SearchInfluence

Lifestyle Lift is learning the cost of unethical customer reviews. The New York State Attorney General has reached a $300,000.00 settlement with cosmetic surgery company Lifestyle Lift in response to fabricated consumer reviews.

It appears that Lifestyle Lift was directing employees to spend their time in reviewing their own facilities.

Lifestyle Lift is a plastic surgery chain store. From those online customer reviews one finds, which appear truly authentic, they’re not doing so great in good old fashioned customer service. According to the article in the NY Times it seems that Lifestyle Lift is resorting to aggressive reputation management techniques to suppress bad reviews and advance their own message.

“Markets are conversations”, states the Cluetrain Manifesto, the online reputation managers’ Bible. And if you sell any kind of product or service today, you must be part of the conversation or get left out.

Crowd Pleaser - The Power of Word of Mouth

In the days before the internet, reputations were built on word-of-mouth (WOM) and reputation management was a term that referred to damage control and crisis communications. The growing reach of the internet means that online business is now a two-way conversation.

I want to apologize for any juvenile references to follow — my 40th birthday is ~ 6 weeks away and this may be part of my mid-life crisis.

Or as my friend Michael, a New Orleans commercial insurance agent, says: “go Google yourself”!

Surely you realize Dr. Elders didn’t really say that. But, what she did say is alleged to have gotten her fired. For those who don’t remember, Joycelyn Elders was fired by Bill Clinton in the 90′s because she said things that, while true, could have used a little more finesse. That said, she was talking about AIDS which clearly warrants a direct approach.