Stop begging for conditional customer reviews
Worried, I had spent Friday evening hurriedly searching up emergency dental clinics to figure out who could see my wife about an issue that was troubling us.
Only one of those I called could take us on a Saturday morning, and it was a bit of a trek to get there.
The wait time wasn’t crazy, and the forms we had to fill out weren’t long, but there were the usual irritations that you find in almost any health-care setting.
This included the difficulty in getting straight answers to basic questions and an air of suspicion that we wouldn’t be able to pay.
Still, my eyes widened when I was in the process of signing one of the forms when the receptionist – with a perma-smile and an almost robotic expression – said, “Will you leave us a good review?”
“Let’s see how the service goes first,” I muttered, returning to my seat until my wife came back out.
Then, when we were wrapping up payment, it happened again.
“Be sure to leave us a positive review!” she chirped.
I should add her demeanor was in stark contrast to the officiousness with which she injected every other aspect of our interaction during our visit.
There was no way I was going to leave a review, I decided, and I felt kind of outraged. Now I see that scientists are backing me up!
Terms and conditions
According to a paper published in the Journal of Retailing by researchers from Lehigh University and Seattle University, there’s a term for what we encountered: the conditional customer review request.
If you go by the adage “there’s no harm in asking,” their findings should encourage you to think again:
The consequences of conditional requests on customer loyalty (i.e., retailer engagement and repeat purchase behavior) are uniformly negative and surprisingly expansive.
Six experiments with over 3,000 participants reveal that customers who receive conditional (vs. unconditional) requests are subsequently less loyal to the retailer, whom they perceive as manipulative and untrustworthy.”
It’s not the request, in other words, but in the fact that those asking stipulate they want a positive review.
They aren’t really looking for feedback. They’re looking for validation that can build their brand online.
How AI could make conditional customer review requests the norm
None of this may come as any surprise, but I feel it’s worth pointing out because the emphasis on validation may continue to skew CX efforts.
Many existing AI search tools, including ChatGPT and Perplexity, pull directly from reviews to inform the answers they provide. Brands will have every temptation to forsake genuine insight in favor of five-star ratings and friendly comments.
This is a time to educate everyone in the organization, particularly C-suite leaders, about the difference between validation and actionable feedback, and why the latter is critical to long-term success.
If you really want unconditional love, get a dog. Even though they can’t actually write you a positive review.
