Every time I review something and am forced to give it a star, I think, "Well, OK. The place DID serve me, and they DID HAVE food [or whatever], so I guess that counts for something!" But seriously, a 0-star review would help me out with that. I regularly give 5-star reviews for places who give me what I want, in a way that leaves me with a positive feeling when I leave. Nothing about the place has to be exemplary, but if I feel as though it's a place I will return to and can rely on to give me what I need in a hospitable way, they get 5 stars! I don't believe the 5th star should be reserved for rarefied exemplary services [as some people do].
Having said that, in the past I would not even give the 0-star establishment the benefit of my time, as I was seeing that as free advertising. However, I now think that we are reviewing for the benefit of others, not the business. As such, I review, great and atrocious, so that others have an idea of what they might be getting into if they consider visiting the shop.
In other words, we all deserve to know if people consistently like or dislike a place. The owners learn about their service possibly as much as we do with these reviews. Hopefully, the bad reviews incentivize the owners to make positive changes.
Re: 5 Stars rating and natural customer behavior. People more likely to give bad ratings than good o
I too work with lots of Small and Medium businesses and I'm always dealing with small business owners who take negative reviews really personally and they often want to respond to these reviewers aggressively. I absolutely agree with all the comments that @ZachM has made in his response. I spend a lot of time explaining to these business owners that these negative review can often become more valuable than a positive review if handled correctly. Firstly, it sometimes highlights staff training issues that the business owner wasn't aware of, then I advise them to claim their Maps listing and respond by thanking the reviewer for their feedback (in a positive way), explain some improvements that they are going to implement, as a result. Responding this way illustrates to other potential customers that you really care about your customers. Then I advise these business owners to encourage many of their happy customers to post reviews about their positive experiences.
I have been working a lot of years in customer relationship programs, customer satisfaction and behavior programs. I know that the most of customers are more likely to rate a company as a punishment for a bad experience more than giving a normal/medium rate for a correct service/product and only in few cases they will take the time to rate for an over the standard or extraordinary service/product. Have Google Maps ever thought about making a good rating / bad rating ratio or algorithm based in the extreme rating vs. quantity of ratings to avoid underqualifing based on basic human behavior in rating operations?.
2022
