“Consumers prefer businesses who care about them” – that says it all in my book! As to how to do it, I’m sure Emily Post has some advice on writing thank you notes: Thank them. Make sure to add to or relate to detail they shared. Tell them what you’re going to do with their feedback. For example:
“Thank you so much for sharing your experience with Product A. We love how it does Key Feature B too – it’s one of the things our buyers loved when they selected it for our assortment. You might also like Product X too.”

If you can do it with personality, like a trusted in-the-know friend, then bonus points! The challenge is, this is hard to execute at scale and the benefits are hard to pin down directly back to this effort. If brand loyalty was increased and a shopper made one more incremental trip to a store as a result, how would you ever know? And so the effort and investment does not get made…

Retailers responding to online reviews (good or bad) are an indicator of the level at which they are engaged with the consumer post-visit. Personally, if I see several recent reviews (particularly negative ones) with no response I immediately question what must be going on in that store, and if it’s worth my time. The next frontier is for retailers to be training in-store team members on the skills and etiquette involved in handling customer reviews. After all, if foot traffic is down — they have the time.

The reviews are only going to affect traffic in one of two ways. Either the reviews are plentiful and extreme – all 5 stars or all 1 stars and lots of them – or the shopper is unfamiliar with the store but has been sent there by a search engine. At the point of limited knowledge, reviews can make a difference. How the retailer responds is dependent on any number of factors. One or two reviews a day – write a “thanks” or “I’m sorry – how can we fix that” note. If you’re getting a lot, get an automation program to do it for you, but a good one, one with a sufficient variety of responses. Be sure it flags serious problems for personal attention.

Social media allows for two-way communication with consumers. This is a significant departure from the old model of creating a message and sending it out to the masses. Consumers want a conversation with retailers and brands. That is why 90 percent of consumers in the survey expected some kind of response. Companies need to change their expectations, reorganize, take this form of communication seriously, ensure that messages sent are consistent with other company messages, and that information gleaned from consumers is sent to appropriate places within the company.

Every review. Every point of view. Every time. Dean Shulman, SVP of Brother talked on my podcast recently about how as a manufacturer he was more inclined to want to read the negative reviews to learn what could be better and respond. Smart thinking for any product or service when it comes to reviews.

It takes an effort (and therefore it takes staffing and payroll), but retailers and service providers should try to respond to online reviews, both positive and negative. The best responses to positive reviews are the ones avoiding boilerplate responses, and the best replies to negative comments reflect a genuine desire to address the issues where possible. Consumers are absolutely attuned to retailers’ level of engagement with anyone who bothers to post a review.

Well, we have just touched on the essential paradox of retail, right here. On the one hand, we are literally drowning in data, which led to the old axiom “Retail Is Detail” but on the other hand, we are exhorted by the media to deal with “Big Data” and use aggregation to get a sense of sentiment.

I would prefer to see retailers use some level of NLP to call out the best and worst of user reviews. I just think we’re asking the impossible of retailers.

The customer is engaging you, so you better engage in return. Most importantly — LEARN. My guess is that reviews fall into some kind of bell curve. Admonishing for mistakes made, reinforcing good attributes, and encouraging for new and improved. Take notes. Take action. Evolve. This is invaluable feedback.

There is no doubt about it! Yes, customer reviews have to be answered in cases where they indicate that feedback is being requested or appropriate. Here comes the Golden Rule: If a retailer gives a feedback, it has to clearly refer to the reviewer’s comment and it needs to meaningful and solution-oriented (in terms of a negative review). If the feedback only contains automated statements, then it is not only of no value but it will damage the retail brand.

A retailer NOT responding to every review is asking for disaster. I love this quote that we use frequently in social media presentations: “A lie unchallenged becomes true.” There is much truth in that quote. We know that customers read reviews, and unfortunately believe them to be true except in outrageous statements, if there is no retailer response. The best businesses reply is to respond with at least a thank you for a nice review and attempt to address, apologize and then resolve any issue by inviting the complainant to call them to clarify and hopefully rectify the issue. Everyone who reads the review will also read the response. So retailers, respond!

Online reviews certainly demand individual responses from brand owners. Ideally each should be uniquely composed, but let’s get real. I can think of no job more mind-numbing than sitting in a cubicle monitoring online reviews and formulating replies. It’s a task better suited for ‘bots, 98% of the time.

So I envision a solution that uses AI to respond to the vast majority of reviews while referring outlier comments to humans for special attention. All reviews should be dumped into a sentiment analysis engine to search for meaningful patterns.

A lone criticism is easy to discount, but a theme demands management involvement.

I look at this more like a conversation. A wise retailer will respond as appropriate to interact with their customers. That means definitely responding to some of each.

But this is also an area to be careful with resources. Responding to every review either requires bots (a clear downer for customers) or requires cheap interactions (not going to build brand value).

It takes wisdom to make the right choices and I’m not going to suggest hard and fast rules. This is, after all, an area of complexity instead of being “complicated” (read Rick Nason’s excellent book on complexity).

Responding to customer reviews is an obvious opportunity for retailers to explicitly demonstrate that they care — and are loyal — to customers. It’s why we define loyalty marketing simply as “paying attention to customers and acting accordingly.” That means when a customer says something, such as a review, you look and respond appropriately.

It’s fundamentals like these, among many others it’s worth noting, that separate leaders from laggards. And as we al know, there are many fewer of the former than the latter.

Yes, retailers should keep consumer reviews, consumer feedback and customer service as one of their mainstays of business. Ignoring this great opportunity to address issues, satisfy customers and correct business performance is a wasted chance for any retailer to win higher customer satisfaction, win more customers and correct customer performance issues. Which retailer wants to ignore upset customers? In today’s online and omnichannel environment, this is even more important. Great communication means great business.