Being a local guide is more than sharing pictures or 30 second videos; it’s about bringing new content that is usable for others to benefit. This alone can bring up several topics including but not limited to reviews or virtual tours 360° panoramas.
So, let’s chat a little bit about review edicate as a Local Guide.
I’ve been with merchant services since 2012 for a company that I run called PrimaKeys LLC based in Wisconsin and I have seen some great reviews for great customer service and products while at times we all have seen someone that rants about the little stuff while leaving a lower than nice ranking. We as people all have bad moments and I totally get that life can be stressful but if you can’t bring something positive than don’t type anything at all. It’s like the old saying that my mom and dad said to me when I was young, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say it at all.”
It’s not about bottling up your feelings it’s about growing and being responsible. It’s about understanding and respecting the people around you.
I sometimes feel that people live in a bubble where I think they don’t care about their reviews or how it can hurt when left on a disrespectful note. It’s in my professional opinion that no one runs a business with pour customer service in-mind or not wanting returning customers. Business owners wear many hats from accounting to training employees from running arons to payroll and the last thing that they want is bad reviews on petty stuff that really doesn’t matter in the bigger picture.
I particularly don’t look at reviews anymore because I’ve seen some horrible reviews about restaurants or hotels and every single time, I go I had nothing but a great experience. That 1-Star for not having the salt and pepper shakers full or you had to wait five-minutes for a server to wait on you because they were busy doesn’t rate a pour review.
Beside what give anyone the right to give a review without some training on what to look for and how-to write one in the first place. I sometimes think that before anyone can leave a review, they should be required to watch a video with a test or something.
I don’t know about everyone else but sometimes if you follow that bad reviewer and look at their history it seems to me that overwhelming majority of the time there just negative in nature. As strange as this may seem I had restaurant owners tell me that people that leave bad reviews do come back. Some always have something to complain about while others fly under the radar. In addition, people when fat and happy are content and most times do not leave a review even when asked. On the contrary and depending on the nature of the customer will always give a review and perhaps a dishonest one at most.
Being a Local Guide is to boost business owners with great reviews on finding what great about their business rather than the negative. It’s about giving great and honest rating based on several factors not based on your encounter with your waitress. With that note and let’s say your waitress wasn’t in the best of moods, but how was the food? Was your coffee hot or your soft drink cold? Was the restaurant clean? Were the other customers happy?
What I do as a Local Guide is look for the positive aspect of each business rather than picking one thing and base my rating and my opinion on just that thought. Too me that would disqualify me as a true reviewer.
I’m not asking for people that do leave reviews to be dishonest but rather broaden the way to leave okay reviews to great reviews and be honest instead of writing negative ones.
There are tons more of what a Local Guide’s responsibility is but considering no one wrote about this topic I thought this would be a great opportunity so see what other Local Guides think on this topic.