Challenge

Sport Clips successfully collected a high volume of customer reviews across its various locations, but several key metrics were lagging. Many locations were not consistently responding to customer reviews, impacting the brand’s reputation and customer trust. The response time for locations that did reply was lengthy, sometimes extending beyond 10 days. Maintaining a consistent and personalized tone across all responses was challenging, especially when handling negative reviews.

“We needed to increase our locations’ review response rates and decrease the time it took to reply. Our goal was to achieve faster response times by replying to every review within 24 hours, ensure a consistent brand voice that resonates with our customers, and simplify the review process for our local managers so they can focus on delivering great service,” said John Lester, Field Marketing Director at Sport Clips.

In response to these challenges, Sport Clips partnered with SOCi to implement a trial of Genius Reviews, an AI-powered tool designed to streamline and automate the review response process. Sport Clips tested the tool with a selected group of 444 locations across the U.S., focusing on locations with varying levels of responsiveness to reviews. Genius Reviews was easily trained to align with the Sport Clips brand voice. It included fun, personalized responses like sports analogies: "Sorry we struck out" for negative reviews or "Glad we hit a home run" for positive ones.

Genius Reviews offered several key solutions:

Solution

• Automated Review Responses: The AI drafted responses for each review, allowing store managers to either accept or personalize them.
  
• Brand Consistency: Customizable brand voice directives ensured that responses reflected Sport Clips’ casual, sports-oriented tone.
  
• Efficiency: The tool significantly reduced the time spent crafting review responses, enabling managers to focus on other critical tasks.

During Sport Clips’ national conference, “The Huddle,” the company’s CMO introduced Genius Reviews to franchisees across the country, building excitement for the tool. The positive feedback from local team leaders, who appreciated how easily the tool managed reviews, helped drive widespread adoption.

By adopting SOCi’s Genius Reviews tool, Sport Clips transformed its online reputation management from a time-consuming, inconsistent process to a streamlined, efficient, and brand-consistent strategy across its 1,800+ locations. Faster response times and higher engagement improved their online presence, while the tool’s customization ensured responses felt authentic to Sport Clips’ unique voice. This success led to the early adoption of Genius Reviews across all Sport Clips locations, proving that faster engagement leads to higher sales and stronger customer relationships.

Meet the Customer

Sport Clips has built a reputation for delivering a unique, sports-themed experience across hundreds of locations as a premier provider of haircuts. With so many stores, managing customer feedback and online reputation efficiently has become a growing challenge for the brand.

 John Lester has served as the Field Marketing Director at Sport Clips Haircuts since 2004. He is responsible for developing and leading the field marketing team, concentrating on local community engagement, Google, and social media strategies. In addition, he trains managers and store owners on effective local store marketing techniques, providing guidance on leveraging both Google and social media to attract clients.

Meet the 

Visionary

Meet the Customer

Summary

Summary

John Lester

Field Marketing Director

“Genius Reviews has cut our response time and strengthened our reputation management strategy by using what clients say in their reviews to create personalized responses. We've pulled the data and can show that the stores doing SEO well and responding to Google reviews tend to do about 18% higher net sales a week than their system average. Conversely, if we look at the stores that are not focusing on improving Google ratings and review responses, they're about negative 18%," said John.

The results of the Genius Reviews trial were overwhelmingly positive. Key improvements included:

Results and Impact

Increased Sales: Increased review response correlates positively with SEO, increasing net sales 18% in the first four months of use.

Reduced Response Time: Sport Clips cut review response time by 64% in four months. The average response time dropped by nearly 10 days.

Response Rate Increase: Sport Clips saw a 26% increase in their review response rate across all trial locations.

Time Savings: 80% of the AI-crafted responses were accepted by managers without any modifications, dramatically reducing the manual effort required. Over 1,800 responses were sent automatically.