Google Reviews Monitoring

[hajnasiewicz]

Hi, can anyone recommend tools for monitoring Google reviews for chain business (200 locations). I'm looking for a tool to help drive efficiencies into the review management process. Thank you.

 

[JoyHawkins]

GatherUp 100% I have a friend that works there and deals with agencies if you want an introduction.

 

[Tim Colling]

I agree with recommending GatherUp. I don't have clients with 200+ locations (I wish!) but GatherUp is certainly my review tool of choice these days.

 

[Henry LocalClarity]

Carolyn,

LocalClarity is designed primarily for multi-location businesses. Most clients are about the size you mention so the per-location pricing is very competitive.

 

[BenFisher]

Yup, I concur... We use GatherUp too.

 

[hajnasiewicz]

Thank you everyone!

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Grade.Us should get a mention but we don't have any clients with that many locations.

 

[Tim Colling]

Grade.Us should get a mention but we don't have any clients with that many locations.

I do not recommend Grade.us

I used to use them but I found that their support became unreliable and unresponsive. For a period of an entire week, they did not respond to requests for support.

GatherUp is easier to use, more useful in many ways, and their support is superb.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

I do not recommend Grade.us

I used to use them but I found that their support became unreliable and unresponsive. For a period of an entire week, they did not respond to requests for support.

GatherUp is easier to use, more useful in many ways, and their support is superb.

Good to know.

My experience with support has been different. I wouldn't say their support is superb but it's serviceable. They usually reply to me within 24 hours.

I've always thought both services offer the same benefits. Plus my profiles on grade.us are insanely cheap because I have a legacy account.

After using Grade.Us, what features of Gatherup would you say they have over Grade.Us? Maybe I should switch.

 

[Tim Colling]

After using Grade.Us, what features of Gatherup would you say they have over Grade.Us?

To be fair, I don't know anything at all about how their (1) their features, or (2) their support are since I fired Grade.us and switched to GatherUp in May 2018.

What I can say is that at that time, a year ago, support at Grade.us was bad (as mentioned above) and the features were, well, not very easy to use, for the most part. Composing the review request emails was very difficult, with a quirky UI that often lost all the work I had done and also arbitrarily removed things that I wanted left in, but I cannot remember now what those were. One thing that I DID like about Grade.us, that GatherUp does not yet have, is automatic sharing of favorable google reviews out to Facebook, but in the overall big picture that's a relatively minor thing.

I also really respect Mike Blumenthal's experience and expertise and so that is another reason (for me, at least) to lean in favor of counting on GatherUp for the future.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

To be fair, I don't know anything at all about how their (1) their features, or (2) their support are since I fired Grade.us and switched to GatherUp in May 2018.

What I can say is that at that time, a year ago, support at Grade.us was bad (as mentioned above) and the features were, well, not very easy to use, for the most part. Composing the review request emails was very difficult, with a quirky UI that often lost all the work I had done and also arbitrarily removed things that I wanted left in, but I cannot remember now what those were. One thing that I DID like about Grade.us, that GatherUp does not yet have, is automatic sharing of favorable google reviews out to Facebook, but in the overall big picture that's a relatively minor thing.

I also really respect Mike Blumenthal's experience and expertise and so that is another reason (for me, at least) to lean in favor of counting on GatherUp for the future.

Understood. I haven't had those same issues for the most part. But I don't blame you for moving on at all. If I was facing those issues I probably would have as well.

The frustrating thing about both companies, I will say, is that the review sharing on your website is not elegant at all. I've brought this up to Grade.Us but I'm not sure it went anywhere. If GatherUp made the reviews look like these guys do with all the sorting features etc. then I would use GatherUp Business Reviews Bundle plugin for WordPress. If Grade.Us did this then it would cement me with them. But until then, I'll keep using this plugin to display the reviews.

 

[Tim Colling]

If GatherUp made the reviews look like these guys do with all the sorting features etc. then I would use GatherUp Business Reviews Bundle plugin for WordPress. If Grade.Us did this then it would cement me with them. But until then, I'll keep using this plugin to display the reviews.

Yes, I like that one but I don't use it right now.

 

[hajnasiewicz]

I appreciate everyone's input. Thank you!

 

[Garrett Sussman]

Hey Carolyn,

Garrett Senior Content Marketing Manager from Grade.us here.

I wanted to chime in and address some of what @Tim Colling said. He is absolutely correct. At the time of Tim's need, we had a retreat and completely dropped the ball when it came to a proper response in a timely manner. I actually gave Tim a call and spoke with him personally after the fact. I think it was a major wake up call to how we could do better.

In the year since, we've worked incredibly hard to improve our support and our communications. We now send out monthly newsletters with better updates on our features. We hired 3 new support reps. Kevin, Wes, and Tory, they are all great! We also recently hired a director of customer success Kelly, who has been trying to improve our team and protocols across the board. I'm really excited about the direction of our team. It was unfortunately to lose Tim, but he's in great hands with Aaron, Mike and the Gatherup team. I've always heard great things about their support as well!

Thanks for being such a loyal customer for so long Tim, and I am sorry that your experience with Grade.us left such a bad taste in your mouth.

p.s. Thanks @JoshuaMackens for mentioning us! I'm glad to hear that your experience has been positive and we definitely appreciate your support! Our conversation has had an impact on our road map, but I hope it's within the time frame of your expectations. I am an advocate for design (in general) as well.