Widewail

PLK Communities wanted their online reviews to reflect the personal care their teams deliver across 36 multifamily properties.

To make that happen, they partnered with Widewail to scale review management and ensure every response remained genuine and brand-aligned.

“Before Widewail, responses tended to feel generic and impersonal. Now, residents feel acknowledged through thoughtful, specific replies that reflect their experiences.”
—Brad Slomsky, VP of Marketing and Brand, PLK Communities

The results:
Communities averaged 4.5 reviews per month in April—2.5x the multifamily industry average
Review volume more than doubled in the first 30 days
Negative reviews dropped by 58% in the first 90 days

By leveraging Widewail’s Invite, Engage, Engage Plus, and Listings tools, PLK built a strategy that drives more reviews, stronger engagement, and thoughtful, human responses that reflect the onsite experience.

Read the full case study to see how PLK Communities is setting a new standard for online reputation management.
https://hubs.ly/Q03M7T-J0

Higher review response rates → Higher star rating and volume

We looked at how review volume per month and monthly average ratings trend upward with review response percentage.

We found the benchmark performance for every dealer at each review response percentage, from 0% to 100%.

(Find this in the Widewail Automotive Reputation Index by Grouping by Response Percentage)

The black bars represent the volume of dealerships that occupy each response rate. We can see the majority are above 50%.

As we would expect, higher response percentage represents an increased commitment to digital customer engagement, and, as a result, review volume and rating trend up as response rate approaches 100%.

Comparing dealers that respond to 20% of reviews to those that respond to 80% of reviews, we see that volume jumps up 64% and rating goes up 2%.

It is evident that responding to reviews indicates to your customer base that their opinions are valued and as a result they are more likely to leave you a review -- and as we've discussed in the past, increased review volume tends to bring higher average ratings.

For more data and insights like this, subscribe to The REV -- a newsletter that digs into a few review data insights every 3 weeks. Subscribe on LinkedIn: https://hubs.ly/Q02lddHX0

A Valentine’s Day match made in heaven: Widewail + Automotive News 💕

Here’s Chris Bouchard, our first sales hire back when Widewail had less than 50 clients, finding our ad in a recent issue of Auto News.

Along with consistent growth comes the resources to spread the word about Widewail to a broader audience.

Chris, having spent 12 years in the auto industry, first at Burlington Hyundai, then at DDC and now Widewail, is beyond proud to see that reflected in print.

For the whole team, it’s symbolic of our growth, great products and even better clients. !

Welcome to the team, Dustin!

Dustin grew up in Vermont and is proud to have lived here ever since. He has worked in the digital automotive space since 2016, when he started at https://hubs.ly/Q02kmQzc0. In late 2018, he moved to EBlock, where he was the Inside Sales Manager for 5 years. He spent a brief period of time in the retail side of the business, as a sales rep at NuCar CDJR and Ford, but he’s happy to have found himself back on the digital side here at Widewail.

Dustin loves his 10-year-old and 7-year-old kids, who keep him very busy with sports practices. Dustin is also a personal trainer, training one-on-one clients and leading group fitness classes at Align. When he’s not working, wrangling his kids or at the gym, Dustin’s favorite thing on the planet is seeing live music, so he tries to see as many shows as he can.