The importance of e-reputation for consumer satisfaction
RetailTune monitors online reviews, offering solid support to the brand and help to the end customer
TOUCHPOINT.NEWS
Listening: this is the keyword that many retailers underestimate in developing their business, even though it has a significant impact on users, on their purchase intentions, and on how a brand is perceived by the customer.
Listening understood both in an active sense, such as gathering online reviews and comments, categorizing and managing them, and in a passive sense, when a customer communicates directly with sales staff and asks for their help.
Regardless of the type of listening, there's one core goal to focus on: making the customer feel at the center by showing that their opinion and feedback are crucial to developing and improving the shopping experience.
Fortunately, in 2021 we have at our disposal a wealth of data, known precisely as microdata, that users voluntarily leave online — a highly valuable source of information to start from when analyzing user sentiment. Comments about product quality, staff training, the in-store experience, the perception of the store, how promotions are communicated, but above all after-sales support. It's especially in this last stage that you shouldn't abandon the user, but keep maintaining a relationship to build loyalty, encouraging them to come back to the store.
Writing a review is an important action, since it shows that the user has dedicated part of their time to sharing an opinion — positive or negative — with other users and with the company itself. Google My Business, Facebook, Tripadvisor, Trustpilot, Booking, Airbnb, Amazon and other platforms give considerable visibility to user comments and base their ranking of businesses precisely on this factor.
According to a BrightLocal study, in 2020, 87% of consumers said they read the online reviews of local businesses, an 81% increase compared to the previous year. Another study by Chatmeter shows that 88% of consumers rate online reviews as important as a recommendation from a friend.
The data confirms what we already know: the influence a user's review has on others is significant, and it can affect how a brand is perceived. A negative review left on a Google My Business listing, highlighting a business's weak points, that goes unnoticed or, worse still, unanswered, can drive away potential customers, causing damage both to brand image and to reputation.
This is why e-reputation is an increasingly strategic matter for brands, one that touches on a multitude of aspects: brand identity, the relationship with the customer, and ranking in Google results.
RetailTune, whose mission is to establish a dialogue between customer and store, pays great attention to the reviews left by customers on Google My Business listings and Facebook Location pages. Not only does it manage to capture them within the platform by feeding them into a dashboard made available to the brand, but it also offers a genuine Customer Care service: a dedicated international team directly handles review management, defining precise guidelines together with the brand.
«We know that managing reviews on Google My Business, especially for retailers with many stores, is not an easy task — it takes time and special attention, because a wrong response, or no response at all, can even have financial consequences – explains Claudio Agazzi, Founder of RetailTune – but we're convinced that keeping a close eye on reviews is essential for brands, both in terms of the visibility linked to better search engine ranking, and above all in terms of customer care».
Response speed is an important factor: on average, internet users have to wait as long as 20 days before their reviews are addressed. With centralized, organized management, the average wait drops to seven days, with an enormous benefit in terms of customer satisfaction.
Measuring the impact of RetailTune's Customer Care service in the beauty sector, we can see that over the past year the average review rating rose from 3.7/5 to 4.0/5, with an 80% increase in positive reviews, peaking at 90% in some countries.