To centralize or not to centralize, that is the question.

Why a centralized review management system will change your life for the better!

We don’t have to tell you how important reviews are in today’s world, especially when we are talking about restaurants.

Data shows that nowadays 25 percent more people turn to consumer reviews on sites like OpenTable, Yelp, and TripAdvisor than traditional food critics. Also, 60 % read reviews before going out for a meal, often even before checking where the restaurant is, what is on the menu or whether the pictures of the food look good.

With the humongous variety of reviews engines found on the internet, it’s difficult to stay on top of all the reviews and ensure a positive image of one’s business.

In this article we are going to look into detail at a way that can make the whole managing process of reviews easier: centralized review management. We are not only going to explain what it is and how it works, but also why it’s such a wonderful idea.

Let’s get to it!

So.. What is centralized review management?

Say you own a business. You have received 3 new reviews — one on facebook, which is pretty good, one: 3 stars on tripadvisor, not that good, because the veal — that they had specifically come for — wasn’t available and the last one on google that, not only tells you your steak was to die for, but that the opening hours on the internet are confusing: 5 star reviewer123 almost didn’t come to your restaurant because he thought it was closed.

With a centralized review management system you not only are able to receive all the reviews from all the engines in one place and answer all of them immediately. You can also change directly your opening hours on all platforms so that other reviewers like 123 will not be mislead and, at the same time, possibly re-order the veal that was out stock, putting an end to a strike of disappointed customers. All with only one click and from the same dashboard.

In fewer words, centralized review management allows you to control, manage and answer all your online reviews from a single interface.
Now, let us look more closely at the advantages of centralized reviews management.

All in one so you miss none.

Jay Baer in his Food Service magazine highlights how detrimental it is to not answer reviews, especially when they are complaints.

The reason why missing answers often happen is because reviews are on many different social media and review sites and restaurants get only 14% of all complaints.

With centralized review management, all of your reviews platforms are connected: you will be notified instantly of new activity and will find all the different reviews, one underneath the other, on your screen. In this way there is no risk in missing a review or forgetting to answer.

But it doesn’t stop there.

You can filter

With these types of systems you not only find all your reviews on your interface but you can filter them by establishment, rating, date, platform or keyword and answer them in just a few clicks.

It’s fast

You can respond to reviews in just a few clicks from your interface without having to go check each and every review engine and without having to switch between them — the reviews are all there as soon as the customer presses send. Further, you are made aware of issues instantly and can react faster, as explained in the example at the beginning, you can amend mistakes such as ingredients out of stock or obsolete opening hours in a matter of seconds.

You create positive image of the businesses

It is important for restaurateurs to promote a positive image of their businesses through engaging with, and responding to, both positive and negative online reviews. This can help users feel more connected to the business and feel that they aren’t just a paying number but that their experience matters. In addition, engagement can bring in a considerable amount of new business: higher reviews lead to higher ratings, that lead to higher ranking and more visibility which ultimately brings more people to the restaurant. Therefore a system that helps you deal easily and quickly with all of your online reviews can be definitely viewed as a worthwhile investment of resources.

You can easily analyze your e-reputation

With these systems you can also analyze your e-reputations, assess its results and take actions and measures againsts the possible weaknesses. Following the key indicators you could for example note that service has been slow and therefore it could be useful to hire more waiters. You could also, for example, filter your reviews to a specific period of time: i.e. you have changed the menu and want to check people’s reactions and see if, in that selected period, there have changes in satisfaction rates.
With review management reports, you can easily access the number of reviews, response rate, average rating, segmentation of satisfied, dissatisfied and neutral customers, making you aware of how your business is really doing. You can access your average score, your evolution, what is your average response time etc. In this way you get an analyzed overview of how you are doing and identify the steps to do better.
See it, read it, solve it.

You improve your business, boost customer experience and increase revenue

Thanks to review analytics you are able to strengthen your weak points and plan actions for improvement where needed. Solving the issues that generated the negative reviews not only helps you improve your business and increase customer experience but also achieve a higher rating which could ultimately generate, according to Temkin Group stats,

an average revenue increase of $823 million over three years for a company with $1 billion in annual revenues. (Temkin Group).
Further, A Harvard Business School researcher found that a one-star increase in a restaurant’s Yelp rating correlated with a 5–9% increase in revenue.

Therefore a positive image of the business can make your business more successful.

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I believe we have made a strong case for centralized review management systems, which reveals themselves as a restaurateur’s best friend. This is the reason for Foodetective’s partnership with Partoo so we can do exactly what we have explained and make, once again, restaurant’s lives much easier.

Sounds like something you would be interested in? Sign up for a demo by clicking on this link!