How do you find out why a competitor’s customers prefer them?

I run a small tech company, and I keep hearing the same thing from local business owners: they can see a competitor has 4.8 stars, but not why people choose them.

The only way I’ve found is reading their Google reviews by hand, hundreds of them, looking for what people praise and what they complain about. It works, but it takes hours.

I’m curious how others handle it:

• Do you read competitors’ reviews at all?

• What do you look for (service, price, wait times, something else)?

• Has anything you learned from a competitor’s reviews actually changed what you did?

I’m building a tool for this (LocalGap, launching here next Tuesday), so I’d really like to hear how people do it today, including what’s annoying about it.