The impact of customer reviews on in-store visits
For a network, managing local reviews can no longer be improvised. Requesting reviews, responding to them, analyzing trends and enhancing positive feedback must be structured. Dedicated tools allow for centralizing Google, Facebook or on-site reviews, facilitating responses and improving local visibility for each point of sale.
Before going to a point of sale, consumers check out customer reviews published by their peers. Retail chains must therefore be properly referenced: be where the Internet users are.
Establishments must also enjoy a good reputation on the Internet because consumers read the comments left by customers before them.
Why online reviews influence traffic within your physical stores?
As consumers, we experience this daily: when searching online, our trust goes to companies (or products) with a minimum of negative reviews and a good average rating. Physical networks are therefore directly concerned:
- 63.6% of consumers say they are likely to check online reviews on Google before visiting a business, more than any other review site.
- 94% of consumers say that an online review has already convinced them to avoid a business.
- 80% of consumers say they trust a rating of 4.0, 4.5 and 5 stars.
How to manage the local reputation of your points of sale on the Internet?
Before or after a visit to a store (or other establishment), there are several steps to follow if you want to leave a positive impression on consumers.
Improve customer review visibility by soliciting… customer reviews
If your local establishment pages are not properly visible on the Internet, reviews cannot be either. First, develop your local presence where internet users get informed.
On the other hand, we know that the number of reviews on a store page has a major influence on its ranking in local search results. So the more ratings and comments you have, the better your local pages (and reviews) will be presented in search results.
Be proactive! Ask your customers for reviews to improve the local SEO of your establishments.
This customer feedback collection
- Social media platforms: Google Business Profile, Facebook, Tripadvisor, Yelp, Trustpilot …
- On-Site: your website and/or its local pages, your apps.
- After purchase: email, push notification (mobile), receipt ticket …
- At the point of sale: sticker, flyer, interactive kiosk …
To collect reviews in a more in-depth way, and if the environment allows it, measurement tools such as CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score), NPS (Net Promoter Score), CES (Customer Effort Score) are interesting to capture the voice of the consumer through different points of their purchasing journey.
Respond to customer reviews
53% of customers expect businesses to respond to negative reviews within a week. But 63% say a business never responded to their review.
As a consumer, it is appreciated that their review is taken into account. Receiving a response, and even better, a personalized response, always makes a “pleasure” even if the in-store experience was not as expected. It even happens that the customer modifies their evaluation upwards following a satisfactory response. It is therefore important to respond to reviews, even if they are negative.
Analyze customer experience
Thanks to all this collected data, you'll be able to identify your strengths and areas for improvement on the ground, as well as internally.
In the face of negative reviews, consider proposing actions for dissatisfied or disappointed consumers.
Analyze and improve review management within your marketing department or locally (example: response speed and rate) to enhance customer satisfaction.
Highlight the “positive”
Reviews are increasingly shifting from a trend where consumers express their discontent to a trend where they recommend points of sale after a positive experience.
Relay positive reviews across your different communication channels:
- On-Site: your website and/or its local pages, rich snippets (“Rich Snippets”)
- In-store via POP display for example
- In your email marketing communications (newsletters, offers …)
- On social networks
To highlight positive opinions about your establishments, don't hesitate to go beyond the "raw" review and work with your loyal customers to make them influencers among their peers. Referral campaigns can be set up, for example.
Simplify customer review management for your network of physical stores
Google and Facebook have become the #1 and #2 online review platforms.
Tools exist to implement basic management of your local e-reputation. In this context, the first media you need to consider are Google Business Profile, Facebook and your own website. Then, if your points of sale belong to a more specific industry, it will always be time to consider other possibilities (example: Tripadvisor for hotels and restaurants).
The My.Mobilosoft platform is equipped with a solution that goes in this direction and allows:
- Collect and group local reviews (Google, Facebook, on-site) within the same space.
- Respond to customer reviews via the marketing department (centralized) or via points of sale (decentralized) in a “semi-automated” way (access to predefined response templates according to the rating and/or published comment).
- Filter establishments to facilitate customer review processing (display by rating, by keyword, by zone, by response rate...).
Notes: The statistics displayed in this article are from the ReviewTrackers survey of millions of reviews on over 100 opinion sites, in the last decade.
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