Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve focused on how brands who are ready to monitor and manage their product ratings and reviews should get their ducks in a row and organize their consumer feedback across online stores and then engage their loyal buyers to win new buyers. The next step after organizing and launching campaigns to drive sufficient consumer engagement is to actively monitor and manage your ratings and reviews.
Part 3: Listen and Respond
Product reviews, both positive and negative, are a resource and an opportunity for brands to show their love for their consumers. Because consumers are 63% more likely to make a purchase from a site that has user reviews, it's critical that brand and category managers actively solicit consumer feedback across online retailers.
Monitoring online ratings and reviews can help your brand stay ahead of the game by uncovering patterns in consumer feedback and exposing critical issues. You can use these insights across your organization to fine tune your messaging, branding, and even product design.
But monitoring and uncovering insights is only one part of the equation. To provide the best customer experience, utilize reviews to start a conversation directly with your shoppers.
Shopper engagement with online ratings and reviews builds both trust and loyalty, and the proof is in the positive sales impact. Shoppers who interact with both reviews and customer questions and answers are 105% more likely to purchase while visiting, and spend 11% more than visitors who don’t interact with this content. By responding to reviews, you not only build rapport with a single commenter, you are demonstrating to any shopper reading the review that your brand is willing to engage and take customer feedback seriously.
Don’t Fear Negative Reviews
But what if your online ratings and reviews are lackluster or (gulp) even negative? First of all, consider it an opportunity. Demonstrate your brand’s strong customer service by identifying and responding to negative consumer feedback (on Amazon, a negative review is a product that receives anything less than four stars). The good news is that consumers understand that there will always be haters, and even the best products will have detractors who leave negative product reviews. In fact, “bad” reviews can even increase your conversion rate.
Why? A lack of negative reviews doesn’t’ seem trustworthy to most consumers. They may suspect censorship or fakery. Reviews are powerful because of their authenticity. Brands can mitigate the impact of negative comments by responding in a helpful, credible way.
We’ll use the Gillette Fusion Proglide Men’s Razor as an example. This razor is a generally beloved product: it has a 4.5 average rating and over twelve hundred reviews at Amazon. The item does have 37 one star ratings and Gillette has responded to almost half of them, demonstrating strong customer service.
Remove Reviews Related to Retailer Performance
A quick win for brand managers when a consumer complaint in a critical review is about shipping, delivery or retailer service instead of actual product or product performance is to ask the retailer to remove the review, since this is in violation of most retailers’ rating and review policies. A £559.00 stainless steel Apple watch has 21 positive product ratings and a just a single one-star rating at Amazon UK.
In the one star review, the consumer is frustrated that they didn’t receive an invoice for the value-added tax (VAT) paid from Amazon. “The watch is fine. My 1 star relates entirely to the poor customer care received [from Amazon].” Apple can and should request that this review that has no product complaints be removed from Amazon UK, which would leave this item with only positive ratings.
