Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 1096, Improving Online Reviews.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 1096.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
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This episode is a dialogue about improving or making better reviews that you read on the internet.
Let's get started.
Okay, you were right.
We need to do something to improve business.
Do you think we should take out an ad in the local newspaper?
We could do that, but I think a better strategy is to improve our online reviews.
Who looks at websites with unsolicited reviews?
I'm not convinced that'll help us.
Lots of people look at reviews when choosing which business to patronize.
Right now, we only have three stars out of five and that's hurting us.
It's hard to believe that adding a star will really improve our business.
Believe it.
And those mediocre reviews we received last week?
We should respond to each one and try to make it right.
Those reviews were written by a few disgruntled customers.
We're always going to have a few whiners.
Yes, but now they're much more vocal.
If they're not happy with our service or product, we need to compensate them for their bad experience.
No, that's an investment in our business reputation.
What you're saying is that we need to bribe people to write good reviews.
I wouldn't put it that way, but we should recognize that crowdsourcing is the wave of the future.
And we need to move with the times if our business is to survive.
All right.
I guess we can try that.
Writing my own review.
I've always given myself excellent service.
Our dialogue begins with Jerese saying to Russell, Okay, you were right.
We need to do something to improve our business.
Do you think we should take out an ad in the local newspaper?
An ad.
A-D is an advertisement, a way of promoting or letting people know about your business or your products.
Gerice mentions taking out an ad in the newspaper.
To take out an ad means to place or put an advertisement, in this case, in a newspaper.
You can also take out an advertisement in a magazine.
A more general term for this is to place, P-L-A-C-E, an advertisement.
That's probably a more useful expression, because we could use that in talking about placing an advertisement on a website, for example, or placing an advertisement on the radio.
Russell responds to Jerisa's question by saying we could do that, but I think a better strategy, a better approach is to improve our online reviews.
Online refers to on the internet, on a website typically.
A review is when someone posts or puts their opinion about a product or a service either in a newspaper or, more commonly nowadays, on a website.
Jerry says, who looks at websites with unsolicited reviews?
Unsolicited, U-N-S-O-L-I-C-I-T-E-D, is the opposite of solicited.
To solicit, as a verb, means to ask for.
The prefix un- means not so unsolicited is something that you didn't ask for, something that you didn't request someone do.
Most reviews that you read online are unsolicited in the sense that the business doesn't ask you for a review.
Sometimes they do.
A smart business will ask you to put a review of your product or service on a website so other people can see how much you like their product or their service.
But an unsolicited review is when no one asks you.
You just do it because you want to.
Jerry says, I'm not convinced that'll help us.
Russell says, lots of people look at reviews when choosing which business to patronize.
To patronize P-A-T-R-O-N-I-Z-E means to be a customer of a particular business, or at least that's what it means in this sentence.
Russell says, right now, we only have three stars out of five, and that's hurting us.
Often when you post or place a review of a, say restaurant, you are asked to give the restaurant or the product a certain number of stars.
Usually there are five stars, at least in most american websites that have reviews of this sort.
A five star review would be a review that says this is a wonderful product.
It's the best you could ask for.
If you give a business only one star, that means that you didn't like the product or service very much.
Russell says that his and Jerese's business has at least on the website they're talking about three stars out of five, which is just sort of average.
Russell, in fact, thinks that it is hurting them.
Gerice says it's hard to believe that adding a star will really improve our business.
What Gerice means here is that by improving their rating, their average rating from say, three stars out of five to four stars out of five, would really help them.
But Russell says, in fact, it will.
He says, believe it, meaning you should believe what I'm telling you is true.
He continues and those mediocre reviews we received last week.
We should respond to each one and try to make it right.
Mediocre M-E-D-I-O-C-R-E means not very good.
It's Not a word you would use to describe something that's terrible.
It's sort of in between good and bad, but more on the bad side.
What Russell is saying is that their business got some mediocre reviews last week.
He says they should try to respond to each one and try to make it right.
To make something right means to fix something, to correct a bad situation, especially when you're talking about a customer of your business.
Cherise says those reviews were written by a few disgruntled customers.
To be disgruntled D-I-S-G-R-U-N-T-L-E-D means to be unhappy, to be dissatisfied, to have a lot of complaints or things you don't like about something, especially a business.
Jerry says we're always going to have a few whiners.
Whiner, W-H-I-N-E-R, comes from the verb to whine, W-H-I-N-E.
To whine means to complain, to complain loudly, sometimes in an annoying voice.
We often associate whining with children.
You know, when your child goes, but mom, I want to go to the store.
Please, I want to go to the store.
I don't know, you know, when I was a child, my mother says I was an angel, a perfect child.
I never whined.
Well, that's what she tells me anyway.
Or was that my brother?
Russell agrees with Gerice that there will always be whiners.
However, he says that the people complaining on the website are much more vocal now.
To be vocal, V-O-C-A-L, means to express your opinions loudly, usually in spoken words.
However, in this case, it means someone is writing more in their review.
You can't literally be vocal if we're talking about writing, but we use the term when talking about writing to refer to someone who is writing a lot more than they might otherwise.
Russell says if the customers are not happy with our service, we need to compensate them for their bad experience.
To compensate, C-O-M-P-E-N-S-A-T-E someone, means to... give something to someone, to pay someone something, either money or something else of value, in return for what that person did, or in this case, to make up for a bad experience.
We can use the verb to compensate to mean the same as to pay, as in I'm going to compensate my employees.
I'm going to pay them money for working for me.
But here, compensate means to make up for to do something for someone because something bad has happened to them and you are the cause of that bad experience.
Jerese disagrees.
She doesn't think the business should compensate these customers who are complaining.
She says that would put us out of business.
Russell disagrees.
He says An investment in something is money or resources or energy.
You put into something in the hopes of getting more in the future back from that particular activity.
Reputation refers to what other people think about you.
You can have a good reputation or you can have a bad reputation.
Cherie says, what you're saying is that we need to bribe people to write good reviews.
To bribe B-R-I-B-E means to pay someone money so that he or she will do something for you, especially something that may be considered illegal or dishonest.
Don't confuse this with the noun bride, B-R-I-D-E, which is a woman who is going to get married.
Unless you want to bribe a woman to be your bride, which is probably not a good idea.
Russell doesn't consider this bribing.
He says, I wouldn't put it that way, meaning I wouldn't say it that way.
He says we should recognize that crowdsourcing is the wave of the future and we need to move with the times if our business is to survive.
Crowdsourcing, C-R-O-W-D-S-O-U-R-C-I-N-G, all one word, means to use the services or opinions of many different people, usually by using the internet somehow.
The wave of the future refers to the things that are becoming popular and will be common in the future or in the near future.
To move with the times means to change and adjust your actions or behaviors to do what other people are doing.
Jerry says, all right, I guess we can try that.
Russell says, what are you doing now?
Jeris says, writing my own review, I've always given myself excellent service.
Jeris is going to write a review of her own business, saying how wonderful her business is which, of course, is not exactly what the website that carries these reviews would probably want to see.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Okay, you are right.
We need to do something to improve business.
Do you think we should take out an ad in the local newspaper?
We could do that, but I think a better strategy is to improve our online reviews.
Who looks at websites with unsolicited reviews?
I'm not convinced that'll help us.
Lots of people look at reviews when choosing which business to patronize.
Right now, we only have three stars out of five, and that's herdiness.
It's hard to believe that adding a star will really improve our business.
Believe it.
And those mediocre reviews we received last week?
We should respond to each one and try to make it right.
Those reviews were written by a few disgruntled customers.
We're always going to have a few whiners.
Yes, but now they're much more vocal.
If they're not happy with our service or product, we need to compensate them for their bad experience.
That would put us out of business.
No, that's an investment in our business reputation.
What you're saying is that we need to bribe people to write good reviews.
I wouldn't put it that way, but we should recognize that crowdsourcing is the wave of the future and we need to move with the times of our businesses to survive.
All right.
I guess we can try that.
What are you doing now?
Writing my own review.
I've always given myself excellent service.
Our scriptwriter is always moving with the times and giving you the very latest, in American English, in her dialogues.
Thank you, Lucy.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2015 by the Center for Educational Development.
