Google’s recent changes to their Terms of Service have affected the way businesses are allowed to solicit reviews from their customers. In order to comply, Evalu8 has made a change to the way our platform works.
Specifically, Google requires that businesses “Don’t discourage or prohibit negative reviews or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers.” This forbids pointing a customer who provided positive feedback to public review sites such as Google and pointing negative feedback to a private portal.
Evalu8 Changes to Comply With Google’s TOS
We have modified our negative feedback response to accommodate Google’s change. When a customer indicates a negative experience on the initial “Star Rating” screen, they will continue to be directed to a page that allows them to provide private feedback. However, we have added the social media links to this page to allow customers to leave public feedback as well.
We recommend that subscribers include wording in their “Poor Response Text” in their admin to acknowledge the customer’s ability to leave a public review. Here is an example:
You’ve rated OurCompany as OurScore stars. We are sorry we let you down. Please let us know what went wrong, and a member of our management team will reach out to you to see how we can make it right. If you choose, you may click on one of the social media links below and leave a public review of your experience. We sincerely wish that you had a better experience at OurCompany.
Our Take On Google’s Change
While this change does allow unhappy customers to easily access your public review pages, we believe that most unhappy customers simply want resolution to their issue. Most customers are still likely to still reach out through the private portal in hopes of reaching a decision maker in the company. Evalu8 continues to give you a chance to fix things when they fall off the tracks.
While our first reaction to Google’s changes came with some trepidation, upon further scrutiny, we at Evalu8 believe that this makes for a more transparent interaction. We fully support the change and believe that it will make for a more trustworthy and robust online reputation environment.
