Customer reviews have become a first stop for today’s savvy shoppers. Online reviews exist for everything from the quality of electronics and computer accessories to which linens are best for a guest room. While the glut of customer reviews can be overwhelming, they illustrate how much stock people put into reviews and how important they can be for any company.

Reviews may be commonplace now, but before the Internet they were harder to come by. Consumer advocacy phone lines, magazines like ‘Consumer Reports’ and old-fashioned word of mouth supplied much – if not all – of the reviews people relied on before making a big purchase. Since there was no way for consumers to effectively communicate directly, businesses did what they could to spin articles and published reviews to their advantage and marketing was focused primarily on appearances.

Today, of course, that has all changed since people can now post reviews on social media, video sharing sites and, of course, directly to many review-based websites like Angie’s List or Yelp. As a result, companies today not only understand the power of customer reviews – they do everything they can to encourage feedback from customers and to use those reviews to improve their services.

Ratings and Reviews of Industry Vendors

For an industry like auto sales, reviews go beyond fielding customer complaints and promoting positive reviews of dealers. Dealerships too are customers for dozens of automotive vendors at any given time, who can use their own voice not only to help out other dealers considering certain vendors, but also to hold vendors accountable. This kind of collaborative, community-based approach does more than simply connect dealerships, it can improve the auto industry as a whole.

So where can dealers go to to rate and write reviews on vendors in an authentic way?

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