Monthly Archives: January 2014

We use this as a ‘quick and easy’ benchmarking tool before we meet new clients. See how you fare:

Needless to say, once you become a client, we won’t relax until you’re scoring a perfect 10!

Here are the five core questions asked by almost every estate agent before they join:


Question 1: Will we get more enquiries? 


Answer: Yes. Your prospective clients are actively looking for reviews, give them those reviews in a verified and credible format and they will make that crucial initial contact.


Question 2: Will we get more conversions?

Answer: Yes. Show reviews to potential clients and they are more likely to convert.


Question 3: Will Dialogue aid client retention?

Answer: Yes. Send the invitation to review to your ongoing clients (landlords, for instance) on a regular basis and the response will help you identify those who might be thinking of moving agents. Dialogue is a great early warning system.


Question 4: Will we look better online (Google/AllAgents/AllinLondon etc.)?

Answer: Yes. Dialogue will channel negatives away from public sites whilst at the same time enabling you to invite your happy clients to post there.

Question 5: Will Dialogue make us money?

Answer: Yes. More enquiries + more conversions + better client retention + a great image online = more profit.


Comfort


We don’t ask our new clients to sign a contract for six months. That gives them plenty of time to prove Dialogue’s value.

There’s an awful lot to Dialogue, but the core can be boiled down into the answers to five basic questions that we always asked when we first meet a client:

The Five Questions:

Question 1: Will our rankings and scores improve? 

A: Yes: Dialogue will get you more positive reviews and less negative reviews to TripAdvisor (and/or Google), less negative comments to Booking.com and the other OTAs. This will begin to impact your rankings and scores immediately you join.

Question 2: Will we get more repeat guests?

A: Yes: Guests return to your hotel either because (a) they enjoyed their stay or (b) because you were able to address whatever issue they had when they last stayed. Resolution™ enables you to address those issues.

Question 3: Will we get more direct bookings

A: Yes: Guests book direct because they feel confident; Dialogue gives them that confidence.

Question 4: Will we be able to negotiate better rates with our corporate clients? 

A: Yes: Your corporate clients want to know that their employees or clients will be happy with their choice of hotel. How your hotel is ranked and scored is a big part of that.

Question 5: Will Dialogue make us money?

A: Yes: Better rankings and scores + more repeat guests + more direct bookings + better corporate rates = more profit


The answers to these five questions, especially number 5, explain why our client retention is so very high. How high? We’ll tell you when we meet (to publish the number here might be to tempt fate, and our CEO is mildly superstitious).

It‘s awards season again – from the Oscars to TripAdvisor awards. It’s a topic that always gets raised when we meet clients in January and February, so we thought it worthy of a post here.

Lessons to be learned from award winners

Here’s a great article by Fiona Duncan, the Telegraph’s travel expert (as many of you will know Fiona also edits the acclaimed Charming Small Hotels guides – here’s a link to all the hotels she’s reviewed for her regular column in the Sunday Telegraph) which chimes absolutely with our own thoughts, and long may respected travel writers continue to plead with TripAdvisor to make their awards, and, just a importantly, their ranking system, more accurately reflect the experience travelers can expect.


But for now, you, our clients, must make the very best of the status quo, and it’s our job to make that as easy and painless as possible. So what can you do that the award winners are already doing? What habits do they have that you can easily adopt?

Playing the system

There’s now doubt that the award winners run great establishments, even if (as Fiona points out) they may not be to everyone’s taste. But so do the overwhelming majority of hoteliers we meet in our day-to-day working lives. There has to be something else, and there is: they are ‘playing the TripAdvisor game’. Wittingly or unwittingly, they are giving TripAdvisor what they want.

The numbers game

Let’s look at TripAdvisor’s No1 B&B in the whole wide world, Bindon Bottom in Dorset:


With 5 bedrooms and only opened in 2010, they have 459 reviews.

They get over 2.5 reviews a week. That’s nearly a third as many as the Savoy (which reopened just after them) which has 268 rooms!


But more important than that, we have a very good idea that they ask their guests to write reviews, or at the very least they discuss reviews with their guests. How do we know that? We don’t for certain, but there are clues in today’s Times article. Lisa, who owns the Bindon Bottom with her husband Clive, says, when questioned about the four star reviews: “One guest said that ‘He never gives 5* reviews’ and another ‘wanted a bigger guest lounge’ and the third ‘that there wasn’t enough drawer space.'” The ‘bigger guest lounge’ is mentioned in one of the reviews, but there is nothing in the other two to link the guest with the review. It was a habit
they probably formed as soon as they opened in competition with the
other 17 B&Bs in the village, as they had quite a bit of catching up
to do, and hasn’t it paid off handsomely?


The other reason we think they actively canvas reviews is the sheer number they get – the next B&B in West Lulworth has 118 reviews (111 excellent and 7 very good, since you ask), but over 7 years. Less than one-and-a-half reviews a month. 

Bigger Hotels

Now, some of you are already starting to murmer along the lines of ‘that’s all very well, but we run an 50/100/800 bedroom hotel, how can we be expected to get reviews in volume?’


Well, our first response to that is that you are streets ahead of the Bindon Bottom in terms of your potential to get reviews, with over 10/20/160 times as many guests staying. It’s simply a matter of front-of-house engaging with your guests. Look at what London’s No 1 Hotel on TripAdvisor has achieved with ‘only’ 28 rooms:

• Ask for reviews – using Dialogue™, of course!
• Engage front-of-house – we’ll help with training
• Respond to reviews – using Feedback Manager™, if you don’t have the resources

All our clients in estate agency have one main objective: to gain more business. Added to that, letting agents need to ensure that landlords and tenants are kept happy (just as selling agents will have an eye on repeat business). 

The following is a good guide (and a useful checklist
once your membership is underway):

1. You will be able to show great credible reviews to your prospective clients
2. You will be able to manage negative client issues in private
3. You will get great feedback, negotiator by negotiator, branch by branch 

All of which will lead to…

• An increase in the number of enquiries through your website
• An increase in conversion rates
• Increased client retention
• More positive reviews posted where you need them most
• Less negative comment across the web (Google, AllAgents etc.)

Support


Dialogue is so much more than just a very effective review management system; we will support you throughout your membership to ensure that you make the very best of the opportunities it presents; from initial design and implementation, through staff training on onwards from day-to-day. You will have your own dedicated business member adviser to help and advise


In summary:


You will be employing the most effective review management system available, backed up by a dedicated team of professionals who will ensure you get the very best results from you membership.