Peeling Back the Mystery of Online Ratings, Reviews

Education session helps retailers leverage online ratings and reviews.

September 13, 2017

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – If you participate in a mystery shop program, your stores will likely only be reviewed one to 10 times per year. But your stores are already being reviewed on GasBuddy, Yelp, Facebook and Google—whether you track the data or not.

In today’s hyper-connected world, every customer with a smartphone is a critic with the ability to rate, review and share their experiences at your store. Taken collectively, this crowdsourced feedback influences brand reputation as consumers use the very same mobile apps to decide where to fuel up, get a cup of coffee or use the restroom. According to a recent GasBuddy survey, 69% of users wouldn’t visit a store with less than three out of five stars on the app.

The upcoming NACS Show educational session, “How Online Ratings and Reviews Trump Mystery Shop Data,” taking place October 17 at the NACS Show in Chicago, takes some of the mystery out of the online review trend. Mike Zahajko of CAF Outdoor Cleaning and Frank Beard of GasBuddy will explain how retailers can leverage it in their favor. Attendees will walk away with a clear understanding of how to interpret, engage, and utilize ratings and reviews, in addition to clear, actionable strategies.

Zahajko is an insight leader and teacher in the retail petroleum industry with experience as a fuel retailer at Tesoro, industry supplier and speaker. As executive vice president of sales for CAF Outdoor Cleaning, Zahajko works closely with more than 50 of the top 100 largest c-store retailers and grocery stores in the United States. By working with and benchmarking leading industry retailers, Zahajko shares impactful best practices, lessons learned, and trends that are shaping the competitive landscape for retail petroleum today and into the future.

Beard is an analyst/evangelist for convenience store and retail trends at GasBuddy—the mobile app that connects drivers with their Perfect Pit Stop. A regular NACS Daily columnist and noted industry advocate, Beard contributes analysis and insight to marketing efforts as well as GasBuddy Business Pages—the industry-leading solution for listings and reputation management, loyalty integration, and market-share intelligence.

As you make your plans for the NACS Show, be sure to add “How Online Ratings and Reviews Trump Mystery Shop Data” to your schedule! Registration for this year’s NACS Show is open at www.nacsshow.com.

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