Brands know consumer trust is paramount to customer acquisition and retention, but effectively building this trust can pose challenges to brands. Trust takes years to build and seconds to break. While trust can be a fickle thing for most consumers, it's a critical requirement for brand manufacturers.
One challenge brands face is online customer reviews. A recent study found that 76% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. And these reviews are making a real impact, as 93% of consumers let reviews change their buying decisions.
Reputation management is essential for all brands — from the newly launched to the globally known — and commerce teams must have a plan for responding to each review. Over half of consumers expect that brands will respond to their reviews in a timely fashion. Here's how to respond to customer reviews on your product detail pages (PDPs).
Challenges of Responding to Customer Reviews
Responding to online reviews may seem simple at first: All you have to do is respond to them as they come in. But think of every PDP your brand has, and consider the feasibility of responding to every comment across your entire product catalog, which may contain dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of items.
A single product may live on your direct-to-consumer (D2C) website, Amazon, a wide selection of retail partners, and other priority sales channels. If your product is sold across multiple channels and you have a wide selection of products, this becomes unmanageable.
Customer relations teams can only handle so many PDPs responses in a timely manner. With consumers expecting a response in a short period of time, it’s getting more and more challenging for these teams to meet expectations. Teams are spread thin, and it will only get more complicated.
A negative review could stem from a faulty product — or simply a stroke of bad luck. But if there becomes a pattern of similar negative reviews, there may be operational inefficiency or dysfunction occurring somewhere in your product pipeline. These problems could result from issues in manufacturing, the purchase journey, or product delivery.
Brands also find it increasingly challenging to spot patterns when there are many locations these reviews exist.
How to Respond to Customer Reviews
Centralize Customer Reviews
For brands struggling to keep up with their online reputation management, it can be revitalizing for teams to have a centralized Commerce Experience Management (CommerceXM) platform. With an integrated platform, brands can create a single source of truth for their product content, activate it across the digital shelf, and optimize to ensure it keeps up with changing markets and buying behavior.
Equip Teams With Streamlined Insights
The Salsify Review Insights Module equips teams with the tools needed to monitor, track, and respond to Amazon reviews. The global reviews dashboard gives teams a holistic view of their average review score, the total number of reviews, and a breakdown of positive, neutral, and negative reviews.
This dashboard enables your teams to save time from logging into multiple systems and helps them take action quickly.
Leverage Workflows to Take Action Quickly
Brands can also leverage Salsify Workflows to ensure the right team member is notified when a new review is posted, helping them move quickly and ensure that none are forgotten in the fray.
With quicker response times, your team can effectively and quickly manage any harmful exposure to your products.
Gain Insights on Emerging Trends — and Spot Problems Quickly
Brands can also easily spot emerging trends in their product sentiment through this holistic view of their reviews. Brands can utilize these features to optimize their product content to showcase the features their customers love most to drive more conversions.
On the flip side, if a negative sentiment trend arises on a PDP, it’s easier for teams to spot product manufacturing defects or logistical problems. Diagnosing and communicating problems earlier in the cycle will help muffle the adverse effects of any product issues.
It may not even be an issue, but common suggestions that arise in product reviews can inform your teams for future product versions.
Utilize the Voice of the Customer
Product reviews can help drive your strategy: The best reviews can help you identify which products are most popular with your customers — and which are the most in need of support. Reviews can help you gain a greater understanding of your customers, giving you helpful information to inform your product content.
Winning brands utilize this data to improve their products and make their product content more engaging.
Learn how Badger Basket leveraged Salsify Insights to streamline their tracking and review process, saving hundreds of labor hours per year.
