Customers rate their retail experience on sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Google+ and Foursquare. These reviews are essential for purchasing decisions.
Thumbs up, thumbs down. One star for a no-go, five stars for absolutely recommendable. These reviews are critical to the business of each retailer. The momentum that can trigger a ranking on an evaluation platform is not to be underestimated. Negative reviews can bring trouble for a business. Positive comments have a profit inducing effect on sales. Therefore, the direct question to every retailer: Do you know how your company stacks up on these services?
Customers value the experiences and opinions of other customers. After all, personal recommendations can be relied upon. The reviews, such as they're listed with the star rating for use on Amazon, have a significant influence on the purchasing decisions of other users. And such a review is quick and easy to submit: with one click, customers can affect the image of a business.
These customer experiences provide orientation and value, even for companies. They offer an insight into how the consumers perceive the product. If customers are raving about the professional manicures and pedicures in the salon around the corner, this business can focus its marketing efforts on these services and thus make a name for themselves as hand and foot specialists amongst x-number of beauty salons.
Retailers can also learn about what shortcomings their products and services might have. We can learn and improve from this information. For example, if the quality of bouquets of a particular florist is praised but the employee friendliness criticized, it's important to delve deeper into the underlying reasons. For instance, a reason could be that the business is humming, not leaving the florist much time at all to talk with customers in detail. In that case it might be worth it to possibly hire another employee for peak hours.
The rating communities of Yelp, TripAdvisor, Google, Foursquare and co. are represented worldwide. These days, rating systems are not only used by tourists who want to explore a foreign city and use TripAdvisor to learn about London's nightlife hotspots. Thus, it's high time that each retailer understands the importance of these social evaluation systems and how to use them for their own purposes.
Some hotels, restaurants, cafes or bars also use their positive reviews for advertising. TripAdvisor puts stickers in display windows as a marketing tool, or the same company's Certificate of Excellence may be displayed triumphantly over the hotel reception desk. For many customers, this is a seal of quality and thus reassuring that they are making the right decision.
Conclusion: Retailers should take customer reviews seriously, as they are an opportunity to optimize the business. If customers feel good, they will come back and be happy to recommend you. Paymash also provides customers with a practical evaluation tool with which they can use a smiley rating scale to indicate how satisfied they were with a service. In this way, you know exactly where you stand as a retailer and can learn from this praise and criticism.