Interview with ReviewPoint CEO and Founder Alex Hagan

ReviewPoint CEO Alex Hagan, discusses the role reviews play in growing your business and how to take advantage of ReviewPoint’s free six-month service.

Video Transcript

Gera Yeremin: Last month DriveSavers offered a six-month subscription for ReviewPoint reputation management service to help your business get more five-star reviews online, this offer is still open. ReviewPoint automatically requests positive online reviews for your business. We’re going to talk with the CEO of ReviewPoint, Alex Hagan, about the role reviews, play in growing your business and how to take advantage of ReviewPoint. ReviewPoint completely automates the generating of positive reviews, helping your business look just as great online as it does in person. Hey, Alex, please introduce yourself.

Hey Alex, Please Introduce Yourself

Alex Hagan: Hey, Gera, my name is Alex Hagan. I’m the CEO and founder of ReviewPoint. My background really has been in digital marketing for the last ten years. That’s ranged from overall software solutions in the marketing space to SEO to video optimization pretty much anything marketing, you name it. I’ve been interested in it, and our ReviewPoint is a software solution that I’ve been working on for many years at this point.

Gera Yeremin: Cool. That’s really exciting and I’m excited to have this conversation with you. So tell me a little bit about ReviewPoint.

Tell us about ReviewPoint

Alex Hagan: Yeah. So ReviewPoint is in the category of reputation management. And really what that means is it helps with review generation online and really managing the online presence of any given business online, which is, you know, in a lot of ways your digital storefront nowadays.

Gera Yeremin: So let’s dive a little bit deeper. How does ReviewPoint actually work?

How Does ReviewPoint Work

Alex Hagan: Yeah. So ReviewPoint automates the follow-up process with existing customers of any small business. It does so in an automated format, so it sends both emails and SMS in an automated way on behalf of the business. It also has direct integrations with payment processors and CRMs. So the second-year customer either pays for your service or purchases a product. It can automatically push that contact information over into ReviewPoint and then send a review request on behalf of your business to that customer. And it can do it through SMS and email as I mentioned. And one of the great things about it is it’s not just asking for a review, it’s asking for feedback on how their experience was, and every single text and email that goes out asks, Would you recommend this business to your friend? And it’s a simple yes or no answer. And if it’s yes, it then leads them to a review platform that your business can shortlist. So typically we suggest Google my business, since Google truly is the search engine of the world and you can also have other review websites on there if you’re interested as well, like Yelp and Facebook, etc. And then for some reason, if a business said No, they don’t recommend your business instead of going to be a one-star review online, something that no business owner or manager wants of their business, it’ll actually take them to a private feedback form where they can share their experience with maybe what wasn’t so great, and then also allow the business owner to have direct dialogue within ReviewPoint without it being in a public-facing format, like having to respond to a one-star review on something like Google and have it be a dialogue for the world to see.

Alex Hagan: And I’ve seen businesses actually turn these around in terms of things that had been misunderstandings and setting things straight within something that was a previously a perceived negative experience and actually turned it into a five-star review. So on top of generating reviews for businesses and helping businesses get more five-star reviews in an automated format with their existing customer base, this also helps with the overall SEO of any local business. So a couple of things go into that. When you have a Google my business listing is the overall star rating of a business, which is important, the star count in terms of how many reviews you actually have in terms of the review count and then also the recency. And that’s one thing that ReviewPoint really helps with because it’s following up on a routine basis just in the frequency that you have customers, you have a steady stream of reviews coming into your business where some businesses out there, they might have 100 reviews, but they haven’t received the review in three months. And as a consumer, a lot of people might look at that as they might not even be in business anymore, as compared to seeing a review from the day before. You know that they’re still offering that five-star level of service. So it helps with building trust with any sort of customers or doing a sort of preliminary search online before making a purchasing decision.

Gera Yeremin: Yeah, I hear that. That’s is really cool. Here’s a question that I’m sure is burning at the back of everyone’s mind that has a business and is using a bunch of different tools. How much time will a business owner actually need to manage the reviews once enrolled in ReviewPoint?

How Much Time Will a Business Owner Need to Manage The Reviews Once Enrolled in ReviewPoint?

Alex Hagan: So once you’re enrolled in ReviewPoint, literally there’s zero time that you have to put into it because a big part of it is having the automated integration between whatever system you currently use to serve your customers. And examples of that could be you might be giving them invoices via a software solution like QuickBooks, or maybe you have a CRM that manages job flows and the repair shop where you can automatically follow up with them and we can set up triggers. So it pretty much pushes that contact information over into ReviewPoint and ReviewPoint will automatically send them emails and text messages on behalf of your business. So zero maintenance after getting set up and getting set up is actually very easy too. It takes 5 minutes to set up an account, and no more than another 5 minutes to get the integration set up. So very minimal setup time and very literally zero as it comes to ongoing maintenance.

Gera Yeremin: Wow. That sounds almost like too good to be true, but that’s really exciting. This tool seems like it’s pretty awesome. So let’s look at this question. I think this is really important. Why are reviews important for small businesses or any business in general?

Why are reviews important overall?

Alex Hagan: Yeah, of course. All of us have done some level of research. Based on the sort of stats that are out there before you make a purchasing decision, you want to see what other people have to say. And you know, there are a lot of stats that you can find online, but one of them from Fine Stack is that 95% of customers read reviews before making a purchase. So, pretty much your entire customer base is doing some level of reading online before they decide who they’re actually going to go with, whether it’s purchasing a product or proceeding with a service. They want to know that they’re going with the right provider. So more and more people are heading in that direction. And the star rating and overall review count also influence that as well. So people are searching and then they’re also stats around the effects of how your rated online and what your presentation is there.

Gera Yeremin: Cool. Awesome. Well, how does one sign up for ReviewPoint or just get a demo in general? Yeah.

How Would One Signed up For ReviewPoint or Get a Demo

Alex Hagan: So if you’re listening to this from the DriveSavers newsletter, you can find a link in the newsletter itself. If you’re listening to it after the fact, you can also log into the Reseller Resource Center on the DriveSavers website and redeem the overall promo code from the landing page that is linked there. The third option is just to visit ReviewPoint dot com and mention DriveSavers and you’ll get six months free today.

Gera Yeremin: Alex This application sounds really cool and I am going to check it out for sure, I really appreciate your time and I’m looking forward to seeing how ReviewPoint develops in the next couple of years.

Alex Hagan: Thank you. And looking forward to helping a lot of DriveSavers partners get more reviews online. So looking forward to hearing from all these partners around the nation.