The importance of consumer reviews
Today, accessing what consumers really think about the products they buy is crucial for brands and their customers. On social networks, with friends and family, or on specialized websites dedicated to sharing reviews, feedback is pouring in. To avoid being at the heart of a bad buzz, it became essential for brands to closely follow what people say about their products.
On the one hand, this feedback facilitates the act of purchase: upstream, it informs and reassures the customer, while downstream it allows a mutual commitment with the latter, who, if satisfied, will not hesitate to leave a positive review.
On the other hand, consumer reviews provide brands with many details on the actions to be implemented, such as product renovation for example (see our article on "Why taking into account customer reviews is more important than you think").
Indeed, their reviews are often very precise and highlight the positive points of the product while pointing out the ones to improve.
Therefore, even negative reviews represent an opportunity because they offer the possibility for a brand to regain the approval of disgruntled customers: 45% of them will post a positive interaction if the brand reacts well to a complaint filed on social media according to Net Offensive, specialist in e-reputation issues.
Thus, it can be interesting to maximize the rate of consumer feedback (/ratings and reviews) on its products.
However, generating customer reviews can be complicated
Not all consumers spontaneously leave a review after a purchase due to lack of time, computer skills, or simply motivation.
Therefore, as a brand, it is important to implement solutions to encourage consumers to post their feedback on social networks and e-commerce sites.
According to a study by Getfivestars.com, only 7.7% of consumers regularly write a review after an online purchase. Without solicitation, brands get only few feedbacks, which does not always allow them to have a wide enough vision to take concrete actions to improve their products.
It is therefore interesting for brands to seek out this customer feedback and to provoke it through several methods.
To encourage consumers to respond, it is possible to play on their motivational levers
We sometimes notice that some consumers can be reluctant to take the time to write a review without any compensation. Especially since, due to lack of habit, they tend to neglect this aspect following their purchase.
Brands can then offer an entry to a contest or a voucher in exchange for a comment on the products purchased.
However, this counterpart must be used to motivate the consumer to give his opinion, in order to increase the brand's feedbacks. This is not to be confused with encouraging customers to give a necessarily positive rating, a process that mainly generates biased reviews.
To motivate the customer, it can also be useful to send emails or push notifications on the brand's applications to mobilize the customer. Online shopping allows companies to directly access valuable customer contact information which makes the process quite simple.
Offering discounts when a lot of reviews are left can also be interesting to implement via a points system.
Finally, sales clerks also play an important role in encouraging customers to leave their reviews after purchase.
Moreover, 75% of consumers expect brands to give them the opportunity to provide feedback following their experience.
The challenge is to successfully secure the collection of customer feedback
From the click on the link to write a review to the click on the "send review" button, consumers have the opportunity to encounter a thousand reasons why they may stop along the way.
Indeed, they don't want to have to write too much or feel they are wasting their time. The challenge is to make sure they get to the end of the review writing process. To do this, the form must be quick and pleasant to fill out.
The challenge here is to get the essential information in a form that does not take too much time to complete. To do this, it is interesting to combine open-ended questions with quick response questions.
It is also possible to offer consumers the option of selecting a number of stars according to the chosen theme, in order to make the process even easier and faster.
On average, 59.4% of consumers say they are ready to answer a form containing 2 to 5 questions.
The challenge is to select the right questions to avoid that the length of the questionnaire exceeds the consumers' expectations.
Thus, obtaining customer opinions is important but knowing how to analyze them accurately is even more crucial if you want to remain efficient, innovative and attentive to your customers in an increasingly competitive market.
Now, the challenge is to succeed in proceeding, once the reviews are obtained, to a quick and efficient analysis of them.
How can I make the most of my consumers' opinions?
The methods mentioned above allow brands to increase their return rates and therefore improve their visibility and increase the trust that consumers place in them.
To go even further, the analysis of these reviews contributes to improve the understanding of their customers, in terms of needs and expectations, and thus to adopt a better strategy in order to develop more efficient products.
The main difficulty lies in the fact of having to gather and exploit all these reviews, scattered on hundreds of websites, sometimes on several markets and thus in different languages.
At Voysen, aware of the magnitude of the task, we decided to offer our customers a solution to meet their challenges.
Thanks to Beautysen, our online consumer review aggregation tool, it is possible to quickly and easily access a set of analyzed data on your products and those of the competition.
Our dashboard allows you to access a multitude of consumer reviews analyzed around the world.
Find in a single point the opinions of your customers and those of the competition on the various markets that interest you, grouped and analyzed to provide you with precise information on the subjects that interest you.
To discover our Beautysen dashboard, visit www.voysen.com and our LinkedIn page!
