8 ways you can control the impact of estate agency review websites

Review websites are a big part of the internet these days - and the property industry is no different to any other. In the past few years, the trend has accelerated and the list of estate agent specific review websites is getting longer:

• www.whichpropertyagent.co.uk
• www.allagents.co.uk (the ones who force their logo onto your website header, yuk!)
• www.referenceline.com (one of the more credible sites)
• www.estateagentreview.co.uk
• www.theadvisory.co.uk
• www.meetmyagent.co.uk
• www.agentright.com
• www.agent-tracker.co.uk
• www.estatepropertyagents.co.uk and sister site www.uklettingagent.co.uk
• and more..

Factor in all of the cross-industry sites - such as Google Places, Thomson Local, FreeIndex, CheckaTrade, Qype, Bview, Yelp, Yell Trusted Places, TouchLocal, The Disc Directory, etc. - and the list is endless.

The concerned comments to today's article on Estate Agent Today are not an unusual response from any business owner. But here are the facts:

1. These sites exist and are here to stay.
2. People like to read reviews (not as much as personal recommendations, but enough to matter).
3. People believe what they read (though they appreciate that you get the occasional whinger).
4. There's more incentive to write a negative review than a positive one.
5. Most sites don't give you the option to remove or respond to a review.
6. Most importantly: you cannot control or change any of these facts.

Business owners cannot afford to stick their heads in the sand any longer on this. The potential threat that these sites pose must be taken seriously - and reputation management is now an important part of doing business in an increasingly online world.

Here are 8 things you should be doing:

1. Do a good job. This shouldn't need saying, but poor companies cannot hide as easily anymore - so don't be one.
2. Commit to being open and encourage reviews from happy customers. The only way to cancel out negative reviews is to have more positive ones.
3. Make it clear to customers that you take complaints seriously. Be approachable and deal with problems when they occur, in order to prevent 'revenge' reviews later.
4. Send every customer an email asking for honest feedback on completing your business with them. Encourage them to use third party review websites which feel more independent.
5. Have a page on your website which does the same thing.
6. Consider subscribing to a service like ReferenceLine or The Disc Directory to help outsource the process.
7. Set up Google Alerts on your company name to help you monitor what people are saying about you (and respond where possible).
8. Take negative comments seriously - they should be treated as an opportunity for improvement.

It's unlikely you'll never get a negative review, but if you do the above at least it will be easier for you to put it in context.