SALT LAKE CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AMF Bowling Centers, Inc., the leading bowling center operator in the United States, today announced the results of its implementation of OpenTell™, a customer review product from Mindshare Technologies. Over the course of six months using OpenTell, AMF significantly improved its online reputation across all of its nationwide locations, driving an increase of 948 percent in online customer reviews with dramatically higher average customer satisfaction ratings.
As a client of Mindshare Technologies, a leader in cloud-based Voice of the Customer (VoC) technologies, AMF was already demonstrating its commitment to improving the customer experience by collecting direct customer feedback through a VoC program. With OpenTell, the company is able to unlock the power of customer reviews gathered from Mindshare Technologies’ VoC program and publish the data online, enabling consumers to see real-time ratings on OpenTell.com that reflect the actual performance of specific locations.
“We wanted to develop a strong and transparent relationship with our customers. Mindshare helped us do that with OpenTell,” said a senior executive at AMF Bowling Centers. “The high volume of reviews our customers shared with us, and the unfiltered manner in which they were displayed, gave an accurate representation of each location’s performance. We simply weren’t getting these kinds of results on other review sites.”
Highlights of AMF’s first six months using OpenTell include:
- Greater quantity of reviews – AMF received an average of 241 reviews per location. This was an increase of 948 percent compared to Yelp and Google, which when combined, averaged only 23 reviews per AMF location.
- More recent reviews – On other review sites, such as Yelp and Google, the average age of the most recent review was 176 days. On OpenTell, AMF’s average age was 6 days. Timely reviews are key, as a review that is over two months old is no longer representative of the actual customer experience due to training and employee turnover.
- Higher customer satisfaction scores – AMF received average customer satisfaction ratings of approximately 90 percent across all locations. Due to fewer reviews, other review sites averaged only 68 percent for the same AMF locations, misrepresenting the actual customer experience. In addition, on OpenTell, AMF as a whole averaged a rating that was one full star higher in overall satisfaction on a 5-star scale.
- Accurate, authentic reviews – Since OpenTell requires unique customer survey codes ensuring reviews are only left by actual customers, the potential for misleading and fraudulent reviews was greatly reduced.
“By combining OpenTell with AMF’s outstanding culture, which is highly focused on the needs of its customers, they have been able to get credit for the terrific job the brand is doing,” said John Sperry, CEO of Mindshare. “Customers frequently have positive experiences in their brand interactions, but the majority of these positive reviews never see the light of the day. AMF’s decision to be transparent with its customer review data resulted in more accurate and positive representations of the great experiences their locations were consistently delivering.”
Launched in October 2013, OpenTell helps brands improve their online reputations by leveraging their most valuable asset – their satisfied customers. Used by AMF, Costa Vida and others, OpenTell’s large sample sizes and high frequency of reviews provide clients and their customers with the most accurate representation of their business’ performance. AMF offers a multi-faceted guest experience through the combination of bowling, food and beverage offerings and amusement games in a fun, high-energy atmosphere.
About Mindshare Technologies
Mindshare Technologies is the largest provider of cloud-based VoC solutions for the food services, retail and contact center industries. Using a proprietary customer review platform, Mindshare collects feedback in real time to help companies retain customers and increase profits. As a full-service partner, Mindshare provides tactical instruction, strategic guidance and customer experience consulting to global brands and multi-unit operators. For more information, visit www.mshare.net.
