The Doing Business in Bentonville Podcast
To create an ecosystem that connects leaders of all kinds – industry, community, student, educational, civic, investment and entrepreneurial – to help overcome Omnichannel Retail barriers through exclusive, insight-rich content.
The Doing Business in Bentonville Podcast
Ep. 52 - Scott Benedict and Andy Wilson on Leveraging Customer Reviews for Retail Success
What if genuine consumer reviews could be the game-changer your retail strategy needs? Two of Doing Business in Bentonville's regular hosts debate, as Scott Benedict and Andy Wilson unlock the secrets behind harnessing the true power of user-generated content in this episode of "Digital Front Door." Join the two retail veterans as they explore the journey of UGC from simple product ratings to becoming an invaluable feedback engine that influences both online and in-store retail environments. Discover how UGC not only boosts SEO and product visibility but also serves as a goldmine of insights for product managers, guiding them in making informed decisions about both current and future products.
This episode delves into the essence of authenticity in UGC and unveils the robust measures in place to combat fake reviews, ensuring that consumer trust remains unshaken. Scott and Andy share practical strategies for brands to maximize the impact of UGC, including review syndication and active engagement with customer feedback. Hear about real-world examples, like how listening to consumer feedback improved a faulty product, and learn how to leverage UGC to improve customer experience and refine marketing efforts. This discussion promises to equip you with actionable insights to make UGC a cornerstone of your retail strategy.
Well, hello everyone and welcome to the Digital Front Door.
Speaker 1:I'm Scott Benedict. You know, in the early days of e-commerce, one of the roadblocks that were faced by digital merchants was the challenge of selling a product that a consumer did not have right in front of them, a product they couldn't touch, they couldn't feel, they couldn't hold in their hands. Selling a product that a consumer did not have right in front of them, a product they couldn't touch, they couldn't feel, they couldn't hold in their hands. To help address this challenge, online retailers created product ratings or reviews right there on a product detail page. That provided the shopper with a kind of an easy understanding of a one to five star rating, as well as the ability for shoppers to see comments and thoughts from people who had purchased that product previously and shared their ratings, their experiences about that product and made that information available for shoppers who came after them to kind of get their thoughts, their feelings, on the product that they had purchased, as other consumers were considering purchasing that product.
Speaker 1:If you fast forward to today, and ratings or reviews are just one aspect of shopper feedback, that now is contained in the context of what we refer to as user-generated content and the importance of UGC that's the acronym for user-generated content really plays a critical role and provides an underutilized feedback engine from consumers that is truly valuable to shoppers, to retailers and to consumer brands alike. And so joining me today for conversation on this topic is my good friend, andy Wilson. Andy, welcome, and it's so nice for us to kind of have a conversation on a topic related to omni-channel retail, and I know this is an area you're interested in just as much as I am.
Speaker 2:Well, scott, first of all, it's great to be with you and I'm glad to have you. You know, we sort of switched chairs today. Normally I'm interviewing and now I get to participate. But you know, scott, first of all, you're right, this topic is critical, and I think one of the things we're going to do with this topic today is that we're going to really give you specificity around. How do you do this? How do you understand more about Omni Channel? It's here to stay. It's how we're running our business today, as you said, and we're going to get deep into that.
Speaker 2:One of the things I want our audience to really understand, though, scott, is your background. You know, scott comes from years and years of experience in retail, and we worked together at Walmart. Scott was a long-term at Sam's. Prior to Walmart and Sam's, he was in a host of other retail companies, and then he said, okay, I'm going to do all this retail, from buying and from memberships and all of that. Now I'm going to go to a technology company, analytical company, white Spider, and you spent several years there at White Spider. And now, scott, what you're doing today with Benedict Enterprises and all that you have your hands into is exciting. It is. It's sort of like me. We don't ever quit, do we? No, because we enjoy retail Absolutely, and I think the thing we enjoy most is the change. Yes, because it gets better for the consumer every day. And what Scott and I are going to dive deep into, as he's already said today, is around this user-generated content. So let's buckle up here.
Speaker 2:Let's get into it Absolutely, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask Scott some questions and then I think you'll find this very interesting, very informative, and it's something you can take to your team and do the same thing that we're going to do Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I'm thrilled to talk about it because it's probably an aspect of omni-channel retail and people really think of it, andy, as just part of online. But I think, as you see, as the conversation unfolds, it impacts in-store retail as well as online retail, and that's why it was such an important topic. I felt like we needed to talk about.
Speaker 2:Well, it is, and so here we go. So let's just start off with this and get deep into it. As I said earlier, scott is such a subject matter expert in this area, and so we're going to deem some of this knowledge today. But as you were talking about user-generated content, so talk about why that's so valuable. Yeah, why is that so valuable?
Speaker 1:Well, it's a couple things. As I mentioned at the opening, it was a way for consumers to understand more about a product that they couldn't hold right in front of them, that they couldn't see on a shelf or display like they could in a physical store, and that was really the beginning of its value. But over the course of time it kind of unfolded that it had broader impact in the online shopping experience by creating SEO, creating value in how search engines would tend to look for items one that had more ratings and reviews and two that obviously had higher or more positive ratings and reviews and put those towards the top of search results. When a shopper was searching on a non-branded term, they were looking for particular bottles of water or whatever that might be. But I will tell you through my lens as a former buyer and being someone that in that role I interacted with a lot of product managers the role that UGC plays in informing decisions not only about the product that's on the shelf or on the digital shelf today, but informing decisions about products in the future that's the real unlock, the real opportunity.
Speaker 1:If you ever watch Mad Men or these kind of old-school ad agency depictions, you know focus groups was a way that a lot of people would get consumer feedback about a product or an idea about a future product, and that was maybe a room of a few people that they selected. Imagine if you could have thousands upon thousands of people who had actually bought and used that product and get their feedback and get it in mass I don't, by the way, get it in a very efficient way that didn't cost you a dime. That's, I think, the part of the unlocked power or underutilized power, I guess yeah, I should say of ugc is. It provides feedback to the buyer and to the brand owner, to the product manager, to say this is what people liked, this is what they didn't like, and literally you get to hear the voice of the consumer through UGC and what they think about the product.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, we were talking about the value from the customer, the stakeholder. So talk about that, the value, because basically companies are getting better and better at this. Yes, and you're right, you had to have some type of focus group. Yeah, and in fact I just read yesterday, I think Walmart is even going to and Sam's is even going to do some of the focus groups with customers around products. So it's not either, or I guess no, it's both.
Speaker 1:All feedback is certainly valuable, andy, and I think that's it. But to a shopper, I think shoppers really seek authenticity when they're comparing one product to another, and it's one thing to hear the message of the person who made the product the brand owner it's another thing to hear from your fellow consumers about hey, I bought this product, I've used this product and here's how I really feel about it my unfiltered feedback. So to shoppers, it's got an incredible value there. To retailers, it obviously informs their decisions about not only what to carry but how to market it. And I will tell you there's real marketing value. And I will tell you there's real marketing value, both to the retailer and to the brand owner, of pulling in the comments of real consumers who have used the products and say don't believe our message.
Speaker 1:This is what somebody who's owned this product has said. That's where the authenticity of their feedback is really valuable. It's really, if you think, in the context of online retail, it's a conversion driver. If someone can see this is what somebody else has bought this product thinks, your likelihood to click that buy button goes way, way up up. And in many cases you'll see in just in pure measurable metrics that the average order size, the number of items in a basket and the average order value, or the dollars in a shopping basket, will, statistically, they'll tend to go up when consumers interact with user-generated content because, once again, it gives them a confidence, a feeling of confidence that this, this purchase decision that I'm contemplating. I feel good about it because I've seen what others who have bought this product think about it you know, scott, since you and I started talking about this topic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, here's what I noticed in my shopping habits. Here's what I noticed. I noticed that I'm paying more attention today to what the customer says about the product and how they rate the product, and and and, because, number one, I trust that yes, okay, yeah. So I'm paying more attention today than ever right and ever yes About my decision on purchasing is what you're talking about. So that's so crippling. The second thing that I really like what Amazon does is that they will send me a question from a customer about a product and I answer every one of those because Amazon, I flip that. If I have that same question I want to answer and I'm not getting something that's made up, yes, or that's come from algorithm. It's the voice of an actual consumer, exactly, and I was thinking about how powerful that is to me as a consumer in this position and a customer on my decision making. So you're so right. If retailers, sellers, are missing this, they're missing a huge, huge opportunity. I agree.
Speaker 1:And I should probably mention, as you talk about it. You mentioned the questions and answers. I mentioned at the top that user-generated content historically is thought about as just ratings or reviews and it is that. But it's more than that. Many websites and Walmartcom and Samstub the retailer can answer it, or the community, other shoppers If they have had an experience with a product, they can answer it and those questions and answers are part of what is now considered user-generated content as well.
Speaker 1:Consider user-generated content as well. But then the other thing that's kind of neat is most websites also allow you to either upload a picture of a product or post some videos of the product. Say, it's a food item and you wanted to show it prepared. Or it was a product that sits on the shelf in a box and it's not assembled and you want to take a photo of this. This is what it looked like when it was assembled and all the instructions were wonderful. It was easy to put together. User-generated content really encapsulates all of those things. So it's bigger than just ratings, reviews. And you mentioned the ability to ask questions and that's now one of the more recent in the last few years right aspect.
Speaker 2:That's part of this umbrella of what we call ugc you know, that's why I'm so excited about this, is why you and I just work forever, probably because this, this retail space, this omni-channel space, is only going to get better with more information, as we said at the top of the show. There's something else, too that I think that's in this Can user-generated content. David, again, we talked about a bit around use across retailer sites. Is there anything else that comes to your mind about that? And then the question I have. I'm part of some groups too out there. I'm a cyclist, so I'm part of a shrimp group. I was trying to have a tech on my bike. It's a Trek, so I'm part of a Trek group. Is that all the same?
Speaker 1:How does that integrate in all of this many forms? Obviously, as retailers or as people who grew up in retail, the first thing you think of is a product on an item page, but it's bigger than that to incorporate all those other things, and so it really can be used in a lot of different ways, and you'll see that there'll be raise reviews of stores, there'll be raise reviews of service providers or of, you know, auto repair shops or HVAC people. So UGC takes a lot of forms beyond what we typically think of as just a product on a retail shelf. That's probably the biggest part, but it comes to life in a lot of different ways.
Speaker 2:So what in your opinion and I know you study this deeply and you've done a lot of research but what is some of the most critical aspects of this, where you say, well, what would you tell our audience?
Speaker 1:This is critical, yeah the biggest uh can be summed up in one word authenticity. Here's what I mean when I say that. In the early days of of e-commerce and omni channel, there was examples and amazon kind of suffered through a little bit of this as they were pioneering this this aspect of online retail, the concept of fake reviews, where people right putting reviews uh, either good reviews on their own product, if they were a product manufacturer, or placing bad reviews on a competitor's product to try and pull down their performance. There was even examples of people being paid to write reviews, whether they had any involvement in the product as well, and so, rightfully, online retailers have put in place guardrails to make sure that if you're writing a review, it's for something you purchased.
Speaker 1:One and two. The FTC and others have put in rules and sort of some real guidelines to make sure that if you get caught publishing fake reviews or inauthentic reviews, there's some pain involved, there's fines, there's things like that that kind of put some guardrails around the use of UGC that now have meant to safeguard its authenticity, because, as a consumer, if you can't trust that what you're reading is in fact an actual review from someone who's actually had an experience of the product, the whole value of that and, quite frankly, your trust in the retailer is gone. Once it's gone, you can't get it back. So some of those early pain points have been addressed both by regulation and by guardrails that retailers have put in place, but authenticity is the one word that is critical to this being the true value for all parties that it really has the potential to be.
Speaker 2:Well, we live in a. That's wonderful. We live in an area where there's thousands of brands right, I mean Northwest Arkansas. There's thousands, yes, okay, and they seem to be growing daily here. And when you drive around our area this is how I describe it to my friends is that when you open up your cabinet doors, your pantry or whatever in your home and you see all the brands but they're here, they're all here in Northwest Arkansas, and it's exciting to live in this area because they bring such diversity to this area. So, think about those brands, yeah, and think about all the brands in your cabinet, in your home that you've dealt with sometime today, probably. What can they do? Sure, because to me, I see a lot of responsibility. Yeah, not only the retailer that you've talked so well about, yeah, but I see a lot of responsibility in the brands Indeed there is.
Speaker 1:So I think there's a couple of those responsibilities in the brands Indeed there is. I think there's a couple things that they can do, both brands on their own and in partnership with their retail partners. One is to maximize the value of UGC getting the review count up, getting as many reviews and recency reviews and recency more frequent reviews reviews being constantly added to that page is critical, and there's ways that you can accomplish that. One is through what is called review syndication, where, let's say, you're a brand owner and you have your own direct-to-consumer website and you collect reviews on that website. The technology exists that you can then syndicate those reviews out to your retail partners and they can appear on that item's detail page on the retailer's website in addition to your own. So you can take reviews gathered one place and syndicate them, so long as it's the exact same item, onto other retailer websites.
Speaker 1:The other thing is, obviously, if a product is brand new to the market and not that many consumers have experience with it, there's a practice called product sampling, where you can actually put samples of that product into the hands of the consumer for free and say, hey, we'd like you to try this, the only way we ask in return is write a review, tell us what you think, and many people think, well, that's a great way to get great reviews.
Speaker 1:Well, sometimes you may get channel injuries back, but you'd rather hear that early on in making the adjustments to the product or the packaging or perhaps the instructions if it's a product that has to be put together or assembled.
Speaker 1:But product sampling is a way to kind of get the review count up early in a product's life cycle, perhaps right after it's introduced. And then we mentioned earlier the whole questions and answers aspect. One of the things I don't see brand owners do as often as they can is to really assign a member of their team to monitor the questions that are coming onto their product's detail page on a retailer website and responding to that. And there's an opportunity to engage a consumer in a conversation, answer any questions they have and really provide customer service on a broader scale in a very efficient way by kind of monitoring the questions that are coming in and then respond to them or respond to ready-to-answer reviews and you can do that on Walmartcom and Simscom as well and keep the conversation going and just assign a body, assigning someone to be responsible for that that interaction through UGC is incredibly valuable because you'll you'll really harness the whole business value out of UGC content if you practice that engagement and you put a little bit of resource behind it.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. So brands have a tremendous responsibility for that. So let's flip it again. Let's flip it back to the retailer. Sure, how do they maximize?
Speaker 1:this. Well, a couple things. One, there's a practice called moderation, which is to monitor reviews before they go up and go live on the site to make sure that they are in effect, authentic to the topic I said earlier that they don't contain any inappropriate words or language or that sort of thing. And contain any inappropriate words or language or that sort of thing, to confirm that they are in effect a review of that product, not some other extraneous content. They're not talking about a competitor or about somebody else's product, they're talking about that product. Before that appears on that product's detail page, you want to make sure it's an authentic review. You want to make sure it's an authentic review. Also, many retailers use a practice called the post-interaction email, or the acronym is PIE, and what a PIE is is, once a consumer purchases a product, after a preset amount of time, an email is auto-generated out to them to say hey, we noticed that you bought product X, we'd love to hear your feedback on that. So, in other words, instead of waiting and hoping that a consumer will give you their feedback on the item, ask for it, go out and proactively ask it. And what's neat is not only do you get that feedback on the item through that post-interaction email. In many cases that brings someone back to your website for another visit and potentially they could go shop for other products while they're there, because you kind of compelled them to go onto the website to offer the review. One of the other things that I've seen Walmart and Sam's Club really lean into this and I'm so proud to see this is they aren't just asking for reviews for product that were bought online. They're now asking for reviews for product that was purchased in a store, and I get these emails all the time saying we noticed you bought this item in the store. Would you give us a review and rate this product and tell us what you think? And that's I think.
Speaker 1:If you look across the whole retail community, not enough retailers are doing that. You can also look at the left-hand navigation on a website and there's many boxes you can check or uncheck that filter the product results you're looking at. One of those facets should be ratings. In other words, I just want to look at five-star rated products or four-star rated products and I want to filter out the products with bad reviews.
Speaker 1:If you're a retailer and you haven't put that functionality on your website, then I think you're missing an opportunity to help guide the consumer towards products that are highly rated, and other shoppers have really stood behind it. And the last thing I'll tell you is many retailers and we'll learn Sam's do this have their search engine algorithm tuned to be more likely to show you a product with a high rating than a product with a lower rating. So you put a search term in the search box, they're going to be more likely to show you the products with better ratings that fit that item or that description, that term, than the lower ones, and that's just obviously. That's a great customer experience is let us show you the things that other people like, not not the things that people don't like. So, a retailer, those are just some of the things that you can do to kind of leverage the value of this content.
Speaker 2:I like that. You know one of the things as we have been navigating this conversation today, the thought that comes to me is the consumer, the shopper. Yeah, you're really in the driver's seat here. Yes, you really are. You don't have a lot of power, yeah, and you should have, yes, because you're the person purchasing the item and using the item or whatever the item is. Yeah, so we probably have more as a consumer today, more power, if you will, or say so, influence than we've ever had, and that's the way it should be. And now we have ways that Scott is teaching us how to do this. So, as we've talked today already, but as you begin about the retailer, how can this really help them? All the things you've mentioned? Retailers do that really well. Listen to the customer. Sam Walton used to. Retailers do that really well. Listen to the customer. You know Sam Walton used to tell us all the time listen to our customer. And we walk to stores and listen to her talk to our customers. Now, I think you still should do that, you should.
Speaker 1:If you're a retailer, this is now an add-on to that experience of going out and talking to consumers one-on-one, and it's wonderful to have that face-to-face conversation. But then you could complement that with the feedback of hundreds and thousands of people who have bought item X and to hear their thoughts. That just builds upon it. And to answer your question, andy, is that I still don't feel like both brands and retailers really spend the time diving into UGC content and looking not only in the big picture. For how is this product rated? It was a 4.X number of stars. Yeah, that's the top line, that's the headline piece. But you can actually, through a lot of the tools that are available, do what's called text mining and look for terms or comments within the content and look for common themes in terms of feedback. And I'll tell you a very quick story. My friends at Bazaar Voice, which is one of the companies that manages UGC for a number of retailers, including Walmart and Sam's Club, they taught me this story once when I managed this part of the business for samsclubcom and they said Scott, we have examples where a buyer, in the intention to get to a lower price point, worked with the supplier and took some of the features and some of the capabilities out of a product to get to a lower price point. They reintroduced that item and the ratings and the reviews were awful. And when they went in to the reviews they found that in order to get to that lower price point, they had defeatured or lowered the quality of some aspects of the product.
Speaker 1:I think it was a trampoline actually, those outdoor trampolines, and buyers were always trying to get to a better price and on the surface you can't fault them for that. But what the consumer told the retailer and the manufacturer is is you took too much out of this product. The quality is not where it used to be. The product is fading. You know being outside. In the case of trampoline, it spends its life in the backyard in most cases.
Speaker 1:And not only were there returns going up for this product, more people were bringing it back. But if you go through and you harness that ratings or reviews data, you kind of learn okay, we defeatured this product too much and they pulled in this example. They pulled that product off the market and they went back to the better quality, better quality product that, quite frankly, stayed sold. People were happier, happier with it. Over the course of time it was more highly rated, but it informed decisions both on the part of the buyer, the retailer, and the brand owner uh, the manufacturer to say the. The consumer has told us not one consumer but hundreds and thousands of them have said this is what we think of your product and they then they took action and used that consumer feedback to build back a better product that actually was was better received marketplace because they went in and they really studied that feedback and understood what the consumer was telling them.
Speaker 1:That's part of the power here.
Speaker 2:It is, it's great. So how can then, you know, brand marketers leverage all this content and then how does this really help retailers talk through? If you do the things you've talked about, then what happens? What can?
Speaker 1:really happen here? Well, there's a couple things. One, you can use the consumer's voice, the consumer's feedback, in more places than just on that product detail page or on the website. You can use it in marketing and we've seen a lot of cases where in promotional emails or in social media posts, where here's the product or maybe here's the consumer's picture of them using it and enjoying the product and here's what they said about it, here's the ratings and here's the review and what they said. Again, it's such powerful marketing value to hear not what the brand said about their product but what other consumers said about the product. So it's underutilized as a marketing tool. Particularly if you've got a great rating and a great review, shout that, tell that story and tell it through multiple touch points with the consumer, not just on the product detail page, and then obviously we talked about. You know, use it to inform future product decisions, whether you're the buyer or the retailer or the consumer. But just, you know, use it to kind of tell the story through multiple touch points on.
Speaker 2:this is what people who have actually experienced this product think about it this morning, as we visited prior to our time here, one of the things I realized is that this is extremely broad. Yes, I work with, I'm on board with three other companies three companies and none of them are retail. Well, one's retail and two are not. So what I started thinking about is that how this works beyond retail. It does, so talk to us about these companies. Should they have some type of strategy? Let's take this big, broad view of it for our guests and talk to us about how that would work Well first of all, there's a couple of things.
Speaker 1:It started out as a way to drive sales online for when consumers were interacting with a product or a brand online consumers who are interacting with a product or a brand online, and it obviously is that. But you can use it in other touch points I mentioned. You can use it in marketing, in social media marketing, in email marketing, you can use it in print or broadcast media and it just reinforces your brand image and your brand perception in the marketplace. And I see particularly in the sporting goods industry, maybe as a good example, where outdoor retailers like REI and some of those folks that are really focused on outdoor, they will pull in the voice of the consumer that they've gained through UGC and it could be about a product, could be about a brand, it could be even about them as a retailer. They use that consumer feedback as kind of a cornerstone of their marketing strategy, of their strategy, and it's like don't let us tell you who, who we are. Let our customers tell you who we are and listen and hear their voice. Don't just believe what we tell you at none. See what other consumers say and help kind of define their brand through the eyes of the customer instead of what they say.
Speaker 1:You know, it's one thing for me to say who I am. It's another thing for my customers to say who I am. And who would you believe first? Someone who's objective, or me, who's trying to tell you what you know? Try and boost my own message. There's nothing more powerful than that authentic voice of the consumer, whether it's a company's brand, a particular product brand or an individual specific product or service. So I think that's the unlock. That's underutilized is we live in an age where you can garner so much of this authentic feedback and use it in so many ways. And even though UGC is not a new sign, it is unbelievably underutilized as a marketing and brand message, not just for product but for brands, for retailers, and that's, I think the shame is having completely captured all the value out of it.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, this has been so informative and you know, scott, you have so much in-depth knowledge here and I have really enjoyed our time together today. And first of all, I want to thank you for all you do at Doing Business in Bentonville, yeah, and I appreciate our friendship so much. It's a lot. I really enjoy this and this has been great because I've learned a lot and I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to be more intentional in my voice to the retailers, to products and services, et cetera. Yeah, I know I recently was on a trip, a particular airline, and they wrote me you know how was my time, how was my trip and they asked me to write and I did, yeah, and you know I got a call. I thought I was wasting my time.
Speaker 2:I really did Just to say that they don't ever listen to me. I actually got a call from a person that works in that area, the customer service area because they wanted to ask me even a more specific question about a comment I made and it wasn't necessarily a negative comment, but it was a comment. I recommended something and they wanted to know more about that, and you know what that made me feel. I'll tell you what I did. I will fly their airline probably more now because they're concerned about the consumer they showed an interest in your perspective.
Speaker 2:Andy, that's powerful stuff, and so I think what you're telling our viewers today is you have a strong voice. A consumer has a strong voice. Indeed, they do. You need to listen and engage with that. That's what I hear you're saying today, and you have shared ways to do that. Yes, that's what I hear you're saying today, and you have shared ways to do that. Yes, yes, that's excellent. So thank you so much for our time together today. It's been great, definitely great for me, my pleasure.
Speaker 1:I enjoyed it All right. Well, thanks, Andy. I've really enjoyed it and I'm glad to have people listening on this episode of the Digital Front Door. Again, I'm Scott Benedict. This is my friend, Andy Wilson. Thanks for listening in.
Speaker 2:Thank you everyone, have a nice day.