Customers frequently read reviews from other customers, but how often do companies get involved? Customer reviews abound online but are often overlooked by brands.
Liz Carter, CMO of experience management company Reputation, says customer reviews have incredible power.
Today’s customers are leading their own buying journey and showing up for brands. The majority of customers look at multiple reviews online before making a purchasing decision. But most reviews come from customers who either had an amazing or terrible experience, not the majority of customers with solidly positive experiences. Carter says that if brands aren’t asking customers to leave a review, they are missing out on the silent majority of people who had a good experience but didn’t share it. And those reviews can bring in new customers.
Customer reviews go beyond just influencing sales. They can also be an impactful form of feedback for companies. Analyzing customer reviews can provide insights into common pain points with the product or service, aspects of the experience that can be improved, or things that are going smoothly.
Customer reviews help businesses grow, thrive, and evolve to meet customers’ needs. Customers want to understand and respect that they have a voice. If customers get into a habit of taking the opportunity to leave reviews for companies, they give brands the ability to change and react. Carter encourages brands to take advantage of customer reviews to understand their experience, the insights they can gain, and what they can take action on.
But for as crucial as customer reviews are, Carter says managing data can’t be a singular effort. Every department must come together to get the most out of the data. Instead of data management falling on a single person or team, Carter says getting everyone equally invested in keeping the data clean and dynamic can drive insights across the organization.
Ultimately, managing data is about telling a story. It’s not just numbers and metrics—it’s the voice of the customer. And as Carter says, if you’re not using the voice of the customer to help make business decisions, you’re probably not meeting customers where they are.
To build momentum around customer reviews, Reputation launched National Leave a Review Day on June 8. The goal is to encourage customers to leave a review for a product or service and for companies to pay attention to those reviews and use them to adapt and evolve their customer experience.
Customer reviews are crucial to brands every day, not just on National Leave a Review Day. Paying attention to customer feedback in all forms encourages customers to get involved in the experience and helps brands evolve and thrive.
This episode is sponsored by Reputation.
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Blake Morgan is a customer experience futurist and the bestselling author of The Customer of the Future. For regular updates on customer experience, sign up for her weekly newsletter here.