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Hi there! 👋

Customer Reviews are a goldmine.

They are a blunt reflection on how you’re doing as a company. These unpolished opinions are a cheap source for feedback that you can take action on immediately.

But are you analyzing your customer reviews on a regular basis?

Probably not.

Let’s change that.

In today’s issue, we’re going to talk about analyzing customer reviews and how it can help you optimize your operations to make more happy customers.

Disclaimer: We’re not going to talk about NPS. I think it’s a bullshit metric. But let’s keep that discussing for some other time.

Open up the goldmine that’s called Customer Reviews and streamline your operations.

Let’s not make it more complex than it is. You only need 3 clear steps in order to do this.

1. Collect.

2. Find.

3. Fix.

Simple as that.

You’d be surprised how little we do with customer reviews and how much money we leave at table on the long term because of it.

Let’s dive in.

1. Collect Customer Reviews

There are two types or reviews:

1. Business Reviews

2. Product Reviews

Now timing is everything here.

You don’t want to send out a product review request the minute after your customer places an order. People need time to use the product in order to give decent feedback. I recommend you send out a product review 7 to 14 days after shipping.

However, when you send out a business review request 14 days after shipping, people already have forgotten how their customer journey went. So you want to send out these kind of request much earlier, say 3 to 4 days after shipping.

My biggest advice for collecting reviews is that you use a closed review system. Meaning: only people who have actually placed an order with you can leave a review. Otherwise you’ll end up moderating troll-reviews all day long.

Also, you must make it as easy as possible for a customer to leave a review. So you don’t want to go full FBI on them. You only need 4 things:

• Name (mandatory)

• Order number (mandatory)

• Rating (mandatory)

• Feedback (optional)

That way, you keep it short and simple.

And yes, keeping the feedback optional will leave you with many mediocre reviews, but they will still impact your rating (which you want).

2. Find issues

Collecting reviews is one thing, but actually doing something with them is another (and something we ofter don’t do).

Your customer review tool probably has an AI or reporting tool which tells you what reviews you should look at.

Otherwise, take a look at every review with a written feedback (yes, that means even the 5-star reviews) and see if you can spot trends.

You don’t want to jump on the horse when 1 customer has 1 bad experience with your business. But by regularly looking at your reviews you spot trends. And eventually you will find issues that will make sense to fix.

Disclaimer: 70% of your bad customer reviews will involve last mile shipping. Collect those reviews and discuss them with your carrier.

3. Fix them

In a world where everyone loves NPS scores, going the extra mile, and customer-centricity, my biggest advice is: don’t over-optimize for customer satisfaction. 

That might sound contrarian, but the danger is that you are optimizing for customers and forget profits and growth.

If you spot issues you can fix ask always ask youself: is this going to make my business more money? If not, don’t.

Think about it.

If you take all returns forever, always send free replacement and always handing out discounts their are massive costs attached to it (that eat up your profit).

Sure, your customers will be happy to receive a discount. But is a discount neccesary to keep them coming back?

Eventually you have to optimize for your customers AND your profit.

And that’s a challenge. But a challenge you need to nail in order to grow a sustainable business.

TL;DR

Collect customer reviews, analyse them and find issues to make your customers happier. But not let profits get out of your sight.

That’s it for today. Have a great Sunday.

Erik

Whenever you’re ready, there are three ways I can help you.

1. Interim E-Commerce Management: I run, scale & optimize your e-commerce business.

2. Resource Library. Useful resources for every marketer. Includes an E-Commerce Audit Report, ChatGPT Prompt Guide & Midjourney Masterclass.

3. Book a 1:1 Call. A No Bullshit 20 min Ask Me Anything call. If you’re facing challenges in online business, I’m happy to talk.

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