Michael Sayre
Hey everyone, welcome to the In Your Business podcast. This is Michael Sayre with CUI Wealth Management. CUI Wealth Management produces this podcast. Today, I have invited Matt Vance to join us. So Matt, why don't you take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself and briefly introduce yourself and your company, if you don't mind?
Matt Vance
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity, Michael. And hello everyone, I'm Matt. I'm the CEO of Mobrium. We are the first and only aggregator of employee reviews. So, I guess the simple explanation is we help you manage all feedback across sites like Glassdoor, Indeed, Comparably, and -In-Personite so that you can know what your employees are saying, how you're being rated online, and simplify the management of all those feedback streams. I've also written a book called The Review Cycle.
It's all about managing online reviews and over a decade of managing reputation for different industry businesses. I've discovered a simple, four-step approach to optimizing feedback, whether for customer feedback in product reviews on Amazon, Wayfair, Overstock, and other e-commerce sites or customer reviews on Google, Facebook, Yelp, and TripAdvisor.
Or even for those employee reviews on sites like Glassdoor and Indeed. There's a similar methodology that you can use to optimize those public feedback loops, those reviews, to help you generate more sales, get more applicants to your jobs, and ultimately drive your business forward.
The methodology we use for our software at Mobrium is the same methodology written about in my book, The Review Cycle. It's just about automating as much of it as possible and leveraging software so there are fewer human touchpoints, increasing the cost efficiency of managing your reviews.
Michael Sayre
Awesome. Thank you so much for the introduction. I wanted to bring you in on the podcast because one of the topics I think is really interesting with business is distribution channels.
What I mean by that is that you can have the best product out there. You can have the best service. And if nobody knows about you, then you won't sell anything. You're not going to grow your company. I wanted to talk a bit about that, but I also wanted to talk about some internal correlations and how they play a role in the importance of distribution channels. And I think just how you've set up your company and what you do is a perfect example. I believe there are some great topics that we can discuss here during this conversation. One of the first things I wanted to discuss is the power of having the proper channels to communicate your business message. And as I was thinking about that, I was thinking about there's someone had said that,
"Stories are the currency of human relationships." It's Robert McKee who originally coined that quote. And that's an exciting concept because our businesses tell a story to those who see and consume the product. I'd like to see your perspective as you've grown your company and how that relates.
Matt Vance
And I had to write down that quote, Michael because that's very profound. I think that's spot on. Stories illustrate so many connections. From my experience managing reputations for different organizations, I've seen that reviews tell that story at scale, that there's trust in the social proof that the online community provides.
In fact, 92 % of consumers will use online reviews for their decision-making, whether it's a product they want to buy, a service they want to buy, what restaurant they're going to go to, what dentist they're going to use, even what professor they want to have on their next semester's schedule. There's, you know, ratemyprofessor.com. But the thing that's crazy is that 85% of consumers trust these reviews as much as a personalized, personal recommendation. So reviews are so accessible.
And there's so many of them that, um, most of the time we say, well, the online community can't be wrong as some voice, right? So there's a lot of trust that gets put in those reviews. And, of course, there are some ways to manipulate it, but I think you're spot on as far as distribution goes; there are lots of types of distribution. That's which retail channels you have a product on a physical shelf available for purchase or
which retailers you can buy something from.
But it's also worth mentioning and discussing the distribution channels of word-of-mouth advertising and the different types of user-generated content, UGC, available online. And reviews are a big one. You've got social media and all the mainstream social media platforms. You've got video content like TikTok and YouTube shorts.
People are watching unboxing videos; they're watching reviews, video reviews, and interviews of different products and services. All these different forms of user-generated content are word-of-mouth distribution channels found online. But I get asked many questions, like, why don't you track social media, or is social media and other forms of user-generated content as valuable as reviews as far as impact on buying behaviors?
They're both critical, but I've always believed that reviews trump any form of social media. And the reason is every review is tied to an actual rating. A social media post may go viral, but eventually, it won't be relevant anymore. Every post has a shelf life of recency.
And there is no rating that impacts a longstanding average rating of a product or service. So, every time an employee or a customer writes a review, there's positive or negative sentiment and what the review is actually saying. But then there's a rating that affects the overall score. And that overall score is the number one determiner of people who will click on your offering and, if they ultimately will, will buy. And so it's critically important to manage reviews.
But also other forms of social media content that are forms of word-of-mouth distribution. So along those lines, one of the things that comes to mind is, I think, when it comes to business, it comes down to the product or service you have. It tells a story of what you're trying to accomplish, what kind of impact you can have on society, and what value you can offer.
Michael Sayre
Talking to you about this makes me feel that a review or some kind of client experience is an excellent method to see if the communication and the story match what the company is trying to accomplish. Because if you're, and I think it's also when you look at different reviews, you can often see the comments on why they gave that review. And I think employers if they recognize that their story doesn't match up with what people are saying. I think that's when you get people upset because maybe the product isn't, or the service isn't useless for a particular audience, but if it's presented a certain way and doesn't meet that expectation, I think that's where the concerns come. And when there's a little bit of misalignment between a company and the employees or the product or service. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Matt Vance
Well, you're spot on, Michael. Managing expectations is critical. There are a couple of different studies I reference in my book. One of them was by the Harvard Business Review. They also talk about consumers' willingness to spend more and rate higher based on alignments of expectations.
And they went through a couple of different studies. One of them was, um, like concertgoers going to different concerts and they evaluated, you know, if the artist said they were a country singer, did the listeners believe that they were a country singer and did that genre that they were self-labeling, was it accurate? And then another evaluation they did was of restaurants. And they looked at, OK, if this restaurant is claiming to be authentic Mexican or authentic Italian.
Did they believe that the food and the experience in the environment were authentic to what was portrayed? They found in both cases that the closer you were aligned to what the consumer would expect to be a particular genre or food category, the more they were willing to spend and rate higher. I've seen that firsthand as well with both products and selling products on Amazon and other sites, but also with company culture and employee feedback: Can you manage expectations of what a benefit is, what PTO is, how it can be used, and what use cases are allowable or not allowable? What is flexibility? What does that mean? When are you allowed to leave or not leave or those types of things? Being very specific with those expectations or on a product side of specific use cases where a product can and cannot be used or what voids the warranty.
Understanding and managing all of those little details and describing them accurately can increase your ratings and sales without spending more money. A lot of the time, you don't need to redo your benefits and your PTO policy. You don't need to launch a new version of the product. You need to understand what customers say about it, what they expect, and how you can better communicate the outcome and experience that customers and employees should expect. And that will lead to greater satisfaction, greater profitability, and lower turnover.
Michael Sayre
It's interesting because, as you're talking, I was thinking about how people have different perspectives based on their past. If you say, hey, this is a giant ice cream cone. It might be big to you, but comparatively to someone who has seen something else; it might not seem a giant to them. It might not be in perspective the same quality or the same size or whatever the case may be. And so I think the undertone that I get from this conversation is that it's crucial to have open communication and to be able to understand perception. And I think a lot of companies could...
They would do better if they could realign those expectations or realign what they mean and the context behind their message. So, that's what comes to mind in this conversation. One of the things I wanted to talk about is when you're running a company, even if it's a massive company or C-suite. Or if it's a small company, it's the same thing; the same truth applies if you have two sets of customers.
You have the customer buying your product or service, but you're also having, and maybe there's a better label than a customer. Still, your employees are similar to customers in many ways because they could work elsewhere. But you want them to work for you for the reasons that align with your value and your company strategy.
And I just want to unpack that with you a little bit. One of the things I wanted to start with is a quote that I love from J. Willard Marriott Jr., the chariot emeritus of Marriott International.
He says, "Take care of your employees, and they will take care of your customers." And I love that quote because leadership comes from the head down. You have to show what you're expecting and how clients are expected to be cared for. And so if you're saying, take good care of our clients, but then you're treating your employees another way if you're not treating them well, they're...
The actions speak louder than the words. And so it's imperative that the things that you do and the message that you put out there to the world and the company, like the employees that are part of your group, that's equally important. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, and maybe you can expound a bit on your experience.
Matt Vance
Yeah, you're right on there, Michael. And the terminology I use is just stakeholder groups. Like you've got customers, they're a stakeholder. You've got investors, employees, and even the general public can be a group of stakeholders. And all these different stakeholder groups are looking at you differently as a business, right? The customers are looking at the products you sell and the services you offer.
And what other people are saying about those things. Job seekers and current employees have a similar outlook on looking at you, but the job seeker is pre-employment and looking from the outside, and the employee is inside and looking around at what's going on. But one thing that I like to call attention to is these different stakeholders; the things that they're looking at have crossover.
Right? Like your employee reviews can influence your customers. Like do I, especially as the purchase consideration gets larger, like let's say I'm looking to build a house, and there's a lot that's a huge purchase. There's a lot that goes into buying a house. I would love to read employee reviews of the home builder.
I want to see how the people who will build my house feel about working for their employer. And if they hate it, I probably don't want them building my home. Right? And so there is spillover. And the same thing is true for job seekers, right? It's like if a job seeker sees that all of your products are ranked or rated horribly, and there's a lot of negative talk about your business on Reddit and other, you know, online spaces, they probably are less likely to apply because they don't want to be associated with the company that has all this negativity. And so when you talk about distribution channels and when it comes to word-of-mouth marketing and all this, the different forms of content that users use that we can share online, there's so much spillover that the best practice of managing your reputation and managing those distribution channels.
It is paying attention to all of it, having a holistic approach and having a plan in place for collecting and managing employee feedback and customer feedback and every other profile where you could exist in between, and recognizing the spillover, that halo effect of consumers do look at those other platforms.
Michael Sayre
When I look at companies, we use the term corporation and its kind of body or its own entity. And I think these companies take on a life of their own. And if you don't have good communication and ways of putting out how you want your company to be portrayed, that can have an impact. But the other thing I think is crucial is to look at reviews and feedback. That's an excellent opportunity for companies to understand if they need to pivot if things aren't aligning.
That's one of the things I was thinking of. One of my last questions is about your perspective on what you've done in your company. What kind of advice or final parting words would you give to those involved in either HR and trying to communicate the message to the employees as well as how they communicate and distribute, like how the company distributes their message to the world as a whole? Just any parting knowledge or wisdom that you can offer.
Matt Vance
The big advice I would give HR and people leaders is never to assume what your employees need. Ask them. First, go out and understand what's top of mind for them. And especially if you're doing that systematically with an engagement survey or monitoring your employee reviews, like what Mobrium does, we track all of that. You can then understand the top experience drivers, both positive and negative. Then, you can address those things more systematically with greater data to know how to support your employees specifically.
And as you're doing that and returning and reporting to your workforce and your team, you're going to increase trust. They're going to see that you're taking their feedback seriously, and they'll be more willing to share more specific feedback that will drive even greater improvement. So, it becomes this virtuous cycle of improvement of listening to your employees, reporting to them, and listening again.
Michael Sayre
Awesome, Matt. This has been a fantastic conversation. I've learned a lot and had some new perspectives. I appreciate you coming in and joining. And so we're going to end here.
Thanks again to all those who have tuned in. Once again, this is Michael Sayre at CUI Wealth Management. This is the In Your Business podcast produced by CUI Wealth Management. Hope to see you next time. Thanks.
Matt Vance
Thanks.
