People Share Good News: The Marketing Power of Online Reviews
Research has shown that people like sharing good news. According to Brett Hurt, CEO of Bazaarvoice, a company whose review engines power many other well known online review sites including popular restaurant reservation and review site Open Table, or reviews at Walmart.com.
Addressing himself to marketers and brand managers who may be reluctant to allow online reviews of their products on their own web properties, he asks:
"Don't you think that customers have already been talking to one another? Don't you think that's already relfected in your sales trend? Why would you not want to know?
According to Hurt, whose firm powers online reviews for leading sites worldwide, over 80% of all reviews are 4 or 5 stars, because the primary reason people create review content is altruism. In other words, they like sharing good news and paying compliments when they are due.
Further, even 5 star reviews can be mined for ways to improve your products and services, and your sales, because they usually contain suggestions for improvement. People may say they love something about your product or service, but that it would be even better if you were to make xyz changes. I see that all the time when reading reviews on Amazon, Yelp and even the iPhone App Store, and it made perfect sense to hear that it is supported by data. Particularly, in the case of apps, customers are offering suggestions for improvements and shouting out about the developers who take that feedback and act on it quickly.
The number one reason people write content, says Hurt, is altruism. It is in our human nature, apparently, to want to help, and to make a difference. Onlilne reviews, then, should be looked at as people trying to help you. I have had conversations with several clients about the nature of their reviews online, and I often hear these business owners say that they believe that people are more likely to use online reviews to thrash them, to only talk about negative expreiences. Some believe it could even be their competition trying to harm them. This is likely based on their experience dealing with customers directly, on-premise or over the phone, where complainers are often seeking ways to shame the business owner into giving them something for free when they've found fault in it. The meal was cold, or the salad had an insect in it. Your delivery man was not on time. The promised results did not materialize, etc.
According to Avinash Kaushik, repsonding to negative criticism is highly misunderstood. Negative criticism can be a great way to engage with your online community, particularly if you are the first voice to respond to it, and have the opportunity to establish your voice and tone, resolve the issue, and establish a connection with the reviewer that will increase the likelihood of their long-term engagement.
However, not all online reviews are negative. In fact, research has shown that people are much more like to share good news online, and are much more likely to talk about favorable things. If you are ignoring reviews because you believe they are all negative, then you are also missing the valuable insights contained in positive reviews. Those simple suggestions your customers make, if incorporated into your offering, could potentially double your sales. But you'll never find out if you're not listening.
I has this conversation with my friend and marketing research expert Jeff Walters recently, and asked him about the importance of time in receiving and responding to feedback obtained through reviews. Theoretically, he said, reviews that are obtained onsite, in real-time, would have higher validity than reviews that were written some time after the delivery of your product or service, but only to the extent that in getting the review sooner you were also in a position to respond to it and rectify whatever the complaint was. For businesses that are seeking real-time customer reviews and feedback, new services such as Chatterplug are entering the market that enable onsite reviews and real time dialog and engagement between merchants and customers. I met a few days ago with Chatterplug President JoyAnn Book (@joyannbook) and took a tour of their impressive suite of tools for merchants. As with any tools designed to provide data and actionable insights, such tools are only as good as the way they are used. If you're willing to make the investment in encouraging customers to use a new iPhone or Android App to review you in real-time, which involves training your customer-facing staff to alert customers to adopt the App as well as to encourage them to review you, as well as your management who will monitor the data feed and respond to the reviews, then such tools would likely be beneficial to you.
If you are still on the fence about whether to make online reviews avaiable to your customers on your own website, or whether to pay attention to them on third-party review sites, we think its time you came down and in out of the rain. People are already talking about your business. Why wouldn't you want to know?