Tanger Factory Outlet Centers, a shopping centre group that operates 44 sites across the US and Canada, says it has significantly increased its reputation online using new technology.
Working alongside Reputation.com, which helps organisations drive better ratings online and ensure customer comments accurately reflect the services they provide, Tanger reportedly tripled its web reviews and built a stronger internet presence.
According to the shopping centre owner, Reputation.com’s technology played a major part in it achieving a “Best-in-Class Reputation” score, which increased 57% from 448 in December 2014 to 705 in February 2016 – well ahead of the department store average.
Between 2014 and 2016, the Silicon Valley-based technology company – which earlier this year benefited from a $20 million round of investment funding – helped Tanger increase its online review volumes from 1,933 to 5,721.
Another key achievement, Tanger says, was reaching 100% accuracy for the citations of its outlet shopping centres across Google, Bing and all other business directory sites.
Beth Mayo, director of digital marketing at Tanger Factory Outlet Centers, said: “We have 40-plus centres and it’s critical to have consistent business listings and reputation across all of our retail locations.
“We needed a platform that would help us manage and keep business listings up to date, and then, of course, increase our online review ratings. These factors made it clear to us that we could build a great partnership with Reputation.com.”
Three-pronged attack
The new tech platform allowed Tanger to create a three-pronged approach to managing its long-term online reputation, which firstly involved ensuring reviews were accurate. Once Reputation.com had helped boost ratings and review accuracy, it then enabled Tanger to respond to customer comments and empower its individual centres to proactively manage their respective online reputations.
During these processes, the shopping centre company was able to gather customer insights about the brand and embed them into business operations
This was achieved by integrating its CRM system with Reputation.com, which enabled it to automate sending emails to shoppers prompting them to submit reviews. Tanger also used kiosks, installed at each of its location, to gather feedback from shoppers.
Easy-to-manage platform
Tanger says the Reputation.com platform enables the company to quickly respond to reviews and flag or forward comments to the right people within the organisation. Through review alerts, Tanger’s centre managers were able to identify service issues and trends around individual brand stores and worked closely with those outlets to resolve potential problems.
Among the changes resulting from the new system were the re-evaluation of coupon book usage, and amendments to exchange and return policies for individual brands.
“Reputation.com is helping us to reach our goal of getting more and more positive reviews from all the review sites that matter,” explained Mayo.
“We believe these strategies will put us above the competition when it comes to our online reputation.”
Download Reputation.com’s free whitepaper to learn more about utilising reviews from your customers to improve your reputation.