Eooro is a review platform that helps businesses collect and promote customer reviews – Gavin Mullins

Edited and prepared by Oscar Michel, Masters in Journalism, DCU

Great Interview with Gavin Mullins, Founder/ CEO of Eooro.com

Your background briefly?

I was born in Dublin, Ireland and have two daughters, aged 7 and 2.

Over the past 20 years I have been involved with various businesses and it was while working on one in London when I first realised how difficult it was for a business to find a good affordable review service.

The available platforms were ridiculously expensive and they did nothing to help a business collect more reviews, they seemed to be more focused on getting traffic to their own website.

Does it seem like a logical background to what you do now?

My experience gave me great insight into the reputation management side of business, it felt very natural to begin developing Eooro. My previous occupation was in engineering, so I guess building something from scratch and making it work is in my DNA.

I believe that the best ideas come from people that look at problems from a different angle.

1 min pitch for what you are doing now?

I founded Eooro.com in 2014.

Eooro is a review platform that helps businesses collect and promote customer reviews.

Think of Eooro as a mix between Yelp and Hootsuite, but with additional tools to make collecting and promoting reviews much easier and less time consuming.

Our Review Collector App is a game changer in the review world. Once downloaded to a smartphone or tablet a business owner and their employees can collect on-the-spot reviews directly from their customers.

We estimate that using an app to collect reviews directly from customers will improve review collection rates by as much as 400%, we proved this with some of our early testers.

Businesses that do not deal face-to-face with customers can request reviews via email using our Review Collector Email System.

Then there is our Social Media Posting Tool, this enables businesses to connect their Eooro account with their social media accounts. Once connected, Eooro can automatically post the reviews they collect straight to their social profiles or pages.

Posting reviews to social circles builds Social Signals, keeps existing followers engaged and improves search engine rankings.

We also have several Website Widgets, these are installed on our users own website and they automatically display reviews to potential customers. It helps build trust and improves conversion rates.

The best part is, once an Eooro account is all set up the only thing the business needs to do is collect reviews, we take care of the rest.

Your tips for growing a business and why should business owners collect reviews?

I cannot stress enough how important it is for a business to have good customer reviews.

I speak with business owners all the time and it is amazing to see how collecting and promoting customer reviews improves their sales.

With 80% of people conducting online research before purchasing and 70% of people trusting the online opinions of others, it is more important than ever to have a good online reputation.

Many business owners do not realise, but their existing customers are the key to attracting new customers and it costs nothing to ask for a review. Every good review should be thought of as a free asset that will continue to entice and attract new customers for years to come.

There is also the issue of bad reviews. Too many businesses make the mistake of not starting to collect reviews early enough, then when a bad review happens panic sets in as they try to resolve the situation. A smart business owner will begin collecting reviews early, then if a bad review occurs it will simply get diluted in among the good ones already collected.

However, getting a negative review is not the end of the world as it can make a reputation look much more authentic. We all know it is impossible to please everyone and people are more likely to believe a review rating that’s not perfect over one that is.

The thing to remember is that collecting reviews early will help avoid a reputation disaster in the future.

Looking back is there anything you’d do differently?

Yes. We should have begun looking for investment much earlier, it took longer than we expected to find our first investor.

How does Eooro compare to the likes of Yelp and Trustpilot?

Like our competitors, we also get reviews to the top of search results.

What sets Eooro apart from the competition is the additional tools we provide businesses with, such as our Review Collector App and Social Media Posting Tool.

Another major difference is our price, while other review platforms charge over $3000 a year, Eooro costs only $200 a year.

Eooro should appeal to any business that needs a good review platform at an affordable price.

Where do you see Eooro in 5 years?

A global service helping 100,000+ businesses to manage and promote their customer reviews.

What is your unfair advantage over other competitors in your space?

That’s easy, it’s our App, Social Posting Media Tool and our Cost.

Our only goal is to help businesses attract new customers, if they succeed, we succeed.

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at Simon@IrishTechNews.ie or on Twitter: @SimonCocking