TRAVELLING BLIND

THE CONFIDENT TRAVELLER How to harness the power of Internet opinions to plan your next holiday, hotel stay or restaurant visit.

THE LAST THING ANY BRAND

wants is to go viral because of poor customer service. Yes, we need transparency to sort between good and bad public places, but many of those negative reviews on social platforms don’t tell the full story. Ashleigh and Quinton Mchaffie started Social Places in 2013 with a mission to right Internet wrongs. With Go Review, they are doing just that.

“Go Review is a buffer between a company and social media that gives patrons direct access to the brand,” explains Ashleigh Mchaffie. “We’re not trying to be a social media site, but rather allowing brands to manage their online presence. We facilitate the interaction and stores can then link to the reviews section.”

The idea is simple. You visit a restaurant and scan the provided QR code with your smartphone. Then you complete the short survey. After that, you can opt in to share your review across your various social networks and connected reviews sites. The restaurant can then choose to share that to its relevant platforms and build its review base from there.

In the case of a negative review, the manager is notified and can then engage the disgruntled customer at that moment before it escalates to something beyond anyone’s control. This approach allows for improved customer service and conflict resolution.

You’ll never see Go Review in action, though. What the average end user sees is the results, which are populated reviews from real people.

To keep you from getting duped by unscrupulous methods of getting good reviews, Mchaffie has some advice for your online review research before visiting a place you’re not familiar with. “Look for listings on regular on relevant sites (think Yelp, Zomato and Safarinow). If there’s a spike in good reviews in a short period, be suspicious; it may be a canvassing campaign. Look out for authentic experiences that are described in detail. If there’s a negative review, check to see if the brand resolved the problem. Don’t just look for 5-star reviews.” PM