Improve Your Online Reputation with Real Time Feedback

Hello everyone and welcome back to another volley rally. Got a quick little one here today, but Scott and I were introduced to Wes and his team with Real Time Feedback and thought this was pretty neat and want to introduce this to you. They have a neat platform and can help you improve your online reviews and averages and all of that. So I wanted to bring Wes on here, introduce him. And Wes, thanks for taking the time.

Yeah, absolutely. Jake, thanks for having me and pleasure to be here with you.

Totally. Like we said guys, this isn't meant to be super salesy. Honestly, we just thought this was pretty neat and wanted to introduce it to you guys. So Wes, can you tell us a little bit about how you guys are able to improve the online reputation for the dealers? Because, I mean, let's be honest, there's nothing more important than, than your reputation. You know, you want to Google a store and see five stars, right? You don't want to see, you know, two or something because you'll probably go somewhere else. So how do you guys do it?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'll tell you, Jake, it kind of really, it starts from the fact that we're all automotive business folks here at Real Time Feedback. So, you know, I came from the dealer world, spent the better part of, I'm going to kind of show my age here, but spent the better part of about 24 years on the dealer side of things and of course join the feedback team here in the last few months. But, but essentially what we do is that we're actually able to help facilitate, you know, conversations to increase the customer experience in store as well as post visit. And of course you had mentioned Google and some other review channels and, and reputation sites that are obviously hugely important to a dealership's reputation as far as whether it's a single point store or dealer groups as well. And so collaboratively speaking, we, we want to focus on Google because Google looks at your Google business profile, your main page as well as your service and parts page and says, hey Mr. Dealer, we're going to, you know, reward you for incorporating not only reviews from your customers, but review responses. And we're going to look at that and we're going to reward you for increased search visibility, your SEO presence. So there's a variety of things that can really help you when you're paying closely attention to, you know, what your customers are saying, the type of experience that they had, and when they're posting that publicly on review site and as a dealership, you, you acknowledge that and respond accordingly to good and positive reviews. It really helps you. So what we like to do, we take a 360, 360 degree approach from the customer experience standpoint and we look at that as far as discovering and resolving any sort of issues or concerns that a customer might have while they're at the dealership as well as post visit. And so that starts actually with incorporating QR codes strategically placed in and around the dealership. So in the service lounge, the coffee bar, the cashier's desk, restrooms, and of course obviously on the sales floor. But anywhere you want to strategically place a QR code that will help you engage with a customer, whether they have a concern or maybe you want to lend kudos, hey, I had a great experience and I want to share that with the management team. So that engagement starts there in the store and then the other aspect of things is that once the customer has checked out, paid for that RO or the vehicle has been RDR'd and that vehicle now has been booked and sold, whether it's a new vehicle or pre owned vehicle, we will then through the DMS partnerships that we have, so in likes of CDK Global or Dealer Track, Reynolds and Rentals, etc. We partner with all of the more popular DMS companies that are out there and as soon as that transaction has completed, it will then send a text message notification to the customer and requesting, you know, hey, how rate your experience, you know, so Jake, you know, if I'm a service manager, there'll be a customized message there that will go to you as the customer to say, hey, tell us how we did, you know, did, did we, you know, meet your expectations? Did we fall short? So it's a 1 through 5 rating page. So essentially what will happen is if you would say, okay, you know, we're going to rate you on Google, they'll get that, they'll get that request and then they can actually then tell them directly about the dealership, about their experience. If it was a five star experience, then we're going to redirect them to Google specifically. We can also sprinkle those out and around to other popular review sites. So for instance, let's not forget Bing, right? So there are a lot of folks that are Microsoft users that use Bing as their primary search engine. Well, Bing does not utilize its own own review channel. They actually utilize Facebook reviews. So we can help populate those Facebook reviews. The Iterator. Are you a theaterator member? Do you utilize cars.com or cars gurus, these other popular review channels? So we can actually then engage that customer to Leave a five star review. Now, let's say they don't, right? Let's say they didn't have a great experience and you didn't, you know, meet or exceed those expectations and we fell short as a dealership. We can then generate that feedback request to allow the customer to share their thoughts and concerns directly with the dealership. So instead of going publicly and blasting you on a public review site, we give them that opportunity to share what their concerns were and then that goes directly back to the dealership. So the dealership management team, whether it's the service manager, sales manager, general manager, dealer, principal, can have the opportunity to answer and direct those questions that they have from the consumer to, you know, facilitate a proper response to say, hey, listen, we apologize and here's what we can do to make up for that. I'd love for you to reach out to me directly. Here's a $20 off coupon for your next oil change, whatever that might look like. It's an opportunity to engage with the customer, correct whatever issue may have happened. And that's helpful in the degree of the fact that ultimately the factory survey is looming. It's going to come, it's going to come out to that customer. And so this is a way to help engage with the customer, rectify any issues before they blast you on a public review site, review site and, or that factory survey comes in and you can correct those issues before they give you a poor score. I mean let's, let's, let's look at it As a former GM, typically on average it takes about 10 good surveys to make up for one bad one. So it's a, it's, you know, a major issue at times or can be. So the other aspect of that is it's also going to help skyrocket those positive Google reviews which as I mentioned earlier, is going to help in a variety of ways. It's going to help with increased search visibility and as you know, if you're looking place a place to do business or looking for a place to do business, whether it's, you know, buying a car, car, having a vehicle service, looking to buy a part, you're going to read with other consumers what their experience was like with that dealership. And so you know, you're going to read those reviews and you're going to also see how engaged that dealership is. Is the dealership responding to those reviews publicly as well? So you know, all of that combined really is going to help in a variety of ways. And then we also have a feature that's called Real Time Reviews. And so with Real Time Reviews, we're actually utilizing the, the Chat GTP functionality. So to lessen the brain drain, you know, from a management side of things, Real Time Feedback will incorporate Chat GTP to actually read the customer feedback and also read reviews. So it helps you generate a well crafted response that's, you know, that, that addresses the concerns and any issues that that customer may have had and then allows you to read that, edit it accordingly if you choose to, and then post it publicly. So, you know, we were able to incorporate that in a variety of ways which really helps out, you know, with the overall customer experience and providing a great experience for the customer in store, post, visit and then with the review section itself.

Yeah, you know, it's really, really important. Like you said, people, people want to do business where they have good reviews. But let's take a step back here and yeah, we, we, we're talking about the dealers, we're talking about the car business, but we all think that way whether we're talking about, hey, which broom should I buy on Amazon? Well, should I buy the broom that has a, you know, a 3.8 and only 17 reviews or am I going to buy the one that has a 4.9 and you know, 4,000 reviews? Well, you're going to buy the, you know, they're comparable in price. You're going to buy the better reviewed one. Right. We do that with restaurants and of course your customers are doing that with your dealership. So it's pretty important. Honestly, guys, we, you know, we saw the screen that Wes was talking about where the customers can start to leave their reviews and it redirects them as you want them to, either to your team to help resolve or to the reviews aggregators, you know, if you want to, you know, have them leave a good review, it's pretty neat. You should check it out if that sounds interesting. Wes, can you tell them what, tell them real quick, what type of results do your customers typically see once they turn this on?

Absolutely. Great, great question. I appreciate that. So typically we've got, you know, the dealer partners that we have, and that's what we call them. They're not our clients, they're our dealer partners because, you know, we work with them strategically to make sure that their customers are getting a fantastic experience as well as facilitating real, you know, real time reviews to help them build up their reviews on the Google and other important review sites. So on average, let's just kind of use it in simple math. So if you're generating a thousand ros from your service on a monthly basis, you can really kind of typically expect to see about a 10% increase in with reviews. So you know, that would be a hundred reviews a month. I mean let's look at some of the historical information that you might see on a typical dealer's website. You know, there's some dealers that only have 2 or 300 lifetime Google reviews. You see others that have thousands. You know, from a consumer facing standpoint, if I'm a consumer and I'm looking at a dealership that has a four point, you know, eight rating with 5,000 Google reviews with engagement and responses from the dealers versus a competitor or a dealer that I'm looking at that maybe has, you know, 500 with a 4.2 rating, who do you think I'm going to go to? Right? Who do you think I'm going to interact with and engage and start asking questions with? So typically you can see on average, you know, about a 10% lift in overall monthly Google reviews with a thousand ros. And then, but what's more, even more exciting is that the clicks on what we call the autopilot rating request, you can typically see about a 35% engagement there as far as folks that are actually going to click and then leave the rating request, whether it's the engagement through the feedback platform and or through the reviews portion of it as well. And then we've got dealers that are seeing as much as 500, 600, 700% increase in their positive Google reviews, primarily five stars. You know, so we have a dealer in Florida, a Toyota store specifically that within the last six month period of time versus the previous six months. So starting from about April until now versus versus that previous time period, they've seen a 733% increase in positive Google reviews. So imagine what that type of lift can do for you for your search, visibility for your customer engagement and opportunity to earn someone's business.

And just to say it, you know, for that particular example, because you, you, you walked us through this on your deck before, that particular customer not just had an increase in the reviews but the rating went up. You know, they went from, it was like a 4.1, they went to like a 4.9.

They were kind of teetering on that 4.1, 4.2 range which look is not.

Hard, still pretty good. I mean let's be honest, right?

Yeah, it's pretty anything over, you know that 4.2 and higher is good. But if you can take that from a 4.2 to a 4.8, 4.9 within a matter of just a few short months. You know, I would say you're doing a pretty darn good job.

And you know, just to go back to general consumerism, we all, in the, in the world of online reviews and ratings and how they put them all up, we all kind of start to look for closer to five stars as opposed to, oh, you know, a 4.1. Right. So anything you can do to, to try to improve that is something that, I mean, your online reputation is very, very important.

It is. Well, and let's think of it, you know, in terms of what the manufacturer expectations are. I mean, the manufacturer, you know, the OEs look at this and are creatively thinking of ways to increase customer loyalty. Let's keep them not only loyal to the brand, but let's keep them loyal to the dealership. Right. So if you're a dealer or within side of a dealer group that's looking to, you know, figure out ways of how can we get into the mind of the customer and get that customer mindset and this is a way to do that. This is a way to get answers to some things and for you to be able to respond with, you know, engagement with a customer that's looking to tell you what their thoughts are and how they feel, whether it's good, bad or indifferent. It gives you that, as the company you know, name says, you know, real time feedback. It's a way to get that, get that instant communication with the customer that's there in store on site, that scans that QR code and then again utilizing the autopilot rating request of being able to send out those rating requests to say, hey, tell us how we did. Did we meet or exceed those expectations? Did we fall short? And then utilize the real time reviews feature which, let's be honest, it lessens the brain drain. Right. If, if you can utilize Chat GTP to help craft a well written response to then share that via the feedback platform and on the review site. It's, it's going to help you out tremendously. So there's a lot of things that we can do. You know, full transparency, it's, it's all about creating a much better customer experience than what they're getting at this point.

Mm, totally Wes. Thanks for taking the time here guys. Again, just something pretty neat that you may want to look at. If you're feeling like you want to get your online reviews up and your scores, we will go ahead and put Wes's contact info in the description here. On the YouTube video. Feel free to reach out again. I get nothing from this. You know, we just thought it was neat and wanted to introduce you guys if you, if that's something that, that you're interested in. So we'll throw his contact info in the YouTube description for you and, and go ahead and, and Wes will take it from there. Thanks so much, guys. Thanks a lot, Wes, for taking the time and it's been a pleasure. Absolutely. And I hope you all have a fantastic day. So anything you can do to, to try to improve that is something that, I mean, your online reputation is very, very important.

It is. Well, and let's think of it, you know, in terms of what the manufacturer expectations are. I mean, the man, you know, the OEs look at this and are creatively thinking of ways to increase customer loyalty. Let's keep them not only loyal to the brand, but let's keep them loyal to the dealership. Right. So if you're a dealer or within side of a dealer group that's looking to, you know, figure out ways of how can we get into the mind of the customer and get that customer mindset and this is a way to do that. This is a way to get answers to some things and for you to be able to respond with, you know, engagement with a customer that's looking to tell you what their thoughts are and how they feel, whether it's good, bad or indifferent. It gives you that, as the company you know, name says, you know, real time feedback. It's a way to get that, get that instant communication with the customer that's there in store on site, that scans that QR code and then again utilizing the autopilot rating request of being able to send out those rating requests to say, hey, tell us how we did, did we meet or exceed those expectations, did we fall short? And then utilize the real time reviews feature, which, let's be honest, it lessens the brain drain. Right. If, if you can utilize Chat GTP to help craft a well written response.