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What you need to know about the latest guidelines on negative reviews
There is likely not a restaurant, hotel or service department you’d go to today without checking out their online reviews first. It’s become instinct in this digital age, lifting the veil on what companies, products and services want us to believe about their business, versus what consumers have actually experienced with their business. Today, people want the good, bad and the ugly upfront to make an informed choice.
The FTC just rolled out some new guidelines on the way reviews are collected and displayed, and every dealer should know about and understand how these changes will impact their business. Why? Because according to our research, 93% of vehicle buyers state that customer reviews helped them choose a dealership. 93%!! There couldn’t be a louder or more clear call to action to tighten up your review and reputation management strategy before you lose customers you didn’t even know you could have had.
Now is the time to check your Google Business Profile, get online reviews flowing, audit review websites and lock up a powerful CX strategy so you can leverage customer reviews to boost your business.
So, what’s new?
The new FTC guidelines state that starting April 26, 2022, both positive and negative reviews are to be immediately published and not eligible for or subject to a holding period.
Industry partner DealerRater shared that their Community Guidelines will be in place to filter any reviews that do not meet their criteria, but aside from that all reviews will be displayed immediately after submission. Historically, DealerRater has placed negative reviews in a holding space of 14 days before publishing, giving dealers time to manage on the backend before being displayed publicly.
Now, why is this important to you?
That 2-week timeline is now boiled down to real time so every minute a negative review lingers out there without an effective response from the company could lead to more and more missed opportunities for new business. Our research shows that 8% of consumers didn’t contact a dealership because of negative reviews and/or how they were handled.
For Digital Air Strike dealer partners, we know the need to monitor and be instantly responsive is critical. That’s why our DAS CX Tech platform enables dealers to:
- monitor the dealership’s reputation actively across multiple top sites
- enhance the reputation by instantly connecting to consumers
- boost good reviews and effectively respond to negative ones or help resolve disputes
- generate even more reviews because most often, when a consumer is asked for a review they leave a positive one (81% positive for sales, 88% positive for service).
Since time is of the essence when it comes to reviews, we added a couple more features to ensure easy, instant awareness and responsiveness:
- Digital Air Strike will collect reviews when they are left, eliminating the need to manually login and check for pending publishing reviews
- a “resolved” button, located on the user’s backend dashboard of DealerRater, will trigger an alert directly to the consumer asking them to update their review.
Staying on top of your dealership’s online reputation matters more than ever. The convergence of consumers researching and shopping online 24/7, a vehicle inventory shortage, interest rate increases, online national retailers moving in on local stores, and staffing shortages all mean consumers are constantly looking for vehicles online every hour of the day to locate a vehicle that fits their needs, budget and/or timeline. Dealers can’t afford to miss out on a sale because of a negative review or a poor response to one.
Digital Air Strike is here to ensure that your store stands out from the competition, whether you are up against the online retailers of the world or the local dealer down the street.
Want to know how you compare online to your competition and what shoppers find when they search for you? Request a FREE Intel Report and our team of reputation management experts will create a custom analysis of your online presence and include quick tips to fix what we find.
Click here to request an Intel Report today.
