Four mistakes marketers make when
leveraging customer reviews
W
hether it’s a tweet, online review or an
email to customer service, marketers need
to be focused on listening to the feedback they
receive from their customers. But, with waves of
comments coming in from all directions, it can be
a challenge for marketers to know which feedback
deserves more attention than others.
Rather than only focusing on positive reviews,
marketers need to give special attention to
reviews that provide constructive criticism.
Customer insights that explain what customers
hope to accomplish with your product or service
can be especially useful.
For instance, if a reviewer mentions that she loves
how her new task management software merges
with her calendar, but she expresses frustration
that it doesn’t have the functionality to serve as a
collaborative tool for her team, this feedback can
be used to guide the next iteration of product
enhancements. Perhaps, more importantly for
marketers, the feedback can be used to improve
messaging, as to eliminate confusion surrounding
what the product can and cannot do.
Here are the four most common mistakes
marketers make when it comes to customer
reviews:
Ignoring negative reviews - We get it — You don’t
have the time to read every online review, but it's
important to pay attention to a selection of both
positive and negative comments. Customer
sentiment, whether it's good, bad or so-so, can be
valuable to marketers. While a rave review can tell
a marketer what’s working for their product,
negative reviews include important insight that
management, the product development team and
other lines of business need to hear.
Marketers have the ability to help break-down
communication barriers between developers and
end-users to improve the customer experience.
Failing to drive exposure for good reviews -
Positive reviews are an important resource for
marketers. These comments should be
merchandised far and wide, whether it be through
sales materials or posts to the company website,
blog and social media channels. Because peer
reviews are considered more credible than other
types of endorsements, these insights should be
given priority when it comes to building and/or
updating marketing collateral. They are on-par
with a major media placement or another type of
earned media.
Being passive about monitoring review websites
- Before customer satisfaction reaches a high-point
or a low-point, marketers should develop a
comprehensive strategy for understanding
customer needs. When looking at reviews during
periods of extreme satisfaction or dissatisfaction,
it’s hard for marketers to understand how
customer sentiment reached this point. To address
this issue, marketers need to be consistently
monitoring reviews, rather than exclusively doing
so when things are going good or bad.
Continued on Page 5
Strictly Marketing Magazine May/June 2017
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