Birdeye

What is Birdeye

Birdeye is a complete software platform that helps local businesses manage their online presence and customer experiences. Its main purpose is to provide all the tools a business needs to be found online, connect with customers, and manage its reputation from one single place. The platform uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help with tasks like understanding customer feedback and automating communication. Birdeye was founded in 2012 by Naveen Gupta and Neeraj Gupta. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, and serves thousands of businesses, especially those with multiple locations like healthcare clinics, retail stores, and restaurants.

Birdeye Features

Birdeye offers a wide range of features to help businesses grow.

• Reviews: You can automatically ask customers for reviews via text or email. It lets you see and reply to reviews from over 200 websites like Google and Facebook in one dashboard. AI helps you understand the general feeling of the reviews.
• Listings: This feature makes sure your business information (name, address, phone number) is correct across more than 50 online directories. Correct listings help customers find you and improve your ranking in local search results.
• Social: You can plan and publish posts to Facebook, Instagram, and other social media sites. It also includes a tool to monitor what people are saying about your brand and engage with them.
• Messaging: A unified inbox combines messages from web chat, text messages, and social media. This makes it easy to talk to customers without switching between different apps.
• Webchat: Add a chat widget to your website so visitors can ask questions. You can use an AI chatbot to answer common questions or have a live person chat with them.
• Surveys: Create and send customer surveys to get detailed feedback about your products or services. This helps you understand what you are doing well and where you can improve.
• Referrals: This tool helps you create a program to encourage happy customers to refer their friends to your business, helping you get new customers.
• Insights: An analytics dashboard that uses AI to show you trends in customer feedback. You can also compare your performance against your competitors.

Birdeye Pricing Plans

Birdeye does not show specific prices on its website. You need to contact their sales team to get a custom quote for your business. The pricing is based on the number of locations and the specific features you need. They offer different packages for different business sizes.

• Standard Plan: This is usually for single-location businesses. It includes the essential features like review management, business listings, and the unified messaging inbox.
• Professional Plan: Designed for businesses with several locations. This plan typically adds features like social media management, customer surveys, and more advanced reporting.
• Premium Plan: This is for large enterprises and chains. It includes all features, plus dedicated customer support, custom integrations with other software, and detailed competitive analysis.

Birdeye Free Plan

Birdeye does not have a permanent free plan. However, they offer a free demo of their platform so you can see how it works. Sometimes, a free trial may be available if you discuss it with their sales team. They also have a free tool on their website that lets you scan your business to see how your online listings and reviews look across the internet.

How to use Birdeye

Getting started with Birdeye is a straightforward process.

1. Set Up Your Account: First, you connect your business profiles, such as your Google Business Profile, Facebook page, and other relevant review sites to your Birdeye dashboard.
2. Check Your Listings: Use the Listings feature to scan and fix any incorrect business information across the web. This ensures consistency.
3. Start a Review Campaign: Create an automated campaign to send review requests to your customers via SMS or email shortly after they make a purchase or visit.
4. Manage Communications: Use the unified inbox to monitor all incoming reviews and messages. You can respond to customers directly from this dashboard.
5. Schedule Social Posts: Connect your social media accounts and use the content calendar to schedule posts in advance. This keeps your social media active.
6. Analyze Your Performance: Regularly check the Insights dashboard to see your overall rating, review trends, and customer sentiment to make better business decisions.

Pros and Cons of Birdeye

Here are some advantages and disadvantages of using Birdeye.

Pros:

• All-in-One Platform: It combines reputation, social media, and customer messaging tools in one place, which is very convenient.
• Great for Multi-Location Businesses: The platform is built to easily manage many locations from a single dashboard.
• Powerful Automation: Automating review requests and social media posts saves a lot of time.
• Unified Inbox: Managing all customer conversations in one place makes communication much simpler.

Cons:

• No Public Pricing: You have to talk to sales to get a price, which can be a slow process.
• Can Be Expensive: The cost might be high for very small businesses or startups.
• Complex Platform: With so many features, it can take some time for new users to learn how to use everything.
• Long-Term Contracts: Customers often need to sign a one-year or longer contract.

Birdeye integrations

Birdeye integrates with over 3,000 systems, making it easy to connect with the tools you already use. This helps automate tasks like sending review requests after a transaction. Some popular integrations include:

• CRM Software: Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho CRM
• Healthcare Systems: Dentrix, eClinicalWorks, Athenahealth
• Automotive Systems: DealerSocket, CDK Global
• Point of Sale (POS) Systems: Square, Toast, Lightspeed
• Property Management: Yardi, Entrata
• Automation Tools: Zapier, for connecting with thousands of other apps.

Birdeye Alternatives

If Birdeye is not the right fit, here are some other similar tools.

• Podium: Focuses heavily on customer messaging and payments through text. It is very popular with local service businesses.
• Yext: A strong competitor for managing business listings. It has powerful tools to make sure your business information is accurate everywhere online.
• Reputation: An enterprise-level platform that offers deep analytics and customer experience management tools, suitable for very large brands.
• Sprout Social: Primarily a social media management tool, but it also has features for review monitoring and engagement.
• ReviewTrackers: This tool specializes only in review management and customer feedback, offering detailed analytics on reviews.

Birdeye API

Yes, Birdeye provides a developer API. This allows businesses to integrate Birdeye's features, like review data and messaging, directly into their own custom software or applications. Access to the API and the necessary API keys are typically available for customers on higher-tier plans or as a paid add-on. To get an API key, you would need to contact your Birdeye account manager or their support team. They will provide you with the credentials and documentation.

Here is a simple example in Python of how you might use the API to fetch reviews:

import requests

api_key = 'YOUR_API_KEY'
business_id = 'YOUR_BUSINESS_ID'

url = f'https://api.birdeye.com/v1/business/{business_id}/reviews'

headers = {
    'Authorization': f'Bearer {api_key}',
    'Content-Type': 'application/json'
}

response = requests.get(url, headers=headers)

if response.status_code == 200:
    reviews = response.json()
    print(reviews)
else:
    print(f'Error: {response.status_code}')

Birdeye Affiliate program

Birdeye does not have a traditional, public affiliate program that anyone can join. Instead, they have a Partner Program for agencies, resellers, and technology partners who want to offer Birdeye's services to their own clients. To join, you must apply through the 'Partners' section of their website. The commission rates and payment details are not public and are likely negotiated as part of the partnership agreement. If you are an influencer or want to explore a referral relationship, it is best to contact their sales or partnership team directly to discuss potential opportunities.