Review management: What it is and how it benefits brands

Translating reviews into actionable steps allows you to take control of your online reputation, identify areas for improvement and showcase your commitment to customer satisfaction. But it can be time-consuming and often overwhelming, especially when you’re struggling to keep up with reviews on different platforms.

In this article, we cover what review management is, how it supports reputation management and what its benefits are. Plus, see the top five review management software to manage reviews for business intelligence and explore examples of how brands have used review management to their advantage.

What is review management?

Review management is the process of monitoring, responding to and using customer feedback across different online platforms. It involves actively tracking reviews on websites like Google, Yelp and TripAdvisor, as well as social media channels like Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly known as Twitter).

Promptly addressing negative reviews and expressing gratitude for positive ones shows your commitment to customer satisfaction. It helps you increase brand trust, leads to higher search engine rankings and ultimately, attracts more customers.

How review management empowers reputation management

Review management is a crucial component of reputation management, but it’s just one piece of the puzzle. Reputation management also includes:

• Social media listening
• News monitoring
• Customer experience
• Crisis communication

While online review management focuses on improving customer brand visibility, reputation management takes a broader view. It considers the expectations of various stakeholders—investors, employees, government institutions and the general public.

Incorporating review management into your overall reputation management strategy leads to a threefold effect: you gain valuable insights into customer perceptions, address customer concerns promptly and showcase your brand’s strengths to potential customers.

Reputation management also goes beyond customer interactions—it monitors social media and news outlets for brand mentions to ensure a positive customer experience across all touchpoints.

This ultimately leads to a stronger, more resilient brand.

5 benefits of review management for businesses

Review management helps you address immediate concerns, but it also sets the stage for long-term growth in five ways:

Measures business stability

Are your customers happy with your products or services? Positive reviews indicate satisfied customers who are less likely to be swayed by competitors. Negative reviews reveal on-edge customers who may be more susceptible to competitor offerings.

Use review management and insights to develop proactive strategies to counter customer attrition and strengthen business stability.

Builds customer loyalty

Engaging with customer feedback shows you value their opinions. This proactive approach turns satisfied customers into loyal advocates for your brand.

For example, multiple reviews mention long wait times at the Japanese restaurant Gyubee, but customers still gave 4-star ratings due to the exceptional food quality. Inserting image…

To address long wait times, Gyubee allows customers to get into a waitlist on Yelp which shows estimated wait times and the customer’s place in line. This transparency manages expectations and allows customers to plan.

By addressing the wait time issue and maintaining high standards, Gyubee can foster long-term customer loyalty.

Fuels competitor analysis

Review management platforms give you a unique view of customer sentiment on competitor products and services such as revealing common pain points. Use this information to your advantage. For example, if multiple reviews for a competing product mention poor customer service, emphasize exceptional support to gain an edge.

Plus, competitive analysis allows you to anticipate shifts in market share and demand. If a rival sees a sudden increase in 5-star reviews, it indicates increasing interest in their product you may need to counteract with tailor messaging and solutions.

Leads to personalized marketing

Review management provides valuable insights to help you develop targeted marketing strategies. When you analyze customer reviews based on demographics and sentiment, you understand the preferences, needs and pain points of different customer segments. Use these to create personalized experiences that foster genuine customer connections.

For example, reviews for Sprout on G2 highlight how lean corporate marketing teams benefit from its scheduling and reporting tools.

Replying to user reviews individually shows we value their feedback and use it to improve our product. We appreciate their input, highlight the impact of praised features and share how their feedback drives meaningful improvements that benefit them and similar users.

Plus, considering that reading reviews before purchase is quite important for 75% of software buyers, our presence on G2 works as a marketing channel in itself when potential customers research social media management sentiment analysis solutions and are looking for positive reviews that validate our value proposition.

Product innovation

Analyzing customer reviews provides valuable insights into your product roadmap. You uncover what your customers love, what they find lacking and what they hope to see in future iterations.

Reviews often have gems for product innovation and improvement that you can share with your development team. For example, this review for Semrush on G2 reveals the need for a multilingual platform:

These insights lead to potential product differentiation that can set Semrush apart from competitors in meaningful ways. Plus, the fact that the brand responded emphasizes its focus on customer satisfaction.

Top 5 review management software

To keep up with the constant influx of reviews across multiple platforms, you need a centralized solution to simplify the process and manage your online reputation. Here are our top five picks for review management software.

Sprout Social

Sprout Social improves online reputation monitoring by unifying social media and reviews in a single platform. Monitor and respond to reviews across the top four review platforms on the web: Facebook, Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor and Glassdoor.

Quickly sift through reviews with sorting, filtering and custom views to prioritize reputation management tasks that matter most.

Aggregated reviews and social data pinpoint opportunities for improving customer and employee experiences. This includes specific areas for improvement, like enhancing product features or customer response rates so you can directly impact the bottom line.

Sprout Social’s integrated platform and social media tools enable brands like yours to manage their reputation on both a granular and macro level. It also enables you to connect this data with social media business intelligence to maintain a holistic online presence. Experience the impact firsthand with a free trial of Sprout’s solutions designed to help you work smarter.

Podium

Podium facilitates online reputation management by connecting review sites in one platform. Automate asking for reviews, track feedback sources and monitor reputation improvements over time.

Quickly respond to reviews with personalized, on-brand replies using Podium’s assisted response tools. Visualize trends to understand performance and areas for focus.

Its strengths center on consolidating reputation efforts across review sites and saving time through automation and response assistance.

Mention’s The Brand Grader

Mention’s Brand Grader analyzes online reputation across the web. It tracks mentions, sentiment and metrics on various websites, review platforms and social channels.

With this bird’s-eye view, gauge overall brand sentiment, spot potential issues early and identify top sources of buzz and conversation about your brand online. The Brand Grader makes it easy to visualize and understand these important reputation indicators at a glance.

Birdeye

Birdeye is an AI-powered reputation management platform that simplifies monitoring and responding to reviews across 200+ sites from a single dashboard.

You can reply at scale while keeping a human touch with auto-response rules and personalized templates. Its language translation feature also automatically converts reviews into English and responds back in the customer’s language to enable multilingual customer service.

Trustpilot

Trustpilot helps you collect, manage and showcase customer reviews to build trust and drive growth. It integrates with tools like Zendesk, Freshdesk and Slack, so you can manage reviews without disrupting workflows. This streamlined approach saves time and ensures consistent review management.

Built-in tools also help you identify unknown reviewers and flag reviews needing attention to enable quick issue resolution and maintain profile integrity.

Use cases for leveraging review management

Business review management tools offer multiple ways to manage customer feedback. But their true value lies in how you translate their features into practical applications that drive meaningful change. Here are four use cases that show this in action.

Identify the reason behind lower customer satisfaction

Review management platforms enable you to dig deeper into customer sentiment data and pinpoint the root causes contributing to lower satisfaction scores.

Granular insights allow you to prioritize improvement efforts and address the most pressing customer concerns.

Picture a bustling chain of coffee shops with declining customer satisfaction. An in-depth customer feedback analysis reveals two issues: long wait times and inconsistent product quality.

They implement a new staff training program focusing on efficiency and consistency in product preparation. Plus, they introduce mobile ordering and payment options to reduce wait times during busy periods. This proactive approach displays their commitment to customer satisfaction.

Compare locations for variations in service

Location-based insights from review management platforms support consistent brand standards and ensure all customers receive the same high-quality experience, regardless of location.

By analyzing customer sentiment across multiple locations, you can identify differences in service quality and customer experience to pinpoint which locations are excelling and which need work.

Imagine a popular gym chain with multiple locations across a city. Sentiment analysis reveals one location emerging as a shining star while another one indicates room for improvement.

Peeling back the layers of aspect-based sentiment shows that customers at the underperforming location experience issues like limited equipment availability and less attentive staff compared to the high-performing location.

With these key takeaways, the gym has the details it needs to tackle these location-specific issues head-on and ensure a positive customer experience at every location.

Scope out what resonates with your customers

Understand what makes them tick by analyzing the frequency and sentiment of keywords and phrases in customer reviews. Use review management platforms to zero in on recurring themes, popular products or services and areas that require attention.

Word clouds like Sprout’s visually represent the frequency of words used in customer reviews, so you can quickly grasp which aspects are most important to your audience.

This visual representation is like a roadmap that guides you to the core elements driving customer sentiment and engagement. Concentrating on these aspects lets you fine-tune your offerings, messaging and overall customer experience to strike a chord with your target audience.

Monitoring changes in the word cloud over time will reveal shifting customer priorities and preferences, so you can stay nimble and adapt to evolving market demands.

Identify the trends in user experience

Review management allows you to keep your finger on customer satisfaction. Continuous monitoring spotlights emerging trends in user experience before they become widespread issues.

Imagine you own a popular e-commerce website selling clothing and accessories. As you monitor your customer reviews, you notice an increase in comments about checkout difficulties. Confusion over shipping options is causing some customers to abandon their carts, while limited payment options frustrate others.

As more reviews highlight these issues, you realize this trend threatens your sales and customer loyalty if left unaddressed.

You take action to improve your checkout process. You simplify the shipping options, offer clearer explanations and expand your payment methods to include popular digital wallets.

You then monitor subsequent reviews to see if there’s a marked improvement in customer satisfaction around your checkout experience.

Your proactive approach, guided by review management insights, would not only mitigate customer churn but also position your business as a customer-centric brand that listens and adapts to user needs.

Strengthen your market position with review management

When you compete on the littlest of details, every review matters. A 360-degree overview of customer sentiment allows you to manage your online reputation, build strong customer relationships and solidify your market position.

An all-in-one review management solution that also integrates with social enables you to do just that. From real-time alerts and in-depth analytics to seamless cross-platform publishing, Sprout enables you to make data-driven decisions and deliver top-notch customer experiences.

Learn how Sprout Social can help you unlock the full potential of business review management with a 30-day free trial.