For restaurants it is tough to know what to do about negative comments on Urbanspoon.
As the chart shows below in the past few years it has become the the most popular review sites in Australia and for some customers it has become a blood sport to leave negative comments for even the smallest problems.
In the case of a popular venue its profile will be seen by several thousands visitors a month and can refer several thousand visits to its website every month.
In terms of the traffic it drives to websites, you could say Urbanspoon seems to have more power than Facebook and Twitter combined (not to mention the other review sites in Australia).
The chart above is based upon our experience of dealing with several clients.
Typically when any new venue opens there is a certain amount of hype across social media, websites and traditional media driving people to visit a restaurant.
The venue probably won’t have a proper website up with a menu and food prices and any pictures of their food available.
That means lots of people will visit a venue in it’s early days – beta phase as they’d in IT – with no idea of what to expect at a time when it hasn’t quite got the service, food, drink selection or pricing right.
In the early days of opening customers and fans are forgiving. But as the hype builds a less forgiving audience starts visiting at a time when the restaurant is still in beta.
In terms of numbers it means that maybe 30-40 people a week – or even double that – could be voting on a venue with a fair share making a negative vote.
The negative comments and down votes seem to often peak as voting volumes start to slip. At the same time you find yourself falling from the heady days of a rating of over 80+% to falling towards 70% and eventually 60%. Or towards 50%.
Often by the time a venue starts to take action by sorting out its food, service and price points the damage has been done.
They now are facing the Cost of Inaction (COI)which means it is sometime before they can even think of a ROI – Return on Investment from engaging in social media.
At this point the venue is received maybe 10 votes a week as opposed to 10 or 20 – or more – a day. And when, say 300 have votes you a rating of 65% it means you have had 195 upvotes and 105 down.
At 10 votes a week it can take up to 6 months or more to recover a poor Urbanspoon score.
Inevitably a low rating on Urbanspoon does affect you business as some customers will be put off.
The temptation is to use Facebook, Twitter and friends to vote. But Urbanspoon has an algorithm that recognises patterns and deletes these votes, probably with a few other upvotes as well. You end up worse off than at the beginning.
It’s a tricky game to play even if you are simply replying to diners gripes.
Some venues take the bad reviews personally and hunt the reviewers down. That takes a lot of emotional energy and I think is a negative thing to do.
Others hire a third party to deal with these reviewers is a rational, unemotional manner.
Each instance has its own solution.
This work is the start of a white paper we are producing on social media and we are pleased to hear venu operators thoughts on the problems of dealing with online reviews.