Automotive News - October 16, 2017 - Supplement - S29

OCTOBER 16, 2017 | 29
S T E V E N S C R E E K S U B A R U , S A N J O S E , C A L I F.

DIVERSIFIED STRATEGY

Calif. store focuses its
online efforts across
different platforms
Printed in Automotive News May 15, 2017

Katie Burke

kburke@crain.com

hen Brian Bakhtiari joined
Stevens Creek Subaru in October 2012, the San Jose, Calif.,
store had a one-star rating on
online customer review site Yelp.
As general manager, Bakhtiari made it his
mission to improve the rating. By the spring
of 2016, he had brought it up to four stars by
reforming or firing staff that weren't delivering customer satisfaction results.
"Online reputation is vital for any business," Bakhtiari said. "I tried to change the
culture of the store. You have to give customers excellent service."
Positive online reviews
are crucial to any retailer in
the age of smartphones and
social media. But as Bakhtiari soon learned, focusing
attention on one platform
can be risky because review
sites often change strategies
Theisen: Filtering quickly, which can erase a
causes problems. dealership's online reputation overnight.
Stevens Creek maintained its four-star rating
for about a year, with the goal of hitting 4.5 stars
in the next two and a half years. But the store's
progress was abruptly erased in March.
"In the middle of March, I noticed a drop
from four stars to 3.5," Bakhtiari said. "In the
first week of April, we dropped from 3.5 to
three stars."

Soliciting discouraged
The 1,300 recommended reviews on Stevens Creek's Yelp page had been filtered,
moving up to 700 reviews from recent years
from the main page to a link at the bottom
where visitors could access reviews "not currently recommended" by Yelp. That resulted
in the dropped rating.
For comparison, at press time, Stevens
Creek had a 4.1-star rating on Google with
284 reviews, a 4.9-star rating on Cars.com
with 1,405 reviews and a 1.9-star rating on
DealerRater with 13 reviews.

Stevens Creek Subaru's Yelp rating fell from four stars to three after some reviews were filtered.

"For a retailer, this hurts," Bakhtiari said. "We
ships for the past few years.
did all this work to improve our reputation onThe main problem is that customers visit
line; it goes a long way with consumers."
dealerships much less frequently than restauYelp filters its reviews to display comrants or other stores, causing the software to
ments from users with longer histories on
automatically filter out many reviews written
the website, determined by the number of
for dealerships.
reviews they've written and the number of
Some of the stores Theisen works with will
"friends" they have on the site. First-time
have tens, maybe hundreds of recommendvisitors to a retailer are less likely to have
ed reviews on Yelp, compared with thoutheir reviews placed prominently. Yelp prosands on sites such as DealerRater and
hibits businesses from writing their own reCars.com, which have different filtering paviews and discourages them from asking
rameters.
customers to write reviews on the site.
"Yelp's algorithm is set up to highlight those
A Yelp spokesperson said the company had
people who go out to eat and stay at hotels
refined its filtering software to "take acregularly, not those who buy a car once
tion" against reviews it determined
every three to five years," Theisen
to be solicited. Stevens Creek
said.
Dealership
was one of many businesses,
Dealerships don't have the
benefits from
including dealerships and
luxury
of ignoring their reputaspreading its online
other retailers, that were part
tion on Yelp and other review
efforts across
of the renewed effort to filter
sites - 68 percent of consummultiple review sites
reviews that customers were
ers trust opinions posted onand social media
asked to write, she said.
line,
according to Nielsen. On
platforms.
Bakhtiari said the dealership
some search platforms, such as
had been asking customers to
Apple's Siri, Yelp reviews are listed
leave reviews on Yelp as part of its efprominently when searching for a
forts to improve its online reputation.
business.
However, after hearing from a Yelp repreUnless Yelp changes its filter policy, there's
sentative that the site was filtering solicited
little dealers can do to make sure reviews,
reviews, Stevens Creek now has employees
positive or negative, stay on the site.
ask customers to leave an online review,
"I don't know how to fix it," Theisen said.
without specifying a platform.
As for Stevens Creek Subaru, Bakhtiari said
the store is diversifying its online efforts, building its reputation on other review sites and soLess frequent visits
cial media platforms. "We invested a lot with
Keith Theisen, a dealer consultant with
Yelp," he said. "To put all your eggs in one basCox Automotive, said Yelp's filtering softket, we found out, can be harmful." a
ware has been causing issues for dealer-

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