The online reputation of restaurants in the face of customer reviews

Restaurants want to project the best possible image to online users, especially during this time of year. A good opportunity, after the online reputation of chefs , to take a look at customer reviews of restaurants.

The decision to go to one restaurant or another is no longer based solely on the brand’s arguments or an expert’s opinion, but also on reading the reviews published across the web. Good old word of mouth is now amplified by the power of the internet.

How should restaurants manage their online reputation in the world of dining and gastronomy reviews?

What platforms shape the online reputation of restaurants?

While gastronomy guides such as Gault et Millau, the Michelin guide and the Routard guide hand out official reviews of restaurants through their food critics, which fine-dining enthusiasts love to consult, customer reviews of restaurants on the internet are also becoming increasingly important.

Among the review and rating sites most consulted by internet users, we can mention:

• The recommendation site Tripadvisor, which lets consumers leave a rating and a review of an establishment’s offering. One distinctive feature of the site: users are asked to state whether or not they would recommend the establishment. Consulted by 315 million visitors per month worldwide, Tripadvisor results can appear on the first page of search engines. Negative comments directly affect an establishment’s foot traffic and reputation.

• Acquired in May 2014 by Tripadvisor, the French restaurant-booking platform La Fourchette offers reviews and ratings from internet users about restaurants. The particularity of LaFourchette is that only people who have made and honored a reservation can post a review. Lafourchette also lets you geolocate yourself and possibly benefit from a promotion at a restaurant.

Customer reviews on LaFourchette are linked to those on TripAdvisor

• Sites such as Yelp(which offers long reviews and photos taken by customers), Cityvox(a review site for going out, with 38,000 restaurants and 300,000 reviews) or Foursquare offer reviews from internet users.

• On the social media side, according to Elodie Letemplier, a consultant in marketing for chefs and gastronomy, “Facebook and Instagram are particularly important because they are popular sites.” The friendly feel and the sense of closeness could also explain the success of these social networks. The reviews posted on Google Plus Local, which appear on the first page of the search engine, are also worth considering. Google geolocates the computer and automatically adds “local” results to its links. Google Local provides restaurants’ contact details, reviews and ratings. To rank well locally, you need to fill in the information about your profile on Google Adresse meticulously, as it is the primary source of traffic for local sites.

• In the United States, we can mention sites such as Opentable , which offers a rating system based on different criteria (food, service and atmosphere), or Zagat, which has developed a rating system for internet users to elect the best restaurants.

Different ratings are shown on opentable

How much credibility should you give these reviews?

On these sites, social networks or apps, internet users can widely share their experience, positive or negative, with the community. However, these reviews should be taken with a grain of salt:

• Fake reviews are rampant. According to the DGCCRF, the anomaly rate of reviews reached 45% in 2013, or almost one review out of two. For example, the lack of oversight on Tripadvisor casts doubt on the reliability of the comments and raises the possibility of fraud. In Europe, Tripadvisor is thus sometimes targeted by professionals and independent authorities who question the reliability of the reviews presented. For its part, TripAdvisor explains on its site the various ways it identifies and stops fraudulent practices. Its president recently wrote a letter in which he explains that “TripAdvisor applies a zero-tolerance policy toward fraud.”
• The risks that restaurants engage in self-promotion or disparage a competitor are real. A process similar to word of mouth, but this time carried out in a more anonymous and widespread way.

What attitude should you adopt toward reviews?

Faced with this flood of reviews, restaurateurs and chefs do not always know what attitude to adopt. Should they act as if these reviews did not exist or take them into account, knowing that nearly 9 out of 10 French people consult them according to a recent IFOP/Semji survey and that 89% of them find them “useful” or “very useful”?

Several approaches are recommended to turn these reviews into an advantage and manage the online reputation of restaurants favorably.

Faced with negative reviews, “the first thing is to respond whatever the review is,” says Elodie Letemplier. Not responding in the heat of the moment and personalizing your response are strongly recommended.

A happy customer does not always spontaneously communicate their satisfaction. Sending an email after the customer leaves can help increase the rate of positive comments. This makes it possible to publish positive reviews that can dilute any negative ones. Restaurateurs can also capitalize on satisfied customers by encouraging them to leave a review on a tablet at the entrance of the establishment or brought over, for example, by the waiter. Once collected, the restaurateur can then share this review.

Responding to negative reviews can also go through the legal route. Consumer reviews are indeed likely to constitute faults that engage the liability of their authors if proof of their “deceptive,” “excessive” or “disproportionate” nature is provided, or if they contain insulting, defamatory or disparaging remarks.

A 2,500-euro fine and 5,000 euros in costs were, for example, sought last October against an internet user following the posting of a scathing comment about an establishment that had not yet opened on the day the post was published online. In the case of defamatory reviews, it is advisable not to respond but to request their removal, which can be done within a period of 3 months. Beware, however, of the Streisand effect, a phenomenon that manifests itself in a sharp increase in the distribution of information or documents that are the subject of an attempted removal or censorship.

For example, a restaurant in Cap-Ferret that had a blogger convicted, following a review that had gone largely unnoticed, saw the convicted person’s post receive national media coverage as a result of the case.

Ask for reliable reviews to be published. In this spirit, the Michelin-starred chef Pascal Favre d’Anne recently launched the petition “No to insulting reviews against restaurateurs.” In particular, he asks “restaurant review sites to moderate their users’ comments and to require proof of their visit to [their] establishments.” Some are asking that Tripadvisor adopt the AFNOR NF Z74-501 standard “Online consumer reviews,” which proposes a reliable method for handling consumer reviews. With this standard, the author of the review must be identifiable and reachable, no consumer review may be purchased, the grounds for rejection must be stated in the site’s terms of use, and so on. But this standard, which is non-binding, is still very rarely used.

To monitor the sites and respond to reviews, it is also advisable to list all the sites on which the chef’s establishment is present. You need to consult each of these sites and claim the right to update the establishment’s listing. This will make it possible to respond to negative reviews. On Tripadvisor, you can thus claim an owner page and speak up.

There are sites that manage customer reviews. For example, Revinate, which is basically an ORM, an online reputation management software. This aggregator goes looking for reviews posted on platforms such as TripAdvisor, Booking or Google Business, and presents them on a single interface. It collects online reviews and performs a semantic analysis of their content, which can help restaurants better understand customer reviews about the services offered and their experience.

Monitoring is also necessary to know what is being said about the establishment and the chef.

All these tools should allow restaurants to regain control of their online reputation. Managing customer reviews must, with this in mind, be their top priority, because digital has multiplied the principle of simple word of mouth.

Managing online reputation can also allow restaurants to offer optimized customer service. A restaurant in New York goes so far as to google its future customers. So, if a customer comes from the same region as one of the restaurant’s waiters, that waiter is assigned to them! While personalization raises questions about privacy, the restaurant’s strategy proves effective: by knowing, for example, the customer’s favorite music, the restaurant offers them an unforgettable experience that goes beyond a simple dinner.

Sources:

(1) http://www.thrmagazine.info/TripAdvisor-lutte-contre-la-fraude\_a1385.html

(2) http://www.orange-business.com/fr/blogs/relation-client/social-crm/comment-les-avis-d-internautes-influencent-les-parcours-d-achat-

(3) https://www.legavox.fr/blog/maitre-anthony-bem/reputation-rapport-dgccrf-faux-avis-15824.htm

(4) http://www.sudouest.fr/2014/07/11/un-restaurant-du-cap-ferret-fait-condamner-une-blogueuse-effet-streisand-garanti-1612754-3246.php

(5) http://www.petitionpublique.fr/?pi=P2014N46320

(6) https://www.yonder.fr/news/food/quand-les-restaurants-googlisent-leurs-clients