Here at Akira, we pride ourselves in helping restaurants take charge of their online reputation. Several months ago, a major burger chain reached out asking for help managing feedback, reviews, and listings for their 100+ restaurant locations.

Their team felt overwhelmed trying to manage all their silos of direct feedback. And their online reviews and listing management was being done in a different platform, making it difficult to build a 360° view of what their customers were saying.

The burger chain now uses Akira to manage listings, direct feedback, and online reviews and has completely transformed their online reputation. Read on to learn the four major challenges the team faced and how Akira's product easily solved each one.

Online Reputation Problem #1: They had feedback and review silos everywhere, and it was impossible to manage

This major burger chain has a lot of locations, but their corporate team is relatively small. They were managing direct feedback from:

• Website contact forms
• Phone calls
• Emails
• Letters
• Online ordering platform

And managing online reviews from:

• Google
• Yelp
• Tripadvisor
• Social media accounts

Their team had no way to streamline and manage all of their direct feedback and online reviews in one place. Their process was disjointed and time-consuming—and they struggled to assign, track, and resolve issues across the various platforms.

TL:DR? Successfully managing all direct feedback and online reviews for 100+ locations was impossible for their small corporate team.

How Akira Solved This For The Major Burger Chain:

Akira's platform gave them a single platform to manage of all of their direct feedback and online reviews.

Since it's so much easier to manage, they now respond to ALL of their feedback and reviews in a fraction of the time. Because remember, it's important not to 'ghost' your guests.

Everyone is on the same page, with full transparency, and the teams know exactly what needs to be addressed.

Online Reputation Problem #2: The reputation management platform they were using was costly and for online reviews only

The burger chain had an existing reputation management platform in place, but it was separate from the system used to manage their direct feedback, and came with a ton of limitations including:

• Inability to take conversations with guests offline
• No tracking process for guest follow-up/feedback
• No holistic view of direct feedback and online reviews
• No scorecards or sentiment analysis

Because of the above limitations, the restaurant chain was dropping the ball when it came to protecting their brand online—and it was costing them.

How Akira Solved This For The Major Burger Chain:

Akira's platform eliminated the need for two separate platforms and made it possible to manage all their reviews and direct feedback under one unified platform.

Akira created a system of accountability for the restaurant chain. It helped them establish who owned what, and let them see exactly where all direct feedback and online reviews stood. They no longer had to guess what their next step was, it was organized and clearly outlined for them.

Building a feedback loop with customer was now easy to do. Guests who left reviews detailing a concern, were given a path for followup, and the restaurant was empowered to win-back that guest. And because everything was tracked in Akira, including any direct follow-up by guests, the burger chain had a complete picture of what happened from initial contact to resolution.

Finally, with everything in one place, building a 360° view of their guest sentiment was now possible to do, making it easier than ever to drive operation change with confidence.

(Pssst...want to know the best way to handle bad reviews? Check out, A Step-by-Step Guide to Responding to Bad Google Reviews)

Online Reputation Problem #3: Keeping all of their locations' online listings accurate was challenging

Speak to any restaurant manager or owner, and you're bound to hear about challenges they face keeping their online listings accurate and up-to-date. Now multiply that by over 100 and that's what our customer was up against.

In addition to the above, the burger chain struggled with Google's automatic listing updates—which were prone to user or Google suggested updates that were inaccurate and lead to frustrated customers.

There was no single source of truth for maintaining and updating their listings—which meant keeping them accurate was a struggle.

How Akira Solved This For The Major Burger Chain:

The beloved burger chain now uses Akira as their single source of truth for their location information and can see at a glance the status of each listing.

Akira allowed them to make updates directly within the platform that would syndicate across all major online listings (Yelp, Google, etc.) including:

• Bulk updates and scheduling
• Error detection and notifications
• Duplicate detections and merging

Online Reputation Problem #4: They weren't getting actionable feedback and review insights to track restaurant sentiments or improve guest experience

Like many restaurants we talk to, our customer struggled to understand how to address problems revealed by reviews. Was it a one off issue? Or was it indicative of a larger problem?

It was impossible to tell, because they weren't calculating NPS or sentiment scores or analyzing direct feedback and online reviews in a way that was actionable.

There was no process in place for benchmarking or to even leverage insights from what the feedback and reviews were telling them, and so there was no easy way to improve operations and guest experience.

How Akira Solved This For The Major Burger Chain:

Akira's NPS and scorecard capabilities were a game-changer for the burger chain. They now understand how each restaurant is performing, and if they're trending in the right direction.

The scorecards provided the actionable insights needed to make measured improvements.

It also helped them analyze trends to understand general sentiment and overall consistency.

Akira's on-demand insights have helped this well-known burger concept boost sentiment across restaurants and provide a more consistent guest experience.

Akira + Popular Burger Chain = ❤️

A few months into using Akira the fast casual burger concept has seen notable improvement on their online reputation management. Their ratings have increased for many locations and they are using the scorecard insights as a benchmarking tool to improve guest experiences.

Plus, they're able to do all of the above easier than ever, and in a fraction of the time it took before investing in Akira.

Don't let unruly feedback ruin your restaurant. Let's Revolutionize the process together.