Buyer's Guide: Online Reputation Management
This description is provided by the seller.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users appreciate the excellent customer support of Birdeye, highlighting its responsiveness and helpfulness in managing reputation.
Users love the ease of use of Birdeye, streamlining review management and enhancing overall efficiency effortlessly.
Users commend the ease of managing and growing online reviews with Birdeye, appreciating the support and intuitive setup.
Users note missing features like Yelp integration and better review solicitation, limiting client engagement and functionality.
Users note that the AI chatbot requires significant improvement as its responses can be vague and unhelpful for complex queries.
Users find it challenging to navigate dispute processes and the dashboard, complicating their review management experience.
This description is provided by the seller.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users love the user-friendly interface of SOCi, which simplifies social media management and saves valuable time.
Users love the easy post scheduling with SOCi, streamlining management across multiple social media channels effortlessly.
Users love the ease of scheduling posts with SOCi, enhancing their social media consistency and creativity.
Users face challenges due to missing features, such as limited app functionality and lack of TikTok integration.
Users face posting issues with SOCi, including limited media options and inadequate reporting capabilities.
Users express frustration over the limited features of SOCi, lacking essential capabilities on important social media platforms.
This description is provided by the seller.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users appreciate the ease of access and user-friendly organization of Reputation, enhancing their overall experience and efficiency.
Users value the convenient review management that Reputation offers, consolidating feedback for easy access and response.
Users value the ease of access to insights and features, enabling efficient management across multiple business units.
Users feel that improvement is needed in features like bulk uploading and user-friendly templates for better functionality.
Users are frustrated by the missing features in Reputation, particularly in social media management and reporting capabilities.
Users experience poor review management with buggy features, complicated template updates, and unreliable notifications.
This description is provided by the seller.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users find Podium to significantly enhance ease of use, simplifying customer communication and scheduling processes.
Users find Podium's communication features invaluable, enabling efficient daily interactions and positive customer feedback.
Users appreciate the streamlined and automated communication that Podium offers, enhancing follow-up while saving time.
Users experience messaging issues with Podium, finding it challenging to manage high volumes and retrieve past correspondence.
Users find Podium lacking in essential features, such as proper message organization and bulk messaging options for teams.
Users feel that Podium has limited features, particularly for tracking inquiries and integrating with other systems like Hubspot.
This description is provided by the seller.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users love the constant improvement and ease of use with HighLevel, appreciating its templates and supportive community.
Users find the exceptional support from GHL invaluable, especially praising Krishna for his patience and clarity.
Users commend the excellent customer support of HighLevel, enhancing their overall business management experience seamlessly.
Users find the steep learning curve challenging due to frequent updates and a need for ongoing adaptation.
Users desire missing features in HighLevel, such as easier live streaming and support for multiple bank accounts.
Users face a steep learning curve with HighLevel, requiring dedication to master its constantly evolving features.
This description is provided by the seller.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users value the ease of use of Yext, enjoying seamless management of business information across multiple platforms.
Users appreciate the helpfulness of Yext's team, going above and beyond to resolve issues and optimize resources.
Users praise the helpful and fast customer support of Yext, making requests and navigation easy and efficient.
Users often face complex usability issues with Yext, finding it challenging to navigate the platform initially.
Users note a difficult learning curve with Yext, but helpful support and documentation ease the process somewhat.
Users experience a learning curve with Yext, though helpful support and documentation can ease the process.
This description is provided by the seller.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users highlight the exceptional customer support from Liftify, appreciating their responsiveness and commitment to client success.
Users find Liftify's platform easy to use, streamlining the process of collecting Google reviews effortlessly.
Users praise Liftify for its seamless experience, allowing businesses to confidently focus on growth and success.
Users find poor reporting in Liftify challenging, although support from the team helps clarify needed insights.
Users find access limitations frustrating, particularly missing features like bulk messaging for reminders to multiple contacts.
Users find that the content repetition can hinder the experience, suggesting improvements for unique responses.
This description is provided by the seller.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users value the intuitive interface of NiceJob, making setup and operation effortless and efficient for their businesses.
Users value the review automation of NiceJob, enhancing efficiency and simplifying the review collection process.
Users praise NiceJob for its effective review automation, simplifying the process and improving overall efficiency.
Users find NiceJob's missing features frustrating, particularly regarding client insights and limited website functionalities.
Users find NiceJob's pricing a bit expensive, especially for those on tighter budgets.
Users have experienced communication delays, often needing to wait for responses and struggling with inconsistent support information.
This description is provided by the seller.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users love the ease of use of Experience.com, simplifying client interactions and review management seamlessly.
Users value the collaborative support from Experience.com, enhancing their business growth through effective partnerships and automated reviews.
Users value the personalized customer support at Experience.com, fostering collaboration and genuine business growth.
Users experience linking issues, affecting their ability to integrate accounts and receive alerts efficiently at work.
Users face challenges with review management, including spam issues and limitations on client feedback opportunities.
Users express frustration over missing features, such as automatic review links and limited resending options for clients.
This description is provided by the seller.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users love the ease of use of Right Choice, especially for managing bulk updates effortlessly across locations.
Users praise the responsive customer support of Right Choice, highlighting its effectiveness in resolving issues promptly.
Users appreciate the time-saving features of Right Choice, streamlining management tasks effortlessly across multiple locations.
Users express a desire for more features, including custom reporting and a dark theme, to enhance their experience.
Users express a need for missing features like custom reports and dark theme options for better usability.
Users note some minor software bugs, but appreciate the team's prompt resolution and ongoing improvements.
This description is provided by the seller.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users value the quick response times and support from Edge, which enhances their overall experience and engagement.
Users commend the exceptional customer support from the Edge team, noting their professionalism and efficiency in resolving issues.
Users find Edge's ease of use and intuitive interface greatly beneficial, enhancing their experience from the start.
Users are frustrated by the poor customer support required for password resets and managing account settings independently.
Users express frustration with delays in payouts, wishing for quicker or instant payment options to enhance their experience.
Users experience a learning curve with Edge, especially regarding monthly caps and review processes.
This description is provided by the seller.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users praise Yotpo for its excellent customer support, providing prompt assistance and fostering strong partnerships.
Users appreciate the ease of use of Yotpo, enjoying its intuitive interface and smooth functionality for managing rewards.
Users appreciate Yotpo for its user-friendly interface and effective support, enhancing customer engagement and driving sales.
Users find Yotpo's features expensive and complex, especially with additional modules and SMS message costs.
Users note a lack of essential features in Yotpo, wishing for more widgets and better blocking options.
Users find the limited features of Yotpo frustrating, creating confusion and complicating their overall experience.
This description is provided by the seller.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users value the helpful customer support of Reviews.io, noting excellent assistance and easy-to-use features.
Users find Reviews.io's helpful platform invaluable for collecting feedback and enhancing brand reputation effectively.
Users find Reviews.io to be easy to use, providing seamless integration and valuable insights with excellent support.
Users find the expensive pricing and high entry levels challenging, especially compared to free alternatives.
Users often struggle with poor customer support, experiencing long response times and inaccurate AI assistance during critical moments.
Users find the difficult navigation of Reviews.io complex and overwhelming, hindering their overall experience.
This description is provided by the seller.
This description is provided by the seller.
Pros and Cons are compiled from review feedback and grouped into themes to provide an easy-to-understand summary of user reviews.
Users appreciate the user-friendly interface of Synup, which simplifies management tasks and enhances overall efficiency.
Users benefit from Synup's helpful insights, enhancing online visibility and client satisfaction while streamlining feedback management.
Users commend the attentive customer support of Synup, enhancing their experience and satisfaction with the software.
Users find the learning curve steep at first, but adaptability improves overall experience with Synup.
Users find the feature limitations of Synup challenging, particularly with complex reporting and customization needs.
Users find Synup's interface initially difficult to learn, requiring time and guidance to navigate effectively.
Online reputation management software, also known as review management software, is designed to help businesses monitor their online reviews across many review platforms. These solutions help companies identify and respond to negative reviews, promote positive customer experiences, and solicit new reviews from their customer base. Most products also contain functionality for monitoring brand mentions across social media channels.
In addition to aggregating reviews, online reputation management platforms interpret and analyze review data to provide an overall picture of a brand’s reputation. These tools use sentiment analysis to determine positive, negative, or neutral emotion, enabling users to quickly discover unsatisfied customers and remedy the situation if necessary. Businesses also use online reputation management software to capture positive customer experiences and leverage them as social proof.
Online reputation management software can take a proactive or reactive approach to customer reviews. Reactive platforms exclusively provide review monitoring tools to either identify positive reviews or send alerts in case of negative reviews. Proactive products, on the other hand, provide tools such as review request forms, surveys, SMS marketing, and other mechanisms for review generation. Depending on a company’s strategies for review generation and customer experience, certain proactive, reactive, and hybrid response products can provide great overall benefit.
Online reputation management platforms offer a range of features that enable businesses to gather, monitor, analyze, and distribute customer reviews.
Customer feedback: Online reputation management products are designed to scrape reviews from a variety of review platforms and store them as historical records. This allows users to view all their online reviews from one centralized platform, rather than manually checking individual review sites. In addition to collecting reviews, online reputation management tools use feedback data to help businesses analyze their brand reputation, customer sentiment, and customer demographics.
Review generation: Most online reputation management platforms provide one or more methods for generating new customer reviews. Common tools for review generation include web forms and invitations to fill out surveys via email, SMS, or messaging platforms. As a result, many products integrate with or offer features from other popular software solutions, such as email marketing software, live chat software, and SMS marketing software.
Competitive intelligence: Companies may wish to benchmark their reputation performance against their competitors’ to see how they stack up. Online reputation management platforms offer competitive intelligence features that enable users to monitor their competitors’ reputations and customer sentiment in real time. Competitive intelligence data can help a business identify gaps in their competitors’ offerings and leverage this knowledge to improve their products or marketing strategies.
Sentiment analysis: Many online reputation management products incorporate natural language processing (NLP) software algorithms to analyze the text of a review or social media message and assign it a positive, negative, or neutral sentiment. Sentiment analysis gives users greater visibility into how customers are feeling and makes it easier to identify the most common issues or frustrations customers are raising.
Social media marketing: In online reputation management platforms, social media marketing tools help businesses engage in social listening and respond to customers on social networks. As a growing number of consumers share their experiences online, businesses need to be aware of what customers are saying about them on social media. These tools enable companies to respond quickly to customer complaints as well as promote positive customer experiences.
Other Features of Online Reputation Management Software: Digital Media Monitoring Capabilities, Employee Performance Capabilities, Revenue Reporting Capabilities, Social Media Management Capabilities, Team Workflow Capabilities
Online reputation management software can be beneficial across many different areas of business. While the main function of online reputation management platforms is to gather and interpret customer reviews, these products also provide capabilities for turning bad reviews into positive customer experiences, generating new reviews, and improving a company’s website ranking on search engines.
Review management: Most online reputation management software comes with tools for users to monitor keywords and brand mentions. Different alerts can be automated to signify positive and negative reviews as well as customer inquiries. Since it’s nearly impossible to delete or hide reviews, online reputation management products allow teams to identify users who expressed negative experiences. Instead of reporting the review or complaining to the reviewer days, weeks, or months later, companies can quickly ask about the problems and remedy the issues. If a business can fix or alleviate the complaint, customers are more likely to recommend a product or edit their review. Additionally, when businesses respond publicly to negative reviews, it demonstrates to potential customers that the company cares about providing a positive experience.
Review automation: It can be difficult for businesses to gather positive, verified feedback from real customers, but online reputation management software makes the process easier with capabilities for collecting reviews from a business’ customer base. These products come equipped with customizable surveys and forms that can be sent to customers, usually via email or SMS. Advanced solutions offer workflows to automate review generation. For example, a review request may be sent to a customer after they make a purchase or finish a conversation with customer support. Most products will enable businesses to collect customer reviews for a variety of review sites, social media platforms, and search engines, although some may focus on only one channel.
Reputation monitoring: With so many channels available for consumers to share their experiences with a product or business, it can be difficult for companies to gain an overall view of their brand’s reputation. Online reputation management platforms monitor multiple outlets where consumers may be leaving feedback about a business, so marketers and business owners don’t have to worry about tracking a dozen different review sites, directories, and social media channels. Review management software allows them to see all their brand’s reviews and ratings from a single dashboard. These solutions also enable businesses to view historical performance, which can be useful for understanding how a brand’s reputation has changed over time.
Search engine optimization (SEO): Online reputation management software can help businesses improve their website’s ranking on search engines. In local searches, search engine algorithms favor businesses with more reviews and higher ratings. Testimonials and customer reviews are also a great source of user-generated content, which businesses can post on social media as part of their SEO strategy.
Online reputation management software provides numerous benefits and features for both internal and customer-facing teams.
Customer service: Customer service teams use online reputation management software to monitor review sites for new customer feedback. Users can be alerted when a negative review is posted, so customer service reps can respond immediately. If a rep can resolve the complaint, the customer may feel inclined to edit their review and give the business a more favorable rating.
Marketing teams: Marketers use online reputation management platforms to source marketing materials. Positive customer reviews and testimonials are a valuable form of social proof and can be leveraged in digital advertising, social media marketing, and other promotions. Online reputation management products also provide important customer demographic data, which marketers can use to assess their marketing campaigns and create targeted campaigns that align with the customers’ demographics.
Product managers: While product managers may not interact with online reputation management software directly, they can greatly benefit from the data the platforms provide. If many customers write reviews complaining about the same product feature, online reputation management solutions can capture their feedback and identify the product feature as a common issue for customers. This information can help product managers understand pain points within their product and make improvements for future versions.
Related solutions that can be used together with online reputation management software include:
Social media monitoring software: Some online reputation management platforms offer features of social media monitoring software. These tools help companies listen for a specific brand or keyword mentions across social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Businesses use social media monitoring software to analyze customer sentiment, respond to positive or negative mentions, identify social trends, track competitors, and discover influencers.
Enterprise feedback management software: While online reputation management software collects a business’s reviews from external sources, enterprise feedback management (EFM) allows businesses to gather and store customer feedback internally. Companies use EFM applications to build surveys, solicit feedback, and calculate net promoter scores (NPS). The data collected through enterprise feedback management platforms can be distributed and leveraged throughout many different departments in an organization.
Product reviews software: E-commerce businesses use product reviews software to host reviews of products on their websites. These reviews help brands measure customer satisfaction, identify unhappy customers, and improve their products and customer experience. Though there is little overlap, some product review solutions also provide features of online reputation management software.
Local listing management software: Online reputation is an important consideration for local businesses, which often rely on word of mouth, reviews, and online visibility to improve their foot traffic and sales. As a result, many online reputation management products contain features of local listing management. These solutions allow businesses to manage and update their online listings across directories, apps, and websites, ensuring a positive customer experience and improving local SEO.
Depending on a business’ specific requirements and capabilities, adopting an online reputation management software can pose a few challenges.
Compliance requirements: Some industries must comply with certain standards to protect sensitive data or consumer privacy. For example, businesses in the healthcare industry must ensure their patients’ data remains confidential by working with software vendors that comply with HIPAA. If this is the case for a business, they must seek out vendors that promote compliance and ask about their privacy and security safeguards.
Responding to negative feedback: Not all reviews are going to be positive. Some customers are simply looking for a place to vent their frustrations, while others have genuine concerns or constructive feedback. It’s important to always respond to negative reviews—users must not ignore, delete, or hide negative reviews, as this can further erode the customers’ trust. Before implementing an online reputation management solution, businesses must establish the dos and don’ts of responding to reviews and make sure their team understands these guidelines. There are many resources online that advise on how to respond to negative reviews.
Siloed information: Online reputation management tools should be adopted by all stakeholders for a business to realize the product’s full potential. Ownership of the software may lie with only one department, but customer service and marketing teams should both be involved in the process of review management. By working together, marketing and customer service teams can respond effectively to negative feedback, resolve issues, and promote brand advocacy through positive reviews. Product managers should be looped in as necessary when customers make suggestions for new features or mention a bug.
Whether a company is purchasing an online reputation management solution for the first time or looking to replace their current system, G2.com can assist buyers with the selection process.
Generally, the most important considerations for this type of software are the feature set, pricing, integrations, and customer support. Businesses should create a list of requirements based on their desired outcomes for the product, for example:
Create a long list
Using their unique list of requirements, buyers should create a long list of potentially viable online reputation management products. They can consult online review sites like G2.com to find out which solutions are the most popular or have the highest satisfaction ratings. Take this opportunity to learn how the vendor manages their online reputation.
Create a short list
After creating a long list, buyers should narrow down their selections by eliminating the products that won’t meet their business needs. Pricing, integrations, compliance, and support may be factors that contribute to a product’s suitability.
Conduct demos
All products on the buyer’s shortlist should be vetted by conducting demos. This is an opportunity to find out how a product works firsthand, so buyers must come prepared with questions guided by the requirements gathering conducted at the beginning of the selection process. If the product will be used by multiple teams within the company -- for example, marketing and customer service -- they can ask the vendor to walk through the product’s features for each persona.
Choose a selection team
The organization should involve any relevant personas as early as possible in the selection process. With review management software, it will be necessary to consult both managers and individual contributors in marketing and customer service departments, as they will likely be the heaviest users of the platform. The selection team should also consist of a project manager to coordinate efforts and ensure the process runs smoothly.
Negotiation
Before signing a contract, it is imperative to open up a conversation about pricing and contract length. While a few vendors may not budge on pricing, most will offer flexible pricing plans based on the exact features the business needs or the length of the contract.
Final decision
To conclude the selection process, and before going all in, it is suggested to run a pilot program with a small group of users. If the platform meets all the requirements and is well received, the buyer can be confident in rolling out the platform to the rest of the company. If not, it might be time to try another product from the short list.
Social media
While only a small percentage of customers will take the initiative to write a review for a business without being asked, many more are likely to mention a brand, product, or service on social media. As a result, businesses need to invest in social listening if they are serious about managing their online reputation. Many online reputation management products provide enhanced social media monitoring features that enable users to track brand mentions, engage with customers, search and filter discussions, and identify trending topics. These tools can even help businesses engage in social customer service.
Natural language processing
It is increasingly common for reputation management tools to have built-in natural language understanding (NLU) capabilities to assist with keyword tagging, topic clustering, and sentiment analysis. These features make it possible not only for businesses to monitor their reviews, but to make data-driven decisions based on emerging trends and customer sentiment. For products that leverage artificial intelligence to consolidate and analyze customer feedback from other channels and not just review sites, buyers can browse G2’s category for feedback analytics software.