Chatmeter is a brand intelligence company reimagining customer connections and reputation management through AI-powered deep listening. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Chatmeter CEO John Mazur to learn more about the company.
John Mazur’s Background
Could you tell me more about your background? Mazur said:
“I’m the CEO of Chatmeter, a multi-location customer intelligence company that helps brands manage their digital reputations and use AI to listen deeply to customer feedback and improve the customer experience.”
“I joined Chatmeter in 2023 as AI was just starting to transform customer experience software. CX is an area ripe for AI transformation, especially with the explosion of customer feedback in the form of unstructured data like photos and videos, and I knew Chatmeter had potential to lead the customer intelligence category for multi-location brands.”
“With AI, brands can now collect and understand all the feedback and online chatter from customers and make product, price, operational and CX decisions that transform their businesses. In an era where businesses are struggling to compete on price, deep listening can help them compete on customer intelligence instead.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Mazur explained:
“Chatmeter’s Pulse Ai platform offers a suite of AI tools that help multi-location businesses understand every customer’s experience at every location. For brands with hundreds or thousands of locations, it’s hard to be everywhere at once. Our platform helps them get that in-depth understanding of the customer journey across all locations.
Pulse Ai capabilities include:
- Signals, a generative AI-powered analysis tool. Marketers can ask questions in plain language, and Signals analyzes thousands and thousands of reviews, social posts and surveys to concisely summarize customer feedback and suggested next steps.
- Risk Monitoring, which uses AI to analyze customer feedback for mentions of harassment, safety issues, food poisoning and more. Brands can get alerts immediately when mentions spike so they can take action to prevent the next viral crisis.
- Surveys 2.0 continuously analyzes survey data, including open text answers, in real time, and allows brands to survey customers after specific interactions to identify insights and patterns that traditional survey tools miss.
- Sentiment uses natural language processing and generative AI to identify major themes across your customer feedback to give you an at-a-glance view of customer feedback across your business. When Chatmeter debuted this feature in 2017, we were first to market.
We also offer brands with tools to help them automate and streamline management of their digital presence. For example, they can conduct social listening, update their local listings, respond to customer reviews, and improve local SEO at scale.”
Challenges Faced
Have you faced any challenges in your sector of work recently? Mazur acknowledged:
“The restaurant industry is one of our biggest customer segments and over the past couple of years it’s faced many challenges, from inflation to supply chain disruptions, health scares and staff shortages. Our 2024 QSR Reputation Ranking report found that even the most beloved restaurants aren’t immune to customer service issues. Many popular chain restaurants have gone through bankruptcies or major leadership changes in the past year, and many are seeing sales and foot traffic drop.”
“We’ve actually been able to lean into this and offer a solution for restaurants looking to understand exactly why customers aren’t coming back. For example, we noticed that mobile orders were emerging as a potential threat as consumers complained about their orders not being ready on time and inventory issues. There are operational shifts restaurants can make to address this, such as dedicating staff specifically to mobile orders. Knowing exactly where your customers’ pain points are makes solving them a lot easier.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Mazur noted:
“Chatmeter was founded in 2009 to help multi-location businesses better manage their online reputations. We were initially heavily focused on local SEO, and while local SEO continues to be very important today, we have grown into a more comprehensive customer intelligence platform. Thanks to recent product innovations, we now offer the most advanced AI-powered reputation management platform for multi-location brands.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Mazur cited:
“In 2024, Pulse Ai saw monthly active users (MAU) of Signals grow by 138%. Risk Monitoring alerted brands to more than 300k risky reviews. With our AI-powered review responder, brands responded to an average of 38% more customer reviews monthly than they were able to do previously with more manual processes. We supported more than 9.8 billion Google search impressions and more than 857 million interactions for multi-location brands last year.”
“In January, we launched new capabilities, including the ability of Signals to analyze photos in reviews–an industry first. We also debuted Review Generation, a tool that helps businesses generate a higher volume of authentic, trustworthy customer reviews. This is critical because nearly all consumers, 95%, say they are more likely to trust a business with a lot of online reviews.”
Customer Success Stories
When asking Mazur about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“Our customers include A&W, Caliber Collision, Driven Brands and H&R Block Canada. Some examples of success stories include:
- Caliber Collision receives 12,000 reviews per month across 2000+ locations. They partnered with Chatmeter to uncover insights into the customer experience across all locations and respond to 100% of reviews, resulting in a 31% increase in 5-star reviews.
- An aesthetic dermatology practice with 3,000+ locations used Chatmeter to increase their volume of reviews by 62% in just 9 months, leading to a 20-30% increase in organic leads for the business.
- A major hospital system with 400+ locations needed to keep its online presence–which spanned 9,000 digital listings–accurate. By using Chatmeter, the team was able to improve listings accuracy from 50% to 98%, seeing the number of appointments booked directly from listings grow significantly as a result. Now, 25% of all scheduled appointments come directly from listings, which are complete with provider photos, hours, keywords and more.
- Rise Brands, which creates immersive consumer dining experiences in the midwest, south and southwest, used our listing management and reputation management tools to manage customer feedback. By using Chatmeter, Rise Brands locations ranked on page one of Google for 11 different phrases and received over 5,000 5-star reviews.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Mazur affirmed:
“Chatmeter’s AI is purpose-built for multi-location brands. Our platform can process millions of data points in mere seconds, helping brands spot and avert potential reputation-damaging crises as quickly as it helps them understand how customers feel about new products and services. Customer feedback is the backbone of brand loyalty, and we’re the leading experts when it comes to deeply understanding that feedback.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Mazur emphasized:
“We’re continuing to create new ways for multi-location businesses to use AI to drive growth. We just launched image analysis in Signals, allowing brands to use AI to better understand customer photos in reviews, and we’re looking at doing the same for video next. We’re also always adding new integrations with platforms where customers provide feedback or research brands, and we’re working on technology that helps businesses better analyze their competition. Demand for our platform has never been higher, and we’re excited to continue investing in our multi-location AI.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? Mazur concluded:
“The SEO and reputation management industry is currently at a crossroads as AI transforms local search and how consumers make decisions. It’s an exciting time to be at the helm of Chatmeter as we help multi-location brands navigate this shift.”
