Last Sunday evening I published the first part of this two part series titled Redemption or getting their claws more deeply embedded? โ A Place for Mom launches a new consumer review site it was based exploration of the website and a discussion with a press representative for Senioradvisor.com. I went into the discussion with a high degree of cynicism which I am sure comes through in the article. By the end of the interview, I was asking questions she couldnโt answer. This spawned a second interview, with Eric Seifert, the president of Senioradvisor.com. I asked my hard questions and yours from the comments on the first article. Here you go:
Fair or Unfair โ Senior Communities
The first, and ultimately most important question for senior housing providers is whether or not it provides a fair playing field for A Place for Mom (APFM) partners and non-partners. To my surprise, it is essentially a level playing field. The site has about 137,500 senior communities listed and about 20,000 are APMF partners. Whether you are an APFM partner or not you can claim your communities listing. Once you have claimed your page and been verified (24-48 hours) you can do the following:
- Rewrite your description
- Add photos
- Respond to comments
- Your residents and their families can post reviews
Note there are some restriction, which you can see on the Terms of Service (TOC) page, but those restrictions apply to both member and non-member communities. Claiming your community is something you should do immediately. The one slight advantage that APFM members have is that member communities with consumer reviews came out of the gate with reviews and star ratings. The default (well actually only) ranking algorithm in a given market area is that the more ratings your community has, the higher they fall on the list. This means if you want to get to the top, you need to figure out how to get people to say nice things about you on the site.
Fair, Unfair and Useful โ Consumers and the World
The second question is whether or not the site really provides useful and useable information for consumers. Perhaps most important to the integrity is whether or not all reviews will be posted, even the really terrible one. My initial exploration of the site demonstrated that most sites had 4 & 5 stars with a sprinkling of 3โs. Even the threes for the most part had positive comments. I was provided links to 2 communities with less than 3 stars which you can find at the bottom of the article. That being said, I am still suspicious that not all the negative ratings made it to the launch, which honestly might be the fair thing to do so that communities donโt start in a hole they need to dig out of. All comments are moderated, to ensure that the comments comply with the TOC this is to make sure the reviews arenโt peppered with negative unfair ratings from competitors and disgruntled employees among other things.
Business Model
Right now it is essentially a money losing proposition because the playing field is so level. They will have to figure out a way to at least break even and they are still working on what that will look like. Possibilities include banner advertising and premium listings both of which seem reasonable.
A Work in Process
The reason I did not publish this article earlier is that I had trouble getting a few things to work right. The site is still very much a work in progress and you will see changes to make it work better. Here are a couple of helpful hints: 1. Before you can claim your building you will need to create an account. Sounds straightforward, but today it is not quite. It is possible to register (or semi-register) with just your email. In order to be fully registered the site needs to have your email address plus your first and last name otherwise it wonโt allow you to claim your listing. 2. If your community is not listed, go to the support page (button in the bottom right of every page) and send them an email with the name of your community and your contact information, you should hear back in 24-48 hours. My initial impression is very positive. They had all the right answers. It would be helpful to the reader community to tell us about how well it works for you as you claim your community and work with the site. If you are going to be at the ALFA national convention in Charlotte you might want to come to our breakout session on managing your on-line reputation.
Links to Low Rated Communities
With a low overall star rating With a low individual comment Steve Moran
From Linkedin Groups
Lorie Eber โข There’s really no good shortcut to checking out places for yourself. Ratings only go so far and there’s usually a bias built in. Do you agree?
Steve,
Thank you for taking a look at our new site, SeniorAdvisor.com. It’s completely fair to say that the site is still a work in progress. We have a lot of work to do in order to create a great customer & community experience. We love the feedback from you and your readers and are feverishly updating the site to improve user experience. Please continue to let us know what we can do better!
Cheers,
Eric Seifert (President, SeniorAdvisor.com)
From LinkedIn Groups
Luke Daniels, CSA โข You’re right, Lorie; you must do the research to learn each facility and parent company to determine which is the best and most appropriate fit for someone. One needs to meet with and get to know some of the staff and talk with the residents. It’s the same with Home care companies. Steve, thanks for a valuable article.
Lorie
I agree, but that being said I think there are several reasons who sites like these are an important part of the equation:
1. It is possible for a community to look great and not be so great, this will give a different perspective.
2. It provides a chance for smaller communities that do a great job but don’t have a big marketing budget to tell their story and for consumers to hear those stories.
3. In big markets it can serve as a filter to figure out the best place to start looking.
From LinkedIn Groups
Mary Ayers โข As a care provider I feel it is important to be heard as our facilities are being presented to the public by an entity that we have little influence over except by spending our money. So thank you to everyone thatโs taking time to express your thoughts on this topic.
This is a hot button for me right now because it is a project that Iโm working on for our company.
My issue is paying money vs. not paying & the transparency of that to the consumer. Steve, I disagree with your point #2. Let me share some examples –
One company I have spoken with, if you do not pay the listing fee your facilityโs information will only show up if you are searching for the specific zip code in which your facility is located. If the individual making the search is looking within a 10 mile radius of another zip code & your facility falls inside of that radius, you will not be found. Pay the listing fee & your information is included. Another company requires you to speak with a person to obtain additional information on the facility of interest. If you do not pay the listing fee, when an individual inquires about your facility the response is that โthey cannot recommend that facility, let me give you the names of two or three others that we can recommendโ. I will admit that Iโm possibly being over sensitive but in this particular situation I believe that the words โcannot recommendโ will imply to the individual engaged in the search that something bad is known about this facility & they arenโt willing to say. Instead, if the response was that they โdonโt have enough information to recommend . . .โ then there is a totally different tone to the exact same situation.
From my experience of providing info. to families and conducting tours, many of the individuals that are searching for info. are in crisis or are quickly trying to avoid a crisis. They are using the Internet to save time & leg work. They are coming to what they believe to be a trusted source for information. I believe in everyone making money. I just would like for the company to be more up-front about what the consumer is seeing. In the end, every site Iโve researched, & Iโm working through a list of 90 web sites, requires money somewhere. Many sites have a paragraph on their About Us page stating how they make their money. I would like to see that statement in a more prominent spot.
I suppose Iโm an idealist – I would like the playing field to be level so that โthe smaller communities that do a great jobโ can be seen & their stories heard. Today, that’s just not the case.
I appreciate your comments. I want to start my response by saying that this article was very specifically about SeniorAdvisor.com, and not a review of the consumer rating industry.
I do think the question of how to create a level playing field and make money is a complex issue. One might argue that the only way to create a completely fair site would be for a company to provide the service and make no money off it at all, something that is not realistic. I do think that to this point what SeniorAdvisor.com has done is to create as level a playing field as possible.
An alternate way to not to discriminate would be to only list communities that have paid to be there, but that again would be a different kind of negative message.
So I guess I have two questions for you:
1. If you were creating a consumer review site how would you make it fair and make it profitable?
2. Looking specifically at SeniorAdvisor.com what could they be doing to make the site more fair. I do know that for sure they are paying attention to the comments at Seniorhousingforum.net
I appreciate your input.
Steve
From LinkedIn Groups
Cristina S. Castro โข Steve, I can vouch for five years of creating a faรงade for families as they toured the several communities I have represented in my career. As a matter of fact, as I looked up a few of those communities on SeniorAdvisor.Com, the exact verbiage I sent in as a APFM “partner” was the same wording that is being used now. One of those descriptions being so outdated it does not pay homage to the community one bit. Unfortunately, what you see is not what you get. The harsh truth is there is no such thing as 24 hour care, quick response times and balance meals…. I don’t think so! If you consider chicken nuggets and french fries a balance meal. For the $2,500.00 average ticket, one would think a steak dinner once a month would be in order. The harsh reality is the staff which are hired to do the actual care and loving of our seniors are overworked and come with very little training. They are not part of ANY bonus plan. Most of the staff have 2 or more jobs and come to work very tired. There is no real “advisor” at SeniorAdvisor. They have re-worked the SEO strategy to present a grading system. where the stars mean nothing to the consumer. It is much like Taco Bell re-packaging of the Taco. You take the same bland ingredients give it a “New” cool and relevant name and package it differently. I will be willing to bet that the communities themselves have not been visited by Oz behind the curtain. Which leads me to say… “we must to go back to the day when word of mouth was the best reference”. An even bigger question… who holds these communities accountable for what they claim to be in the brochures and or on these “Advisory Sites”?
Just a thought!
CC
From LinkedIn Groups
Hi Cristina:
When you talk about the verbiage I assume you are referring to the community description provided by the senior community. I would expect any consumer would take those with a grain of salt. Even the very best communities are going to create the most glowing descriptions and publish the very best narrowly cropped photos.
To the best of what I can uncover today, SeniorAdvisor has created a pretty level playing field. The difficult challenge, one that even Yelp the granddaddy of consumer review sites has, is making sure your have valid reviews. It is a problem that can come from at least two sides, on one-hand you can have competitors and disgruntled employees posting and on the other hand you can have the community marketing and administrative team shilling. It is a tough problem to solve fairly.
All I can tell you is that SeniorAdvisor is saying all the right things. From my perspective we need to watch how it all unfolds.
From the perspective of the consumer I would hope that SeniorAdvisor, Caring.com, RetirementHomes.com and other sites in the on-line lead generation/consumer review space would be seen as perhaps a starting place.
As Lorie pointed out, ultimately prospects need to go visit, talk to staff and residents, visit at odd hours to get a feel for what is really going on.
Steve Moran