My skepticism of customer reviews has been growing for some time. I think customer reviews started out well and became very useful to find good people, but have been spiraling down for years for a variety of reasons.
I believe the first reason lies in the sheer ubiquity of
customer review requests. If I talk to
any person on the phone, I’m getting some combination of e-mail, text, and
personal plea for a 5-star review. And it
is not just once in a while; it is becoming part of most business interactions. It’s a job put on me by companies and they
make me feel guilty if I don’t comply, and comply positively. The volume of reviews has watered-down
legitimate performance feedback.
Another reason is how the on-line review system has been
gamed. Corporations hire “review help”
companies to improve their on-line reviews.
They send out surveys to every person that does business with the
corporation and then turns the positive, 5-star reviews into “official”, posted
reviews. The less positive reviews get
scrapped. This has made reviews less and
less reliable.
Many reviews border on fantasyland. The 1,000 positive reviews with one company
with only a handful of negative reviews?
How is that even possible? People
tend to be negative! Everyone is so
overwhelmingly overjoyed with an overwhelming number of companies? People don’t generally seem that effusively happy
to me…
Or how about companies that arbitrate between two parties
with competing interests? It would be
like reviewing a judge (or a property manager with their landlord and tenant
clients!). If a guilty verdict was
given, the prosecutor would be giving the judge 5-stars and the defense would
be giving the judge 1-star. That makes
sense. Now is it possible that both parties
think justice was done and might positively review the judge? Sure, it’s possible. But 1,000 times? No one is that good!
If there is one scoop of ice cream left and my oldest son
and daughter both want it, how would I always get a great review from both of
them? One is going to love me and the
other is going to be upset. I figure to
get 5 stars from my daughter and 1 star from my son (or vice-versa). Doesn’t that make sense?
So… if on-line reviews are trending to be less and less
reliable, where do Charlotte
landlords find good people to work on their homes? We are all in need of them!
In the old days, people in need of a service would ask a
friend. “Who mows your lawn? Are you happy with them?” There are certain friends everyone has that
they know are up-to-date on certain things.
They tend to give out the 5-star referrals!
In property management, the same goes for finding excellent
vendors and tenants. I’ve always had
success when asking our favorite vendors if they could recommend good people in
other industries. And when great tenants
recommend their friends who are moving into town, I’m almost positive they will
be good tenants too before even running their applications. Good, reliable people tend to congregate with
people like themselves.
Are on-line reviews useless now? No, but I think they are getting there. I’d argue they need to be taken as a piece of
information and handled with a healthy degree of skepticism. I think it is better to focus more on the
comments than the star count.
Smart landlords realize that while newer search methods for
good people can be moderately useful, old-fashioned methods can be more
dependably 5-star worthy.
Happy Landlording!
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