Introducing Invite by Widewail, a new kind of review generation software that gives you everything you need to get more reviews for your business, and saves you money and time on everything you don’t.
Introducing Invite by Widewail, a new kind of review generation software that gives you everything you need to get more reviews for your business, and saves you money and time on everything you don’t.
The prevailing strategy amongst tech startups is clear. Build a product that has great market fit, sell a whole lot of it, raise money to pour gas on the fire. This approach seems to be what earns flashy media coverage and makes great fodder for a press release. “So and So raises $30MM in Series A to build e-commerce platform” - great press, right?
There’s a less visible side to fast growth tech companies that isn’t discussed enough. Whether B2B or B2C, customers need support from real people. Technology rarely provides value in a way that cements a long term relationship - people do.
What’s the impact? Somewhere along the journey of these tech companies, internal conversations shift from being focused on innovation, growth strategy and hitting the number on a monthly basis, to churn. “Our churn was 2.5 % last month, if it continues our growth rate will be off and we’ll miss our number this year” - a startling but very real danger for any company with hungry investors and big aspirations.
What’s one way to slow churn? With a managed service. Get your teams in direct contact with your customer on a regular basis. The hyper-growth tech company is suddenly in the people-powered solutions business. The problem - The leadership team never wanted to offer managed services. Their hearts aren’t in it. They worry about the impact of lower margin offerings and services revenue on their exit multiple. The service is tacked on with poor definition and limited value at an unreasonable price point in order to produce the highest margin possible. It’s your average managed service.
So when we started Widewail, we purposefully tackled the people side of the business first. The goal was simple - create amazing relationships with our customers while providing a world-class service. Be visible supporting them on a daily basis. Make churn an absolute non-issue.
What’s the benefit? “Lean” is our DNA. We don’t operate on the same margin that a tech company might expect. For a very palatable monthly fee, we offer a tech-enabled, human-powered service to help any local business manage their reviews and social media engagement.
The strategy has always been to build our technology offering by learning from our customers - listening to what they really need to help grow their business. By the nature of being a review and social engagement service, our customers started suggesting a path for us early on. 40% of our sales calls included a question like “Can you help me get more reviews?” or “How do I optimize review flow to both of my Google My Business pages?”.
We studied available solutions (this is a somewhat crowded space). We talked to customers large and small, urban, suburban, and rural. We connected with regional and national groups and franchise businesses about what was working and what wasn’t. Ultimately - we built a product defined by the market.
Enter Widewail Invite.
Review generation software that gives our customers everything they need and nothing that they don’t. It helps staff at any local business focus on the task of providing an exceptional in-store experience, while ensuring their online reputation will drive additional traffic through their doors.
Manual or automated solicitation.
A single account managing multiple Google My Business pages for locations with clearly defined and differentiated profit centers (an industry first).
Personalized invites to improve invite to review conversion rate and reduce the need for your team to send manual invites (another industry first).
SMS as the lead channel because it’s 2020. Email as a backup - because email should be the backup.
Widewail offers the most detailed, thoughtful and efficient review response service on the market today. With Invite, we expand on our offering - pairing our world-class response service with the power of a personalized, automated review generation software that gracefully handles the complexity of today’s local business.
We’re more than proud to release Invite into the world. Our current customers will be the first to experience the power and performance of Invite, as it should be.
Matt Murray, Founder/CEO
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