Customer reviews: why you should care of them more than ever

In this article, we are going to focus specifically on the situation that the coronavirus crisis has generated in eCommerce customers, and how they have reacted through their comments and opinions.  

Even so, as much as this refers largely to a specific situation, many conclusions can be drawn that will be useful in other different contexts, because many of these changes are here to stay. 

The Internet is an open environment in which users can interact with brands. For this reason, the analysis and opinions users have of our products and the service we provide is something public. 

The Internet expands what previously remained in a proximity environment, reaching thousands of people. And, when reaching social networks, the scope multiplies exponentially. 

Online customers seek opinions proactively, they compare what is said about one product or another and, in the most direct way, social proof influences their purchasing decisions. 

As we can see in this Statista graph, after the brands' websites (which also include reviews), 43% of users acknowledge that their friends and family influence their purchasing decisions. In addition, 38% get information on blogs or forums, and up to 24% use social networks. 

Since we are aware of the importance of reviews to influence those users who are in the consideration stage of the customer journey, we include the possibility of integrating comments directly in the product sheet.  

This is the first point of friction and the one that is easier for us to control. Have this user-generated content in good health, and when a negative one occurs, do not leave it out. Give it a solution and you will see how the sense of criticism changes. 

Not everyone sells through portals like Amazon or eBay, but if you do, you should also pay close attention to what is said in them about you. 

Good reviews position you better within them, but the bad ones can lead to the suspension or cancellation of the account (when they are recurring and constant). 

They are very popular and, as they have the advantage of feeding on large amounts of content contributed by users, they can become highly visible in Google SERPs and other search engines, even above our own results for some keywords. 

In addition to SEO, obviously the opinion portals should matter to us because users consult them proactively, and can benefit or harm us depending on how the opinions are. 

By the way, especially in the case of having a physical establishment , do not forget to check Google My Business periodically since it has such a powerful visibility. 

Also do not forget about blogs and forums: they are very thematically focused spaces and the users who consult them can become very sensitive to the opinions that appear in them. 

If we talk about visibility, monitoring our brand on social networks is absolutely essential. 

Think that they are places where sharing experiences is highly favored and that, even, many of the users apply a direct influence among their followers, even without being what we call influencers. 

By the way: as with Amazon, a bad rating on Facebook will harm us directly, limiting the visibility of our ads on Facebook Ads. 

This is logical. During confinement and in the following lockdown-easing, eCommerce has increased itself as a sales channel (especially in certain niches and products). 

Simply by maintaining the same response rate as before, the volume of reviews rises; and this influences both now and generating a history. If the inertia was positive, it will surely be kept, but it is necessary to keep this aspect monitored to quickly detect a negative change and react. 

The only problem that it can bring us to reach more public is that these new users in many cases is one of the first times that they buy online and they have other types of expectations and incidents that can be interpreted as a certain "lack of aptitude" when in reality the experience must be contextualized because the current circumstances are unique. 

That frustration can easily be turned into negative criticism, justified from the point of view of possible service, but unjustified in the sense of not sufficiently evaluating the impact of current exceptional circumstances on service. 

We must think about these types of clients more than ever and rethink the usability of our site if necessary. Using conversational marketing resources such as agent-operated live chats and chatbots would also help a lot. 

Let's resolve doubts before seeing them become avoidable reputation crises and transform them into positive reviews that drive business. 

What is objectively positive and one of the purposes that we always pursue, such as selling more, can in exceptional circumstances, turn against us. 

A sustained increase in the number of orders requires us to balance our structure at all levels again: production, customer service, logistics, web infrastructure … If we are not flexible enough, everything can start falling apart like a house of cards. 

Think that any failure in this entire chain is passed on to the client, and his way of expressing it is through negative reviews. As we have said, they not only mean a reputation problem: depending on the platform used for the complaint, they even compromise our performance with account closings or service limitations.