Reviewing online reviews

By Jeff Walker

Disinformation has been around almost as long as our sources of information, and in today’s modern era of social media, multi-media and heavy opinions, it is no different.  Almost as soon as consumers started creating reviews of moving companies to let others know how good or bad a mover was, companies jumped in and either hired companies to give them positive reviews, or posted those positive reviews themselves.  It’s an ongoing problem that you can see on Yelp, BBB and other review sites.

Figuring out what information is useful and what information isn’t takes a while and even an experienced hand can get fooled once in a while, but the more you know going in, the better you can determine if you’re looking at a real consumer experience, or one someone made up to boost their sales.

What’s in a review?

What we’re really asking, is what’s at stake?  For the moving company, your review can be the difference between getting future jobs or not.  The most reliable moving companies out there will take the feedback for what it’s worth, use it as a learning experience and apply what they’ve learned toward future work with their customers.  They don’t’ try to hide the experience, they don’t try to cover it up, they take the time to deal with it and move on.

On the other hand, there are people out there who feel that no matter how bad the results, what they did was the right thing, and instead of taking their feedback as a learning experience, the see it as a threat.  In doing so, they must react. They will respond to the reviewer negatively, sometimes with threats while at the same time, hiring others to write nice things about their company.  They will play the charade as long as they possibly can, to avoid having to change or get better at what they do.

The Devil is in the Details!

Simply put, if a review is legitimate, and the customer truly cared about their experiences, they will put them down, in detail.  For the most part, reviews are created by people who felt strongly about their experience.  This is also why we tend to see more negative reviews than positive ones, because an angry person is more likely to react, and put their experience down in words.  Sometimes, a company can give a customer such a good experience that they give them a positive review.  In each case, the customer is generally writing from an emotion.  Something sparked their interest to write, good or bad.  What separates these reviews from someone who throws up a review to make their company look good, is in the details.

People who’ve had their experience will take the time to put down details.  Pickup and drop off dates, the name of their driver, salesman or someone who gave them outstanding (or poor) service.  They may mention what was broken, or the fact that their mover took the time to reassemble furniture for them.  Legitimate reviews are generally much longer than ones that aren’t, because the events that took place really mattered to the writer.  Reviews that are written by a marketing company, or the owner or employee of a company, generally are fairly generic, because it’s hard to make up details about a move that never happened.

So when you’re taking the time to page through your next set of reviews, keep in mind that the details really matter.  It is about your stuff, after all!