A few bad reviews can really put a dent in the revenue of an individual restaurant location and, in turn, the brand as a whole.
After all, sites like Yelp and Google are powerful sales channels.
- Each new star on Yelp comes with a 9% average increase in revenue. (Source: Review42)
- Over 60% of consumers are likely to check Google reviews (through Maps and Search) when evaluating a new service. (Source: TechJury)
- Over 45% use Yelp as their preferred site for checking where to eat, shop, and who to trust. (Source: TechJury)
Thus, better reviews = more traffic = more revenue.
With this in mind, while restaurant operators know not everything can be perfect, they certainly don’t want customers posting bad things about them on Yelp and Google. This is especially true when it comes to vague reviews that they can’t use to improve.
We’re going to look at how restaurants can naturally intercept these negative reviews, give operators the actionability they need, and increase their ratings online.
Step One: Generate Private Feedback
The first thing you’ll want to do is assemble a natural barrier between a guest’s experience and online review sites.
How is this done? By way of private feedback in the form of causation-based surveys.
These Tattle surveys are a systematic, actionable approach that ultimately enables operations to identify areas of improvement at each location. It’s a perfect wall for reputation management.
To get a bit more technical, Tattle surveys are automatically distributed 90 minutes after a transaction occurs (thanks to our integrations with your pre-existing POS, ordering, loyalty, and kiosk providers), giving customers plenty of time to consume their meal and consider their experience.
This process alone will do most of the heavy-lifting when it comes to intercepting negative reviews.
Yet, there’s more that can be done.
Step Two: Handle Incidents
To take negative-review prevention to the next level, you’ll want to have incidents handled in a quick and efficient manner.
Tattle considers incidents to be any surveys that have a Customer Experience Rating (CER) of 3 stars or less.
Some brands choose to set up automatic guest recovery emails depending on whether feedback is one, two, or three stars. Other brands have team members assigned to manage these dissatisfied guests, writing personalized apology responses and offering more customized rewards in an attempt to win them back.
Regardless of who responds or the content of the message, it’s critical to not only preventing bad reviews, but retaining revenue.
For example, if a guest sees the effort and care you put into each experience, they’ll respond in one or two ways.
- They’ll consider their issue handled, thank you for your attention, and forgo writing a negative review on Yelp and Google.
- If they really took kindly to your guest recovery efforts, they’ll have no issues giving your brand a second chance. This happens more than you might think.
“The ability to respond to unhappy guests in Tattle and track their satisfaction with our replies ultimately gives us a well-rounded view of our guest recovery process.“ John Giffin, Brand Marketing Manager at Roy Rogers
Step Three: Watch Your Ratings Rise
Not only have you prevented dissatisfied customers from telling the world about what went wrong with their experience, but you have also created an outlet for them to channel their frustration in a systematic, operationally-useful method.
Over time, the constant cycle of intercepting negative reviews, improving operations, and handling incidents will yield fantastic results for each location across the brand.
This is the power of actionable private feedback.
“We aren’t just getting negative, random reviews on social media anymore. With Tattle, we now have real customers attached to real experiences.” Maya Pocock, Asst. Brand Manager at Starbird Chicken
Conclusion
When optimized, social media review sites are money-making machines.
According to Review42, 35% of people who search and discover a location on Yelp will visit within 24 hours.
The value of these channels cannot be overstated. A star rating increase of just 0.1 can yield fantastic results financially and – for some brands – even determine whether new locations come to fruition.
So, are you utilizing the power of private feedback to strengthen your brand’s online reputation?
Want more?
Watch a rapid demo of the Tattle platform!
