Canoe2 offers canoe hire and multi-day river bundles along The River Nene, an hour north of London. We spoke with co-founding director Ian Blackwell about how Yonder has transformed the volume and usefulness of their customer feedback.
"We decided to start using Yonder because we wanted more data from customers about what they thought of the trip. We were getting some feedback, but not enough to get a full picture. Our Google and Facebook reviews have been increasing but TripAdvisor has really dried up over the last year. Overall, we never felt we were getting enough feedback."
Since using Yonder, Canoe2 now collects over 10x more customer feedback than they did through online reviews alone — using Yonder Reviews integrated with their Checkfront booking system.
"Getting direct feedback from customers through Yonder has been absolutely fantastic. 50% of our customers over the summer season leaving feedback is just amazing, I was astounded!" — Ian Blackwell
"Feedback is incredibly valuable to us, both the good and the bad. Gathering regular feedback lets us know if there's anything customers are unhappy with. With Yonder we can now publish all of our good feedback on the website and use it as a promotional tool. I love that bit — and people love seeing real, recent and relevant customer feedback when they're deciding whether to book with us."
"The Yonder website plug-in to show live reviews on the website is the most exciting thing we've done on the website this year. It was super easy to drop it in via the Checkfront website editor — I wish I put them on sooner actually!"
The plugin automatically displays the most recent 10 reviews with comments — combining Yonder and Google reviews, filtered to 5-star ratings only. And because each review shows the specific tour it relates to, Canoe2 can display relevant reviews on individual trip pages — automatically, with no manual updating.
"Previously, I was cutting and pasting the occasional review from TripAdvisor, and often I'd forget to do it for a month. Now it's all automatic and live."
"The integration with our booking system Checkfront was really easy to set up. It only took me a few minutes to connect and get going, then it was sending surveys automatically for us."
Negative feedback is matched with booking data from Checkfront — providing immediate context (tour date, product, booking details) to help Canoe2 follow up faster and more accurately.
An average of 50% of customers provided feedback over summer
Learn more about Yonder Reviews and using Yonder with Checkfront.