Brand Reputation? Yes!

Does brand reputation matter? Ratings & reviews seems to dictate purchase actions for most consumers. What was verbal conversations and word of mouth reputation building, one person at a time has scaled to thousands of social conversations on a SKU in minutes. In this environment, are you really ready for the unprecedented levels of conversation about your brands? What can you really do when there’s feedback that needs urgent action, or simply answer questions consumers have on how to use a product, the form, size, or other issues. Each one is an opportunity to speak to a consumer and drive loyalty and conversion. We spoke to Jon Jessup, CEO and founder of Reputation Studio, a company focused on a mission of connecting brands and SKUs to the reputation destiny. Here’s what we asked him. We also previously discussed brand trust & authenticity. Find it here : https://bit.ly/305qbw4

1) In a global pandemic, why is customer engagement so important?

This pandemic has disrupted nearly every aspect of our lives—and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Around the world, consumers are substituting in-person interactions with virtual options wherever they can. From basic needs to impulse buys, people are increasingly relying on eCommerce to purchase products.

Every state is different... I know here in Utah we have entered the yellow risk phase and businesses are beginning to reopen with new social distancing measures. But even as this happens, many people are still reluctant to venture into crowded brick-and-mortar stores. 

With this rapid growth in eCommerce comes an increased dependence on user-generated content like ratings, reviews and Q&A. In fact, studies show that consumer interaction with reviews more than doubled when COVID-19 started in mid-March. This shows that shoppers are more likely to seek out this content to make informed purchase decisions and avoid unnecessary returns. 

Engagement with UGC is higher than ever and gives brands an excellent opportunity to connect with customers and create authentic conversations that address their needs. The kicker for engagement is that it not only helps build trust and foster loyalty with that customer, it also gives new shoppers confidence that you are a brand they can count on. They know that if they, too, have an issue, it will be taken care of. 

The winning brands will be the ones who understand their customers and put in the effort to connect with them. 

2) What can brands do to reduce the impact of bad reviews? 

Let’s face it, not all customers are going to love your products. When a customer has a less-than-favorable experience, they are most likely going to return or replace the item—and there is always a chance they will write a negative review. 

When a consumer gives a 1, 2 or 3 star rating, it puts a brand’s reputation at risk. 1-star ratings, in particular, will not only diminish your product visibility and overall star average, they can discourage new buyers.

Brands should pay attention to bad reviews for a number of reasons: 

First, most customers who write them want brands to acknowledge their disappointment. A swift, authentic response by the brand can resolve the issue and save face with that customer. Remember, customers also have the potential to update that 1-star rating to a 3, 4 or even a 5 star rating.

Second, that reviewer also wants to inform other shoppers so they know what to expect and don’t make the same mistake purchasing the item. Oftentimes, customers seek out negative reviews so they can imagine the “worst-case scenario” and understand potential problems before committing to buy. Again, this is where a well-crafted response from the brand can resolve any questions in the eyes of the shopper. In other words, “if this happens to me, I know the brand will be there to help.”

Finally, one of the biggest ways a brand can resolve the impact of a bad review is by assessing the topic at hand. For example, if a customer writes that they expected the product to be larger, a brand’s first move should be to assess whether this is a trend. If they see many customers with that same concern, the brand should edit its product detail pages to ensure total transparency around the product’s size. 

3) How do Q&A Forums impact purchase likelihood? 

Product descriptions give customers a detailed overview of products but don’t always include every minor detail that customers may care about. Q&A Forums provide a platform for customers to ask questions about products in greater detail. A customer researching a product may want to know how a product fits or they may be seeking out a specific use case. 

Potential new customers can also read questions posted from previous customers. They are able to search for questions and find answers to help them guide their decision making. 

Unfortunately, when other customers answer questions, they might not give the best or most accurate response. Questions that are left unanswered or have a misleading answer posed by another customer could impact future purchases.

It is a brand’s responsibility to ensure that every customer question has been answered, and that it is answered correctly. This can help mitigate the impact false or unanswered Q&As can have on purchase likelihood.

Similar to bad reviews, brands should also ensure key points that are asked in Q&As are addressed on the product detail pages. 

4) What channels should a brand be monitoring and responding to? 

Most brands sell their products on a number of different channels and marketplaces. Too often, I see that it becomes overwhelming for brands to maintain their reputation in all these places. But the truth is, if it’s a customer touchpoint, your brand should be equipped to respond. Marketplace channels are especially important because that is where customers are actually researching and purchasing products. 

Sure, you could prioritize channels where the bulk of your UGC takes place. For most brands, that channel is Amazon. This is the channel most of our customers care about the most.

On the flip side, however, I would argue that all of your channels matter. Brands also need to manage the reviews published on their eCommerce website and retail channels such as Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Lowes, Best Buy, etc.

This is important if you want to maintain that optimal brand reputation across the web. This type of consistent response and brand voice shows you are customer-centric and builds trust. Plus, when you have the right partner, monitoring and responding everywhere is easy to set up and seamless to manage, so why not cover your bases?

5) How quickly do customers expect brands to respond?

Ah, this is a great one and it actually depends on the channel. Most people think the quality of the brand response is the main thing that matters, and it does. But consumers really do expect a quick response to their reviews and questions.

Providing timely customer service shows you care. If customers have an issue, you are on their side. This is why you need to come up with an effective and sustainable customer engagement strategy. When brands first start out with engagement, they try to go it alone. Monitoring every channel manually is just not sustainable, and you are likely to fall behind in response time.

The average customer wants a brand to respond within 24-48 hours. This is especially true for customers who have taken the time to write a negative review or posed a question prior to making a purchasing decision. These scenarios are often time-sensitive and brands need to prioritize action and responses accordingly. 

What I’m seeing from the customer-centric brands who I believe are doing this right, is they have an internal SLA of 4 hours for Adverse effects, a 24 hour SLA for negative review, and a 48 hour SLA for responding to positive reviews.

Some of our customers have more than 40 brands across many markets that they manage.  Each brand comes with a unique brand voice and line of products. Keeping up with 24-hour SLAs would just not be possible without the right tools and resources in place.

6) How can brands leverage automation and new technology to help keep up and outshine the competition? 

There’s no doubt that review volume is on the rise and brands want to be more customer-centric. But monitoring every channel where shoppers are reading and writing reviews, and crafting an authentic response to each can be a difficult task without the right technology.

The burden of manually managing reviews is something we hear far too often. Believe it or not, some brands must log in to a dozen or more dashboards every day, determine which content needs action, and manually assign it to the appropriate person or team to handle. Then, if they want to respond to a review, they must log back into the appropriate dashboard in order to do so. This process is not only painfully inefficient and unsustainable, but it also leaves a lot of room for error. 

Leveraging new technology and automation can help deliver review data and customer feedback to the right teams, at the right time. Especially in large organizations where you have many teams like eCommerce, Customer Care and Brand Managers who stand to benefit from a solid engagement strategy, having the right business processes and tools in place allows each team to do their job while achieving the same goals. 

Prior to implementing Reputation Studio, most of our customers had a pretty big backlog of unanswered reviews and questions. Many of their CS agents also had an average response time of 2 minutes. We have helped many brands including some of your past companies Sri, who have to manage dozens of brands, shorten response times to 30 seconds per review and completely diminish their backlog of reviews awaiting a response. Increased efficiency has allowed them to focus on the quality and personalization of responses. 

For example, in the midst of COVID, Lysol was prepared for the surge in ratings and reviews. They definitely would not have been able to keep up with responses without the right technology in place. 

7) Should brands automate their responses? 

There’s nothing better than paying your CSR’s to write the same things over and over again, right? If you’re using the right tool, response templates and canned responses are a great starting point to bring some structure and speed to your response. They can also prevent mistakes, i.e. writing the wrong phone number to call.

There’s no reason not to use some of this technology, especially for Frequently Asked Questions. In fact, I see some great successes with this for responses to positive reviews (something that is often overlooked).

However, when it comes to customer engagement, automation and canned responses should be taken with a grain of salt. Each review and question has its own unique spin, so while starting with a template can be great, it’s always best to err on the side of authenticity. Be sure you’re addressing the actual concern and not just pointing them to your 800 number. If they really wanted to call you, they would have found your 800 number.

8) Why is having a reputation management solution built on the Salesforce platform game-changing for so many huge brands?

Salesforce is the most popular CRM software in the world and leading the way in digital transformation. In fact, thousands of companies are already using the platform to manage customer relationships. 

Integrating review and Q&A data into Salesforce can help brands engage with shoppers and identify new opportunities for growth.

Brands can manage reviews and Q&A alongside other channels, such as phone, email, and chat. They can automatically create cases for negative reviews and tagged keywords, then respond from directly inside Service Cloud or Social Studio. 

Our user-specific and filter based workspaces create huge efficiencies for Customer Care agents.

Brand managers are able to set user permissions and approval processes. They can also prioritize actions based on rating, sentiment, or keyword. 

By leveraging Salesforce, our customers have access to advanced analytics, reporting, and dashboards to help them discover consumer insights and complete the customer 360.

9) You mention analytics (and got excited about it!), What can brands learn about customer experience and brand engagement from aggregating/consolidating review data? 

Brands need to measure real-time consumer sentiment to understand brand and product performance within each category. But this isn’t as easy as it sounds. 

For example, a reviewer may have given 5 stars but also provided a critical point of feedback. Or, she may have left 1 star but written a glowing review. There are all sorts of scenarios in between this that make it difficult to analyze the sentiment of a review.

That’s why it’s best to have a partner that excels at machine learning, customized models for intent tagging, and artificial intelligence. This makes understanding the true sentiment of reviews accurate and worthwhile. 

Consolidating Review and Q&A data and then analyzing the sentiment gives brands the ability to gain a deeper understanding of the collective voice of their customers. To take it one step further, brands can also monitor their competitors’ reviews and analyze that sentiment, comparing it to their own. This is extremely important if you’re trying to capture more market share or not lose market share to your competitors.

Once you have this collective voice of not only your brand but your competitors, you can do amazing things.

10) What action do you see brands take to improve ratings after learning more about their review data? 

Innovation comes from understanding your customers and what they want. If you are a customer-focused brand and you commit yourself to having a presence in the UGC space, you will dedicate the appropriate resources to this effort. Monitor and respond to your bad reviews. Check for recurring issues in the sentiment of the text. Take the appropriate actions to improve your products and messaging based on real customer feedback. Not only will your reviews improve, your sales will, too, as you win over customers in the exact place where they are increasingly going for product purchasing decisions. I always like to say: The best way to have a 5-star product is to deliver a 5-star product.

Our intent is not to forecast the future or suggest there's only one way. Our ambition is to see the CPG industry progress in delivering maximum value for the consumer via quality products widely available to all.