You might be missing out on up to 94 percent of their potential customers due to one single issue…

Negative reviews.

I know, it’s hard enough to read a negative comment.

Let alone accept how much that negativity could affect your business.

It seems crazy that so many people can be influenced by one, 1-star review

What’s even crazier? It doesn’t have to be that way. You can work with negative comments to attract most of that 94 percent to your door and to your cash register, and it’s a relatively simple process.

Yes, you can harness the negativity.

Not only that but, with the right moves, you put your brand on the digital map.

And that’s what BirdEye is all about.

What Is BirdEye?

BirdEye is a Silicon Valley SaaS (Software as a Service) company that was launched by Indian entrepreneurs Naveen Gupta and Neeraj Gupta in 2013.

Today, BirdEye powers over 40,000 businesses and partners, enabling them to get the most out of their customer reviews—both positive reviews from satisfied customers and negative reviews from the peanut gallery.

It grants you a bird’s eye view of every aspect of public customer reviews and social media, so you won’t be left wondering about your online presence.

With a variety of unique, effective features, BirdEye encourages your happy customers to review you via well-trusted public platforms such as Google, G2Crowd and Facebook with the goal of increasing your conversions and brand authority.

We came across Birdeye while wondering how best to improve the online presence of a popular website we manage, and took the tool for a free spin with the help of a friendly Birdeye representative.

BirdEye Review: The #1 Tool for Generating Authentic Customer Reviews

Before we dive in, here the top features that make BirdEye stand out:

• Provides an all-in-one platform to manually and automatically monitor your online reviews and interact with your customers

• Tracks your social media mentions

• Spies on and analyzes your competitors‘ reviews

I. Send Out Review Requests to Customers Using Email and SMS

Using the Campaigns section on BirdEye, you can start creating SMS and email promotion review requests.

To take advantage of this feature, you need to have a database of your users with their phone numbers and/or emails.

BirdEye allows you to upload your email/phone number lists using the Contacts tab in the upper left of your Campaigns panel.

The Contacts tab also has a great search function to narrow down and select your target customers for every campaign. You have the option to choose “All” users or only a limited number.

Now that you have uploaded your user database to BirdEye, you will want to customize your emails and phone messages on the Manage Templates page.

There you will have the option to edit templates for a review request email (which is the most popular option), review request SMS, share review email or promotion email.

After you add a new template, you can start customizing your email/SMS and landing page (the page you will want to promote) by changing the colors, logo, text and review platforms.

Here’s an example of how this could look on your site:

After you’re done designing your templates, you can now set up and launch your campaign from the Campaigns tab.

II. Monitor and Interact with All Your Reviews in One Place

In the Reviews section, BirdEye will grab all the pieces of feedback you have online and assemble them in a feed like this:

From this panel, you could start responding to your reviews using the blue Reply button on the bottom left of every review.

According to a ReviewTrackers survey, 53 percent of customers expect companies to drop replies to their negative reviews within no more than a week. Still, over 63 percent of the people surveyed reported that a business has never responded to their reviews.

If you believe in the importance of providing great customer service and you care about your clients’ feedback, responding quickly to both positive and negative reviews must be a no-brainer.

And if you have many reviews posted on different platforms, you could easily use the search filter on the right sidebar to only select the reviews you want to respond to.

According to the same source, Google is the #1 most trusted website for online reviews, as 63.6 of the consumers surveyed say they are likely to check reviews on Google before visiting a business.

Bottom line; it’s very important that you respond to people’s feedback. But what’s even more important is what advantages/disadvantages people are actually addressing. This takes us to the next feature…

III. Get Ratings Based on the Feedback in Your Reviews

Via the Insights page, you will get precise ratings based on the feedback your brand has been collecting over all platforms.

The ratings are similar to those of the American academic grading system:

• A+: Very good
• A: Good
• B+: Above average
• B: Average
• C+: Below average
• C: Poor

Here you can choose which categories you want to track for every location. You may select everything from pricing to customer service to product quality. This will help you specify your businesses’ strengths and weaknesses and make the right decisions and changes on your products or services.

To display reviews, you will want to click on a grade in the Performance by Location table. BirdEye will then forward you to the snippets page where you can see targeted reviews based on the series of keywords you have put into the system for every category.

A great goal to set within the Insights section is to aim for an A grade overall rating for every location.

Want to give your reputation management system an extra push? Enter social media mentions.

V. Track, Schedule and Engage with Your Social Media Mentions

Using BirdEye’s social listening tool in the Social section, you can track all your mentions over different platforms, including:

• Google
• Twitter
• Facebook
• YouTube
• News
• Blogs
• Discussions

Basically, BirdEye will scan almost the whole internet for you to spot any mentions of your brand. Moreover, you will be able to monitor all your social media mentions with only one open window on your browser.

This feature will allow you to understand the overall perception and impression of your company on social media among your customers, as well as track the progress your company is making.

Not only that, but you can also start creating, scheduling and publishing content from BirdEye to the three main social media outlets Instagram (which will be available soon), Twitter and Facebook.

This all-in-one social media tool allows you to manage all your social media from one place without having to switch between websites and repetitively publish content.

Now you may be wondering, “How is BirdEye an all-in-one social media management tool when I still should go out there and find content to publish?”

Enter the Engage tab.

There you can react, like, comment, retweet and share publications on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social streams of your choice from only one page.

IV. Assign Employees to Answer Negative Review

Just like with social media and review monitoring features, BirdEye is also big on collaboration.

Using the Service page, you will be able to assign different users (employees or teammates) via email to answer reviews in their areas of specialty.

For example, you will assign tech-related reviews to your head of technology, or ask your marketing manager to respond to email-related issues.

This function is optional and highly dependent on the nature of your business. If you are a small business with one to two individuals working on it, you may not make use of this tool.

Alternatively, if you are a medium or large enterprise, and want to hold your employees responsible, this tool would be a perfect fit.

VI. Send Customized Surveys to Your Customers

Want to take your customer service a notch above? Take advantage of BirdEye’s Survey feature.

BirdEye allows you to create pretty customizable surveys to hear what your audience thinking of your product and learn more about their needs.

After saving your survey, BirdEye will give you a link to preview it and share it with your audience. The surveys will then go out in the same way the review requests are shared.

VII. Spy on Your Competitors’ Reviews

“If you want to stay ahead, it’s all about keeping the competition in your rearview mirror.” – Jim Fowler, Entrepreneur Magazine, 2017

Any business strategy without competitor analysis is like a skeleton without bones.

Studying your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses will give you a distinct advantage in your market and allow you to create better solutions for your customers. In fact, spotting potential pain points within your niche could be a great leg-up as you will provide a proactive, well-crafted service or product.

On the other hand, ignoring your competitors may cost you your whole business.

The BirdEye Competitive Ranking feature allows you to stalk on up to three of your competitors’ reviews and get ratings similar to those on the Insights section.

There you will see competitors’ customer feedback published on over 250 review sites as well as at-a-glance data and charts.

Furthermore, you can compare the sentiment of your products and services and your competitors’ in different areas.

In addition, BirdEye drives deeper beneath star ratings by identifying and tracking trending topics from hundreds of competitors’ customer reviews through with a Natural Language Processing algorithm.

VIII. Integrations

BirdEye has a huge library of over 145 integrations ranging from payment systems to email marketing services to accounting & invoicing tools.

Here are some examples of the best integrations BirdEye has to offer:

QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks Online is an accounting software created mainly for small to medium businesses. Using QuickBooks Online, you will be able to execute different accounting tasks such as creating invoices, paying bills and managing sales.

BirdEye pulls customer information out of your QuickBooks Online account and uses it to send review requests. They will grab first names, last names, email addresses and phone numbers.

AppointmentPlus

AppointmentPlus is an online appointment scheduling system for companies of all sizes that supports features such as client scheduling, reporting, analytics and staff management.

Just as with QuickBooks Online, BirdEye will extract customer information from your AppointmentPlus account to send out review requests and generate new reviews.

Infusionsoft

Infusionsoft is one of the oldest and most popular Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software that is mostly used by small to medium businesses to manage marketing automation, sales, payments, etc.

As with the previous tools, BirdEye will want access to your Infusionsoft database to give you the ability to automate review requests.

MailChimp

MailChimp is an email marketing service designed primarily for small and medium-sized businesses. It allows you to automate many email marketing related tasks, including sending emails, running campaigns, analyzing results & more.

BirdEye will pull your email subscribers’ data from MailChimp and use it to send review requests via SMS and email.

IX. Pricing

They offer a one-size-fits-all plan of $400 per month that includes all the features mentioned above, customer support & more.

Might be pricey, but if it keeps your online recommendation strong and gets bodies in the door, then it’s well worth the cost. Depending on your business, just one fantastic customer per month—lead to you by the internet—could more than pay that monthly subscription.

Conclusion

If you struggle to generate reviews or your brand has a rating on a platform or more that is not equal or higher than 4.0 (which is according to a ReviewTrackers statistic enough to drive 80 percent of your potential customers away), BirdEye should be a no-brainer for your business.

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Yassir Sahnoun is a content strategist and copywriter who helps SaaS businesses attract more sales using content marketing. You can connect with him by visiting his website.

 

 

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