Tag Archives: Naveen Gupta

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Commusoft, a U.K.-based software provider, just published a blog series by Linda Formichelli about customer service management. The last post features an interview with our founder and CEO, Shannon Wilkinson. While the article focuses on a particular service industry, the principles of managing reviews apply to all organizations. Here are key takeaways:

“When you discover that a customer has left an online review slamming everything from your products to the color of your trucks, your first instinct is probably to come back at the reviewer with guns blazing. That will make you feel good, but it will also make your company look bad.

“How the owner, marketing manager, and other employees at a field service company handle bad customer reviews can either make the company look even worse—or demonstrate the company’s stellar customer service.

“We talked with Shannon Wilkinson, founder and CEO of Reputation Communications and author of How to Look Better Online, for expert advice on how your field service business can turn negative reviews into raving fans. Try these tips, and bad reviews can become good news for your field service business.

Prepare for the Worst

“Every field service company is bound to get bad online reviews at some point. Competitors and disgruntled employees may leave unverified bad reviews, some customers just like to vent no matter how hard you try to please them…and sometimes, well, you make a mistake and a customer calls you on it. ‘Statistics show that frustrated or unhappy customers are far more likely to publish reviews than satisfied customers,’ says Wilkinson.

“The solution: Set up a feedback system to ask your customers to leave reviews on the sites that are relevant to your business, with the aim of encouraging your happy customers to put a good word in. Wilkinson notes as an example that restaurants that solicit feedback tend to attract a more balanced collection of reviews

“For example, you might send a personal or automated email after every job asking the customer to review your company. Some businesses also offer an incentive for reviews, such as a percentage off the customer’s next service, but be sure to check the review sites first…this practice goes against some sites’ policies.

Go Farther Afield

“Make it a habit to regularly check your company’s reviews on Facebook, Google, and review sites like Yelp, but don’t forget that negative feedback can also hide on other social media platforms, personal blogs, and employee review sites like Glassdoor. If you can’t handle all this tracking solo, look for review management software that will alert you to new reviews.

“Google offers a lot of free help in this area as well: Set up a Google Alerts account to be the first to know when your business is mentioned online, and list your company on Google My Business to easily track and respond to Google reviews.

Look for the Good

“’People are becoming very good about filtering out those reviews that are either too effusive or too biased,’ Wilkinson says. ‘Biased’ reviews are those where the reviewer is overly critical without providing actual details as to why the service they received was bad.

“For reviews that are negative but not biased, keep in mind that these reviews are valuable sources of feedback from your customers. They give you the opportunity not only to improve your services if needed, but also to impress the complaining customer (and everyone who reads their review) with your response.”

Read the complete article: Here’s How to Handle Bad Reviews—And Turn Haters Into Customers

*Related reading:

Employees’ Online Reviews Are Now Important Reading for CEOs

Best Ways to Manage Online Reviews

Naveen Gupta, CEO of Birdeye, on Managing Online Reviews

 
 
Online reviews, , , , , , ,

Customer reviews on sites such as Yelp and Angie’s List have long posed major challenges to companies in industries like retail and hospitality. But now—especially with the advent of Google My Business— customer review sites reach every industry, and are a potential concern for every company.

How your company lands on review sites

If your organization is listed in public telephone directories, information about it is most likely published on a variety of content aggregators as well as on consumer review sites like Google My Business. Those sites often make the decision for you. In some cases, you often can’t opt out.

There are numerous consumer review sites on the Internet. Many work to maintain the integrity of their forums, but often their primary interest is in driving reader engagement—not protecting your company’s brand. The more businesses they have listed, the more visitors they attract.  The more clicks they receive, the more advertising revenue the site can charge.

Fortunately, there are steps you can take to ensure your business is represented better on review sites. The most proactive is using a review management service.

What review management services do

Review management services work by monthly subscription. They provide clients with a dashboard where they can monitor over numerous online review sites in real time as well as with aboveboard methods to invite customers to review your company or services.

As positive and legitimate reviews come in, you can amplify their exposure by publishing them on many online platforms after establishing a profile about your business on them. This does not prevent negative reviews from appearing on review sites. Instead, it simply posts the reviews you choose to emphasize on social media and review sites—providing an effective counterbalance to reviews that may be biased, or have low credibility but high visibility.

Review management services also work to make your company’s website more visible to search engines. A key way of improving a website’s SEO (search engine optimization) is to increase the number of highly ranked sites that link to it. By allowing you to easily create profiles for your company across many review sites, review management companies also allow you to create many such inbound links from high-ranking platforms.

Review management sites aren’t right for every business.  Many companies do not have storefronts and do not actively market their services and products to widespread groups of consumers.  They are less likely to utilize review management services and more likely to remain detached from the online review space.

If your business would benefit from taking more control over your brand, though, it is a service worth looking into.

Related reading: How to Handle Bad Reviews

Naveen Gupta, CEO of Birdeye, on Managing Online Reviews

 
 
Interviews with experts, Online reviews, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Naveen Gupta, CEO of Birdeye, on Managing Online Reviews

Customer reviews on sites such as Yelp and Google My Business (formerly Google Places for Business) are a growing concern for most companies. They often have little choice whether they are listed on these sites.  Then one day a review appears at the top of a Google search of their company’s name. And it stays there, whether it is authentic, verifiable or anonymous.

In response, services have emerged that help companies track and manage their online reviews. They offer tools to monitor reviews, multiple ways to attract positive feedback from customers and the ability to publish those positive reviews on several websites.

Birdeye is one such company offering these services. We interviewed co-founding CEO Naveen Gupta, a Silicon Valley veteran, on the state of the industry.

How many review sites now exist online? We track more than 100 review sites. I believe there are thousands, but only about 100 are influential. Of those, 50 or so are applicable to every type of business. The rest are in vertical markets — niche sites dedicated to specific industries like dentistry, law or finance.

Which do you consider the most important? Tier 1 directories like Yelp, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo have the most traffic. In Tier 2 are the verticals – sites devoted to specific industries. Avvo, a site that ranks and reviews attorneys, is in this tier. Tier III sites are general business listings such as Yellow Pages, Insider Pages and Super Pages.

What do you consider the most common misunderstanding of business owners about online reviews?

What we see across all verticals is that businesses small and large have been caught unaware of customer feedback because of the proliferation of review sites. As a result, they don’t know which sites to participate on. Depending on your type of market, the importance of the sites differ. Often, business owners don’t know where, and when, their reviews have appeared.

Authenticity of reviews is a concern. Many sites are not good at validating the identity of users. Or the customer’s review does not include the full issue – just their take on it.

Remediation is another big issue we see. Most review sites are not remediation vehicles. They are just one-way venting platforms. Studies show that happy customers generally don’t write reviews – only the unhappy ones do. Unless business owners actively encourage their feedback, satisfied customers don’t provide it. Proactive services enabling business owners to attract them have become necessary to succeed in this environment.

Review sites are often accused of manipulating results so that only negative reviews show up unless businesses pay a fee to the company. What advice do you give to business owners in such situations?

Not every business owner feels they have the time or resources to invest in managing their online reviews. Yet, your brand is your #1 asset. Don’t outsource it. Pay attention. Rather than focus on ratings, invite and focus on the feedback from your customers. Then address it. Use tools to automate the process. It’s about providing great service, correcting any problems and turning your customers into your advocates.

Larger enterprises and franchises are more concerned with monitoring reviews across the spectrum, comparing customer satisfaction across locations or regions, then feeding the data into their systems so they can make customer management adjustments.

There are new tools to help business owners manage all of this. It has become nearly impossible to handle manually. Fortunately, that is now unnecessary.

Naveen Gupta has had senior executive roles at RingCentral, Monster, Yahoo and UTStarcom. He studied in the Executive Education program at Harvard Business School; has an MBA, Finance from NYU Stern & London Business School; and a B.S.in Electrical Engineering from BITS Pilani.

This is the first in a series of interviews with experts whose work relates to online reputation management.