strategy-ewom-reviews

name	strategy-ewom-reviews
description	Use when the main deliverable concerns proactive review generation, referral conditions, advocacy, and electronic word of mouth; use playbook-reputation-management when that neighbouring workflow owns the primary decision.
metadata	{"portable":true,"compatible_with":["claude-code","codex"]}

eWOM and Reviews Strategy

Use When

• Use this skill for proactive review generation, referral conditions, advocacy, and electronic word of mouth.
• Use it when the requested deliverable needs the domain decisions and acceptance checks below.

Do Not Use When

• Use playbook-reputation-management when that neighbouring workflow owns the main decision or deliverable.
• Do not proceed when required evidence, approval, or safety review is absent; return the missing-input path instead.

Required Inputs

Artefact	Source/provider	Required?	If absent
Objective, audience, market, and intended decision	Client or approved brief	yes	Ask for it or state a narrow working assumption
Existing channel, content, commercial, or performance evidence relevant to proactive review generation, referral conditions, advocacy, and electronic word of mouth	Client systems, supplied files, or verified research	conditional	Mark the check unassessed and avoid performance claims
Approval, policy, budget, access, or risk constraints	Accountable client owner	conditional	Stop before publishing, spending, collecting data, or making regulated claims

Workflow

1. Confirm the decision, consumer, market, and evidence boundary; distinguish the request from playbook-reputation-management.
2. Inspect supplied artefacts and record missing or unverified inputs before drafting.
3. Apply the domain framework in this skill and use the decision rule below at each branch.
4. Stop for approval before publishing, spending, contacting people, changing live systems, or making regulated claims.
5. Review the deliverable against the quality and anti-slop gates; if a check fails, correct it and rerun the affected check.
6. Hand off the artefacts, assumptions, evidence, and unresolved risks to the named consumer.

Outputs

Artefact	Consumer	Observable acceptance condition
Proactive review generation, referral conditions, advocacy, and electronic word of mouth deliverable	Client decision-maker or delivery team	Names the chosen route, owners, sequence, assumptions, and measurable acceptance checks
Decision and risk record	Reviewer or implementer	Links each recommendation to supplied evidence or labels it as an assumption

Evidence Produced

Evidence	Format	Acceptance condition
Input and assumption register	Table or annotated brief	Missing and unverified items are visible, not treated as passed
Release check	Completed quality checklist	All blocking findings are fixed or the deliverable is explicitly withheld

Capability and Permission Boundaries

Read and search are the minimum capabilities. Analysis and planning remain read-only. Edit only files placed in scope; publishing, outreach, spend, personal-data processing, production changes, and certification claims require explicit authority and evidence of success.

Degraded Mode

If files, tools, network, current evidence, rendering, or authorised access are unavailable, return the narrowest useful qualified deliverable. Mark each unavailable check not assessed; never convert it into a pass or invent market facts.

Decision Rules

Choice condition	Action	Failure or risk avoided
The goal is new advocacy rather than incident response	Design ethical prompts and proof capture; route active damage control to reputation management	Manipulated reviews or a growth plan built on unresolved complaints
Evidence is contradictory or materially incomplete	Pause the affected recommendation and request the accountable source	Confident advice built on an unresolved premise
Authority is limited to analysis or planning	Deliver a read-only plan and approval checklist	Unauthorised publication, spend, outreach, or data use

Quality Standards

• Keep Uganda/East Africa, British English, EAT, UGX, and WhatsApp-first assumptions explicit where they apply.
• Tie recommendations to observed evidence, a named assumption, or a verification action.
• Give the next operator enough detail to execute without guessing ownership, sequence, or acceptance.
• Apply ai-marketing/anti-ai-slop during drafting and block release on an F from ai-marketing/ai-slop-audit.

Anti-Patterns

• Inventing a client metric, audience fact, price, partner, or platform rule. Fix: verify it or label the decision provisional.
• Treating a missing tool, source, render, or approval as a passed check. Fix: mark it not assessed and narrow the output.
• Producing channel tactics before defining the decision and consumer. Fix: state the required outcome and handoff first.
• Copying a global template without adapting Uganda/East Africa access, language, payment, or trust conditions. Fix: record which local assumptions apply.
• Recommending publication, outreach, spend, data collection, or a regulated claim without authority. Fix: stop at an approval-ready draft.
• Reporting activity as success without an acceptance condition. Fix: name the observable result and evidence source.

References

• AGENTS.md

Source: Hanlon and Tuten (2022) The SAGE Handbook of Digital Marketing

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Required Inputs

Ask for the following before generating any deliverable:

1. Client business name
2. Industry
3. Country / city (defaults to Uganda / East Africa)
4. Primary goal (e.g. increase Google review volume, build a referral programme, measure NPS for the first time)
5. Current review platforms active (Google, Facebook, TripAdvisor, industry-specific platforms)
6. Current monthly review volume (how many new reviews per month across all platforms?)
7. Current NPS or CSAT score (if available — or confirm that no measurement exists yet)
8. Primary customer communication channel (WhatsApp, email, phone — affects activation tactic design)

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eWOM vs. Reputation Management

Reputation management is reactive — it responds to what customers say after they say it. eWOM strategy is proactive — it designs conditions that cause satisfied customers to talk before they are prompted by a negative experience or an external review platform.

The goal of an eWOM programme is to engineer a stream of authentic, voluntary advocacy from real customers — not to manufacture or fake reviews.

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The GST Framework (Hanlon and Tuten, 2022)

Consumers engage in three eWOM behaviours. A strong eWOM programme activates all three:

Behaviour	Definition	Programme goal
Give	Share their own experience — write a review, post a photo, mention the brand in conversation	Create the conditions for satisfied customers to share easily and promptly
Seek	Look for others' experiences before making a purchase decision	Ensure the client's reviews and advocacy are visible where seekers look
Transmit	Share others' content — repost a review, forward a recommendation, tag a friend	Create shareable assets (screenshot-friendly quotes, shareable posts) that transmitters can pass on

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Identifying eWOM Transmitters

Transmitters are not always the same people as top reviewers. Some customers write excellent reviews but never share them. Others share everything without writing reviews. Identify both types using:

• Social listening: Who is mentioning the brand without being prompted? Use meta-social-listening to monitor brand mentions across platforms.
• Survey data: Ask "Have you recommended us to anyone in the past 3 months?" in an NPS survey — those who answer Yes are active transmitters.
• CRM data: Which customers have the highest referral rates? Which contacts are sending new enquiries?

Build a separate Advocate List in the CRM — a tagged segment of verified transmitters who receive early access to new offerings, exclusive updates, and referral incentives.

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Activation Tactics

At Peak Satisfaction Moments

Identify and map the client's peak satisfaction moments — points in the customer journey where positive emotion is highest. Common examples:

• Project completion or delivery (services)
• Product unboxing or first use (e-commerce)
• Problem resolution after a complaint
• A milestone reached (client hits a goal with the service's help)

At each peak moment: Ask for a review within 48 hours. Use a single-tap review link sent via WhatsApp — do not require the customer to search for the review platform or log in to a platform they do not already use. Response rates drop by approximately 80% after 48 hours.

WhatsApp review request template: "Hi [Name], I'm really glad [positive outcome]. Could I ask a quick favour? If you have 2 minutes, a Google review would mean a lot to us — here's the link: [direct link]. Just share your honest experience. Thank you!"

Incentivised Advocacy (Where Applicable)

Offer a non-monetary incentive for general advocacy (social sharing, referrals — not Google reviews, which prohibit incentivisation):

• Early access to new services or products
• Entry into a monthly recognition draw
• Public recognition: feature the customer in a social post or case study
• A handwritten or WhatsApp thank-you note (in EA, personal recognition is often more motivating than a discount)

Important: Google's review guidelines explicitly prohibit incentivised Google reviews. Design advocacy incentives for referrals and social sharing — not for Google review submission.

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The Objectivity Principle

Display negative reviews alongside positive ones. The counterintuitive evidence is robust (Rageh, 2026): a 4.3-star rating with a mix of reviews is more trusted than a 5.0 rating with uniformly perfect reviews. Consumers interpret a perfect record as manipulation or selective deletion.

Response to negative reviews:

• Respond to every negative review within 24 hours
• Acknowledge the experience without being defensive
• Offer a direct channel to resolve the issue (WhatsApp number or email — not a public argument)
• After resolution, invite the customer to update their review if they feel their experience has changed

Responding professionally to a 2-star review demonstrates genuine accountability. This increases trust more than the 2-star review costs — and is visible to every future prospect who reads the review thread.

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eWOM Measurement Framework

Track the following metrics monthly:

Metric	Definition	Target
Review velocity	New reviews per month across all platforms	Increasing month-on-month
Sentiment ratio	Positive : neutral : negative reviews	Target 85:10:5 or better
Net Promoter Score (NPS)	% promoters minus % detractors on a 0–10 scale	50+ is strong; 70+ is exceptional
Share rate	% of published social content shared by audience members (not just liked)	Track trend over time
Referral rate	% of new enquiries that cite an existing customer as the source	Track via CRM source field
Review platform spread	How many platforms have active, recent reviews	Minimum 2 platforms; Google is always one

Review all six metrics monthly. Prioritise review velocity and NPS as the two most actionable leading indicators.

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Platform Priority for EA Clients

Platform	Priority	Notes
Google Reviews	Essential	Highest search visibility; influences Google Maps ranking
Facebook Recommendations	High	Highest platform penetration in EA; trusted by all demographics
TripAdvisor	For hospitality and tourism clients only	Sector-specific but important for hotel, restaurant, and travel clients
Industry directories	Context-dependent	Health, legal, construction: check sector-specific directories
Instagram and TikTok UGC	Supplementary	User-generated content and tags build social proof without structured reviews

Do not spread eWOM effort across too many platforms. Focus on Google and Facebook first. Expand only after review velocity on both is strong.

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eWOM Programme Build Sequence

Follow this sequence when building an eWOM programme from zero:

1. Audit current proof — inventory all existing reviews, testimonials, and social mentions. Identify which peak satisfaction moments currently generate unsolicited advocacy.
2. Set up review links — create a short-link (bit.ly or similar) for each priority review platform. Test on a mobile device before deploying.
3. Train the team — brief every customer-facing team member on the 48-hour review request window and the WhatsApp request template. Role-play the conversation.
4. Implement NPS measurement — send an NPS survey to all active clients in the first month. Identify promoters (score 9–10) and add them to the Advocate List.
5. Launch referral mechanic — create a simple referral prompt for promoters: a WhatsApp message or email with a referral request and a small recognition incentive.
6. Build the review response routine — assign one team member to check and respond to all new reviews weekly. Draft response templates for common positive and negative themes.
7. Report monthly — review the six eWOM metrics monthly; adjust tactics based on what is generating the highest review velocity and NPS movement.

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Quality Criteria

Output meets the standard for this skill if:

• The GST Framework (Give / Seek / Transmit) is applied — the strategy activates all three eWOM behaviours, not just review generation
• Peak satisfaction moments are identified for the specific client — not generic timing recommendations
• The 48-hour review request window and WhatsApp-first request channel are specified
• The objectivity principle is applied — the strategy includes negative review response, not just positive review generation
• All six eWOM measurement metrics are included with monthly tracking cadence
• Google's prohibition on incentivised reviews is flagged — incentives are directed at referrals and social sharing
• Platform priority is ranked with EA context: Google first, Facebook second
• Language is British English throughout; imperative in all instructional sections