Retail - Helping Google Reviews and Incentivising Employees

[Jonathan Goudy]

I have a retail concept that I would like business-minded feedback on. It can be applied to a contracting business or whatever, but I conceived this with respect to food service.

The background, I went to a local pizza establishment that is the first franchise in a brand that I have known, and the recipes are fantastic. The location and decor of this first franchise is fantastic, but the customer service is really poor. Sometimes when you walk in, it is like a cave, but you can see 4 or 5 employees messing with their phones. They have a 3.3 on Google Reviews with their only criticism being the customer service.

I met with the owner of the franchise and proposed that he incentivise his employees by giving everyone on the payroll (down to the dishwasher) a $2 bonus on their paycheck for every 5 star review they get. Give a $20 bonus to an employee that gets mentioned by name as an over-achiever. He immediately took a defensive posture and thought his employees would try to "game" the system by having all their friends post reviews, to which my response was "and why is it bad to increase your five star reviews?". My wife took the position that this was dishonest, but my thoughts were that the employees would eventually run out of friends and the customer service would have to stand on it's own merit.

What are your thoughts? Is this a good way to boost your ratings and incentivise employees at the same time, or is this wrong or immoral or something? Apparently my filter is too broad, so I would appreciate a professional's opinion to keep me grounded. Thank you for reading this, and for your input of you wouldn't mind sharing.