How Young’s Leveraged Customer Feedback for Business Growth
active ‘profiles’ capturing the full Young’s estate
increase in Reputation Score since 2021
average star rating for Young’s in 2024
review response rate, rising from 83% in 2021
Overview
Faced with the challenge of effectively managing and responding to high volumes of customer feedback, particularly evident from the popularity of their Sunday Roasts, Young’s sought to harness the power of the Reputation platform.
By integrating this tool across their business, Young’s not only enhanced their response rates but also garnered a deeper understanding of customer sentiments. This strategic move was pivotal in shaping a culture of generous hospitality that is both guest-centric and feedback-driven, significantly contributing to the brand’s growth and operational success.
Need
- Young’s needed to ensure that they were responding to, and acknowledging, more customer feedback across the group
- Better understand feedback and gain insight from customer reviews
- Maximise online search for their pub & bedroom profiles
- Reduce the effort of keeping listings updated and consistent
- Improve and maximise conversion of listings and overall performance
Young’s review responses have consistently increased over the past five years since the initial trial of Reputation. The response rate was 83% before the full rollout in 2021, and it has since surged to 99% by the end of 2023.
Decision
- Initial trial of Listings and Reviews for bedroom profiles in 2020, and following success they expanded this to the whole Estate in 2022
- To place a partnership with Reputation as a key pillar of Young’s revamped customer strategy
- Leverage Reputation Score as a core KPI
- Utilise the platform’s data to identity stories from data to inform decision-making and make operational changes
- Commitment to increase review volume, and business listing accuracy, across the group
Outcomes
- The Reputation platform is now rolled out to, and actively used by, the whole Young’s Estate, totalling 268 profiles across the UK
- Young’s Estate-wide Reputation Score currently sits at 803, having risen 124 points since 2021
- 145 pub and bedroom ‘profiles’ are holding Reputation Scores above 800, with 15 above 900
- A star rating of 4.5, having risen from 4.3 out of 5 in 2021
- A 99% review response rate, growing steadily from 83% in 2021
Young’s Reputation Score is now 803 in August 2024, up 124 points since 2021.
An excellent example of Young’s utilising Platform Insights is their ‘Sunday Best” Focus
Young’s launched an internal campaign to build on their already loved Sunday Roasts across late 2023 which touched all parts of the business, after seeing that 35% of their reviews came on Sundays and Mondays.
Young’s utilised the Reputation platform to categorise feedback specific to “Roasts/Carvery”, created training materials for their customer-facing teams, and worked to instil the idea of ‘generous hospitality’ across their sites.
Their key objectives were to improve their average rating for the “Roast” category, and to increase volume. By the end of this campaign, they saw their Roasts star rating jump 0.4 stars to 4.5 stars, saw a 38% increase in review volume, and saw positive reviews jump from 77% to 88%.