Great product almost

What are the best aspects of this product?

In terms of the purpose of this product which is making it easy for your customers to rate and review you online, this product works. We used the product for a year and it really did make a difference for our google, yelp and facebook reviews, both in number and quality. The triggering of an email or text and notifications to me, the owner, whenever there was a review, positive or negative, was fantastic. They made it easy for me to stay on top of the quality of our work in 4 locations with sales associates and service providers in each.

What aspects are problematic or could work better?

Many of our patients have aol accounts for email. While it is easy for the younger generation to just create a gmail account in order to add a review, our patients don't trust the ease and are resistant to having to take that step in order to represent us. Also, while we had no difficulties with google reviews in the first 8 months, later on when google changed their algorithms, we lost 7 reviews in one location and 10 in another. We never did resolve how that happened or why, but to birdeye's credit, they gave me 3 months of complimentary service while I tried to work with google to get them back. I never did and it's not like yelp where they're just suppressed but can be seen through additional links. They were actually deleted. Unfortunately, this shook my confidence in birdeye's knowledge and abilities and ultimately led to my terminating the contract due to the expense and my worry that this might happen again.

Finally, after making the decision, I called to cancel and it so happened the renewal was to happen the next day. So they gave me until the end of the day to collect my things and go (download the existing reviews so I could help the patients who's reviews got deleted to re-submit them on google), and while I fully intended to get that done, forgot and was locked out. When I called the next morning to see if they could just send them to me or allow me to login briefly to grab them, the answer was no, a new contract would be required. Now I understand the pressure tactic as a business owner and yes, I take full responsibility for the screw up, but bottom line, I run my company from a stand point of outstanding customer service. This is rare in this day and age which always surprises me since online presence and visibility is like never before. I feel finishing things with a customer being satisfied always allows that customer to come back. But if I leave with the feeling that ultimately, the business doesn't care, the money is more important, I won't be back. It's a trust issue.

What features/services would you like to see in future versions of this product?

I would like the cost to be lower. Almost $600 for 4 locations per month seems steep to me. It's a convenient platform but I can pay $200/month for as many locations as I want and have auto emails triggered through a generic platform like infusionsoft. Also, finding a way to get google reviews online without requiring the step of creating an account would be nice (see below), although as our elderly continue to age and the next generation who are already internet savvy need our help instead, this desired feature will go away.

What specific problems in your company were solved by this product?

We are a health related company servicing the elderly community and we had a very difficult time figuring out how to make it easy for them to get reviews online since they generally are not as savvy at online usage. By placing an ipad with Birdeye's interface front and center in each of our locations, finally they were able to easily and quickly give us reviews that if they had a gmail or facebook account, would get posted to our google reviews and/or facebook reviews. It was fantastic for this purpose and while pricey, seemed worth the cost since it had solved a very difficult problem for us.

Are you a current user of this product?

No