Whether you’ve bought detergent or just had a colonoscopy, every store, website, health care provider, airline, credit card company, hotel and car dealership wants to know if you’re satisfied, how they could improve and whether you’ll recommend them. — The New York Times
In the 1980s, Ed Koch, then New York City’s mayor, often grabbed bemused commuters emerging from the subway, asking them a simple, surprising question: “How am I doin’?”
Today, that query seems to be asked of everyone, all day long.
Whether you’ve bought detergent or just had a colonoscopy, every store, website, health care provider, airline, credit card company, hotel and car dealership wants to know if you’re satisfied, how they could improve and whether you’ll recommend them.
Fuelled by the ease of responding online, our inboxes are now clogged with multiple requests per day for five-star ratings and glowing reviews. And today no transaction, however mundane, comes without a plea for feedback.
Drivers who retrieve their cars from the valet at the Residence Inn in Berkeley, California, immediately receive a text message asking, “How was your valet parking experience?” The simple act of delivering a parked car now becomes an “experience” that needs to be rated.
The quest for reviews “is the ultimate fetishisation of capitalism”, said Robert Thompson, founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. “For centuries, our buy/sell relationship was akin to a one-night stand. Now every transaction is the beginning of a relationship,” one that introduces a social dimension with the supplier.
Despite its intrusiveness and time suck, many people tend to engage with feedback – often happily. We love to be asked our opinions. We’ve gone from a world where people kept their diaries locked to one where we have private conversations out in public on our iPhones as we walk down the street and share our secrets on social media.
We’ve now become a society in which everyone can be an influencer, without even needing to build a following.
“The attraction of slobbering attention is deep in our soul,” Thompson said. “It’s not a question of everyone getting our 15 minutes of fame. It’s me getting it and not you.”
In the past, Consumer Reports, a ratings magazine, was the source for consumers looking for the best products and services. Today, many people rely on readily available ratings from the average consumer to make buying decisions.
Companies and service providers claim to seek reviews and surveys to improve and collect feedback.
In fact, most large corporations don’t solicit reviews themselves but contract out the work to third-party review-gathering and analysis companies, such as Feefo, Medallia and PowerReviews. Retailers may then respond directly to consumer complaints either with a human or a chatbot-generated response.
Today, customers speaking to call centre reps may have their voices scanned for “sentiment analysis”, an artificial-intelligence-generated readout of a caller’s emotional response, enabling the client company to modify practices to improve service.
“Our technology helps to automate a personalised response,” Jodi Searl, Medallia’s senior vice president of client experience, said. “We generate an automated response to a review, but then the company needs to respond directly in a personalised manner. The golden rule is: If you’re asking for feedback, you need to act on it.”
But, in fact, some companies never actually see the reviews. Many hotels, for example, hire review-gathering and reputation management companies such as GuestRevu or TrustYou, said Brett Hollenbeck, assistant professor of marketing at UCLA Anderson School of Management. At best, such hotels may get a monthly report sent to the property’s manager, he said.
According to PowerReviews, virtually all consumers read reviews when shopping online, while more than half read reviews while shopping in physical stores. Nearly all – 96% – look for negative reviews, while half of those surveyed said they were suspicious when all the ratings are five stars.
In a survey by BrightLocal, a British search engine optimisation company, 47% said they were likely to patronise a business that didn’t respond to any reviews, compared with 88% who said they would use that business if it responded to positive and negative reviews.
At the same time, standard methods used to sway consumers are now out of favour. According to marketing firm impact.com, 84% of millennials – those born between 1980 and 2000 – don’t trust traditional advertising.
But although better reviews may mean more business, seeking out five-star ratings and over-the-top reviews encourages companies to game the system, with some resorting to paying noncustomers to post positive reviews.
Some companies, such as Bosch, entice purchasers with a chance to win US$500 (RM2,211) if they leave reviews. And it’s not hard to imagine that many such customers might think a positive post would raise the chance of capturing the prize.
“Now, the five-star review is the default, even though once, only aggrieved people wrote reviews,” said Daniel Levine, a trends consultant and owner of the Avant-Guide Institute.
During a recent visit by Levine to his dentist, a nurse “shoved an iPad in my face” and asked him for a five-star review, while he was still under anesthesia, he said.
“We’re now into review begging, which is equal to a barista expecting a tip,” Levine said, calling the practice time tipping: I already paid you, and now you’re asking me to pay you more, in the form of a review. “If you want a review, then pay me for my feedback,” Levine said.
Cyfermax, a Reddit user, agreed. “I pay for the thing; they give the thing. That’s the transaction.”
The United States is the capital of review mania. The need for feedback and affirmation is “a very American thing”, said Gerd Leonhard, a Zurich-based self-described futurist, book author and corporate consultant. “Europeans don’t do this; we’re not gung-ho to write reviews, and many people will refuse.”
Such has been the experience of Salvador Ordorica, CEO of The Spanish Group, a translation service used by the US government, Wells Fargo and others. Based in Irvine, California, Ordorica’s company sends out requests for reviews after delivering contracted documents. At times, getting customers to respond is not easy.
In the United States, Ordorica’s company gets a 50% response rate to review requests. In France, fewer than 10% will leave a review.
And those reviews differ by country. “In France, nothing is ‘incredible’ or ‘horrible’. But in the US they’ll write: ‘It’s the worst; it’s horrible; stay away’,” Ordorica said.
Even if companies are successful in garnering reviews, there’s still a question as to whether the lessons gleaned about consumers’ likes and dislikes have any validity at all. Computer scientist Jaron Lanier says data doesn’t offer the entire picture.
“Most people think that data must be there that can perfect the world. But reality does not offer those numbers,” said Lanier, one of the creators of virtual reality and author of the book Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now.
“Often people answer surveys angrily, and then the survey turns qualitative anyway by the interpreter of the data. My impression of surveys is that they’re a little bit theatre, a little bit CYA and a little bit sincere. But that does not make them worthwhile.”
Some believe we may soon reach peak reviewing.
“Review requests are skyrocketing; everybody is inundated with them,” said Colleen P. Kirk, professor of management and marketing at the New York Institute of Technology. “Over time, consumers will get more sceptical of them.”
Until then, every digital transaction offers companies vast amounts of information we share about ourselves.
“Eventually, companies are going to ask for reviews even before they perform the service you purchased,” Levine said. – ©2024 The New York Times Company
