Charles Clinkard steps into the future with Pulse

Charles Clinkard, the respected British footwear retailer with over a century of trading history, has partnered with Pulse, an AI powered review intelligence platform, to enhance its customer experience and online reputation.

Founded in 1924, Charles Clinkard is known nationwide for its customer-first approach, with over 30 retail locations and a high-performing eCommerce site powered by Visualsoft. While steeped in tradition, the business remains committed to innovation, most recently demonstrated by their move to adopt Pulse.

Charles Clinkard is using Pulse to monitor and improve their overall review performance. The platform provides sentiment analysis, instant notifications and allows its stores to reply to reviews quickly and centrally. The retailer will also use one of Pulse’s most popular tools to calculate the exact number of five star reviews needed to increase a business’ Google rating. The platform also manages location data like opening hours, ensuring Charles Clinkard’s listing is accurate and up-to-date.

Rachel Clinkard, eCommerce Director at Charles Clinkard, said: “We’ve always taken customer feedback seriously and partnering with Pulse is a natural next step for us. Their technology lets us understand and respond to reviews faster and more intelligently than ever before. It also gives us the ability to track performance across all our stores, which is key for maintaining our high service standards.”

The centralised nature of Pulse alongside its unique metric helps Charles Clinkard to easily create and manage targets for its stores, either on an individual basis or as part of an internal competition.

Pulse is a software platform that helps businesses like Charles Clinkard understand, manage and improve their online reputation. Using powerful AI and machine learning, Pulse brings together all of a company’s Google Reviews across multiple stores into one easy-to-manage platform. It benchmarks performance across locations or against others in the industry, enabling deeper insight and more informed decisions. One of its key features is the Pulse Score, a unique, data-driven metric that consolidates review activity into a single score for each store and the overall business, making reputation performance measurable and trackable over time.

Clinkard added: “We also know how important authentic reviews are for customers, so maximising the potential of the ones we have and encouraging stores to capture more was really important. Pulse also aligns with our wider strategy of increasing AI adoption across the business, helping us respond in ways that are both efficient and relevant. And importantly, we’ve seen that replying to reviews with the right keywords can help our search visibility, so Pulse is supporting us there too. Pulse supports our values and gives us a clearer view of what our customers think.”

“Working with a company like Charles Clinkard is a big moment for us,” said Kiya Phillips, founder and CEO of Pulse. “They care deeply about customer service and reputation, which aligns perfectly with what Pulse delivers. It’s exciting to support a business that’s been trusted for over 100 years and now trusts us to help power their future.”

This partnership reflects a shared commitment to putting customers first, helping shoppers get the best possible experience in-store and online, while ensuring their feedback drives meaningful improvements.