Yelp is a tool that many consumers use to make informed decisions about businesses before they spend their money with them. Creating a Yelp profile has always been touted as an effective part of a marketing campaign so that businesses can secure high reviews that will bring in more business.
However, what happens when a business gets low ratings that don’t necessarily reflect the level of service or the quality of products that it provides?
Many business owners have found they don’t necessarily like Yelp because of how consumers are more likely to leave a negative review before leaving a positive one.
Bad Review Statistics
According to a ZenDesk-sponsored study conducted by Dimensional Research, 42 percent of customers were more likely to make a purchase again after a good experience with 52 percent not making purchases after a bad experience. However, 95 percent of the 1,000 people surveyed stated that they told someone in person about their bad experience. This is compared to 87 percent that shared a good experience.
This survey proved that people were more likely to share bad experiences with their family and friends than those with good experiences. Forty percent of people share bad experiences with their co-workers.
In regards to online interaction, the survey showed that 50 percent of the respondents were more likely to share bad experiences over social media, with only 30 percent sharing their good experiences. On sites like Yelp, 52 percent of people were likely to share their bad experiences. This is an issue for businesses because 86 percent of those surveyed said that negative reviews impacted their decision to buy.
In an online world, negative reviews can travel much further very fast when compared to in-person interaction. In addition, the negative review stays much longer than the negative experience may remain on the mind of the customer and the people that they told.
The Effect of Personal Opinion
There is also the fact that reviews and ratings are simply opinions. Where one person may not like a certain type of customer service, another person may be satisfied. This is why some businesses are no longer including Yelp as part of their marketing campaign. However, some review platforms, such as Google and Facebook, are crucial to a marketing campaign and the issue that plagues businesses on Yelp doesn’t seem to exist as deeply on these sites. This is mostly due to people being registered under their true identities.
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