What Yelp Must Do

Yelp finds itself under a cloud of suspicion. A provocative story claims Yelp staffers offered business owners to remove negative reviews and promote favorable reviews for a fee. In the story, anonymous individuals described how after refusing to pay, their Yelp ratings and businesses suffered. Yelp’s CEO vigorously denies these claims, and took a decidedly offensive stance, questioning the reporter’s reporting and data gathering methods.

Later, the tone softened, and a recent Yelp post seeks to debunk “myths” concerning sales practices and manipulation of reviews. This is a good first step, but it doesn’t go far enough. Yelp should take additional measures to repair fractured trust , and rebuild its credibility as a community service that truly puts the needs of the consumer, and not themselves, first.

Having managed a customer review program (albeit on a much tinier scale) myself, I offer up these policy changes:

1. Allow businesses to opt-out of Yelp
   Businesses should have the choice to not participate. It’s not about control — conversations about their products and services will happen regardless whether Yelp hosts them — but it acknowledges that some businesses may not be comfortable or ready to be scrutinized on Yelp’s pages. Letting them opt-out helps to level the playing field.
2. Allow businesses to moderate their reviews
   Before you dismiss this idea, don’t you have the choice to moderate comments on your blog? Your blog is a digital facsimile of yourself. It’s your personal brand and online persona. You care about what the world sees, and you vigilantly protect your reputation. If junk or hate shows up in comments, you delete with prejudice. Why shouldn’t a business be afforded the same opportunity with their digital persona? Of course, only allowing favorable reviews and removing negative reviews is foolish, and destroys credibility and usefulness of the reviews. But done right (with lots of transparency), moderation gives businesses a fail-safe to counter the fear of being unfairly targeted, while preserving the helpful insights and protections the Yelp community offers to consumers.
3. Be transparent in user content management practices
   It’s understood that reviews originally appearing on the site may be later omitted, since Yelp’s content management system is actively managing this data. What’s not clear is the rules and conditions Yelp uses to decide when a review stays up, and when it is removed. Prominently publishing the content management policy (without exposing proprietary algorithms) can address this question.
4. Clearly identify reviews written by Yelp staffers
   Yelp now prohibits its sales staff from using the site to post reviews, but other staffers may still do so. To avoid future conflicts of interest, any person who is on the Yelp payroll and is contributing reviews should declare their affiliation. This could be as simple as a badge appearing next to their profile.
5. Communicate all of the above directly to the Yelp community.
   Talk to the community to explain what is going on, and why these changes are needed in clear, frank language. Make sure it gets read by delivering the message in a blog and direct email, and ask for feedback and discussion. Give folks an opportunity to be heard, and show that you are listening and care.
   

February 26, 2009. Tags: community, reviews, yelp. best practices. Leave a comment.