Background

Research shows that 69% of consumers think reviews older than three months are no longer relevant. And Google uses the number and recency of reviews to determine your locations’ rankings in search results. If they lack recent reviews, they often don’t show up on the map in local searches. But requesting reviews is time-consuming for your locations, and unless you have a consistent process in place, results are inconsistent.

One large U.S. retail services organization with 223 locations spanning eight states on the East Coast was struggling to implement such a process. They wanted to be able to connect with customers following interactions to request reviews and maintain a strong presence across major review sites.

Industry

• Retail Services
• Large retail organization
• 223 Locations
• Eight states

Goals

• Implement a systematic way to capture email addresses after purchases.
• Connect with customers following interactions to request reviews.
• Maintain a presence across major review sites

Solution

• Reputation.com Online Reviews

Results

• Increased review volume by 3X in 6 months
• Increased positive reviews 3.7X
• Decreased negative reviews 37%

Challenge

A gap existed between how this retailer looked on review sites and their true quality of service, so they knew they needed to request more reviews. And, the number of positive reviews the company was receiving was disproportionate to the number of negative reviews.

To bring up ratings and rankings and ensure they were represented fairly online, they had to find a way to increase review volume. A large number or representative reviews across major review sites would help improve ratings and rankings, attract new business and enable insight into customer sentiment.

However, there were issues on the back-end with data management that made it difficult to connect with customers and gather feedback. Those issues would have to be solved before a reliable review requesting process could be implemented.

Solution

Reputation.com makes it easy for large, location-based businesses to monitor and routinely request reviews immediately following customer interactions by text, email or mobile app – even while the customer is still at your location.

By integrating Reputation.com with its CRM system, the company eliminated the backend data dilemma. The system now automatically sends review requests within 48 hours of a customer transaction being logged in the CRM system. Reputation.com also enables the company to distribute reviews evenly across relevant review sites, ensuring a fair representation across all major sites, including Google, Facebook and others.

Results

With Reputation.com review requesting is immediate, easy and consistent. In just six months, the company achieved significant results:

• Increased review volume by 3X in 6 months
• Increased positive reviews 3.7X
• Decreased negative reviews 37%