Pros & Cons of Birdeye: Analysis of a Top Reputation Management Software

Online reputation can make or break a business. And there are so many channels where reputation-related issues can arise. Comments and reviews are publicly available from popular social networks and review blogs. Tracking them manually, particularly negative ones, is close to impossible. So, negative feedback may tend to hang out longer for everybody to see. This is bad for business; much worse when a company proves to be unresponsive.

Luckily, there are powerful reputation management software solutions available. The most comprehensive platform around today is Birdeye. It provides businesses with a top-down view of their brand presence and perception across the internet. But, it’s not only a visibility and monitoring tool. The platform also includes features for omnichannel engagement, complete with feedback generation features. Thanks to its comprehensive feature set, it is known as the best reputation management platform for businesses of all sizes and types across different industries.

Being the best, however, doesn’t mean that it is perfect. In this guide on the pros and cons of Birdeye, we will go over what makes Birdeye the leading solution available and also areas that can be improved. In this way, you’ll have a better idea of what the product can do for you and also potential issues that you may have with it.

There is some truth to the saying that reputation is more important than wealth. In today’s digitally enabled consumer culture, positive reviews and feedback can be a gift that keeps on giving. They help develop trust in your brand and, later, help generate sales in the long run. And you want multiple good ones as most online shoppers, at 54.7%, read at least four reviews before buying a product.

On the other hand, negative reviews can result in lost sales and sticky brand perception issues. In fact, in one study, 60% of consumers revealed that negative reviews have stopped them from making purchases. Hence, if there is a way to manage online reputation, one should really take it.

Fortunately, there are great tools to do that. These range from social media analytics solutions to customer relationship software. And companies have long been using multiple products to manage brand perception across different online channels. One problem, however, is reputation management processes are scattered across different departments and platforms. There’s no singular view; no united purpose. That is exactly what standalone reputation management platforms like Birdeye offer.

Overview of Birdeye

Birdeye is a cloud-hosted reputation management software, considered by many as the best solution available today. This is because it is a stand-alone, dedicated all-in-one reputation management software that brings together all the complex processes together in one program. It is prized for its comprehensive feature set and its customized roll-out for companies. As such, it is a go-to application for businesses of all sizes across a wide range of industries. Users range from those in the retail and restaurant industries to organizations in financial services and hospitality.

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The product is billed to help companies attract, convert, and delight customers. Its key features revolve around these functions. They include tools for managing listings, reviews, referrals, social media accounts, engagement, and payments. Moreover, it also has tools to collect and analyze customer feedback and competitor performance. It also leverages a powerful AI to process data to generate actionable insights. The comprehensiveness and cohesiveness of its features make it, in the eyes of many, far superior to Birdeye alternatives.

Furthermore, you can, in high probability, integrate Birdeye with your current and future software infrastructure. The cloud-based app integrates with more than 3,000 third-party tools. These include QuickBooks, Zoho CRM, and Freshbooks. Of course, it works seamlessly with Google, especially with apps and services such as its Business Profile, Knowledge Panel, and Seller Ratings. Lastly, Birdeye has three plans—Standard, Professional, and Premium. All of them, however, are only available via custom quotes as software rollout is highly personalized.

Pros and Cons of Birdeye

Real-Time Omnichannel Reputation Monitoring

There is one thing that a good all-in-one reputation management software must provide—real-time reputation monitoring capabilities across the internet. Birdeye simply has this down. Birdeye actively gathers review data from more than 200 partner sites. These include popular platforms such as Facebook, Airbnb, Amazon, and Google. Moreover, another great thing about its aggregation feature is you can align and categorize your received reviews with specific business locations. This allows users to get a clearer granular view of performance across branches.

With its powerful review aggregation technology, users can monitor incoming reviews in real time. Well, that is, most of the time. Since the platform pulls data from other sites, delivery can be delayed because of technical issues. In such cases, however, users get to receive updates within 24 hours after a review has been written. This, however, happens rarely.

Comprehensive Engagement Tools

Setting up the backend for Birdeye’s website chat.

Birdeye pairs omnichannel review monitoring with omnichannel engagement. Its messaging solution allows you to reach customers across webchat, social, and text. With this, you’ll be able to manage all conversations under one inbox and have a single source of truth. Also, it doubles as a virtual team communication tool that you can use to collaborate with teammates. Other engagement tools include social media management, ticketing, and mass texting. It even has an appointment management feature that you can use for scheduling support sessions or managing reservations. With these, you will be able to engage customers across different channels and cater to their specific needs.

Unlike other tools, Birdeye has an integrated social media management module. So, you don’t have to switch applications to manage this important aspect of your online presence. It is complete with post-scheduling features and it even comes with an intuitive easy-to-use visual editor to create engaging posts.

Its mass texting solution supports photos and PDF attachments. This makes it great for creating eye-catching promos. You can also personalize messages and address individuals by name. What’s also great about the platform is that you can turn any review, text, or message into a support ticket. This makes Birdeye a true end-to-end reputation-management-based engagement platform.

Take Surveys to Improve Customer Experience

Give customers a nudge to leave a review on your popular sites

Users can take advantage of Birdeye’s survey feature to make data-driven decisions for improving customer experience. Its survey builder is intuitive to use, enough for you to create and run surveys in minutes. It allows you to create different survey types and even enables you to create audience segments. The survey module is quite flexible. So, you can design them to be conversational to achieve a low-friction customer experience.

Furthermore, Birdeye has powerful survey automation capabilities. You can automate survey requests based on custom triggers and send them directly through messaging apps, email, and text. Also, it allows you to end your surveys with requests for reviews and referrals; and showcase positive reviews on Google and social media. This is very helpful in highlighting stellar customer service to the public.

AI-Powered Actionable Insights

Analyze thousands of survey data quickly with the help of Birdeye’s Athena AI

There isn’t really much use for raw data until you turn it into meaningful information. With Birdeye surveys, you easily can. No need for great technical expertise either. The platform is fitted with a powerful propriety artificial intelligence engine called Athena AI. The engine is powerful enough to sort and interpret thousands of responses in seconds. It helps users “humanize” big data and extract user sentiments about your brand or anything your survey is about. It instantly tracks your preferred key phrases and number of mentions. As such, Athena AI allows managers to analyze data quickly in minutes instead of hours and days.

You can also configure the engine to group relevant keywords into categories to provide insights on performance for specific business areas. Also, you can do this for different branch locations or service areas. The solution is powerful enough that it can stand as a dedicated survey tool.

While functionalities are on target, some loyal Birdeye clients find analytics features to be not so intuitive enough to configure for new users. Similar concerns have also been brought up in other aspects such as configuring review monitoring. As such, it takes new users a relatively long time to reach desired performance levels compared to other top platforms in different software categories. But, this is the usual trade-off for having a full-featured all-in-one system. It happens with other software solutions, too, that carry advanced capabilities, especially business intelligence tools. This, however, is not that big of an issue as Birdeye is well known for its great client onboarding process and customer service. And, let’s face it, the rewards after learning the platform far outweigh the relative difficulty of getting acclimated.

Manage Reviews and Referrals to Grow Sales

Birdeye enables users to send review and referral requests. And it makes it easy for customers to comply. Leaving a review for them is literally as easy as sending a text. Requests are very low-friction, thus, improving response rates. Requesting is also made easy for users. You can automate the sending of requests based on custom triggers like completed purchases and appointments. Furthermore, you can automate your responses to Google reviews based on triggers as well.

Birdeye allows you to leverage positive reviews by letting you showcase them on partner sites, especially Google. You can highlight them in the Google Knowledge Panel or share them on other online touch points. This helps improve brand perception and develop customer trust. In turn, this can turn your reputation points into sales.

Get a quick summary of your reputation across the internet

Manage Listings from One Dashboard

Birdeye has a very good listing management solution. It allows your brand to be virtually everywhere, thanks to its integration with more than 200 partner sites. The long list includes popular platforms such as Facebook, Amazon Alexa, Whereto, Foursquare, Merchant Circle, Expedia, and many more. Of course, popular search engines such as Google and Bing are there as well. Birdeye is also fitted with SEO tools to help your brand to appear at the top of search results. Also, it has easy-to-use controls for creating and updating listing information such as addresses and opening times.

Furthermore, its listing management solution comes with rich reporting and dashboard features. You can track performance at the global and branch levels, and gain real-time access to key metrics such as keyword ranking, traffic, and call volume. In this way, you’ll be able to identify opportunities for improvement.

Streamline Workflows with Role-Based Dashboards

Birdeye makes reputation management a truly collaborative endeavor. The platform comes with team management tools, including role-based dashboards and customizable workflows. Because it allows for a high level of coordination, it has become the software of choice for large enterprises as well as local businesses looking to grow. The extent of how it supports work organization, however, goes deeper than its team management features. Birdeye solutions are designed to work together to simultaneously generate, showcase, and improve online feedback posts. The way these features are stringed together provides the very objectives of the platform’s use. It offers a workflow funnel with each stage building off and influencing others. Hence, users won’t easily lose sight of what they need to do. Workflows are streamlined at both the meta and user levels. No ambiguity whatsoever.

Birdeye makes it easy to process payments right inside the application.

Convert and Accept Payments

As you already know, Birdeye is not your average reputation management software tool. It covers a lot of extra ground that platforms in the same category just do not do. This includes providing touch points at the start of the customer journey and even during the sales opportunities. And, thanks to its messaging and payment processing features, such opportunities can be quickly acted upon. Businesses can easily send payment requests via text or messaging should customers be ready to complete a purchase. As such, when payment becomes a part of the conversation, you don’t need to redirect the customer to another site and start another process. Make payments convenient by allowing them right then and there.

A Unique Business Solution

The pros and cons of Birdeye lend to us a really unique product. It has an ingenious way of using reputation management as a base to complement other business functions, especially marketing and CRM. If you think of marketing as front-facing and CRM as behind-the-scenes processes, Birdeye’s domain is somewhat somewhere in between. It complements the two yet produces some results in its own right. Reputation management within the Birdeye framework is both a lead generation and a clean-up operation—it identifies, mitigates, and turns around harmful user-generated content. And it also acts as a support for other business aspects as well including social media management, SEO, customer service, and even sales. It simply integrates reputation management into every digital touch point, making interventions available at any stage of a customer journey.

This is a one-of-a-kind competitive edge that software products do not really provide. As such, this makes Birdeye a solution that’s in a class all its own. Of course, like most things, it’s not perfect. The platform can be improved in terms of making the back-end setups more intuitive for new users. Birdeye is so comprehensive that, in its full deployment, it might feel that there’s too much going on. This can overwhelm first-time users and affect the time it takes to perform at an effective level. However, this really comes with the territory when adopting a platform. And, fortunately, Birdeye provides an effective onboarding experience and an easy-to-understand self-service knowledge base. So, users don’t really lack any after-sales support.

On Birdeye, the pros really outweigh the cons. It offers a unique and comprehensive set of competencies that other reputation management solutions cannot provide. For high-level reputation management, Birdeye could really be the only game in town.

By Louie Andre

B2B & SaaS market analyst and senior writer for FinancesOnline. He is most interested in project management solutions, believing all businesses are a work in progress. From pitch deck to exit strategy, he is no stranger to project business hiccups and essentials. He has been involved in a few internet startups including a digital route planner for a triple A affiliate. His advice to vendors and users alike? "Think of benefits, not features."