Gain More Positive Reviews, and Reduce Negative Reviews by Using Swarm’s BirdEye Dashboard
  • June 2nd, 2021
  • Branding Marketing
  • David Fugit

Title image: Swarm BirdyEye Dashboard

How Swarm's BirdEye Dashboard can help you manage your company’s reputation online

This article introduces you to Swarm’s BirdEye service, a tool that our clients use to easily manage their listings and reviews – even for companies with multiple locations. This affordable tool is offered by Swarm to our customers. This article will explain how to get started if you are interested in how to gain more positive reviews. If you already know you’d like to have a conversation with us, or are ready to get started, please click here to contact us

As the consumer world moves more and more online, the value of positive online reviews continually increases. While one of the most important things that a business can do is to manage its reviews and claim its listing on as many sites as possible, it can be time-consuming to manage and a daunting task to take on.

We will answer the following questions: 

  • Why are reviews important to my business?
  • How can I manage my business’s reputation with BirdEye?
  • How does BirdEye work? 

If you are interested in improving your listings and reviews after reading this post, we believe you will find Swarm’s Online Reputation Management powered by BirdEye a great fit. If you have any questions or would like to try the BirdEye dashboard for yourself, please let us know, and we’d be happy to help.

Overview view of Swarm BirdyEye Dashboard

Why Are Reviews Important To My Business?

Before the internet became a place for everyone to voice their opinions and share them with the world, word of mouth was the key to a local business’s success. Customers who had a bad experience were likely to share the story with their friends and families, hurting the business’ potential. They could also refer others based on a good exchange with the business, but whether good or bad, a company often had no idea what their customers were saying. They also did not have any control over how to address customers’ concerns unless the individual came to them and requested help.

Now that online reviews populate sites from Yelp to Google to small business websites, the value of reviewing a business has drastically increased. Where a bad verbal review could previously hurt a business in a community, now bad reviews can hurt businesses anywhere in the world. A research study found that 93% of consumers have used the internet to find a local business in 2020, and 34% of them search for one every day.

How Reviews Affect Customers

Most customers will read reviews for a business or product before ever deciding to purchase or visit. With the continued upward trend of mobile phone usage, more and more people turn to the internet for information on local businesses than ever before. 79% of consumers say that they would trust a review online just as much as a personal recommendation from friends or family. 

A few of the ways that reviews affect customers include:

  • Offering unbiased information regarding products and services
  • Answering questions that the company may not
  • Relating to individual struggles and problems
  • Offering suggestions for ways to have a better experience

How Reviews Affect a Business

A business wishing to succeed should take full advantage of the opportunities reviews offer them to connect with customers – both current and potential. When they do not address bad reviews and unhappy customers, the business can suffer from it. Consider the statistic that only 48% of consumers are willing to consider a business with a rating lower than four stars. While some consumers agree that a few negative reviews provide an accurate overall picture of a business or product, many bad reviews can significantly impact the potential of that business to attract new and returning customers.

Besides Google My Business, the place people are most likely to look for a company, many other sites provide a place for consumers to voice their opinions. Leveraging all of the resources is recommended for a business but is also overwhelming.

How reviews affect businesses

How Can I Manage My Business’s Reputation with Swarm’s BirdEye Dashboard?

Addressing customer’s negative experiences and gaining their positive reviews for excellent experiences is a highly effective way to improve your business’s reputation online. Monitoring your listings and reviews will help you address any concerns, providing customers with an accurate picture of your business.

Swarm offers the BirdEye dashboard, an online reputation management platform for businesses large and small. We are able to offer this easy-to-use software to owners and managers to see all the listings and reviews for their business in one location. Our clients enjoy a significant discount off of the standard BirdEye pricing, as well as the help of our experienced team in managing their account. In addition, our clients enjoy the flexibility of a month-to-month payment plan. Compared to the standard year-long term offered by BirdEye, our clients can implement this service without the rigidity of an annual contract. A few of the features that may be helpful include:

  1. Management of multiple locations from one account
  2. The ability to manage listings on 75+ sites
  3. Review service to manage and reply to reviews from within the system
  4. Automation to ask for reviews from contacts
  5. Contact import from/export to CMS systems

Management of multiple locations from one account

For businesses with multiple locations, managing all listings and reviews from one account can prove very helpful. Reputation management can be an overwhelming process, and this feature of BirdEye can help alleviate the stress involved.

Users can filter each part of Swarm’s BirdEye dashboard by location, city, state, and more to provide data snapshots as needed. You can also view reviews or other data by time period. Many consumers feel that any review older than three months is immaterial, so focusing on recent reviews and customers may provide the most valuable return on your investment.

The ability to manage listings on 75+ sites

Google, Yelp, and Facebook are helpful for all kinds of businesses, but BirdEye also supports sites for specialized industries. Doctors or medical clinics can link to their WebMD pages and similar sites, while a lawyer could manage her listing on Justia.com and Lawyers.com. Providing benefits to businesses in all industries, the BirdEye dashboard from Swarm allows you to customize your account and dashboard with the sites and listings that mean the most to you.

Review service to manage and reply to reviews from within the system

One of the most helpful features of Swarm’s BirdEye service is the ability to view, reply, and manage reviews from within the software. By adding Google My Business page and other similar company listings, users can filter and view all reviews in one easy-to-use location. When customers post reviews detailing a negative experience, BirdEye users can respond to them from the software, ask for more information, or provide helpful feedback or discounts.

Graphs view of Swarm BirdyEye Dashboard

Automation to ask for reviews from contacts

We often recommend that companies add their contacts into the BirdEye system right away after a transaction or visit. Upon entering their information into the system, the company can instantly send customers a text or email asking them to complete a review based on their experience. Leveraging recent experiences can increase the likelihood that customers will leave a review.

The messages and campaigns that companies send through the BirdEye dashboard are entirely customizable. The software integrates with Zapier and Quickbooks, sending an automatic email/text reminder as soon as a customer pays their invoice.

Contact import from/export to CMS systems

If your business already uses a content management system (CMS), contacts can be imported to BirdEye from Swarm, relieving the need to retype any contact information. Additionally, if a company finds that BirdEye has contacts that the CMS does not, they can easily export contacts out of Swarm’s BirdEye dashboard and into the CMS.

Why select the Swarm BirdyEye Dashboard

How Does Swarm’s BirdEye Work?

The advantage that BirdEye gives businesses is in its simplicity and organization. By eliminating the need to switch between accounts for different locations or go from site to site to update company listings, BirdEye reduces the time needed to manage your company’s reputation properly.

BirdEye allows you to manage your reputation by:

  1. Streamlining your company listings
  2. Getting ahead of negative reviews
  3. Responding to reviews

Because Swarm believes the BirdEye dashboard will provide additional value to our clients, we can also offer the service at a special rate. We believe that this reputation management tool can help improve your business’s profile and rating online.

Review Management view Swarm BirdyEye Dashboard

Streamlining your company listings

Sites like Google My Business, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Foursquare offer consumers contact information and details about businesses. With 34% of consumers looking for a local business online every day, having up-to-date and accurate information is crucial to attracting new customers. 

With Swarm’s Online Reputation Management powered by BirdEye, you can manage all of your company listings in one location. Rather than logging in to each site individually, finding the right tabs and places to update (and then remembering them next time), companies can link your BirdEye dashboard up to dozens of different sites all at the same time. Having a uniform presentation across the internet can help increase your business’s credibility and reputation to potential customers.

Getting ahead of negative reviews

One of the most significant advantages that the BirdEye dashboard from Swarm offers companies is getting ahead of negative reviews before they happen. With the automation available in this service, customers can be sent an email or text asking for their experience. If it was negative, they are asked, “why was it bad?” If they are willing to provide information about their experience, a company can seek a solution for the problem and attempt to resolve their dissatisfaction. 

As many as 70% of complaining customers (who might otherwise leave a negative review) will give a business another chance if their concerns are satisfactorily resolved. This is a tremendous advantage for a company, as they may gain repeat customers that they might otherwise lose because of a negative experience.

Responding to reviews

Because of the ability to respond to all reviews in one place, company managers can streamline their conversations with customers. One study found that 89% of consumers said they read replies to reviews, while 20% of consumers said that they expect to receive a response within one day of leaving their review. By reaching out to all customers who leave negative or positive reviews, companies start and can continue conversations with people they might otherwise lose due to a bad experience. 

Considering that it only takes most users less than ten reviews to make up their mind about a company, we highly recommend our clients take advantage of Swarm’s BirdEye dashboard as a simple solution that enables a business to improve its rating online.

Looking for more?

If your business is online, it has a reputation. How you manage it is up to you, but we have explained why we believe a system like the BirdEye dashboard is a solid investment into improving your company’s image and ratings. When time is at a premium and people are always looking for information on local businesses, tools that simplify and streamline reputation management provide a high return on your investment. 

If you have any questions or would like to try the BirdEye dashboard from Swarm for yourself, we would be happy to help. Please contact us right now if you’d like a free demo of how Swarm’s BirdEye platform could add value to your business.