You need to be on top of your reviews, not just a victim of them. The reasons are many.
Your reputation is at stake with negative reviews. The word-of-mouth bump you can get from positive reviews. And then there’s the cold, hard fact that sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, CitySearch, Foursquare, and others dominate Google search results when consumers use that tool to find new places to eat.
To that end, we’ve identified over 45 companies that you should be aware of who help restaurants monitor their online ratings and reviews, circumvent them by seeking customer feedback via surveys, and/or monitor social media mentions of your restaurant. We know there are even more companies providing this service that we’re missing.
Check out the interactive table towards the bottom of this post.
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WEBINAR ON HOW TO MASTER YOUR ONLINE RATINGS AND REVIEWS
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Daniel is the best-selling author of “Manipurated: How Business Owners Can Fight Fraudulent Online Ratings & Reviews” and senior strategist at Convince & Convert.
This semi-dynamic table of companies who can help you get a handle on your online ratings and reviews will, over time, transform into a more full-featured spreadsheet with sweeping details comparing service providers of online ratings and review services for restaurants.
If you’re aware of a provider that is not listed, feel free to simply shoot us an email at info at nextrestaurants.com or through our Contact form.
Not every single company specifically allows you to monitor your Yelp reviews, let alone offers a service to help you respond. But all provide some form of monitoring service and/or alternative feedback mechanism so you can master your online ratings and reviews.
Key point: We’ve elected to include a strong lineup of companies who focus on social media monitoring. You really need to monitor the informal mentions of your restaurant through social channels as much as you do the formal ratings and reviews sites.
UPDATE: We’ve added columns to give you guidance on whom a service is intended for (Independent Restaurants, Chain Restaurants, Both), and Minimum Monthly Price. We haven’t yet added the data for these two columns, it’s coming soon!
How to Use This Table
We’re using a service called Airtable to manage this database and present the table. We’re starting off with the free version of the Airtable product, but would love to do more with this table over time.
So…we should tell you up front that the link to Airtable is an affiliate link. Check their tool out; it’s got a very easy-to-use mobile companion to it.
With this table, you can navigate vertically and horizontally. You can click on a company’s name to see only its record.
You can select filters to see, for example, only those companies who provide social media monitoring. You can hide certain columns. And you can perform searches for specific company names, as this list grows.
Let us know what data you would want us to compile for each vendor, too?
What do you think? Useful? Want more information comparing providers? Run over to our Contact form and shoot me your feedback!
