Monthly Archives: January 2015

Unless it is relevant to review management. In this case, we feel it is justified. Regular readers will remember Botto Bistro from back in October last year. Well, this is an update.

Bottos now have a newsletter. For those of you with five minutes to burn here it is in full (more on their website; this from their FAQ’s: ‘Q: ‘What does your food come with?’ A: ‘It comes with a plate’ – you get the gist). Bottos hate Yelp so much they are fighting back the only way they know how – by actively inviting one star reviews (to the extent of offering a 50% discount as a reward). Is it working? You be the judge…

They don’t seem to like Yelp or Yelpers. This is what they have to say about them:

New today: Google have begun prompting reviews. Taking a leaf out of TripAdvisor’s book, now when you review a coffee bar you will be asked to review businesses from your search history.

So your customers may only be writing a review of a coffee bar, but they will be prompted to write another, maybe even of you.

This is bound to provide a kicker for Google reviews, by how much we don’t yet know (but we will let you know as soon as we do).

For a sector that finds itself so fairly and squarely in the sights of reviewers (and review sites), many in the restaurant industry has been surprisingly slow to formulate effective solutions.

Here we outline our own solution, but first let’s examine two examples – one a restaurant in Rome, another closer to home in London.


Cajo & Gago, Piazza San Calisto, Rome

Tucked away off the beaten track in Trastevere – ‘across the Tiber’ – this cheerful (and typically Roman) venue takes TripAdvisor seriously, very seriously indeed. Just how seriously? below are the cards one of our directors was given when visiting recently…

The first (small card) came with the bill, the second was handed by the waitress in person (‘Agnese’) and the third was handed by the assistant manager (‘Danilo’) on departure. When quizzed as to the restaurant’s policy Danilo happily explained that “tucked away in a back street, away from the main tourist route, the restaurant’s owners decided that they needed to adopt a very proactive policy to get reviews to TripAdvisor, we even get individually rewarded when someone mentions us by name.”


Has it worked? Well, they’re ranked in the top 5% of all Rome’s nearly 9,000 restaurants. What is even more unusual is that they have achieved this in less than nine months. By inviting reviews; they have 689 reviews, all but 82 of which rate them as ‘excellent’ or ‘very good’. As a result the restaurant was packed on a Monday lunchtime in January.


A Central London restaurant


This (in our directors’ opinions) great restaurant has been open slightly longer (end 2013), and has a great pedigree. The food and service are as close to impeccable as can be. yet the restaurant is not always full – even on a Friday night. 


So let’s look at their track record on TripAdvisor:


They are ranked in the mid-4000’s. In just over a year they have been reviewed just fifty-one times, and sixteen (30%) of those reviews rank the restaurant ‘average’, ‘poor’ or ‘terrible’.


Our solution

Is to refine the Cajo & Gago solution. For two reasons: the first is that a fine dining establishment might reasonably say that bombarding their clients with requests to review, in-restaurant, does not sit well with their ethos. The second is that there is a better way.


A better way?

Hand each diner a card and a pencil at the same time as presenting the bill. Explain that they may like to let the restaurant have their email address. If they do (and there’s no pressure) they will be sent useful information (changes of menu, offers for regular clients – not ‘marketing’). The card itself will make clear that ‘your email address will not be shared with anyone’.


The next day an email will be sent, welcoming the diner to the restaurant’s newsletter and inviting them to post a review of the previous day’s experience on the restaurant’s own website.


A percentage of diners will respond. HelpHound will post all the positive reviews to the restaurant’s website (for future diners to see). Any reviews containing issues will first be sent to the restaurant to resolve. HelpHound will then invite the reviewers to copy their reviews to TripAdvisor (or Google). 


The results will be immediate and sustained. And, as a bonus, the restaurant will be building a great database of diners for its other marketing.

This is a screenshot of an actual client’s rating – displayed on their website today

Dialogue is immensely effective – so effective that it often results in clients showing no negative reviews at all, on their own websites or on Google. This leads to an understandable question from our potential clients:

In order to answer this important question we would ask you, our reader, to put yourself in the position of a potential client of one of our clients, and ask them the self-same question, but this time be blunt:

Now: our client’s answer…


“If you go to write a review on our website you will see this:

“If you go to read reviews you will see this:

“HelpHound, who operate this system for us, promise to publish any review – any review at all – but first we have a chance to resolve whatever issue a client may have raised. The reason that we don’t have negative reviews showing is not that we are perfect, but that we have a 100% track record (to date, at least!) of resolving any issues our clients have brought to our attention.

“Is that the kind of business you were looking for? Not one that claims to be perfect, but one that has a perfect track record of putting things right if and when they do go wrong?

We hope this addresses the issue of ‘looking too good’ for everyone.

Not our headline, the Financial Times‘s. On 22 December Italy’s antitrust regulators fined Tripadvisor €500,000.