Why does customer feedback matter now more than ever?

Online reviews have been with us for a long time, but why does customer feedback matter now more than ever?

The recent pandemic forced consumers to try new product categories. Consumers had no choice in the first phase of the pandemic but to try e-commerce as a channel because some traditional retail was closed or had reduced opening hours. Consumers liked this experience to a large extent.

The importance of customer feedback.

Along these lines, the Organization of Consumers and Users (OCU) has carried out a study on the importance of customer opinion and different reviews of products and services on the Internet. The results show that users attach great importance to the opinions of others.

Specifically, the survey results indicate that consulting customer reviews and other ratings has become a norm for consumers.

Ninety-five percent of users consult them before going to a hotel or restaurant. Ninety-four percent do so before purchasing electronics, 90 percent do so when choosing a small appliance and 89 percent do so before buying a major appliance.

The consulting firm McKinsey conducted a study analyzing the online competitive landscape for products. The view reached was that in the last two to three years, online competition has increased four to five times, yet the customer is unaware of this.

When consumers have essentially transparent information about the product they are buying, it encourages them to try everything they want in the category, and so they are not dependent on the brand. So what used to be a matter of getting similar products at equivalent prices is now just a matter of ratings and reviews.

Platforms like ALLSWERS.COM are critical in today’s age, as they help measure and manage the customer experience. Their importance today is vital and with it, positive testimonials can be collected.

Market changes.

1. E-commerce penetration due to COVID-19 is not likely to regress or return to pre-pandemic levels, meaning that particular behavior has been widely adopted by consumers. The total number of global reviews, doubled in the year after COVID-19. And if we think there had been ten years of reviews before that, that’s a lot of reviews in a very short period.
2. The second really interesting thing, which is often overlooked, is how reviews affect offline purchases in a traditional store; it has also increased substantially. It’s a little harder to measure but if you have some good testimonials towards the brand at the online level it translates into more purchases at the ofline level.
3. In the pre-reviews world, you needed marketing to tell you what the product was like, and you needed the brand to give you the confidence that ‘I know the other things I bought that had this name on them were good, and therefore this next one should be good’. And what you see now is new brands disrupting spaces that have been occupied by traditional brands with a long history, because this new kind of dynamic plays very well to the disruptor in that sense.

Customer reviews influence consumers to try competing products, hence the importance of collecting positive brand testimonials. If you want to measure your customers’ opinions and get positive testimonials ask us for a totally free trial of ALLSWERS.COM.