How verified feedback powers modern retail growth and builds stronger customer relationships
Your customers won't want to engage with you on the same channel. Some respond to email. Others are more likely to leave feedback via In Mail, SMS, WhatsApp or QR codes.
That's why the retail sector is increasingly adopting omnichannel feedback strategies, making it easier for customers to respond and generating higher volumes of reviews as a result.
At the same time, customers expect an experience where they feel known, understood, and genuinely cared for. This creates a new challenge: responding to customers at scale. Retailers have started to use AI-powered replies to acknowledge feedback quickly and consistently, helping strengthen customer relationships without creating additional workload.
Together, multi-channel collection and AI-assisted review management are helping retailers generate more reviews, better customer insight and stronger long-term loyalty.
Key takeaways:
- Scale the human connection: 54% of consumers expect a response to every review.
- Get more reviews by expanding feedback channels: WhatsApp has a 77% open rate; SMS offers speed to capture richer data.
- Boost repeat business: Customers are 97% more likely to purchase again from a merchant that replies to reviews.
- Turn feedback into insight: Use sentiment analysis to understand exactly what your customers value.
Why retailers are moving beyond a single feedback channel into an omnichannel retail strategy
Today’s customers live across inboxes, apps, and messaging platforms. An effective feedback strategy involves asking the right questions in the right place.
While email remains central to most strategies, relying on it exclusively limits your reach. A thoughtful multi-channel approach – layering different touchpoints based on customer behaviour – consistently outperforms single-channel methods.
Different channels offer unique strengths for capturing the omnichannel retail experience:
- Embedded Email (In Mail): Remove friction by allowing customers to respond directly inside the email. Not On The High Street used this functionality to achieve an 88% increase in response rates.
- SMS: The king of speed. With an open rate of 82%, SMS is perfect for quick metrics like NPS, capturing sentiment while the experience is fresh.
- WhatsApp: Ideal for conversational and visual feedback. With 76% of UK adults using it regularly and a 77% open rate, it allows customers to share rich responses, including images.
- QR Codes: These serve as the bridge for physical experiences, essential for real-time feedback in retail stores.
By diversifying channels, you reduce friction and make it easier for customers to respond, leading to richer insights.
Why review volume matters for retailers
Being able to generate a higher volume of reviews from existing customers gives those retailers a significant advantage, by creating more opportunities to influence further purchases.
Over 90% of consumers read online reviews before buying. This makes achieving Google Seller Ratings and product review coverage essential for visibility.
When you display and interact with this content, the results are significant:
- Brands see a 128% uplift in conversions when website visitors interact with review content.
- Simply displaying reviews can lead to an 18% uplift in sales.
Beyond sales, authentic reviews provide the intelligence needed to make smarter decisions. Belledorm used insights from customer reviews to launch a sustainable product line directly shaped by customer demand. Listening to feedback across channels allows you to spot trends—such as specific fit issues causing returns—and fix them.
The loyalty opportunity: Keep customers coming back by making them feel valued
Responding to reviews can be overlooked but serves as a critical business driver. Verified reviews build trust, but the interaction secures loyalty.
The Data:
- 54% of consumers expect a response to every review–regardless of context.
- 97% of customers are more likely to buy again from brands that reply.
As review volumes grow, responding to all these reviews individually becomes unrealistic. That's where AI can make a significant difference.
Peter Nyssen, a horticultural retailer, already had an exceptionally high customer rating on Feefo. Like many businesses, the team focused on responding to the minority of unhappy reviewers, which meant thousands of happy customers never received a response.
Using AI Replies, Peter Nyssen have been able to increase their response rate from 50% to 75% of all customer reviews, allowing the business to engage with many more loyal customers and acknowledge their feedback, without creating more work for the team.
The final step: Putting customer experience at the centre of your omnichannel feedback strategy
A true omnichannel retail strategy focuses on creating a joined-up experience for customers, and making it easy for them to engage wherever they are. The same must be true of your retail feedback programme.
You do not need to launch every channel at once. Start with email as your foundation and layer in one additional channel, such as SMS or WhatsApp, based on your specific customer demographics.
Feefo’s tools support teams in scaling the human touch, ensuring that every piece of feedback—from a local store tag to a WhatsApp message—generates meaningful engagement, increases volume of reviews and makes customers more likely to purchase again..
Ready to build deeper connections with every customer? Find out more about scaling human connection with Feefo.
