Hi – Andrew here. Co-founder and CEO of Review Robin

Today I am excited to talk about some changes that have come to Review Robin to offer agencies a better experience when managing their client review campaigns.

We have released a handful of new features that allow agencies to manage and set up their client review campaigns in a more streamlined, predictable and simpler way. 

In this post we will review each change – and how it impacts any existing behavior of the app, if it does. 

Custom review sites are now supported

Prior to this release, you have been restricted to the review websites that we supported natively in the app – without the option to add custom review site links, unless you used some pretty funky workarounds.

You can now add up to 3 custom review sites per location which means sites previously unsupported and not listed directly in the app can be added in to incorporate into your review campaigns.

You will see the custom review site options appear right after the Google and Facebook options in the Add Review Site grid when adding a new location or selecting “Add Review Site” from the location settings area.

Custom review sites do not monitor for reviews at the moment – however, we will be watching which custom review sites are popular choices for the custom links and incorporate them as needed.

You can now search for and jump between locations from the “Location” dashboard

Switching between client locations is now easier than ever.

Previously – to switch between client accounts as an agency user you had to navigate back to the Agency dashboard, then click “log in as” then select the appropriate location in that account from the dropdown.

You can still do this – but there is now an easier way.

In the top left of the location dashboard you will find a dropdown that includes a quick view to all the locations and accounts within your agency.

You are able to simply click the location or account name to jump to that location.

You can also search by location name, account name or by location ID if you need to find a specific location.

“Limit Reset Dates” have been moved to the 1st of the month – regardless of client account creation or agency sign up

Previously – when an Agency added a new client account, the creation date of that account dictated when the monthly email/sms usage limits would reset back to zero. 

This caused a frustrating experience for agencies – as every client was different, and it was hard to keep track of.

We have shifted all locations to have a reset date of the 1st of the month very early in the morning. (Around midnight/1am on the 1st)

This means all locations that you manage will have their limits reset back to zero on the same time each month, offering an easier way to manage the campaigns. 

The “Auto Queue” feature has been removed

A big part of Review Robin’s vision in the early days was to incorporate features that made managing review campaigns easier and with less touch points.

When we launched originally, we included an Auto Queue feature that allowed agencies to queue up review requests to include into future blasts in the event the CSV uploaded was larger than their current monthly limits. 

The intention with this feature was to simply allow a “One and done” style of use – but this became confusing and we have decided to remove this functionality after speaking with our customers.

Now when you send out requests that push you over a location’s limit (for SMS or email) the requests will simply not send, and will not be queued up for a later time. As always you will see a “You are over your limit for (email/sms)” banner in the app for the location – and you will also be sent an email as your approach that limit each month.

You can see how many requests have been sent in the current period for a location by either viewing the location from the Agency’s Usage page (Agency dashboard → Usage on left hand menu) or by logging into the location and viewing the Overview page. 

As mentioned, resets will now occur on the first of the month to offer a uniform and easy to manage experience for agencies. 

Email and SMS limits have been moved to a “Location” level – with a significant boost in available credits for all existing customers

Another feature that we thought was cutting edge for agencies – but turned out to be a source of confusion and frustration was allowing an agency to manually adjust their email and/or SMS limits for each location based on a pool of available “agency” email or sms limits.

While cool in theory – it quickly became a nightmare for agencies to manage, and teaching new agency members how this feature worked was a consistent pain point as it’s a bit abstract compared to the norm. 

It also meant some locations were taking up all the available credits for the month – negatively impacting other locations.

After viewing how this feature is being used we have decided to pull the plug on it and adopt a more traditional account setup to help agencies stay streamlined. 

For future customers – they will come in on this model at the publicly advertised limits.

For our existing customers – we’ve decided to give all of you a significant boost as a thank you for being a loyal customer.

Regardless of what plan you’re on – you will be getting a very large boost in available credits per location that you have access to.

For example – on the Growth Plan:

Previously, you would have 25 locations and 1875 SMS credits and 32 250 email credits.

This comes out to 75 SMS per location – and 1290 emails per location a month.

All existing customers will now get:

3000 email requests per month

200 SMS requests per month

You do not need to take any action to claim these additional credits – they’ve been automatically applied.

If you have a unique circumstance where this negatively impacts your agency operations for whatever reason – please reach out to us. We are happy to work out some sort of arrangement to accommodate you.

A “Select All” option has been added when adding or updating a user

Previously you had to individually click each location or account you wanted to grant a user access to.

We have added a simple way to “Select all” when adding a new user (or updating one)

You will find that option in the typical user management interfaces.

This feature is live for both agency and client user interfaces. 

Ability to auto-assign future locations and accounts to specific users has been added

Continuing with our goal of making the software as simple as possible for agency users – you can now toggle an option for each user that allows them to receive access to new locations or accounts when they’re added in.

When adding (or updating) a user to a location or an account – you will see this new option and can toggle it.

It works for both client users and agency users.

For client users – if active, it means new LOCATIONS added into their ACCOUNT will be auto assigned to them.

For agency users – if active, it means new ACCOUNTS added into your AGENCY ACCOUNT will be auto assigned to them.

Basically – it’s an easy way to keep the entire team in sync as new locations are added – without needing to manually update things as you did before. 

Alright… that’s all the updates for now.

We have more updates in the works as well – keep your eye out for our next update which is scheduled for early 2023.