What 110 diner managers learned about their customer experience


Company Snapshot
Black Bear Diner is a restaurant chain in the Western United States which serves homestyle comfort foods.
- Sept 2017
No way to manage feedback during rapid growth
Black Bear Diner’s delicious food and homestyle atmosphere have earned them mountains of praise online. On track to almost double their locations in 2 years, Black Bear Diner needed to prepare for much more feedback at a much faster pace. They needed to make sure guests at every location, old and new, were happy with their visit and eager to return.
“Knowing we were moving in this trend of numbers and growth, we needed a better way to manage guest feedback,” said Denise D’Amico Johnson, Communications Manager at Black Bear Diner.
Black Bear Diner began searching for a multi-faceted solution to monitor all its reviews in one place and communicate directly with guests to understand their experiences. This led them to Birdeye.
Role-based feedback management and reporting
“The platform has the flexibility for us to set it up differently for each level of use,” said D’Amico Johnson. “The general manager won’t use it on the same level as the VP, and vice versa.”
Birdeye automatically created a support ticket whenever a negative review was posted for any location, and assigned the ticket to the location’s manager. Operations was then able to track ticket resolution time by owner and by status -- open, assigned, in progress, and closed.
“Each diner manager takes ownership of their own reviews, so when a review generates a ticket, they take ownership of recovering that guest,” said D’Amico Johnson.
D’Amico Johnson monitors every diner’s tickets in one place so she can help managers if needed or ask them to follow up if she sees that no action has been taken on a ticket.


“They can use it on a broad level, or zoom in to look at just a small little sliver,” said D’Amico Johnson.

Real-time guest experience management
“They don’t have to check a bunch of places, they use it and they’re done, they move on with their day,” said D’Amico Johnson, who trains marketing, operations and management on the Birdeye platform.
This efficient system allowed the whole organization to keep pace with customer feedback, address problems instantly, and deliver above and beyond guests’ expectations. Black Bear Diner maintained a 4-star overall rating while nearly doubling both their diner locations and review volume.
Black Bear Diner can now monitor and manage more than 140K reviews and more than 3K survey responses with organized ease. All 110 diners are in sync with what their guests want, and they’re equipped with the tools and insights required to deliver experiences that guests savor long after their plates are cleared.

Birdeye: The Obvious Choice
Winning over 400 awards for 10 quarters in a row, Birdeye is the most-awarded and highest-rated customer experience software for businesses of all sizes.

