reviews went down and it was for example to do with housekeeping then we looked at when did it happen was it during the week was it during the weekend who was on call that weekend and make them aware you know if we mess up if we are dropping our cars then we're gonna we're gonna get those type of reviews so use it for team training don't use it for you for just yourself ask customers for reviews do that in an email once people have left with a clickable link to your TripAdvisor listing or your google listing or your Facebook listing and create a feedback system and then the next couple of slides will tell that go into more detail as well TripAdvisor itself has online booking you can pay more to get a higher listing to be featured and all that sort of stuff so again you know if you're getting a lot of business from trip advice at that point or not you can look at that from the other perspective as well see if you can up your game by finding out what other services they offer as well and it is indeed make it easier for people to book online straight away through TripAdvisor or pay more to get a higher listing be featured and all that sort of stuff but i'm sure you were aware TripAdvisor is very wouldn’t say aggressive in the marketing but they will they will tell you but they can what they can offer some of you might have a review management system where review pro for example and revenate I know is quite popular in the in the hotel industry for example where it aggregates reviews from google my business TripAdvisor Facebook and you can do it from one screen basically on the dashboard if you have an aggregator like that please put it in the in the q a and if you're happy with it if it works for you it basically saves time on managing these online reviews booking.com
for example it's another one that’s that they integrate so there might be a way to sort of minimise time spent on responding to reviews by having a review advocate like that great do you have a culture a process in your business that actually encourage people to write a review do you collate the reviews and do you analyse the feedback and the next slide is a very simple excel sheet almost where you know if you if you have those feedback forms in your room which we which we had at the room had feedback form of course you can then create you know what was the nature of the feedback what was the action taken and the details of the follow-up and who handled it these are quite helpful things and think if you don't have a system in place like that you're getting feedback but do you actually take action after getting not just negative feedback but some people can actually put on the feedback from something that is not a critical thing but it would be nice thing so next slides is actually when was going through my archive this was what we had in the Clinton bank hotel and then this back in from 2004 actually so we took a note about when was that review which room and what was the action taken yeah so and again that was a simple excel sheet which we sort of combined and every month we had a meeting with the team to say okay we tend to get that sort of feedback what can we do about it what sort of questions in the feedback forum what did you like what could have been better suggestions and funny enough even a sort of a suggestion like well you know a hook at the back of the bathroom door would be great to hang up my towel or bathrobe and everything are good suggestions and would you recommend this so what do you do to manage your online reputation do you actually share your link to your google my business listing so people can write into the view to Facebook to TripAdvisor and to yelp have you claimed your listing on yelp as well now how can you find out what people write about your business an easy way to set that up is using google alerts google alerts it will show you next couple of slides as well is where you can say to google I want to find out what people write about my business anywhere on the internet and it attracts any keyword or phrase that you that you specify you can do it on a daily weekly or monthly business and what it does is if you can find out who is talking about your business what are they talking about and can you join the conversation yeah you can also do it's a bit sneaky but nobody finds out you can also do an alert for your area so we did an alert for space sites and we did an alert for our main competitor in forest as well just to see what's where they are hanging in this is what it looks like starting a life with Scotland welcome I hope you're on the webinar did a search for or a google alerts for you and it shows me the sort of the content that is coming up on line nearly there personification what does that mean um can you go a step further by just offering the services I mean if you go if your hotel you're offering hotel rooms but can you can you personalise it and know from own experience as well sometimes people give a little bit more extra information about why they're there so for example a couple come from London so we send them an email you're probably arriving at the internet's airport can we arrange a taxi or something like that put a little cart in the room if you know it's people's anniversary or something like that tweeting the social media comes up later in July as well a session about social media if people tweets on a positive way about your business you know a little a little message can do a lot thing it's often the little things that can make a big difference and the last example on the right is a customer that has missed some chocolates in their inductee and coffee facilities tweeted about it and sure enough half an hour later that tweet was picked up by help by the hotel and they brought him some tweaks you know these little things can make a big difference in the in the experience great then the covert 19 the last section of today be clear about you know what can people expect and the screenshot on the left is actually a post that the business editor posted on the book of my business listing just to let people know you know what is the process what can you expect how to book et cetera et cetera and the same goes for Edinburgh gin distillery where it says you know if you're the health and safety options is you need an appointment the mask is required and the staff wear marks as well so use all the elements that you can use to inform your customer because the customer is interested in that information don't just do it on your website this national museum Scotland put it on their website which is fantastic but you can do it on Facebook and google my business as well show that you you're taking things seriously I’ve seen lots of Facebook posts from hotels attractions restaurants even creating videos about you know what what's what can you expect when you book a table with us how it's going to work and all that so be clear be transparent etc the last two slides are about the options that this Scotland has created the good to go and safe travels scheme for example and you know that that logo that that very recognisable logo that people see gives them a little bit of trust about you know by going to this hotel or restaurant or attraction we can be short of safe visit because that's what it's all about nowadays it's not just good customer service it’s being safe that is you'll be happy to hear two more slides and that's then we go to the q a session some key actions some takeaways I thought would be quite helpful review and prioritise your online review platform so should you focus more on Facebook or on google my business or on booking.com etc claim and use your google my business listing very important set of google alerts like I showed you it's free and create a culture not just of customer service I think customer obsession nowadays is is the right term and get the whole team involved not just the business owners but get the whole team involved you know how can we make a stay an experience even more pleasurable and people talking about it and that's not usually the price that's usually the extra little things that usually make a difference ask people for reviews send them an email booking.com does that automatically TripAdvisor when you book them online as well does that automatically as well because if you don't ask people and make it easy click on the link and you go to the trip advice listing or Facebook don't build in barriers make it easy for people to click on the share a link to review sites in your email so if you send out an email to customers after their stay don't hesitate to put the links in there and update your covet 19 rules on google my business on your website or your Facebook etc that was me the next slide and like Andrew said as well the slides can be downloaded so they're clickable so that makes it a lot easier there's lots of support available from this Scotland and other organisations business gateway digital boost etc and we would be very happy if you take the time to go to the feedback form I think i'll put it on the slides on the on the screen but it seems that disappeared but there we go yeah i'll just cheer my screen now so that people can see that this there's various options that Israeli was just mentioned helpfully of support they're on the screen there I’ve also added the details of the forthcoming webinars social media on the 7th of July analytics on the 14th of July and then two sessions one at the end of the month on the 28th and one at the start of next or the start of august sorry on the 4th of august on seo for tourism businesses those can all be booked at gateway.com slash events so i'll again as really mentioned those these slides will be distributed in due course in fact you can see the handout is mentioned on the screen now but you'll get you'll all get an email with the link to that enemy so don't worry if you don't take it over just now and as arena also mentioned thank if you want to put any feedback in for today's session you can do that at BusinessGateway feedback.com and today's pin is 11 fc
any feedback on today's session so Rene first of all thank you very much for your thoughts and for sharing with us today on the topic of online reputation management and I wonder if you could just bring yourself back up on the screen again on your webcam just see if you can really thank you in the chat do you do you put your link to the feedback in the chat as well know it'll go out in an email at all either today I think oh it's actually it'll go out tomorrow so that that will good tomorrow but yeah you can just go to businessgatewayfeedback.com just now if you like with that that pen that's on screen a few questions actually ready i'll bring them up just now but somebody made me a very good point around responding to reviews and said that advice they had received was to write a response to negative reviews from the perspective of future guests rather than perhaps the perspective of the person making the complaint or making the negative review and I thought that was most helpful very good yeah yeah excellent yeah no it's it's I mean the the especially trip advice you know your response is going to be the end of that discussion so make it in a way and that's why you need to think about it don't don't just start clicking on the on the keyboard straight away think about what is it that you want to achieve with this response and that's and that’s a very good one actually to think about you know what else can we sort of get out of the for future guests and everything very good grand one of the things you mentioned Rene was to try to personalise responses to reviews so it's not always the same thing time after time but it I guess if you're a small business and you're trying to respond to a significant number of reviews that have come in then that can get quite tricky and coming up with a different response every time maybe takes a bit of time would you recommend somebody's asked a question would you recommend using a review response template system they certainly have the positives in in that sense but it's always emphasise you know try to make it and I know it does it takes more work and I totally understand that and just to give you just to give you an idea every customer is different obviously and what we did at some point in our in our team we said okay we have a crm we have a database write down three things from I mean our hotel was a small hotel we have ten bedrooms and we had a front of house and all this and stuff but write down three things of every customer put it in their crm and that could be such-and-touch likes well done bacon when the customer checked out he said you won't see me for a while because i'm on holiday to Spain all these little things that are unique for every customer put them in the database because the next time they're calm you can actually respond to that and if they write a review you have a little bit more data in that sense because it's amazing how quickly you forget people in that sense so having an online booking system obviously shouldn't just have a name and an email address and an address try to build on that and you know put in some extra information that allows you to say hey you know this we need to remember this for all for next time or if the customer write a review we can we can respond to that so that might help yeah really I suppose it's an it's the thought there is keeping a conversation going with the guests or with the potential guests for future reference so that you can mention to the future instead of just saying oh you know come and visit us again if you say something you know is likely to hook them in a conversation that's hopefully going to make them more likely to book I mean from a customer point of view if someone else sees a response for example to say well thank you very much Mrs Jones it was great to see you again hope your visit to isle of Skye went well or and the dog had a good time and your kids had a good time that that that makes it personal that means that people that like that personality are more likely to book you in in that sense some people don't like it fine you can't be good for all sort of people but you tend to get the type of people that that you that you show online in the in that sense great I suppose slightly related to that and someone else has asked this question is it okay to offer incentives for people to respond i'm not talking about necessarily giving them gifts or anything like that but perhaps saying if you know leave a review on TripAdvisor and then whether it's good or bad doesn't matter if you leave a review on TripAdvisor I suppose that's part of the trust element there we'll give you a 10 discount or 20 discount off your next day is that okay yeah it's what works for you I I’ve never done that but I know businesses who do that they say you know if you write a review you get you get drawn into a competition and you know you can win this or you get a discount or something like that I never did that but I can understand why people want to do that I what I tend to what I tend to emphasise to get people to write a review is you know and again a simple email we hope you enjoyed your stay if you haven't please let us know if you enjoyed why not tell the world and that word of the world was a link to our direct trip advice at least and actually we said you know it would help us tremendously if you if you if you write a review in in that sense so you know more playing on people sort of well you know we had a great time so I’m quite happy to help them instead of offering in incentive in this and like I said I have nothing against it you know it depends on what you prefer but I’ve never done it I tend to play on people's you know we've done our utmost best if you play time the least you can do not in those words obviously the least you can do is click on the link and give us a review and think that that works really well okay well I think we've got time for one more question and think it's a really good one someone's asked and from the perspective of someone who's perhaps put in a review with comments or aspects for improvement that they think that the business should implement that this person's asked is it appropriate to follow up with reviewers at a later stage so for example if you're a restaurant and somebody's made a complaint and said oh the quality of the steak that I was served wasn't very good is it okay to follow up with mnc two months’ time and say we’ve changed our supplier for you know our stakes and that’s improved is that is that worthwhile doing is that appropriate absolutely no I think that's a very good thing to do people like to see if people give suggestions they do that to help you and you know it's like I said I mean I gave an example it happened 15 years ago but still it might be still in my mind where we had a suggestion about you know a hook behind the door of the bathroom would be it would be nice to have and I thought yeah why didn't we that's so obvious why never why have you never thought of that so we installed we went to being for two pounds or something and installed it and then we sent an email just to let you know thank you very much we really appreciated that that feedback and we now installed that I think that's very good it's and because people like to help not everybody but in general most people like to help and if they see action has been taken because of that suggestion I think that's very good well done especially when it's a business that that relies on is benefits from repeat you know regular repeat clients like a restaurant that's yeah ideally absolutely and these are the things that people tell other people you know I still talk to my friends about experience that experience in a hotel in a restaurant that went beyond the normal customer service I think if you're still providing normal customer service you're going to lose you really need to sort of step up and see you know where can mean a simple example and I know i'm going over time so i'll keep it i'll keep this short this was years ago we had a French crew in they put most of the room six of the rooms where were their English was not very good and that was the day that the clocks went back so we put first a note into every room don't forget the vlogs are going back and this is how to do it here is the manual for the alarm clock and then we came back and we said how can we improve this and someone said well it's nice to have the cars but they don't speak English so they probably can't read it as well why don't we already put the clock backwards and put in French google translate yeah we've got the best sort of friends but to say don't worry we've already put the clock back but if you if you're coming an hour late for breakfast don't worry we'll still so you know it's I think that's is a makes your job a lot nicer and everybody's a lot nicer but also the experience that the guests get is a lot higher and you know they will share that on Facebook on twitter on Instagram and all this stuff brilliant really Rene thank you so much for your time today really appreciate that thanks very much everybody take care and goodbye
2021-07-08 23:19
