SOCi adds new reputation agent skills for surveys, reviews and customer recovery

SOCi on October 6 launched three new skills for its Genius Reputation Agent aimed at helping multi-location brands recover unhappy customers in the moment and convert satisfied customers into reviews. The company says the tools can expand survey reach, close issues faster and lift ratings without adding headcount.

Why it matters: - Multi-location brands often hear from unhappy customers too late, after the visit has already turned into a lost return trip or a bad review. - SOCi is pitching an automated way to catch customers while the experience is still fresh, resolve issues fast and turn positive feedback into public reviews at scale. - The company says the approach can improve customer recovery and local reputation without adding staff.

What happened: - SOCi Inc. launched three new skills for its Genius Reputation Agent on October 6, 2026. - The new skills are Conversational Surveys, Review Generation and Voice of Customer. - The launch targets multi-location brands that need to manage customer feedback across many locations. - SOCi said the bundle is generally available as the Conversational Surveys Core Bundle.

The details: - Conversational Surveys uses a real-time conversation instead of a static form. - The agent chooses the best time, channel and message based on open, click and response data. - Follow-up questions adapt to each customer’s response. - When sentiment turns negative, the agent can act in-thread with a pre-approved resolution. - Review Generation drafts a review from quotes the customer already gave and lets the customer post to Google or Facebook in one tap. - Voice of Customer clusters conversation data into themes and sentiment for each location and for corporate teams. - SOCi says customer data and industry benchmarks show 3.5x more survey responses, 3x more issues resolved and 25% more 5-star reviews versus static forms. - SOCi says response coverage rises from an industry-typical 36% to 100% with the bundle. - SOCi says customers shown their own words are nearly twice as likely to post a review.

Between the lines: - The product pitch shifts reputation management from measurement to intervention. - That matters because a score alone does not fix a bad experience, while a timely response can still salvage the relationship. - The launch also reflects a broader move toward agentic software that automates more of the customer feedback loop. - The claims are company-reported and benchmark-based, so the pilot results are the strongest evidence in the release.

What's next: - SOCi says any multi-location brand can request a demo at more information. - Existing SOCi customers can request a demo through their account team. - The company is positioning the new skills as part of a broader push to expand local visibility across reviews, social, AI search and other channels.

The bottom line: - SOCi is betting that multi-location brands want fewer surveys that just measure problems and more tools that fix them, generate reviews and surface location-level insights in the same workflow. - In pilot use with one multi-location brand, the Genius Reputation Agent closed 90% of customer issues across 16,646 responses, cut 1-star reviews by 45%, lifted 5-star reviews by 23% and raised average Google ratings from 3.88 to 4.38.