How to Build a Successful Multi-Location Review Management Strategy

Company reviews reflect the customer’s impression of the transaction and the quality of the company’s service. If customers successfully get what they want, it is an effective way to increase brand loyalty, encourage repeat purchases, and ultimately help your company grow. 

The matter is that your customers already know what they want from your brand, so you need to meet their expectations consistently. Managing reviews provides quantitative and qualitative information to assess customer needs and ensure their satisfaction at each point of contact. While it can be challenging for companies with a single location, running a multi-location review management strategy means the efforts are multiplied.

Local Consumer Review Survey shows that 87% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses. The number is impressive enough to maintain a brand reputation and foster trust among potential clients. This post will include considerations about multi-location review management for any business model.

Multi-Location Models for Review Management

Whether you have a corporate office with different franchise locations or a business with physical stores in multiple places, the following models are options for review management.

Corporate office’s review management

The first option is that a corporate office will be responsible for review management. In this case, the corporate office’s customer service and marketing departments will handle all the reviews left for all the locations. Everything is managed from one place, and it is easier to control all the responses and overall communication. 

A weak spot of this approach is that the corporate does not know all the nuances in the specific location. Therefore, it may be time-consuming to reach the location’s manager to clarify the situation and handle the review properly if any issue occurs. 

Individual location’s review management

The second option is that each location manages its reviews. While the corporate can provide the review management strategy, the specific location is the first to react and handle the reviews.  

The downside here is possible business dilution. Along with 90% of locations with properly handled reviews, you may have 10% of those who do not follow the review management strategy. These poorly reviewed ones will still define your company. 

Key Steps to Consider When Building a Franchise Review Strategy

Answer the following questions to decide which review model is the best for your business. 

• Who will manage the workload? If you are a small local chain of identical shops, it would be best to let the corporate office handle the reviews. The specific employee or a small team could easily manage multiple location reviews. If your hundreds of locations vary from each other, having a designated person at each location is the proper way out.
• How much control does corporate need? Involving many people in the review process may result in brand dilution. Responses are similar when the corporate office handles reviews. When review management is on franchise locations, they will need a clear plan and training to handle them and represent your brand solidly.
• Consider frictions when building your strategy. No one likes bureaucratic hassle. In an ideal world, the customer service department responds to reviews promptly and offers solutions to unsatisfied customers. Sure thing, you do not want your corporate office to read reviews, address the issue with the location’s representatives, arrange a meeting to discuss the situation, and more.
• Where are your locations? It will be enough for a cafe with a few locations to have one team responsible for review management. If your numerous locations are thousands of miles away from the corporate, it will make sense for the individual location to contact customers.  
• What industry are you running the business in? For instance, when talking about a clothing or electronics store, they have the same inventory and store training for each location. It is essential to collect the overall product reviews; location-based reviews are not critical here. The hospitality industry relies on location-specific reviews since they all may differ from each other. 

Review Sites to Claim Your Business On

Your company’s presence on these sites and portals will give feedback and help customers contact you faster.

Google My Business

Google My Business reviews help receive valuable information about your business and encourage its growth. It is essential to note here that to get reviews from Google, you need to know Google’s policy, your business should be marked on Google Maps, and you need to confirm your Google My Business profile. Google My Business profile not only optimizes your brand for local search but also provides benefits for review management. 

Facebook

Facebook allows to fill in the main company page and add locations. Each location’s page can be individually managed.

When you click the ‘More’ button on the main bar and ‘Stores,’ you will get a map with all the stores. Click any location marked on the map to access the individual location page where the location manager can work with the reviews. 

TripAdvisor

We know TripAdvisor as a popular website for travelers. It provides information about housing, attractions, entertainment venues, air tickets, car rental. You can add your business to the site for free and attract customers through it. Respond to reviews and get access to free tools to request feedback about the company.

How to Better Manage Your Multiple Location Reviews

Online reputation management should be comprehensive. Use the maximum number of ways to interact and influence the target audience to get the expected effect. Today, there are options to run a multi-location review management strategy and be all on the same page. Below we have listed a few ideas.

Use review management tools.

Review management tools help collect feedback, encourage current users to leave reviews more often, and respond promptly to negative ones.

Vista Social’s review management tools allow multiple social profiles, review sites, and locations from one expertly crafted platform. With a few clicks only, you will get complete oversight of your online reputation and grow customer loyalty and trust.

Build a review management strategy

Reputation management is an essential component of marketing policy, which implies regular monitoring of company mentions in social media, prompt response to negativity, and establishing communication with consumers. Building a review management strategy is a must when it comes to multiple locations or franchises. 

Review management strategy for a multiple-location business is a detailed roadmap for countering the information threat, calculating risks, and possible options for solving the problem. This way, all the business locations are in sync with various issues. 

Create templates to keep the brand consistent

It is possible to assume that your clientele leaves quite common complaints and praises, and you solve a limited list of emerging problems. That is where you can use reply templates to simplify your work process and keep your business consistent. 

By creating a library of high-quality templates, you can ensure that your clients will receive flawless, pre-tested with the best editing and spelling tools, responses that answer the client’s questions and reviews.

If a specific location has some freedom to communicate with clients, you should create a brand voice guide. It will ensure that all the locations sound with the same tone of voice, representing your brand personality and values.

Analyze business reviews 

It is preferable to rely on objective data rather than intuition or personal experience to make the right decisions and evaluate your strategy. That is where analytics comes in. 

Measure the metrics that matter using Vista Social’s easy-to-understand platform. You will save time with a suite of super easy-to-use, user-friendly, and customizable reporting options that makes your job a breeze. The tools help track product trends, interests, and common friction points.

Conclusion 

As practice shows, all companies are vulnerable to negative impact: big brands like Nike, small companies, beauty salons, barbershops, and small online stores. Today, online reputation decides the fate of individuals and brands; it directly affects the image, audience loyalty, and profit. So whether you run a single location business or a multiple-location one, proper running a review management strategy is a must.

Consider Vista Social as an all-in-one platform that will bring your review management and analytics to a new level. You will quickly and easily get alerts on reviews to ensure that every review contributes and informs your business strategy. Explore Vista Social’s features for free (no credit card required).