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Customer Story

Yell Secures Future With Online Reputation Management

The UK’s leading online directory developed an all-in-one social monitoring tool, enhancing its position as an essential business service

Related services
Data and AI

Industry
Technology | Telecom | Media

Company
Xebia

Yell.com is the UK’s leading online business directory. The website was launched in the UK in 1996 by the publishers of the Yellow Pages telephone directory. Since then, it has put the names, addresses and telephone numbers of over three million businesses at the fingertips of its users. Yell.com provides over three thousand company classifications, allowing users to find the right local match for what they need. The website is also a hub for localized digital marketing and analytics, enabling businesses to build, manage and grow their customized digital marketing programs, as well as to manage their online reputations in a single portal.
Why
Yell wanted to develop its reputation management software into a one-stop shop for merchants
What
The company created APIs to integrate social mentions into the platform
How
The final product ensured Yell’s position as an essential business service in the digital age

Online Reputation: The Next Step

As part of the journey away from paper-based media, Yell wanted to utilize its experience and knowledge in commerce more within the digital space. With the Reputation Manager product, the company sought to fulfill the business need of allowing clients a single platform for review site and social media engagement.

Yell’s merchants would be able to track their online reputation in one place, with instant notifications for any new online feedback along with the means to respond. The company had already begun working with an external tool that monitored when businesses were mentioned online. Yell wanted to develop this further and integrate the tool as part of a comprehensive digital product.

Integrating APIs Within the Cloud

Yell utilized Xebia’s experience to develop the Reputation Manager in the cloud, building it on the AWS platform to provide a solid foundation.

The first task was to create a method to embed data from the citation tool and social media APIs into Yell’s Vis Editor. Next, a user interface was needed to expose those API calls, enabling data to easily pass between Yell and the citation tool via Yell’s own endpoints and webhooks. With social network monitoring triggering the API calls, Yell would be notified as soon as a merchant is reviewed on a social platform.

The end product would therefore provide merchants’ social media managers the opportunity for instant media engagement, essential in today’s business landscape.

“Reputation Manager is our way of helping merchants to embrace the digital business landscape. We’re delighted how the technology underneath our solution, based on a leading business citation management tool, helps our clients rest easy regarding how they’re discussed online.”
Yell
Leo Perrotta Head of Tech Delivery, Yell.

Keeping Yell Essential in the Digital World

Thanks to its use of the cloud, Yell’s Reputation Manager is a fast, responsive product that demonstrates the company’s continued growth in the online marketing space.

The service automatically notifies clients of citations, removing the need for manual monitoring, and so allowing social media managers to spend more time on creative tasks. Businesses can now track engagement and reviews across platforms, making them better informed on brand awareness, negative reviews and any other social mentions that may influence their online marketing and wider operations. 

Reputation Manager provides merchants with a single portal to gain insight into their online reputations and user bases, enhancing Yell’s future importance as a B2B service.

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