Many businesses assume that you can break down customer feedback into simply positive reviews and negative reviews. In actual fact, there is a lot more involved in online reputation management. Customer feedback is critical for business success as it helps potential new customers make their buying decisions. It also assists with honing your business strategies by highlighting what is working well and where you could improve.
When you are looking at your online reputation management strategies, you need to understand which types of reviews are going to add the highest value to your business. For most companies, both customer product reviews and customer service reviews will be beneficial. It is essential that you understand customer reviews and which options to focus your time and money on.
In this guide, we’re looking at customer product reviews vs customer service reviews, explaining what they are, what the key differences are, and which reviews are going to be more important to your business.
A product review is a type of feedback left about an individual product or item that your business sells.
They provide valuable information about your products, which is useful to both your business and other customers. Unlike customer service feedback, product reviews don’t usually include any information about the buying process, delivery, or company communication. They focus solely on the item in question.
When a customer leaves a product review, they will generally include information about the products:
Product reviews can vary greatly depending on the type of business you have and the products you sell.
For example, if you are a clothing brand, then your product reviews are likely to be about whether your products are true to size and the quality of the materials used. If you sell furniture, then product reviews might include dimensions, longevity, and durability.
These kinds of reviews are very useful to potential customers who are considering purchasing your products. They provide crucial details from people who have first-hand experience with the item they are looking at. In fact, 87% of consumers trust product reviews as much as they trust word-of-mouth feedback and customers are 110% more likely to purchase from online stores which feature product reviews and Q&As.
Honest reviews from real customers can help shoppers feel more secure that they are making the right choice, as they can read the good and bad points of each product. Don’t worry about displaying negative reviews either – over half of shoppers would be suspicious of a company or product if they couldn’t see any negative reviews, according to our 2019 Consumer Report.
To learn more about what drives customers to buy from a brand, take a look at our 2021 Brand Perception Report.
Product descriptions are helpful, but they are essentially a sales pitch and can’t mention every single feature or use for your product. Customer product reviews often highlight features you didn’t know were important. They can also give more examples or context about how an item can be used. Photo and video reviews can be particularly helpful to shoppers, as they show what the product looks like in real life instead of a photo shoot and allow customers to explain their opinions in more detail.
If customers trust you (and your products), they’re more likely to buy from you. By including product reviews on your product pages, shoppers don’t need to go elsewhere to get more information about your product or confirm that it’s a good purchase.
Want to boost conversions even further? Tools like Feefo’s Dynamic Topic Display automatically identify key topics in your reviews, making it easy for shoppers to find and read the ones they care about. For example, if they’re buying a smartphone and want to know what the camera is like, they can click the theme ‘camera’ to bring up every review (both good and bad) about that feature.
Collecting product reviews can help your pages to appear for organic and paid stars on Google. These stars can build trust in your brand and increase click-through rates and conversions.
Search engines love fresh, unique content and if your pages are set up correctly, you can become eligible for those eye-catching stars. They appear next to your pages in organic (non-paid) search results, as well as on any paid Google Shopping campaigns.
There’s little point in wasting money on rebuying products that have major faults, but you may not be aware of why customers are returning items if you’re not collecting feedback on them.
Product reviews can help you to identify and resolve issues. For example, does the item always get damaged in transit? Is there a feature that needs to be improved? Are your dimensions or sizing off?
By listening to your customers’ experiences, you’ll reduce returns and ensure you only sell quality products that shoppers actually want to buy. Customer feedback can also highlight the best features of each product, allowing you to run better promotions and improve your product descriptions.
You can collect product reviews no matter what industry your business is in. Here are some examples of the different types of services within your industry that you could be collecting product reviews for.
Sentiment analysis refers to the analysis of natural language and text to identify, extract, study, and understand qualitative information from it – and that’s where Feefo’s Customer Sentiment Insight and you shouldn’t underestimate its potential to transform your business development.
In the case of sentiment analysis for online product reviews, this analysis works through the written reviews provided by customers. It analyses how people are feeling about the product(s) in question, identifying how positively or negatively they rate the product as well as any key issues or themes throughout the reviews.
Sentiment analysis is just one output of collecting customer insights. Wider customer insight gathering and customer surveys can help gain plenty of information from those actually using a business’s products, but applying sentiment analysis to this collected data is the way to extract genuine workable intelligence from it.
In almost every circumstance, customers will hold differing views, thoughts, opinions, and emotions on their experience compared to those of someone who works for the company involved.
Even for the biggest and most engaging brands, customers are often able to shed light on a point that would otherwise go unrecognised and undeveloped – which can result in customers’ needs, wants and expectations going unmet.
Consider the ‘New Coke’ launch of the 1980s. A drink launched with no customer demand, simply driven out of competitive spirit. Also, the attempted domination of personal devices with Facebook’s ‘Home’ development. Both could have been easily avoided by asking for and better understanding what customers wanted from their brands.
Once it thoroughly understands customer sentiment, a business can develop its product to best meet customer expectations and needs . Using accurate customer data and insights to inform decisions can aid decision-making processes throughout the business and provide a competitive advantage.
The best business decisions are informed ones, and sentiment analysis offers the information required to make them. Feefo customer, frozen-food giant Iceland, has used the insight gathered from over 31,000 customer reviews to guide their marketing campaigns and has seen a successful increase in customer engagement as a result.
A well-understood and properly applied sentiment analysis will allow decision-makers in a business to appropriately and relevantly allocate spending, investment, and budgetary limits. They will also be able to better judge return on investment and profit forecasts. Informed financial decision-making is basic good business and will make banks, investors, and other economic backers happy too.
Customer service feedback is an overall critique of every aspect of your business by your clients, excluding your specific products. It will include reviews and opinions about the order experience, like how easy it was for customers to purchase from you and if any areas could be improved.
Product delivery is also a crucial part of customer service feedback, particularly for eCommerce businesses that depend solely on online sales and their web stores. If a customer is satisfied with your delivery process, including time scales, packaging, and communication, then they are likely to include these in their customer service feedback.
On the other hand, if your deliveries are delayed or products arrive damaged, customers are likely to leave you negative feedback about their experience.
Another important aspect of customer service feedback is the overall service that customers receive from your business. This is usually the case if a client has had to contact your team for some reason, either with an enquiry or an issue. It can include the service received over the phone, email, social media, or in person. If a customer has to wait a long time to receive a reply to a message or has a complaint about the way a staff member handled a query, it will come up in your customer service feedback.
There are various types of customer service feedback that you can consider in your strategy.
The most common option is post-purchase feedback, where you ask clients for a review after they have purchased from your business. Some companies also choose to ask for feedback during the buying journey. This can be in the form of on-site surveys which sit on your website and ask customers for feedback while they are on a specific page. They are effective for monitoring your customer journey and picking up on any points of friction in your purchasing process.
Other feedback collection methods are post-purchase surveys. These are automatically sent to customers, usually via email, after they have purchased from you. The best way to collect feedback will depend on your business model.
For example, online stores can easily send emails to buyers, but service companies might prefer a more personal approach. For small companies with a few important clients, you can obtain feedback through follow-up calls or even face-to-face meetings.
When you look at customer service reviews vs customer product reviews, it is clear to see the difference. To help visualise their benefits, take a look at our handy table:
| Customer service reviews | Customer product reviews |
|---|---|
|
Reviews the service your business is providing |
Reviews individual items that you sell |
|
Clients will give feedback on the parts of your business which are fairly easy for you to control.
This includes the level of service you offer customers, your communication, your marketing messages, your buying process, delivery times and more. |
Clients will give feedback on the specific item they have purchased from you.
It has nothing to do with how they purchased it or their experience with your business, but instead, it is all about what they think of the item itself.
|
|
Sharing customer service feedback on your homepage, social media, or other channels is a great way of showcasing all the great things about your company. |
Showcasing product reviews directly on your product pages can help boost conversions and drive more sales from customers.
|
|
Customer service reviews could highlight areas where staff need further training or where your delivery partner isn’t performing as well as expected. |
Product reviews can help you to make decisions about which items your business should invest in, which are not going to be worthwhile, and those that need improvements. |
Deciding which type of feedback to focus on can be confusing. Both customer service reviews and customer product reviews are important to your business. Choosing the most important will ultimately depend on your business model and goals.
Product reviews are extremely powerful for eCommerce companies and online stores. They work as part of a shop’s marketing and branding, as well as a useful business tool. Consumers are relying on product reviews more heavily than ever before and they can be the difference between a customer making a purchase or going elsewhere. Simply having customers' reviews on a product page, or at least a star rating, can encourage consumers to click the buy button.
Customer service reviews are important because they can strengthen your brand’s credibility. This type of feedback gives you in-depth insights into every area of your company and can help you to better understand your customers and what they expect from you. Collecting customer service reviews allows your clients to have a voice and feel valued by your company, which can help to build loyalty and repeat business. Taking this kind of feedback into account can assist with decisions about your brand, such as where you should be investing more time and attention.
The truth is, both customer service feedback and product reviews are important in their own ways. They each bring different benefits to a business and whichever is most valuable to your company will be unique to you and your setup. Some businesses choose to focus solely on service feedback, others on just product reviews, while some will use a combination of the two.
If you are ready to start collecting and monitoring customer service and product reviews, then you might be wondering where to start. There are many different platforms available that help businesses collect, monitor, and analyse feedback. Most platforms offer features for both service reviews and product reviews and can help you to dig deep into this data.
Some feedback platforms are completely free to use and offer simple solutions for collecting reviews. There is also a selection of platforms that are specialised for managing feedback.
The most popular feedback platforms for customer service and customer product reviews include:
Feefo can help provide you with a complete understanding of how your business and products are performing. It offers a range of additional features such as NPS and Customer Sentiment Insight which can be extremely useful for digging deeper into the feedback that you collect.
This can help you to quickly and easily understand what your customers are trying to tell you in their feedback. You will be able to notice immediately if a large number of customers are saying the same things about your products or service, helping to highlight the areas that might need your attention.
There isn’t much that Google doesn't offer these days and a review platform is another tool they have under their belt. Within the Google My Business toolkit, you can collect and monitor your customer feedback easily.
While Google is a free platform for reviews, it does have limited capabilities. It is great for collecting and viewing reviews from customers, but you cannot separate reviews into product and service specific. Google also does not offer much by way of in-depth analysis of your feedback. If you want a tool that simply collects and displays customer feedback, then Google could be a solid option.
If you are serious about collecting and monitoring your customer feedback, it is critical that you choose a platform with all the features you need to get the most out of your reviews. Some platforms will take ownership of your reviews and do not allow you to transfer them to another tool if you change your mind in future.
With Feefo, all reviews are kept by the business, ensuring total control over your feedback.
Specialised features are what sets Feefo apart from the crowd and can help you get the most out of your customer feedback. Speak to our team today to get started.