The Shed of Dulwich: The Real Story of the #1 Fake Restaurant in London

This is the story of The Shed of Dulwich, and in particular the amazing case experience run by VICE-s writer, Oobah Butler.

He used to write positive reviews for restaurants they had never visited, in exchange for £10 from restaurant owners. Over time, Oobah became obsessed with monitoring the ratings of these businesses, as they noticed their fortunes turning with the reviews.

However, they eventually realised that TripAdvisor was not a false reality, and that reviews were mostly genuine. In an attempt to prove this, they decided to create a fake restaurant on TripAdvisor and get it to the top-ranked position in London. Despite not existing, the restaurant quickly rose to the top of the rankings, which surprised the protagonist.

After successfully achieving their goal, they contacted TripAdvisor to inquire about their review verification process. A representative responded, stating that they only experienced fake restaurant listings from journalists attempting to test their system, and that creating fake listings wasn't a problem within their regular community, as there was no incentive for anyone in the real world to do so.

The importance of customer feedback lies in its ability to provide insight into what customers are thinking, feeling, or experiencing when interacting with a business. With this information, a company can make more customer-centric decisions and improve the overall customer experience.

This story teach has a double faced medal: on one side you business owner is in need to reduce the gap between Customer perception of the service/product and the real use of such service/products. On the other side, a new client want to satisfy the standard he created by reading all those review from others clients. Real comments, price transaprency and top quality feedbacks are the basis to establish trust between a business and its clients.

There is much at stake when using customer feedback effectively, as it can lead to improvements in products or services, internal processes, and customer relationships. It's important to note that customer feedback may not always be positive, but it's crucial to be prepared to act on negative feedback in order to avoid potential long-term damage to the business.

Developing a customer feedback strategy involves not only collecting feedback but also taking action on it. Digital channels provide ample opportunities for companies to obtain feedback on their products, services, and overall customer experience, but many lack the necessary tools to utilize that feedback.

Both collecting and acting on customer feedback are essential for a successful strategy. All customer feedback is valuable data, and when used effectively, it can strengthen existing relationships and even repair damaged ones. To create an effective strategy, companies must understand their reasons for seeking feedback, establish a process for gathering it, share it widely, and take action to support customers throughout their journey.

But when is the right time to let your customer review

your service or your product and how?

One effective feedback loop to consider is ACAF (ask, categorize, act, follow up), which involves gathering customer opinions, closing feedback loops, and using findings to inform overall strategy. Also, it is important to validate the review, make it real: so a trend used in the recent years is combine your customer email and single use QR code for their Verified Reviews on your website or eCommerce.

And have a look at these online survey product like Survicate, HelpScout, and many other you can benefit too from this list