Founded back in 1996, Revolution Bars Group PLC is a leading operator of premium bars around the UK, with 77 bars under the brands Revolution and Revolución de Cuba. Originally founded in Manchester, the Group now employs over 3,000 people across the country and is listed on the London Stock Exchange.

We spoke with Myles Doran, Revolution Bars Group PLC’s Commercial Director about how the business uses Reputation.com’s SaaS Platform and why they sought an Online Reputation Management solution originally.

Revolution Bars are a destination of choice for customers who value a premium drinks and food-led offering. Each Revolution Bar has its own character, individual design and layout, with bar interiors tailored on a site-by-site basis to utilise the space available and the best attributes of the architecture of each property.

Keeping Up With Changing Consumer Habits

There are so many external factors that can affect a brand’s ongoing success. Over time, consumer habits change and businesses that don’t keep up with these changes can often find themselves left behind.

No longer are people as influenced as they once were by celebrity endorsements or traditional marketing. People want to see the opinions of people like them who’ve had experiences with a product or service they themselves are looking at. In fact, 84% of consumers not only look for these reviews and social posts, they trust them as much as a personal recommendation from a friend or family member.

Revolution Bars Group PLC began their focus on the Voice of the Customer when they identified a need to understand the changing consumer habits and behaviours of their customers. Revolution Bars Group PLC were introduced to Reputation.com by a new team member who had used Reputation.com in the past.

Previously using a point solution, they were only getting a single view of customer sentiment. Myles and his team wanted a full turnkey solution for Online Reputation Management.

The Objectives

Revolution Bars Group PLC’s online reviews were skewed towards TripAdvisor and all about the cocktail ‘Masterclass’ experiences, an immersive and fun cocktail-making class for groups and parties, with little exposure on Google. The business wanted to balance their reviews and customer feedback across other key platforms including Google and Facebook, whilst retaining an overall view of inbound feedback from within a single dashboard.

Revolution Bars Group PLC had two key objectives at the start of their work with Reputation.com:

• Spread customer feedback more evenly across multiple third-party sites
• Gather feedback from the experiences of all customers, not just cocktail Masterclass patrons

The Only Full Turnkey Solution

The Reputation.com platform is built to provide businesses with everything they need to manage their online reputation within a single log-in. Revolution Bars Group PLC uses a number of Solutions within Reputation.com’s platform but relies heavily on three Solutions in particular:

Reviews Management: Revolution Bars Group PLC tracks each and every review that comes in about the brand, and reply from within the platform. The business can also request reviews and monitor sentiment, frequency and response rates from a single dashboard.

Business Listings: They are able to ensure that the online listings information for each of their 77 locations are kept up-to-date and correct at all times. They can audit listings information against their ‘source of truth’, and if the platform detects any incorrect information, it is automatically changed.

Reporting: There are close to 70 reports set up for Revolution Bars Group PLC, and the platform is able to create custom reports and automatically schedule them, so the business is able to get the information they need, when they need it.

Reputation Score is a numerical figure of a business’s entire online reputation, at a glance. Based on patented technologies by Reputation.com, Reputation Score provides a real-time score of how a brand and its locations are being perceived online across everywhere that matters.

“Reputation Score is one of the key measures that we look at. We have a balanced scorecard that looks at customer complaints that come through to head office and we look at the NPS score that comes from the amount of parties we handle at each location” says Myles.

Myles went on to say “We align our NPS scores with the Reputation Scores that we have, to put together a pattern of how our revenue is tracking across various specialties. So, if the teams are happy and if the customers are happy, the metrics are positive on food and drink, generally the business is in a stable position and revenue should increase.”

Reputation.com was chosen because of 3 key factors:

1. The platform provides everything associated with the Voice of the Customer in one place without having to use multiple point solutions simultaneously
2. The platform is so easy to use that Revolution Bars Group PLC’s existing team required little time away from their roles in order to get trained ready for deployment. Setup was around 8 weeks in total from start to end
3. Reputation.com’s partnership and integrations with Google, a key focus area for Revolution Bars Group PLC, is unmatched in the industry

The platform is used daily within Revolution Bars Group PLC, with everyone from the CEO, to Finance, Marketing, Operation Managers, Area Managers and General Managers using the platform to various degrees.

What Results Has Revolution Bars Group PLC Seen Since Implementing Reputation.com?

With Reputation.com, review requesting is immediate, easy and consistent. In just 12 months, the company achieved significant results.

100% of reviews are now responded to, up from 46% before Reputation.com in 2017

125% increase of listing views

56% increase in Reputation Score, up from 477 to 718

 

Other Key Results Include:

• 103% increase of listing clicks to phone calls
• 89% increase of listing clicks to directions
• 130% increase of listing clicks to website

Not Losing Customers!

The Reputation.com platform enables Revolution Bars Group PLC to respond to customers who are leaving reviews across various third-party sites and commenting on social media in a way that wasn’t possible before.

Revolution Bars Group PLC aims to respond to 100% of inbound reviews, regardless of the time of day, the platform they were posted on, or whether they’re positive, neutral or negative.

Not all Online Reputation Management platforms are equal. Revolution Bars Group PLC needed in-depth, fully customisable reporting on all of the key aspects they were looking to monitor.

Myles explained “the platform streamlines a number of reports we look at. Historically you’ve got a number of different reviews coming into different platforms so we didn’t have it all sat in once place. Now, because we are based on TripAdvisor and Google etc., it helps reporting and overall visibility. Having it all in a single dashboard gives us a reliable overview.”

You can download the full version of the case study with Revolution Bars Group PLC here.