Best Review Management System? 15 Best Options To Manage Online Reviews
Date
Nov 15, 2024
Description
Find the perfect review management system with our guide to the top 15 options that help you enhance your online presence.
Status
Current Column
Person
Writer
Online reviews are a fact of life for nearly every business today. And while getting customer feedback might initially feel intimidating, this process can be a breeze with the right customer review tools. For instance, your latest product is getting a lot of reviews online. Rather than panicking, you can instantly check your review management system to see what customers say and respond quickly to any concerns. This not only helps your business improve its offerings but also allows you to enhance your online reputation and customer relations. In this blog, we’ll explore review management systems, including how they work, their benefits, and how to find the best customer feedback tools for your business.
One solution to consider is Testimonial software, which helps you collect, manage, and showcase customer reviews. This easy-to-use tool can boost your online reputation and improve your business's bottom line.
What Is A Review Management System?
A review management system is a tool or software platform designed to help businesses track, manage, and respond to customer reviews across multiple online channels. Businesses are increasingly relying on review management systems to stay on top of their online reputation and engage with their customers’ feedback, with the explosion of review sites like:
Google
Yelp
Social media platforms
82% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses, so review management is crucial. It allows you to understand what is being said about your business online and step in and rectify experiences when necessary. Consumers that read reviews will see that you:
Actively take notice of what is being said
Care about their experiences
Will appreciate that you take the time to make things right
The Importance of Review Management: Building Trust and Protecting Your Reputation
In addition, 9 out of 10 people read reviews before visiting or purchasing from a business, so paying attention to the sites where people talk about you can positively affect your customer acquisition. Considering that fake reviews are also a thing, managing ensures that your customers only see genuine reviews to help them make their decisions, whether positive or negative.
Having a review management strategy also helps you avoid damaging scenarios when you quickly identify negative or fake reviews and respond accordingly before the situation gets out of hand.
What Are The Benefits Of A Review Management System?
Boost Your Trust and Credibility with Customer Reviews
Online reviews are one of the most powerful forms of word-of-mouth advertising. According to Bright Local, 98% of consumers read online reviews, and 46% of consumers believe that reviews are an essential part of the decision-making process.
Responding to reviews, whether positive or negative, shows that you are a legitimate business and care about your customers.
Reviews Offer Business Insights for Strategic Decisions
Reviews offer key customer satisfaction data and highlight areas for improvement. They create a feedback loop, providing product development and marketing teams with the information needed to meet customer needs and expectations.
How Customer Feedback Helps Boost Retention Rates
By addressing customer complaints and acknowledging positive feedback, businesses can foster a sense of loyalty and appreciation among their customers. This engagement shows you value customer input and are committed to improving their experience. Consider reposting positive social media reviews as user-generated content, which can influence buying decisions.
Reviews Help You Get Ahead of the Competition
Customer feedback can be a gold mine for understanding your brand’s strengths and weaknesses and those of your competitors. You can capitalize on opportunities to stand out by listening to what customers say. For example, if complaints about poor customer service are rife in your competitors’ reviews, this is your chance to shine.
Leveraging Authentic Testimonials to Build Trust and Boost Conversions
Testimonial simplifies the process of building trust and credibility for businesses. Our testimonial software allows an accessible collection and display of authentic client testimonials featuring:
Video and text options
An embeddable ‘wall of love’ widget
A clever Email Assistant
Third-party review imports
This is ideal for:
Content creators
Agencies
eCommerce
SaaS companies
Testimonials help boost their credibility and conversion rates by showcasing real customer experiences. Build a wall of love for free today with Testimonial.
15 Best Review Management System & Software To Manage Online Reviews
1. Testimonial
Testimonial simplifies the process of building trust and credibility for businesses. Our testimonial software allows an accessible collection and display of authentic client testimonials featuring:
Video and text options
An embeddable ‘wall of love’ widget
A clever Email Assistant
Third-party review imports
This is ideal for:
Content creators
Agencies
eCommerce
SaaS companies
Testimonials help boost their credibility and conversion rates by showcasing real customer experiences. Build a wall of love for free today with Testimonial.
2. Sprout Social
At the forefront of the list of top online review management tools is Sprout Social, which functions as a one-stop shop for everything related to brand reputation management. Brands can take advantage of Sprout’s review management, social listening, and sentiment analysis features to monitor their brand’s online reputation at all times.
What are your customer’s opinions about your product?
Are there positive reviews gaining traction online that need to be documented?
Do you need to mitigate a social media crisis?
These are daily pain points that brands face, and Sprout Social provides easy-to-use features to help brands respond to feedback and tackle issues effectively. Sprout also can help your team increase ROI and efficiency through:
Automation
Chatbots
Artificial intelligence
3. Birdeye
This AI-powered platform helps brands manage their online review effortlessly and build great customer relationships. Birdeye is a tool that helps you leverage the power of AI so you can:
Boost ratings
Be more aware of customer feedback
Understand what your customers want
Through this online review management tool, businesses can gain customer experience insights to help them effectively target pain points and grow sales. Birdeye also helps to connect better with prospects through available social media channels. Establishing trust with your customer base significantly affects ROI and business growth.
4. Yext
Businesses with physical stores that need to regularly update their customers on location changes or expansion to multiple areas can use Yext to do this seamlessly. This is one of the best tools for managing your online footprint and helping customers find you easily.
Yext allows users to update search engines with relevant keywords and include their information in major online directories. It also offers personalized responses for better communication and a centralized review dashboard so brands can always be updated on positive or negative feedback online. There are no integrated features for social media management.
5. Trustpilot
Due to its broad reach as a public platform, brands can leverage Trustpilot to follow up on trends and conversations about their business and competitive advantages. Brands can encourage their customers to leave reviews here to build a positive reputation online.
You can also use this to monitor what customers say about your competitors and how you can improve your products to stay ahead of them in your industry.
6. Brand24
When choosing an online review management tool, a critical feature to watch out for is keeping track of what customers and critics are saying about your brand online. Brand24 features a media monitoring and analytics tool that does this satisfactorily. These tools provide brands with proper insight into their online presence.
Apart from this, you can stay updated on any keyword associated with your brand on social media, including:
Facebook
TikTok
Instagram
Twitter
Enhancing Brand Reputation with Review Monitoring and Sentiment Analysis Tools
It also monitors reviews on top review sites like:
Google App Store
Yelp
TripAdvisor
Brand24 features a tool that analyzes the performance of your keywords based on social media reach and sentiment analysis.
7. Mention
Mention features The Brand Grader, a dedicated tool for monitoring and analyzing online review management. The tracking runs across:
Various websites
Review platforms
Social media
Due to this wide reach, several brands can count on this online review management tool to provide valuable insights and timely updates whenever a keyword is mentioned with the brand. Gaining access to the sentiment analysis feature requires a pro plan that costs more.
8. Broadly
Broadly is a web-based, cloud online review management tool that makes small and medium businesses stand out within and outside their locality. For most small businesses, attracting leads through positive reviews and connecting with customers can be a hassle, especially when considering your competition’s quality and spread.
Broadly helps to make this easier by implementing features to help you do this from a single easy-to-use app. Some of these features include:
Streamlined email communication
Automated web chat
Automatically sending out review requests
Google leads
Reminders for clients about appointments
Managing all interactive social media platforms within one tool
9. Qualtrics
The primary feature of Qualtrics is to help brands collect and organize customer feedback through ready-to-use survey templates. These surveys can be distributed via diverse methods, including:
Chatbots
Web-based question-and-answer systems
In-app features
Mobile devices
Through this feedback, brands can learn first-hand what their customers think about their products and ways to improve their service delivery significantly. This is a handy way to listen in on conversations surrounding your brand’s image and act accordingly. Qualtrics is best for conducting market research around marketing and branding for your business, as it lacks social media management and competitive analysis features.
10. Reviewly AI
Reviewly AI is a new review management software that helps businesses get more Google reviews with AI. Reviewly AI enables you to one-click connect Google Business pages, which is great for:
Single-location businesses
Multi-location businesses
Agencies managing client businesses
You can also send automated SMS campaigns to customers for reviews, and it helps customers write AI-assisted, high-quality reviews—within seconds. Reviewly AI users can also leverage the AI assistant to better respond to customer reviews, saving you time and the headache of crafting the perfect response. The best part? Reviewly AI is affordable and offers a 7-day free trial across all business and agency plans.
11. SocialPilot Reviews
SocialPilot Reviews lets you generate, manage, and respond to reviews at scale, all from a single AI-powered platform.
Request reviews via automated email and SMS campaigns
Track feedback across multiple locations and brands
Foster customer trust by promptly addressing feedback
Optimize your online reputation and drive business growth with actionable insights from genuine customer reviews. You can analyze individual reviews to your customer success team to identify issues to resolve to optimize your tools and business. This allows you to optimize your reputation with actionable tasks.
12. ReviewTrackers
ReviewTrackers allows you to manage and monitor your reviews from 100+ review sites in an aggregate platform, giving you an overview of consumers' thoughts. You can assign individual reviews to specific people on your team based on their content, use a single-click button to share high-impact or high-priority reviews, and respond to reviews in accordance with your brand guidelines.
13. Podium
Another tool that simplifies online review management for local businesses is Podium. Podium focuses on driving more leads and building engagement by taking advantage of the seamlessness of texting. With this tool, customers can leave reviews for your products in a few clicks.
As a brand, you can:
Automate review invites
Track online trends and keywords
Respond promptly to reviews
Build better customer relationships through its interface
This online reputation management tool works great with Google Reviews and is handy for enhancing customer service. It doesn’t help with social media management or social listening.
14. Reputation
Reputation allows you to easily monitor, request, and respond to reviews on hundreds of third-party review sites. The platform also makes it easy to broadcast positive customer feedback on your website and across social platforms such as:
Facebook
Twitter
Google
You can take it further by analyzing review sentiment to uncover trends, analyze performance, and prioritize the next steps. Reputation's Review Booster can help you turn customer survey responses into ratings and reviews on Google, Tripadvisor, and more. By supercharging your review requests, Reputation can help increase review volume up to 40 percent.
15. GatherUp
GatherUp is a review management tool tailored for service-oriented businesses. It offers specialized tools like Net Promoter Score surveys and is heavily focused on personalized customer interactions and feedback management.
What To Look Out For In A Review Management System
Review Monitoring: Stay Ahead of the Game with Customer Feedback
Review management systems aggregate reviews from multiple platforms, allowing businesses to monitor what customers are saying in one place. This centralization helps companies:
Catch negative reviews early
Identify recurring themes
Celebrate positive feedback
Responding to Reviews: Build Customer Trust with Prompt Replies
Many systems allow businesses to reply directly to reviews from within the platform, making it easy to engage with customers without needing to visit each review site individually. Prompt responses to reviews can build customer trust and demonstrate excellent customer service.
Sentiment Analysis: Get the Big Picture of Customer Feedback
Review management systems often include sentiment analysis, which uses AI to evaluate the tone of reviews. This feature helps businesses quickly understand whether reviews are generally positive, neutral, or negative, aiding in faster decision-making for addressing common concerns.
Automated Alerts: Get Real-Time Notifications About New Reviews
These systems can send notifications for new reviews, allowing businesses to respond quickly. Receiving real-time alerts can be particularly helpful when addressing critical feedback, as fast responses are known to help mitigate the impact of negative reviews.
Analytics and Reporting: Uncover Insights to Improve Customer Experience
Review management systems provide insights into:
Review trends
Sentiment over time
Overall customer satisfaction
Some even offer competitive benchmarking, showing how a business's reviews compare to industry averages. These analytics can reveal valuable insights for operational and service improvements.
Review Generation: Build Up Your Positive Reviews
Some platforms include tools to encourage satisfied customers to leave positive reviews. These can be automated follow-up emails, in-app prompts, or other methods that guide happy customers to review sites.
Automate Gathering Customer Reviews With a Testimonial Tool
Collecting reviews manually takes time and effort. You must draft messages, wait for responses, and often follow up to get the necessary information. This process can lead to missed opportunities that delay displaying positive feedback that can help potential customers make informed decisions.
Testimonial tools like Testimonial automate collecting and displaying customer feedback, making it faster and more efficient. With platforms like this, you can:
Send automated requests
Capture testimonials in various formats (text, video)
Import reviews from third-party sources
Streamlining Testimonial Collection and Display with Automated Features and Social Media Integration
Testimonial also provides features like an embeddable “wall of love” widget, allowing you to showcase customer experiences directly on your site without hassle. This simplifies not only the collection but also presentation. A tool like Testimonial even let you import testimonials from review platforms like:
Google
G2
Facebook
From social media sites like:
Twitter (X)
Instagram
Some even have built-in invite systems so you can automatically invite people and track the status of their testimonials.
Email: The Original and Still the Best Way to Get Customer Reviews
Email requests remain one of the most effective channels for collecting customer testimonials because it's a very direct and scalable approach. Later in this post, you'll find testimonial email templates that simplify collecting testimonials via email.
You can ask for positive feedback in bulk by emailing your email list, or you can send an individual testimonial request by sending a direct message to my customer's email address.
Automating Testimonial Requests to Enhance Efficiency and Capture Positive Feedback
You can even set up an automation so happy clients receive an automatic email when they complete an action. For example, two days after buying my product, ask for a testimonial. After a positive customer service interaction, ask for a testimonial. That way, my customer success team won't need to remember to do this every time.
SMS: The Next Best Way to Get Customer Reviews
Text messages (or SMS) offer an intriguingly direct and personal channel for requesting customer reviews. Customers receive dozens, and sometimes hundreds of emails per day. In an age where inboxes are so cluttered, a text message can gracefully cut through the noise.
Because text messages are so direct, they carry a higher risk of intrusion or annoyance if not done thoughtfully. Make your request:
Respectful
Clear
To the point
Ideally integrate it as an already positive customer experience. This way, you encourage valuable testimonials while maintaining the sanctity of personal space.
Collect Reviews Directly From Your Website
The header or footer of your website serves as prime real estate for collecting valuable feedback. It's an area consistently visible to your audience, often catching their eye right before they navigate away or complete an action on my site. Strategically placing a simple but engaging call-to-action (CTA) here can encourage loyal customers to share organic feedback.
Since they're already on your platform, this minimizes friction, making it exponentially easier for them to participate. It's convenient, coupled with visibility!
Pro tip: When collecting testimonials passively, use incentives like discount codes and gift cards to encourage more people to leave testimonials.
Social Media: Tap Into Your Existing Followers to Get Customer Reviews
If you've already built a social media following, you're sitting on a gold mine for collecting testimonials. Your audience is engaged, they know your brand, and they're likely to have positive experiences they're willing to share.
A single well-crafted post asking for reviews can generate immediate and numerous client testimonials and, sometimes, even traffic via public social media posts.
Ask for Testimonials in Person
If you’re new to this and don’t have an established email list of customers, asking in person can also be effective. Whenever your customers come to your shop, you can kindly ask them for a written or video testimonial. This way of asking is convenient for business owners who nurture face-to-face relationships.
Be Active On Review Platforms
It can be difficult for customers to leave you reviews if your business doesn’t have an online presence. For this reason, it’s essential to have active accounts on review platforms so customers can review you. Some of the most common review platforms are:
Yelp
Facebook
Google
Better Business Bureau
Follow Up After Recent Purchases or Interactions
Don’t leave your customers to the wind after they purchase or interact with your business. Instead, allow them to immediately connect with your company through surveys, social media, and more. Increase customer engagement by:
Automating these follow-up messages
Quickly responding to comments and questions
Using AI agents for 24/7 support
Simplify the Review Process
Show you appreciate your customers’ business and time by simplifying how and where they can leave reviews. A complicated review process is less likely to result in positive reviews or feedback.
Here’s how to make it easy for clients:
Link review site pages in social media bios and email newsletters.
Set up messaging software so customers can leave reviews directly through their preferred channels.
Meet customers where they are by being available on various:
Sites
Channels
Mediums
Make links clickable and guarantee they lead to the correct pages.
Whether you’re requesting reviews about your social media customer service, a specific product, or something else, respect the time and energy clients spend leaving detailed, helpful feedback.
Build a Wall of Love for Free Today with Testimonial
Let Customers’ Voices Ring Out Loud and Clear with Testimonial
Client testimonials are a crucial part of any business review management system. They impress visitors, boost conversion rates, and help create trust between companies and customers.
Testimonial simplifies the process of building trust and credibility for businesses. Our testimonial software allows easy collection and display of authentic client testimonials, featuring:
Video and text options
An embeddable “wall of love” widget
A clever email assistant
Third-party review imports
This is ideal for:
Content creators
Agencies
eCommerce
SaaS companies
Testimonials help boost your credibility and conversion rates by showcasing real customer experiences. Build a wall of love for free today with Testimonials.