Are you taking full advantage of your online reviews? We previously looked at the importance of online reviews for SEO and social trust, as well as ideas for use store reviews, but there's another way to think about it: like Business intelligence. Online reviews are unfiltered feedback from your customers, a wealth of information that can help you improve your service and grow your business. Here we look at How different departments could use reviews in a more effective way, by explaining why they should be part of your business communication strategy.
The brand team
Thinking of branding as unidirectional delivery to your audience may never have been accurate, but it certainly isn't right now. Mark Lange from Reputation.com, an online reputation management company, says, “you co-create your brand with customers through review sites and social networks.” Online reviews and social networks offer customers a platform to talk about you and their words have a higher value — in 2015, a survey by Influence Central revealed that 91% of shoppers consider an online review to be more important than the opinion of a salesperson in store.
This means several things for branding: customer service is an extension of the brand (we'll get to that below), and Good branding uses customer feedback. eConsultancy has great examples of brands using customer reviews in their advertising, 11 inventive ways to use reviews beyond the product page, including Sonos, which asked viewers on its billboards to search for “Sonos reviews.” It's a bold move, but they knew that the search would return positive reviews and that customers talking to customers was a powerful advertisement.
The marketing team
A simple rule for the marketing team is to use positive online reviews everywhere. Both online, for example - on your website, on the homepage and other high-traffic pages, in emails and your own social media posts, and offline - in stores and in DOOH ads. A great example of using store reviews is the Italian electrical retailer Marcopolo. Customers could scan QR codes next to products to see more information and reviews. Looking for a product in stores is something we all do anyway, so it was a way for the retailer to take control and show the reviews they wanted the customer to see.
We talked in a previous post about the importance of online reviews for SEO visibility, including local search, but there are other ways in which the marketing team can also use online review intelligence. In a guest post for Mention, Joei Chan talks about using customer reviews to improve your PPC ads and content creation — to find keywords for your products: “refine your keyword targeting by analyzing how customers describe your products in their reviews. It gives you a clearer picture of how customers perceive and look for your products.” You might be surprised at the difference between how you think about your business and how others categorize it.
The product development team
This is an area where negative reviews are just as, if not more, valuable than positive ones. Online reviews are given freely — in fact, it's against Google's rules for brands to encourage people to give reviews — so they're honest experiences of your business. If you are careful, you will quickly discover problems and you will be able to resolve them quickly. Where can you find that, without conducting expensive focus groups? By analyzing your own online reviews, you can find areas for improvement., and by analyzing the online reviews of your competitors, you can come up with new ideas for products and services to give yourself an edge, which you can then inject back into marketing. Online reputation management software helps automate this process — most platforms include keyword analysis and can show you the words and trends that come up most often.
The sales team
Bad reviews can ruin all advertising and marketing efforts. Mark Lange again: “You can spend millions on the perfect advertising strategy, only to be completely hijacked by poor ratings on Google or an industry specific review site.” Investment and training in customer service should go hand in hand with investment in marketing.
Online reviews and social media are “unofficial” customer service channels that need to be monitored and managed; Reputation.com recommends to respond to at least 20% of positive reviews and 100% of negative reviews. Some negative reviews aren't disastrous for a business and if managed properly, they can even strengthen your brand image. But customers expect you to respond, so get your sales team comfortable with that.
The customer service team
It is an extension of the sales team. Good customer service is a powerful advertisement. Responding to negative reviews appropriately can help turn a negative experience into a positive one, both for the customer who left the review and for other customers who read the review feed.. Even if you can't solve a problem, recognizing that a problem exists and dealing with it can give you a point of contact with the customer and an opportunity for dialogue.
Also, customers don't expect everything to be perfect. A study showed that 45% of online shoppers think it's normal for products to have a few negative reviews, as long as the majority are positive. If your customers see that you manage reviews effectively, they will trust you more.
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