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Your Business: Someone Online Hates You
As word of mouth moves online, lawyers occupy the same place today that hotels were in a decade ago: just starting to face the prospect of widespread use of online user reviews, and concerned that such reviews will crater their businesses. Hotels, like restaurants and consumer products before them, have learned to live with, and quite often leverage, the phenomenon of online reviews. While no system of reviews is perfect, getting enough liquidity into the “reputational ecosystem” has created a resource that helps expose those establishments offering subpar service, while celebrating the virtues of those that shine. Lawyers, who would be wise to recognize the inevitability of this trend to professional services, are often hyper-focused on the potential for negative and phony reviews. This can cause paralysis and failure to adapt to this massive change in how clients are researching lawyers. The following 10 tips will put these concerns into context and explore which methods of responding to negative feedback are effective and ethical and which ones aren't.
1. Why Reviews Are Important
According to the latest Nielsen survey data, consumer reviews posted online are now the second most trusted source of marketing information for consumers. Trailing only recommendations from people known (i.e., the gold standard of personal referral), online reviews now rank ahead of brand websites and editorial content and far ahead of traditional “bought” advertising media. Consumers are also increasingly expecting to get this type of information, as they are referring to numerous different media sources when making local purchasing decisions.
2. Yes, You Will Get A Negative Review
As the number of online reviews grows, one thing is near-certain: every business ' even the best, most attentive, empathetic and outstanding ' will receive a negative review one day. There are many reasons for this, but the two most important are: 1) clients and customers are unpredictable and may have unreasonable expectations; and 2) no open reputational ecosystem can be completely free of fraud. Over time, and with sufficient liquidity, the overall tenor of the reviews for a business paints an accurate picture. But any given review may widely miss the mark, in either direction. Or it may be phony. Accept these imperfections (they are never going to be completely eliminated) and focus on managing your online reputation.
3. Suing for Defamation Is Almost Always the Worst Choice
For many e-commerce lawyers, the first instinct when facing something negative online is to threaten to bring a defamation lawsuit. But this is almost always a bad idea, for three reasons: 1) you can't go after the identifiable and likely deeper pocketed forum provider, as they are immune from defamation liability for publishing third-party comments under 47 U.S.C. '230; 2) if you haven't pleaded a solid case, you may be on the hook for the defendant's attorneys fees under state anti-SLAPP law; and 3) under what's known as the “Streisand Effect,” making a fuss about something you don't like online can easily result in the negative content getting exponentially more attention than it would have otherwise.
4. Positive Negative: Free Market Research
Gut-wrenching as it may be, staying objective in the face of negative feedback is critical. Online feedback is free research into how your practice is perceived by clients and customers. If you get a negative review, the very first thing to consider is whether there may be some truth to it. Perhaps there is a blind spot in your business, something you've missed, or even a staff person who, out of your sight, is treating your customers contemptuously. In the past, you would never have an opportunity to learn of this kind of customer frustration. Embrace the window into your business that regular online feedback can give you.
5. Positive Negative: Credibility Enhancer
Consider a typical consumer reaction to a hotel or restaurant with nothing but unalloyed, glowing comments. You'd think they might be fake, right? No product or service, no matter how wonderful, pleases everyone. Consumers expect that any credible site with more than a handful of reviews will include a smattering of neutral-to-negative feedback. And consumers are getting increasingly savvy about online feedback. They are hungry for detail, and generally dismissive of broad generalizations and hyperbole (good or bad). If you've gotten a dozen or more comments that are 100% positive, consider the likelihood that a negative review or two might actually do you some good, by making your positive reviews more credible.
6. Positive Negative: A Platform to Comment
Negative commentary can be a golden marketing opportunity. By posting a professional, meaningful response to negative commentary, an e-commerce company sends a powerful message to any readers of that review. Done correctly, such a message communicates responsiveness, attention to feedback and strength of character. The trick is to not get defensive, petty, or feel the need to directly refute what you perceive is wrong with the review. It's far more effective to think of future readers when writing the review, rather than the original reviewer. Think of what they'd want to hear: that you care about feedback even after you've been paid; you want to make things right for your customers; you have compassion for their situations and invest adequate time and attention in crafting an effective message. Because a poorly handled response to a negative review is much worse than no response at all. It makes you look thin-skinned and defensive. Worse yet, if you argue and reveal confidences (or even potential harmful non-confidences), you may be subject to discipline.
7. Do Not Succumb to the Temptation of “Astroturf”
Online review platforms are fairly open. While there is a nascent movement to tie reviews directly to a purchase (such as Amazon's “verified purchase reviews”), most sites require relatively little information from a reviewer in order to post. So it may be tempting to leave positive reviews for oneself or pay others to do so for you. There's a name for this practice ' “astroturfing.” And it's false advertising, which will easily lead to bar discipline (and significant public shaming) for any attorney caught doing it. One medical practice has already been prosecuted by the New York Attorney General's office, and ended up with a consent decree and a $300,000 fine. Earn your positive reviews; don't generate fake ones.
8. Make It a Practice to Ask For Reviews
Smart businesses realize that the surest way to inoculate themselves from a negative review and to maximize the “free market research” aspect of online reviews is to ensure that they get a wealth of regular feedback from clients. So they make it a practice to regularly ask for reviews. From post-purchase e-mails, to survey instructions on the bottom of receipts, to cards handed out in a medical clinic waiting room, sellers of goods and services in virtually all industries are proactively seeking out reviews. While it may feel strange to ask, it's worth making it part of your file closing procedure to ask for feedback. There are sites with tools to make it easy to do so. And lest you think that only the cranks want to leave feedback, it's actually the opposite that is true: happy customers are more likely to leave feedback. This is particularly true where the services are high cost or high stress and law fits both of those parameters.
9. Build a Wall of Content
There is an old advertising adage that when it comes to expensive purchases, “long copy sells.” It's a concept that goes back to the “Mad Men” days, but it remains true today: someone who is prepared to spend serious money wants as much information as possible. They are far less likely to respond to buzzwords or taglines. Adding to this is the rapid growth of consumer reviews, and increasing suspicion of products and services that are unreviewed. The legal services market hasn't quite hit this point yet, but it's coming. Consider your own behavior when researching products on Amazon, hotels on Trip Advisor, or restaurants on Yelp. What does an absence of reviews make you think? Building a wall of content through regular soliciting of reviews, blog posts, articles, completion of online profiles, etc., ensures that any potential client or customer researching your services will have that “long copy”: a wealth of information upon which to get comfortable in their decision to retain you.
10. Bonus Ninja Skill:'Turn Negative Feedback Into Your Marketing Message
This can be a hard one to get right, and certainly won't work for everyone. But confident businesses, particularly those in successful niche areas, can actually use negative feedback as a marketing message. By bringing attention to a negative review that's based on unreasonable expectations (or is simply hyperbolic or incoherent), the e-commerce firm can communicate a message that hits several areas: confidence, exclusivity and a certain edginess. It also sends a message about the inherent unreliability of any single piece of consumer feedback. Certain restaurants have done this successfully. Servers at San Francisco's Delfina Pizza all wear shirts imprinted with one-star reviews the restaurant has received on Yelp. If you've got the right kind of practice and enough confidence, the next negative review can be part of your marketing message.
As word of mouth moves online, lawyers occupy the same place today that hotels were in a decade ago: just starting to face the prospect of widespread use of online user reviews, and concerned that such reviews will crater their businesses. Hotels, like restaurants and consumer products before them, have learned to live with, and quite often leverage, the phenomenon of online reviews. While no system of reviews is perfect, getting enough liquidity into the “reputational ecosystem” has created a resource that helps expose those establishments offering subpar service, while celebrating the virtues of those that shine. Lawyers, who would be wise to recognize the inevitability of this trend to professional services, are often hyper-focused on the potential for negative and phony reviews. This can cause paralysis and failure to adapt to this massive change in how clients are researching lawyers. The following 10 tips will put these concerns into context and explore which methods of responding to negative feedback are effective and ethical and which ones aren't.
1. Why Reviews Are Important
According to the latest Nielsen survey data, consumer reviews posted online are now the second most trusted source of marketing information for consumers. Trailing only recommendations from people known (i.e., the gold standard of personal referral), online reviews now rank ahead of brand websites and editorial content and far ahead of traditional “bought” advertising media. Consumers are also increasingly expecting to get this type of information, as they are referring to numerous different media sources when making local purchasing decisions.
2. Yes, You Will Get A Negative Review
As the number of online reviews grows, one thing is near-certain: every business ' even the best, most attentive, empathetic and outstanding ' will receive a negative review one day. There are many reasons for this, but the two most important are: 1) clients and customers are unpredictable and may have unreasonable expectations; and 2) no open reputational ecosystem can be completely free of fraud. Over time, and with sufficient liquidity, the overall tenor of the reviews for a business paints an accurate picture. But any given review may widely miss the mark, in either direction. Or it may be phony. Accept these imperfections (they are never going to be completely eliminated) and focus on managing your online reputation.
3. Suing for Defamation Is Almost Always the Worst Choice
For many e-commerce lawyers, the first instinct when facing something negative online is to threaten to bring a defamation lawsuit. But this is almost always a bad idea, for three reasons: 1) you can't go after the identifiable and likely deeper pocketed forum provider, as they are immune from defamation liability for publishing third-party comments under 47 U.S.C. '230; 2) if you haven't pleaded a solid case, you may be on the hook for the defendant's attorneys fees under state anti-SLAPP law; and 3) under what's known as the “Streisand Effect,” making a fuss about something you don't like online can easily result in the negative content getting exponentially more attention than it would have otherwise.
4. Positive Negative: Free Market Research
Gut-wrenching as it may be, staying objective in the face of negative feedback is critical. Online feedback is free research into how your practice is perceived by clients and customers. If you get a negative review, the very first thing to consider is whether there may be some truth to it. Perhaps there is a blind spot in your business, something you've missed, or even a staff person who, out of your sight, is treating your customers contemptuously. In the past, you would never have an opportunity to learn of this kind of customer frustration. Embrace the window into your business that regular online feedback can give you.
5. Positive Negative: Credibility Enhancer
Consider a typical consumer reaction to a hotel or restaurant with nothing but unalloyed, glowing comments. You'd think they might be fake, right? No product or service, no matter how wonderful, pleases everyone. Consumers expect that any credible site with more than a handful of reviews will include a smattering of neutral-to-negative feedback. And consumers are getting increasingly savvy about online feedback. They are hungry for detail, and generally dismissive of broad generalizations and hyperbole (good or bad). If you've gotten a dozen or more comments that are 100% positive, consider the likelihood that a negative review or two might actually do you some good, by making your positive reviews more credible.
6. Positive Negative: A Platform to Comment
Negative commentary can be a golden marketing opportunity. By posting a professional, meaningful response to negative commentary, an e-commerce company sends a powerful message to any readers of that review. Done correctly, such a message communicates responsiveness, attention to feedback and strength of character. The trick is to not get defensive, petty, or feel the need to directly refute what you perceive is wrong with the review. It's far more effective to think of future readers when writing the review, rather than the original reviewer. Think of what they'd want to hear: that you care about feedback even after you've been paid; you want to make things right for your customers; you have compassion for their situations and invest adequate time and attention in crafting an effective message. Because a poorly handled response to a negative review is much worse than no response at all. It makes you look thin-skinned and defensive. Worse yet, if you argue and reveal confidences (or even potential harmful non-confidences), you may be subject to discipline.
7. Do Not Succumb to the Temptation of “Astroturf”
Online review platforms are fairly open. While there is a nascent movement to tie reviews directly to a purchase (such as Amazon's “verified purchase reviews”), most sites require relatively little information from a reviewer in order to post. So it may be tempting to leave positive reviews for oneself or pay others to do so for you. There's a name for this practice ' “astroturfing.” And it's false advertising, which will easily lead to bar discipline (and significant public shaming) for any attorney caught doing it. One medical practice has already been prosecuted by the
8. Make It a Practice to Ask For Reviews
Smart businesses realize that the surest way to inoculate themselves from a negative review and to maximize the “free market research” aspect of online reviews is to ensure that they get a wealth of regular feedback from clients. So they make it a practice to regularly ask for reviews. From post-purchase e-mails, to survey instructions on the bottom of receipts, to cards handed out in a medical clinic waiting room, sellers of goods and services in virtually all industries are proactively seeking out reviews. While it may feel strange to ask, it's worth making it part of your file closing procedure to ask for feedback. There are sites with tools to make it easy to do so. And lest you think that only the cranks want to leave feedback, it's actually the opposite that is true: happy customers are more likely to leave feedback. This is particularly true where the services are high cost or high stress and law fits both of those parameters.
9. Build a Wall of Content
There is an old advertising adage that when it comes to expensive purchases, “long copy sells.” It's a concept that goes back to the “Mad Men” days, but it remains true today: someone who is prepared to spend serious money wants as much information as possible. They are far less likely to respond to buzzwords or taglines. Adding to this is the rapid growth of consumer reviews, and increasing suspicion of products and services that are unreviewed. The legal services market hasn't quite hit this point yet, but it's coming. Consider your own behavior when researching products on Amazon, hotels on Trip Advisor, or restaurants on Yelp. What does an absence of reviews make you think? Building a wall of content through regular soliciting of reviews, blog posts, articles, completion of online profiles, etc., ensures that any potential client or customer researching your services will have that “long copy”: a wealth of information upon which to get comfortable in their decision to retain you.
10. Bonus Ninja Skill:'Turn Negative Feedback Into Your Marketing Message
This can be a hard one to get right, and certainly won't work for everyone. But confident businesses, particularly those in successful niche areas, can actually use negative feedback as a marketing message. By bringing attention to a negative review that's based on unreasonable expectations (or is simply hyperbolic or incoherent), the e-commerce firm can communicate a message that hits several areas: confidence, exclusivity and a certain edginess. It also sends a message about the inherent unreliability of any single piece of consumer feedback. Certain restaurants have done this successfully. Servers at San Francisco's Delfina Pizza all wear shirts imprinted with one-star reviews the restaurant has received on Yelp. If you've got the right kind of practice and enough confidence, the next negative review can be part of your marketing message.
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