Public Review and Comments Policy
General
As an extension to its core Zen Ledge product offering, Zen Ledge offers a complimentary listing service (the "Review Service").
As part of the Review Service, Zen Ledge gives its subscribers access to tools that provide their customers with the ability to write reviews and comments regarding the subscriber's business.
Once they pass through our certification process, those reviews become a part of the business information that we may publish to third party web services, including search engines, websites and indexes, for inclusion in publicly available web pages.
These reviews may also appear on the Zen Ledge website, web pages Zen Ledge creates and maintains on its subscribers' behalf, and subscribers' own independently created websites.
It is up to the third party sites to accept the submissions of business information that Zen Ledge makes.
Zen Ledge has no control of third party web sites or resources that are provided by companies or persons other than that of Zen Ledge.
In addition, these third parties may publish the business information we provide alongside information provided by other sources, or may make changes, enhancements, additions or deletions to the business information we provide, with or without notice to Zen Ledge or to our subscribers.
These third party services, if any, are provided solely by those third party sites, and subject to the terms and conditions of those third party sites.
These terms are in addition to any other terms and conditions specified in our contracts with Zen Ledge subscribers, written or implied.
As described in our standard terms and conditions, if you are a Zen Ledge subscriber you agree to participate in the Review Service, and allow Zen Ledge to make this data available and provide registration services to third party sites.
In addition, if you are a Zen Ledge subscriber you agree to comply with the terms and procedures regarding review creation, certification and removal described more fully below.
Zen Ledge makes no warranty as to the effect that your participation in the Review Service will have upon search engine results, index placement, search ranking, or any other outcome with respect to third party sites and services.
Review Certification
When one of our subscribers' customers writes a review in the Zen Ledge product, that review becomes available for external publication and will appear within the subscriber's product dashboard to be reviewed by the subscriber.
In order to ensure accuracy, fairness, integrity of review content and the security of customer data, subscribers may take any of the following actions with respect to these reviews:
- Do nothing, in which case the review will be published externally
- Add a comment to the review, in which case the comment will be appended to the review information we publish externally
- Only if the review clearly violates our policy, the subscriber may request that Zen Ledge remove the review.
The request must comply with the removal procedure described more fully below.
A review that has not been removed pursuant to the removal request procedure will become a Zen Ledge Certified Review, and labeled as such in the business information we submit to third parties.
Guidelines for Reviews
The following guidelines are provided to consumers leaving reviews about Zen Ledge subscribers:
- Make the review objective, useful and informative.
Be specific to give the reader a feel for your experience.
- Write about the kind of information you would want when you are asking a friend or coworker for a recommendation.
Did the experience meet your expectations?
Would you go back?
Would you recommend this business?
- Keep it short and to the point. Write short sentences that stick to the highlights of your experience.
The recommended length for a review is 100 to 250 words.
Businesses can leave comments about individual reviews in the Zen Ledge business portal.
Comments are a good way for business owners to add a helpful comment to a user's review.
Responding to reviewers' concerns shows that a subscriber values their feedback allows a subscriber to demonstrate its focus on customer service.
Guidelines for Business Comments
Zen Ledge subscribers should note that reviews may not be removed merely because the subscriber does not like the content of the review, or because the review is unfavorable.
Even the best service businesses have unhappy customers from time to time.
Zen Ledge encourages its subscribers to use the business comment feature to demonstrate to existing and prospective customers that the subscriber cares about its customers, and is responsive to their comments.
Even negative reviews, when well handled, can lead to the improvement of a subscriber's reputation.
Below are some guidelines for responding to user reviews:
- Keep it simple and polite.
- Tell readers what you've done to address the issue or concern raised by the reviewer.
- Counter the opinion of the reviewer with your professional opinion when there is a disagreement on a service or procedure.
- Provide correct information when a review contains something inaccurate or out-of-date.
- Show that you listen to your customers and are proactive in following up with them to address any feedback they have.
- Don't write a comment when you are upset.
Wait until you're had some time to think about a review, can address it in a constructive way.
- Do not use the business comments as a forum for advertising.
This Public Reviews and Comment Policy is incorporated by reference into the Zen Ledge standard terms and condition, as amended from time to time.
Use of Reviews
In the event of any termination of a subscriber's subscription for any reason, as provided in our standard terms and conditions, when the Review Service terminates Zen Ledge may continue to provide the business information to third party services, unless that subscriber requests immediate termination of the Review Service in writing.
Upon such request, Zen Ledge will no longer provide the business information to third parties, and will remove all past references to the business information in the data it publishes to third parties, which may result in the removal of the business information from third party sites and indexes.
Guidelines for Business Comments
Zen Ledge seeks to publish reviews that accurately and fairly represent the opinions of the users of our subscribers' services.
In general, every review written by a client of one of our subscribers will be published with the business information, unless that review is demonstrated to violate one or more of the criteria set forth below.
If a subscriber believes a review satisfies the removal criteria described below (the removal criteria), that subscriber may request that the review be excluded from the business information Zen Ledge submits to third parties by completing the "request to remove review" form under the "review" tab within the Zen Ledge user interface.
Upon submission, Zen Ledge will review such request in light of the removal criteria and the information submitted in the request.
As part of that review, Zen Ledge may request additional information from the subscriber in order to make an accurate determination of the appropriateness of the request.
If Zen Ledge determines that the removal request complies with this policy, we will remove the review from the business information we submit to third parties.
If we determine that the request is improper, the review will be included in that business information.
- Are abusive or illegal.
An abusive review or comment is one that makes personal attacks, threatens, or harasses others, or uses profanity.
- Violate privacy.
Reviews that mention specific, non-public, full names of individuals or posts personal information in the review or comments in a manner that is inappropriate and/or unrelated to the performance of the service rendered are subject to removal.
Any licensed service provider is considered a public name.
- Are not from a current customer.
A current customer is one who has received services within the preceding 12 months.
- Contain material falsehoods or inaccuracies.
Reviews or comments cannot contain inaccuracies or false statements that are material to the service performed, or significant unrelated content, such as spam or promotional materials.
Matters of opinion are not considered material falsehoods.
Zen Ledge believes that removal request criteria are infrequently violated, and as a result that the removal request procedure should be invoked only rarely or in exceptional circumstances.
Comments made in response to client reviews are subject to the same removal criteria as reviews themselves, and are subject to oversight and removal by Zen Ledge.
Abuse
The removal request procedure is subject to Zen Ledge's oversight and review.
If Zen Ledge determines that a subscriber or a subscriber's staff is not complying with the removal request procedure, or that the removal request procedure is being abused, circumvented or otherwise violated, Zen Ledge reserves the right to unilaterally take action to stop such abuse by terminating its contract with such subscriber, ceasing to provide the business data to third parties, or otherwise taking steps to ensure the continued integrity of the Review Service.