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customer service trustpilot and hubspot research

Dagens företag har helt enkelt inte råd att bortse från sin kundservice. Konkurrensen är tuff och företag behöver därför anstränga sig för att ge det där lilla extra. Även om rabatter och låga priser kan resultera i nya kunder, krävs andra aspekter för att faktiskt behålla kunderna i längden.

I takt med att konsumentmakten ökar, blir efterfrågan på kundorienterade företag som prioriterar sina kunder större och större.
Omdömesdata från Trustpilot visar mycket riktigt att “kundservice” är det vanligaste temat för såväl en- som femstjärniga omdömen. Trots detta är det idag många företag som inte lyckas prioritera sina kunder, eller saknar en handlingsplan för detta. 

[I en undersökning från HubSpot](https://offers.hubspot.com/state-of-customer-service?__hstc=98516096.160bd863926db55d63dc8fdc77c14416.1620032815706.1630654921772.1630917593461.91&__hssc=98516096.1.1630917593461&__hsfp=3991227921) som genomfördes 2019  uppger 88 % av respondenterna att kundernas förväntnignar har ökat med tiden, och 89 % anser att kunder har blivit mer benägna att dela med sig av både positiva och negativa upplevelser.

Med andra ord är det hög tid att satsa på kundservice.

Här nedan har vi sammanställt tre tips som hjälper dig att med hjälp av omdömen ta din kundservice till nästa nivå.

## Därför är omdömen viktiga för din kundservice

### 1. Dina kunders åsikter är värdefulla

[Sociala bevis](https://se.business.trustpilot.com/reviews/build-trusted-brand/what-is-social-proof-and-why-is-it-important-for-marketing) blir allt viktigare för konsumenterna. 

Enligt HubSpot är omdömen, betyg och intyg från konsumenter den näst vanliga sökningen i samband med research inför ett köp. 69,5 % av företagen uppger att omdömessajter, sociala medier och muntliga rekommendationer ger resultat.

Om du inte ber dina kunder om feedback, riskerar du att gå miste om värdefull information. 
“Dagens köper litar på konsumenter, inte på föreag. När marknadsförare drar nytta av sociala bevis kan detta vara drivande och ge resultat, men det är väldigt få som gör detta. Marknadsförare har fortfarande chansen att implementera kundernas åsikter i sin marknadsföring, men de behöver agera snabbt”, säger Michael Redbord, GM Service, Hubspot. 
Det är allmänt känt att det blir enklare för konsumenter att jämföra företag online. Detta innebär att det blir svårare och svårare för företag att sticka ut från konkurrensen och behålla sina kunder i det långa loppet. 2019 var research på nätet en del av köpresan för hela 95 % av konsumenterna, och i denna research ingår ofta sociala bevis. 

Att leverera en bra upplevelse och ännu bättre kundservice skapar förtroende och ökar kundlojaliteten långsiktigt. Det är därför som företag som satsar på kundservice prioriterar sina kunder i alla lägen.
Visste du att närmare hälften av alla företag som uppger sig vara “kundcentrerade”, enligt Hubspot, i själva verket inte gör någonting för att förbättra sin kundservice? 42 % av dagens företag samlar inte in kundfeedback, och blygsamma 19 % av varumärkena satsar på vad som är bäst för kunden. Att samla in omdömen och visa upp kundfeedback i samtliga kanaler är ett sätt för ditt företag, dina produkter och din kundservice att nå och övertyga fler potentiella kunder – vilket skapar förtroende.


Social proof on-site reviews

third-party validation online reviews

Att använda sig av omdömen är ett effektivt sätt att förbättra användarupplevelsen, och svara på eventuella frågor och funderingar.

________
Tips från Trustpilot: Kundomdömen kan hjälpa dig att identifiera återkommande frågor.  Varför inte utgå från dessa och sammanställa en sida som ger svar på vanliga frågor, och bidrar till din kundservice?
________

Konsumenter kommer alltid göra sin egen research – genom att ge dem svaren de söker direkt behöver de inte lämna din sajt.

### 2. Använd omdömen för att identifiera trender


Marketing Manager, Mannys

En bra kundservice innebär att du förstår dina kunder och din målgrupp samt deras behov och önskemål. En bra kundservice handlar också om att uppfylla och överträffa förväntningar – vid varje givet tillfälle. Detta innebär inte att du måste göra allt rätt i alla lägen, vi är trots allt bara människor. Däremot är det viktigt att du försöker göra ditt bästa i alla situationer, och att du alltid prioriterar dina kunder. Genom att göra detta visar du att du är kommunikativ och lösningsorienterad, vilket i sin tur bidrar till ett bärre varumärkesrykte. 

I [HubSpots rapport](https://offers.hubspot.com/state-of-customer-service?__hstc=98516096.160bd863926db55d63dc8fdc77c14416.1620032815706.1630654921772.1630917593461.91&__hssc=98516096.1.1630917593461&__hsfp=3991227921) uppger 74 % av företagen att de värderas efter sin kundnöjdhet – och samtidigt är det endast 58 % av företagen som faktiskt frågar sina kunder hur nöjda de är.
Hur kan kundnöjdhet mätas utan kundfeedback? Och hur kan man förbättra sin kundservice utan att kundfeedback?

Omdömen hjälper dig att samla in aktuell kundfeedback och identifiera förbättringsområden – samt möjligheterna att förbättra din service och utveckla din verksamhet.

Idag är det bara 54 % av kundserviceavdelningarna som rapporterar till en Customer Success-avdelning. [Trustpilots nya analysverktyg](https://se.business.trustpilot.com/reviews/learn-from-customers/introducing-trustpilots-new-machine-learning-tool-review-insights) för omdömen bygger på AI och hjälper dig att upptäcka trender, identifiera kundattityder samt se hur du kan förbättra din kundupplevelse och kundservice. Om du inte har en Customer Success-avdelning på plats ännu, kan det vara värt att överväga en sådan.

trustpilot review insights customer sentiment

Genom att be om omdömen visar du att du värdesätter kundnöjdhet, och att du arbetar aktivt för att förbättra både kundupplevelse och kundservice.

### 3. Dra nytta av din kundfeedback

Du har kommit igång med att samla in omdömen, och kan ta del av mer kundfeedback.

Nästa steg är att faktiskt använda dig av din feedback – såväl positiv som negativ. Enligt Hubspot är det så lite som 12 % av dagens konsumenter som litar på ett företag som säger att de ska lösa kundens problem.
Här finns alltså en möjlighet för ditt företag att särskilja sig från konkurrensen. Medarbetare inom kundservice som rapporterar till en marknadsavdelning kan intyga att omdömen och sociala bevis ger resultat. När du har samlat in dina data är det dags att överväga vilka avdelningar, processer och initiativ som kan involveras. Implementera en handlingsplan utifrån detta.

När du har en översikt över vad som fungerar bra och potentiella förbättringsområden, kan du ägna mer tid åt att faktiskt [lösa problem](https://se.business.trustpilot.com/reviews/how-ai-can-help-you-get-a-better-trustscore) snarare än att identifiera dem. Detta bidrar till en bättre kundservice, och hjälper dig att uppfylla samt överträffa kundernas förväntningar.

I en undersökning från Trustpilot uppger över 5 900 konsumenter att de ser ett unikt förtroendevärde i Trustpilot-betyg (så kallade TrustScores). 92 % av konsumenterna uppger att de inte skulle handla från ett en- eller tvåstjärnigt varumärke. Ytterligare en anledning till varför du borde satsa på att förbättra din kundservice med hjälp av kundomdömen!


star rating trustpilot research

Om du vill [dra lärdom av dina kunder](https://se.business.trustpilot.com/reviews/learn-from-customers/what-are-consumer-insights-and-how-do-i-use-them) och använda dig av Trustpilots nya analysverktyg, kan du läsa mer [här](https://se.business.trustpilot.com/features/review-insights?cta=read-more_blog_CTA-1).

Du kan också klicka på länken här nedan för att ta del av Trustpilots guide till marknadsföring med omdömen.

Läs Trustpilots kompletta guide till marknadsföring med omdömen

*Vi vill tacka HubSpot för att vi får använda data från deras rapport [State of Customer Service in 2019](https://offers.hubspot.com/state-of-customer-service) i denna artikel.*

3 sätt som omdömen kan bidra till en bättre kundservice

Trustpilot Consumer Insights: Consumer behaviors that changed in 2020, and what to expect in 2021

För att få en bättre förståelse för hur konsumentbeteendet förändrades under 2020, och vilka förändringar företag kan förvänta sig under 2021, har vi på Trustpilot analyserat konsumentaktiviteten på vår plattform

Perioden av nedstängningar tvingade fram ett förändrat sätt att söka efter produkter och handla på, samtidigt som butiker behövde anpassa sig efter nya kommunikationsmöjligheter, [konsumentbeteenden](https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/industries/retail/our%20insights/how%20covid%2019%20is%20changing%20consumer%20behavior%20now%20and%20forever/how-covid-19-is-changing-consumer-behaviornow-and-forever.pdf) och målgrupper.

Utifrån de många [förändringarna för varumärken](https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/industries/retail/our%20insights/how%20covid%2019%20is%20changing%20consumer%20behavior%20now%20and%20forever/how-covid-19-is-changing-consumer-behaviornow-and-forever.pdf) under 2020, är det intressant att se vad 2021 kommer att erbjuda vad gäller konsumentbeteende. När vi nu förhoppningsvis går mot ljusare tider är det nämligen sannolikt att [konsumentbeteendet åter igen förändras](https://obaninternational.com/blog/planning-for-2021-part-1-changes-in-consumer-behaviour/) – och företag kommer behöva anpassa sig även efter denna förändring.

För att få en bättre förståelse för hur konsumentbeteendet förändrades under 2020, och vilka förändringar företag kan förvänta sig under 2021, har vi på Trustpilot analyserat konsumentaktiviteten på vår plattform mellan juli 2020 och januari 2021. Alla data från Trustpilot hämtades den 31 januari 2021.

## 1. Företagen som konsumenterna söker efter mest

Det är ingen hemlighet att kundomdömen kan ge en tydlig indikation på konsumenternas köpvanor.

Även om det finns flera olika anledningar till varför konsumenter läser kundomdömen, är det vanligt att en konsument söker vägledning inför ett köpbeslut – med andra ord kan sidvisning för olika typer av företag ge signaler var efterfrågan finns. 

1 Company profile views last six months


Mellan 1 juli 2020 och 31 januari 2021 var shopping och mode intressant nog den mest eftersökta branschen sett till kundomdömen, trots pandemi. En [undersökning](https://fashionista.com/2020/07/quarantine-shopping-habits-survey-results) från slutet av förra sommaren fokuserade på vilka typer av kläder som konsumenterna prioriterade under pandemin. Man frågade sig exempelvis huruvida arbete hemifrån påverkade inköpen, och ifall konsumenterna köpte på sig fler plagg inför en osäker framtid. Hur påverkas klädbranschen av att människor runtom i världen nu börjar förbereda sig inför ett liv efter pandemin? Kommer försäljningen att öka?

Det är kanske inte lika förvånande att elektronik och teknologi är den näst mest eftersökta produktkategorin på Trustpilot. I kategorin ryms produkter såsom telefoner, datorer, programvaror, etc. Med tanke på i vilken utsträckning människor tvingats både hålla sig hemma under det gångna året, är det inte konstigt att konsumenter sökt sig till sådana produkter.Knäckfrågan här är huruvida detta köpmönster kommer hålla i sig även efter pandemin, när människor inte längre tvingas spendera lika mycket tid i sina hem.

Med tanke på det [ökade intresset för investeringar ](https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-investing-covid-pandemic-new-easy-apps-2020-9)under pandemin, samt den ekonomiska instabilitet och oro som påverkat många familjer under pandemin, är det logiskt att pengar och försäkring hör till toppkategorierna under perioden i fråga (plats nummer tre). 

Det finns många olika typer av produkter och tjänster inom denna sektor, och pandemin har gjort oss alla smärtsamt medvetna om hur snabbt en ekonomisk situation kan förändras. 

[Läs mer om varför konsumenter skriver omdömen](https://se.business.trustpilot.com/reviews/learn-from-customers/why-do-people-read-reviews-what-our-research-revealed)

## 2. Företagen som fick flest omdömen

Dagens konsumenter skriver i större utsträckning ett omdöme när upplevelsen i fråga slår an en känsla – oavsett ifall denna känsla är positiv eller negativ. Om en konsument exempelvis har haft en fantastisk upplevelse med ett företag, är det därför troligt att detta företaget får ett omdöme som återspeglar den positiva upplevelsen. På samma sätt är det sannolikt att en negativ upplevelse resulterar i ett negativt omdöme.

Att konsumenter hjälper varandra att fatta bättre köpbeslut, delar sina upplevelser och belönar företag som satsar på kundservice är alla anledningar till varför dagens konsumenter gärna lämnar omdömen i slutet av köpresan.

Mellan juli 2020 och januari 2021 skrevs hela 22,4 miljoner företagsomdömen på Trustpilot!


2 Total number service reviews

Under samma period lämnade konsumenter dessutom över 3 miljoner produktomdömen på Trustpilot.

3 Total number product reviews

När vi nu har berört vad som driver konsumenter att skriva omdömen, och hur många företags- och produktomdömen som lämnats på Trustpilot under perioden i fråga, kan vi titta närmare på vilka sorters företag som fått allra flest omdömen på Trustpilot mellan juli 2020 och januari 2021.

### Antal företagsomdömen fördelat efter bransch (juli 2020-januari 2021)


4 Service reviews per industry months


Under denna tidsperiod är det tre branscher som utmärker sig vad gäller antalet omdömen: B2B, shopping och mode samt hem och trädgård.

B2B-företagen fick över 2,8 miljoner förertagsomdömen, motsvarande 12,5 % av alla företagsomdömen.

Inom kategorin shopping och mode lämnades det över 2,7 miljoner företagsomdömen, motsvarande 12 % av alla företagsomdömen – inte minst förvånande med tanke på att vår senaste moderapport visar att konsumenter lägger mindre eller lika mycket pengar på kläder jämfört med tiden innan pandemin.

Det går inte att neka till att hem och trädgård är en kategori som gått bra under 2020 och alla nedstängningar.

Med tanke på att en majoritet av världens befolkning spenderat mer tid i hemmet än någonsin, är det inte konstigt att människor valt att investera i hemmet och trädgården. Den här trenden återspeglar sig i antalet omdömen på Trustpilot. Branschen i fråga fick uppskattningsvis 2,6 miljoner omdömen mellan juli 2020 och januari 2021, motsvarande 11,6 % av alla företagsomdömen under denna period.

Tätt efter de tre toppkategorierna följer elektronik och teknik (≅2 miljoner omdömen) samt pengar och försäkringar (≅1,4 miljoner omdömen).

För samtliga kategorier skedde en nedgång i antalet omdömen framåt slutet av sommaren och början av hösten under 2020 (augusti och september), medan de flesta kategorier upplevde ett uppsving i slutet av året (november och december) – troligtvis till följd av ökad shopping i samband med Black Friday och julhandeln.

B2B, shopping och mode, hem och trädgård och elektronik hör alla till de kategorier som såg störst ökning av kundomdömen under det fjärde kvartalet 2020. Dessa sektorer fick också flest omdömen under det motsvarande under 2019, vilket visar köpstyrkan i det fjärde kvartalet oavsett omständigheter. 

### Antal produktomdömen fördelat efter bransch (juli 2020-januari 2021)

5 Product reviews per industry last six months

Vad gäller produktomdömen under perioden i fråga, är de tre kategorier som fick flest omdömen hem och trädgård, shopping och mode samt skönhet och hälsa.

Över 509 000 produktomdömen lämnades i kategorin hem och trädgård, mostsvarande 16,9 % av alla produktomdömen som lämnades under denna period. Inom kategorin shopping och mode lämnades över 492 000 produktomdömen, motsvarande 16,4 % av alla produktomdömen.

I juli 2020 kunde [en undersökning från Trustpilot och London Research](https://business.trustpilot.com/guides-reports/build-trusted-brand/2020-consumer-report-combating-misinformation-in-the-health-beauty-sector) visa att att pandemin resulterat i att konsumenter spenderar mer på hälsa och skönhet. 59 % av de amerikanska och 55 % av de brittiska konsumenterna uppgav att de spenderade mer på denna typ av produkter på grund av pandemin. Det här återspeglar sig i antalet produktomdömen under perioden i fråga – inom sektorn hälsa och skönhet lämnades över 388 000 produktomdömen på Trustpilot, vilket motsvarar 12,9 % av alla produktomdömen. 

De tre toppkategorierna inom produktomdömen följs av elektronik (≅227,000) och underhållning (≅180,000) – föga förvånande med tanke på rådande omständigheter. 

För de flesta kategorier skedde en nedgång i antalet produktomdömen framåt slutet av sommaren och början av hösten 2020, samt en uppgång framåt slutet av samma år i samband med ökad shopping. Men de tre kategorierna med flest produktomdömen skedde en kraftigare nedgång framåt slutet av sommaren, och en kraftigare uppgång framåt slutet av året – en uppgång som dessutom påbörjades redan i oktober 2020. Detta antyder att näthandeln ökade i takt med att restriktionerna återinfördes efter sommaren. 

[Läs mer om vikten av konsumentinsikt i tider av osäkerhet](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/learn-from-customers/what-are-consumer-insights-and-how-do-i-use-them)


## 3. De främsta anledningarna till varför konsumenter skriver onlineomdömen

Vi har också analyserat miljoner av 1 och 5-stjärniga omdömen som lämnats mellan augusti och december 2020, för att få insikt i varför konsumenter lämnar omdömen på vår plattform. 

### A. Gemensamma nämnare för 5-stjärniga omdömen under 2020

Leverans var ett av de mest återkommande nyckelorden i 5-stjärniga omdömen, och nämndes i över 1,3 miljoner omdömen – motsvarande hela 17 % av alla 5-stjärniga omdömen.

En annan gemensam nämnare var kundservice, vilket nämndes över 500 000 gånger under samma period. 
Frakt nämndes 160 000 gånger, motsvarande 2 % av alla 5-stjärniga omdömen.

Våra data visar konsumenternas behov av förtroendeingivande kundservice under en period av osäkerhet. 

Företag som har kunnat leverera sina produkter snabbt och effektivt, och samtidigt erbjuda bra kundservice, hör vinnarna under denna tuffa period. 

### B. Gemensamma nämnare för 1-stjärniga omdömen under 2020

Vad gäller 1-stjärniga omdömen som lämnats under perioden i fråga, kan vi konstatera att den främsta orsaken till ett 1-stjärnigt betyg är bristande kundservice. Kundservice nämns över 210 000 gånger, vilket motsvarar 18 % av alla 1-stjärniga omdömen under denna period.

Leverans är en annan gemensam nämnare för 1-stjärniga omdömen, och nämns över 174 000 gånger, motsvarande 14 % av alla 1-stjärniga omdömen. 

Frakt är ett nyckelord som nämns 39 000 gånger i 1-stjärniga omdömen. 

Sett till denna data är det är tydligt att dålig kundservice och leveransproblem ofta leder till negativa omdömen. Företag tjänar på att leverera en förtroendeingivande  kundservice – och att fortsätta investera i den. 

Läs mer om varför konsumenter skriver omdömen

## 4. Företag som svarar på kundomdömen har högre stjärnbetyg

Att svara på kundomdömen (på rätt sätt) kan ha stor effekt på din kundnöjdhet.

Vi har delat in företag efter bransch och genomsnittligt stjärnbetyg, och jämfört företagens svarsfrekvens.


6 TrustScore vs Number of responses to reviews

Sett till antalet omdömen som ett företag har svarat på, är det tydligt att toppdomänerna har höga stjärnbetyg. Detta kan vara en indikation på att sättet som företag besvarar omdömen på ([inte minst vad gäller att hantera negativa omdömen](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/learn-from-customers/how-to-respond-to-negative-reviews)) kan vara ett vinnande koncept för ökad kundnöjdhet. 

Statistiken pekar också på betydelsen av själva antalet omdömen. Omdömeslämnare tenderar som nämnts att lämna ett omdöme efter att en upplevelse slagit an en känsla (inklusive [negativa](https://business.trustpilot.com/guides-reports/learn-from-customers/bad-reviews-why-people-write-them-and-what-they-expect)). Företagen i topp har relativt många omdömen, och har troligtvis samlat in dem genom att be varje kund lämna ett omdöme. Då inbjudningar ofta resulterar i att många nöjda kunder lämnar ett omdöme, kan detta väga upp för eventuella negativa omdömen.

Ser vi istället till domänerna med lägst antal svar på omdömen (med ett undantag), hittar vi istället huvudsakligen 2- och 3-stjärniga företag. Även om vi svarsfrekvensen i sig kan vara relativt hög, är antalet omdömen i dessa fall ofta lågt. 


7 Star rating reverse

Det låga antalet omdömen kan bero på att företagen här inte aktivt samlar in sina omdömen, utan väntar på att kunderna självmant ska göra detta. Med tanke på ovan nämnda incitament för att lämna omdömen, finns risken då att de negativa omdömena får stor påverkan.

Statistiken visar på värdet av att aktivt samla in omdömen, och att ha en strategi för detta. Trots allt är det företagets rykte som står på spel!

## Viktiga konsumenttrender 2021

Under 2020 var företag tvungna att anpassa sig efter en ny verklighet. Konsumenters köpvanor förändrades i grunden, och varumärken behövde hitta nya kommunikationsvägar.

I dessa tider av osäkerhet har konsumenter i större utsträckning sökt sig till varandra för att få råd och rekommendationer inför ett köpbeslut online. Det visar inte minst alla omdömen som lästs och skrivit på plattform såsom Trustpilot under de senaste månaderna.

Man kan lugnt påstå att kundomdömen har blivit ett värdefullt verktyg för såväl konsumenter och företag. Dagens konsumenter söker sig till varumärken som värdesätter sina kunder. Förtroende är bland det värdefullaste ett företag kan skapa under osäkra tider.

Så hur ser 2021 ut?

Vi bad Gavin Laugenie från [dotdigital](https://dotdigital.com/) ge sin syn på 2021:

”Det är alltid svårt att förutse trender, eftersom förändring är oundvikligt. Detta faktum blev tydligare än någonsin under 2020. Det handlade om hur vi anpassade oss efter utmaningarna. Därför menar jag att 2021 är året för anpassningsförmåga. Din marknadsföring måste återspegla den anpassningsförmåga som du och ditt team visar. Det innebär att ha kraftfull AI för att segmentera exakta data för att leverera riktade meddelanden till din målgrupp i de kanaler som ger störst effekt vid varje givet tillfälle. E-mail är fortfarande herre på täppan, men eftersom konsumentbeteendet hela tiden förändras behöver du komplettera med livechatt, pushnotiser etc. för att leverera de meddelanden som dina kunder kräver. Konsumenternas inkorgarna fylls av budskap, så ditt innehåll måste vara empatiskt, tankeväckande och inte enbart se till konvertering. Det gäller att vara kreativ; visa lite finess, var interaktiv, väck intresse. Men framför allt, lita på din teknik och var beredd att tänka nytt när omständigheterna oundvikligen förändras och kräver en ny strategi.”

Så vilka sorters förändringar kan företag förbereda sig för i år? Och hur kan omdömen fortsätta spela en central roll för kundresan, när pandemin går mot sitt slut och butiker åter kan öppna?

Efter ett år av intensiv näthandel är konsumenter redo för sociala kontakter och interaktioner.

Under de senaste måndaderna har vi sett varumärken organisera [virtuella events](https://www.prdaily.com/5-consumer-behavior-trends-pr-pros-should-know-for-2021/) och [virtuella provrum](https://www.prdaily.com/5-consumer-behavior-trends-pr-pros-should-know-for-2021/) (varumärken såsom Fenty, Lancôme och IKEA erbjuder redan denna teknologi till sina kunder) i ett försök att erbjuda konsumenterna en verklighetstrogen upplevelse. Men konsumenternas behov att handla från såväl [mindre butiker](https://www.retailtimes.co.uk/two-thirds-of-consumers-more-likely-to-shop-locally-compared-to-a-year-ago-mastercard-shows/) som [medvetna och hållbara varumärken](https://blog.euromonitor.com/top-10-global-consumer-trends-in-2021/) kan peka på en comeback för fysiska butiker – när vardagen återgår till det normala.

Konsumentinsikter 2021: Konsumentbeteendet förändrades under 2020 – vad kan vi förvänta oss i år?

Consumer Behavior in the Age of Coronavirus: Global Review Trends by Industry -smaller

Consumer Behavior in the Age of Coronavirus: Global Review Trends by Industry

Coronapandemin har tvingat konsumenter världen över att ändra sina köpvanor på ett drastiskt sätt, vilket gjort det svårt för företag att planera för framtiden. Därför har vi på Trustpilot analyserat konsumentaktiviteten på vår plattform.

Det internationella undersökningsföretaget [Nielsen](https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/article/2020/key-consumer-behavior-thresholds-identified-as-the-coronavirus-outbreak-evolves/) har identifierat ett konsumentmönster i form av sex olika steg som kan kopplas till oron kring covid-19 (och tillhörande nyhetsrapportering): *Proaktiva köp av hälsoprodukter, reaktiva hälsoåtgärder, hamstring, karantänförberedelser, restriktioner och anpassning till en ny vardag.*

Även om situationen fortfarande förändras, och olika länder befinner sig i olika faser, går det att urskilja detta konsumentmönster världen över. Exakt hur konsumenternas köpbeslut låter sig påverkas återstår dock att se.

Som oberoende omdömesplattform har vi på Trustpilot en särskild inblick i omdömens effekt på konsumentbeteenden, och därför har vi analyserat den globala konsumentaktiviteten på vår plattform i spåren av covid-19. 

Vi kommer att uppdatera vår data åtminstone en gång per månad, och det kan därför vara klokt att bokmärka den här sidan så att du enkelt kan hålla dig uppdaterad.  

## Vilken typ av företag läser konsumenter helst omdömen om just nu?

Svaret på denna fråga skiljer sig från region till region, men inledningsvis kan vi konstatera att det just nu är viktigt för konsumenter att ta del av andras upplevelser.

Det finns många anledningar till att trovärdiga omdömen är viktiga för konsumenter i en osäker tid – från ett ökat behov att veta vad andra konsumenter prioriterar, till en mer utbredd skepticism gentemot okända företag. Kanske vill konsumenterna helt enkelt få bekräftat för sig att produkterna eller tjänsterna i fråga lever upp till förväntningarna, oavsett om det gäller någonting direkt nödvändigt eller inte. 

Här nedan följer vår analys av trafiken på Trustpilot inom olika regioner, från slutet av februari fram till idag.

## Storbritannien: Företagsprofilers trafik på Trustpilot under 30 dagar


UK Consumer Behavior in light of Coronavirus: Profile visits to Trustpilot

UK-Profile-Views-April-6

UK Profile Visits 4/20 - 5/20

I Storbritannien är trafiken på Trustpilot relativt jämn mellan den 23 februari och den 24 mars, men det ökade intresset för __försäkringsbolag__ och __möbelbutiker__ sticker ut. Det är möjligt att konsumenterna i samband med detta upplever ett ökat behov av att förbereda sig för en oväntad situtation, såsom att tvingas arbeta hemifrån.

Även om det är för tidigt att dra några slutsatser kring hur mycket konsumenter spenderar på mode i dessa tider, kan vi konstatera att intresset för omdömen om klädbutiker för kvinnor har minskat under denna period – åtminstone i Storbritannien. 

Trots införda restriktioner vad gäller resor, visar vår statistik på ett ökat intresse för __resebyråers__ företagsprofiler. Detta beror sannolikt på att konsumenter hoppas kunna ändra sina resplaner, och kanske har [spekulationer](https://skift.com/coronavirus-and-travel/) kring att livet kan återgå till det normala framåt sommaren väckt intresset ytterligare.

Vår data från den 6 april visar på ett minskat antal besök på profilsidor för __försäkringsbolag__ framåt månadsskiftet mars-april, samtidigt som intresset för __möbelbutiker__, __apotek__ och __träningstjänster__ ökar i takt med att konsumenter anpassar sig till ett ”karantänliv”.

## USA: Företagsprofilers trafik på Trustpilot under 30 dagar

Consumer behavior in the US in light of coronavirus: visits to Trustpilot in the last 30 days

April-6-US-Pageviews

US Page Views 4/20 - 5/20

I USA kulminerar efterfrågan på __toalettartiklar__ i början av mars, vilket kan kopplas till Donald Trumps presskonferens om covid-19 den 26 februari. Sett till konsumentmönstret illusterar efterfrågan på toalettartiklar en övergång från *reaktiva hälsoåtgärder* till *hamstring*.

Även om en stor del av trafiken i fråga kan tillskrivas [The Honey Pots](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/the-latest-online-racist-pileup-is-about-vaginal-care-products-at-target.html) företagsprofil, är det möjligt att trenden även kan förklaras med ökad hemberedskap och efterfrågan på tvål och [handsprit](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/03/coronavirus-hand-sanitizer-sales-surge-leading-to-price-hikes.html).

Framåt mitten av mars ökar intresset för __ekonomisk rådgivning__ kraftigt – kanske en naturlig konsekvens av den ekonomiska oro som coronaviruset medför.

Vår data från den 6 april indikerar att intresset för __bankers__ profilsidor ökar i mitten av mars, och därmed samverkar med den ekonomiska rådgivningen. Det ser helt enkelt ut som att konsumenter har ett behov av att se över sina alternativ i en orolig tid.

I april ligger trafiken för __klädbutiker__, __apotek__ och __butiker med toalettartiklar__ på en jämn nivå.

## Centraleuropa: företagsprofilers trafik på Trustpilot under 30 dagar

Consumer behavior in the age of coronavirus in Central Europe

April-6-CEU-Pageviews

CEU Pageviews 4/20 - 5/20

Centraleuropas intresse för __resebyråer__ minskar i början av mars, strax efter det att antalet [bekräftade coronafall](https://www.nytimes.com/article/coronavirus-timeline.html) kulminerar i Europa den 28 februari.

Att efterfrågan på __spel__ ökar i karantäntider är kanske inte särskilt överraskande, men att intresset för __smyckesbutiker__ ökar på Trustpilot under perioden i fråga är kanske inte lika väntat. Kanske förblir denna typ av köp viktiga för många konsumenter – även i en anpassning till en ny vardag.

Vår uppdaterade data visar att intresset för __spelföretag__ kulminerar i slutet av mars för Centraleuropas del, och att intresset för __mobilbutiker__ tar fart framåt april.

## Australien och Nya Zeeland: Företagsprofilers trafik på Trustpilot under 30 dagar

Consumer behavior in the age of coronavirus: Australia and New Zealand

April-6-ANZ-Pageviews

ANZ Pageviews 4/20 - 5/20

Australien och Nya Zeeland visar på ett genomgående stort intresse för __resebyråer__ under perioden 23 februari-24 mars, trots införda [restriktioner](https://www.ft.com/content/65b88a38-6339-11ea-b3f3-fe4680ea68b5) vad gäller flygresor.

Intresset kan sannolikt förklaras med att många konsumenter har behövt ändra sina resplaner på grund av med nämnda restriktioner, och att man i samband med detta undersökt hur __resebyråer__ har valt att agera.

__Resebyråers__ trafik kulminerar I slutet av mars i regionen, med en nedgång framåt april.

__Hobby- och möbelbutiker__ ökar istället i antalet profilbesök framåt april, i takt med att konsumenter börjar anpassa sig till att leva i karantän.

## Vilken typ av företag lämnar kunder omdömen om just nu?

I goda tider tenderar konsumenter att lämna omdömen för ett ge råd till andra, göra företag medvetna om problem eller ge företag konstruktiv kritik på vad de kan förbättra.

Även om ovanstående skäl fortfarande är giltiga, tillkommer i en tid av isolering ett ökat behov av att tillhöra en community och göra sin röst hörd – oavsett om det handlar om att tacka ett företag eller varna andra för verksamheter som utnyttjar situationen.

Här nedan följer vår analys av de företagskategorier som fått flest omdömen i coronakrisens spår.

## Storbritannien: Omdömen på Trustpilot under 30 dagar


Consumer behavior in the age of coronavirus: review activity in the UK

apr6-UK-organic-reviews

UK Review Activity 4/20 - 5/20

I Storbritannien får följande företagskategorier flest omdömen mellan den 23 februari och den 24 mars: __budtjänster__, __el- och energibolag__, __möbelbutiker__ och __försäkringsbolag__.

Framåt slutet av mars är det __resebyråer__ som får störst antal omdömen, kanske en konsekvens av att konsumenter vill dela med sig av sina upplevelser kring ändrade bokningar.

Vad gäller början av april är det istället __budtjänster__ och __gasbolag__ som har den största ökningen av omdömen i Storbritannien. 

Antalet omdömen om __el- och energibolag__, __försäkringsbolag__ och __möbelbutiker__ håller en jämn nivå under denna period.

## USA: Omdömen på Trustpilot under 30 dagar



consumer behavior in the age of coronavirus: review activity in the US

apr6-US-organic-reviews

US Review Activity 4/20 - 5/20

I USA är det __klädbutiker__, __hobbybutiker__ och __resebyråer__ som får lejonparten av alla omdömen på Trustpilot under perioden 23 februari-24 mars. 

Under april minskar antalet omdömen om __klädbutiker__ och __resebyråer__ i USA, medan antalet omdömen om __hobbybutiker__, __ekonomiska rådgivare__ och __möbelbutiker__ förblir intakt.

## Centraleuropa: Omdömen på Trustpilot under 30 dagar

consumer behavior in the age of coronavirus: review activity in central Europe

apr6-CEU-organic-reviews

CEU Review Activity 4/20 - 5/20

I Centraleuropa är det __budtjänster__, __mobilbutiker__, __resebyråer__ och __spelföretag__ som får flest omdömen under motsvarande period.

Av statistiken att döma ser det ut som att europeiska konsumenter är mer intresserade av att skriva omdömen om __budtjänster__ än att läsa dem i dessa tider, även om detta kan komma att förändras.

I början av april fortsätter nämnda kategorier att få flest omdömen på Trustpilot i denna region.

## Australien och Nya Zeeland: Omdömen på Trustpilot under 30 dagar

Consumer behavior in the age of coronavirus: review activity in Australia and New Zealand

apr6-ANZ-organic-reviews

ANZ Review Activity 4/20 - 5/20

Trenderna I Australien och Nya Zealand påminner om de i Storbritannien, där omdömen om __resebyråer__ ökar i takt med trafiken till företagsprofilerna i fråga. Konsumenterna delar även här med sig av sina upplevelser med __resebyråerna__ i coronakrisens spår.

Efter __resebyråerna__ är det __hobbybutiker__ som får störst antal omdömen mellan den 23 februari och den 24 mars, följt av __klädbutiker__. Kanske ökar dessa omdömen i takt med att konsumenter anpassar sig till en ny vardag, och att man i samband med detta har mer tid att lämna omdömen. 

I början av april minskar antalet omdömen om __resebyråer__ i denna region, samtidigt som antalet omdömen om __hobbybutiker__ och __butiker med biltillbehör__ ökar.

## Vikten av omdömen i dessa tider

Den senaste tidens konsumentaktivitet på Trustpilot visar att det är [viktigt med omdömen även i svåra tider](https://se.business.trustpilot.com/reviews/build-trusted-brand/vikten-av-fortroende-i-dessa-tider?refresh=2). I den osäkerhet som en kris medför, kan omdömen hjälpa både företag och konsumenter.

Omdömen gör det möjligt för konsumenter att ta del av andras upplevelser, vilket inte minst kan vara värdefullt i en tid där osäkerhet råder och det kan vara svårt att känna förtroende. Omdömen gör det också möjligt för konsumenter att göra sig hörda, genom att till exempel tacka ett företag som anstränger sig i en pressad tid eller kritisera en verksamhet som utnyttjar situationen. I en tid präglad av social distansering och isolering kan [öppna omdömesplattformar](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/inside-trustpilot/creating-a-culture-of-transparency-and-trustworthiness-with-trustpilots-new) bygga en känsla av gemenskap. 

För företag är omdömen ett utmärkt sätt att framhäva sina kunders upplevelser, för att på så sätt nå ut till nya potentiella kunder. Omdömen kan också ge företag en direkt inblick i kundernas behov och önskemål. I en tid präglad av snabba förändringar kan detta vara särskilt värdefullt, och hjälpa företag att anpassa sig till nya kanaler och målgrupper.

I svåra tider söker sig konsumenter till företag som bryr sig om sina kunder. Med andra ord är detta ett tillfälle för dig att bygga en djupare relation med dina kunder, och framhäva ditt goda rykte.

Förändrade konsumentbeteenden under coronapandemin – så påverkas olika branscher och regioner

Why the finance industry needs to pay attention to consumer insights

If you’re in financial services, the simple act of listening to your customers has never been so crucial as it is now. In this article, we discuss why the finance industry needs to pay more attention to consumer insights.

According to a survey commissioned by Trustpilot, consumers are [50% more likely](https://business.trustpilot.com/guides-reports/build-trusted-brand/building-trust-in-financial-services) to say that their level of trust in financial services providers has decreased (rather than increased) over the last 3 years. 

This is hugely important because when you’re [dealing in finance](https://business.trustpilot.com/industries/finance), you’re likely dealing in relationships. Your customers aren’t buying a pack of gum. They’re entering into what could be a multi-year partnership with your company. 

So with a trend of rising distrust, you can bet that more and more people are doing their due diligence before choosing a company to handle their money — which brings us back to the importance of listening to your customer. How well you listen determines how well you can actually communicate to your audience, build ever-improving experiences, and ultimately improve your bottom line.

And that all starts with capturing consumer insights.

## What are consumer insights, again?

Consumer insights are actionable interpretations of human behaviour that are used to gain a deeper understanding of how an audience thinks and feels. Analysing these insights helps companies understand the motivations, desires, and feelings of the people they want to engage with, all so they can serve them more effectively.

In short: if you want to meet your customers where they really are, you first have to know where that is. 

When it’s done right, the application of consumer insights can change how you communicate (and resonate) with your clients, increasing sales and customer satisfaction.

Collecting consumer insights can be tricky — here are a few things you’ll need:

__1. Good data quality__

It all starts with collecting solid data. Without high-quality data, your conclusions or results will likely suffer.

__2. A dedicated analytics team__

Oftentimes, the most valuable insights aren’t exactly obvious from glancing at a datasheet. You’ll want a dedicated data analytics team to extract the stories out of the data you’ve collected. 

__3. An open mind__

Gathering and analysing information on consumer behaviour is one thing. But actually acknowledging the sometimes-inconvenient truths that your data is showing you? That’s another. It’s essential to carefully consider the results of your consumer research, whether you agree with them or not.

__4. Database and segment marketing__

Database marketing uses databases of customers to generate personalised communications. If they are purposefully crafted, these databases represent specific personas, audience segments, regions and more. These kinds of groups are essential to test the authenticity of your consumer insights across different strata. That kind of multifaceted testing can confirm your hypotheses as facts.

## How do consumer insights differ from market research?

These two terms are easily confused, but are markedly distinct. 

For starters, __market research__ is an effort to gather information surrounding a given market. That means recording metrics like market needs, market sizes, competitor presence, market rates, service pricing, and more. 

If market research tells us *what* is happening, __consumer insights__ tell us why it’s happening. The team providing these insights will offer a narrative around the data with the goal of making actionable recommendations towards typically lofty goals like improving CSAT metrics, increasing customer retention, and generating more revenue. 

And *it works*. 

Here are a few ways financial institutions can use consumer insights to better attract and engage with customers.

## 3 Ways you can turn consumer insights into tangible benefits

### 1. Analyse the competition

Because financial services companies don’t vary wildly when it comes to rates, the company that can best listen to consumers (and utilise that information) usually ends up serving customers the most effectively. That can also mean listening to what customers are saying about your competitors’ services and considering that information as you improve your own. 

### 2. Improve the customer journey

Another way consumer insights can amp up your consumer experience is by revealing specific opportunities to better your customer journey. 

Take the [example of Wayfair](https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2017/12/15/leveraging-customer-data-to-create-relevant-customer-experiences-2-examples/#731b07d961d3), a leading online home goods retailer. After analysing consumer research, they realised their customer journey had some sizable gaps - so they built an app for recommending products based on user interests. Not only did that insight-driven pivot lead to a 50% increase in customer retention for that year, the app now also provides the company with new insights into customers’ styles and needs. 

### 3. Personalise your marketing

Especially when it comes to the financial industry, marketing to “an average consumer” isn’t the best way to make people feel seen. When their money's on the line, consumers tend to appreciate a more personal, more cared-for approach. That’s where hyper-personalised marketing can come into play and help them feel like your company is truly speaking to them as individuals.

Consumer insights can help you develop your understanding of your audience to the point where you can make your marketing truly personalised.

## Next steps

- __Establish what you want to learn.__ Before conducting research, make sure you know what (and how) you’ll get your data.
- __Identify your resources.__ How will you obtain data, who’s going to collect it, who’s going to analyse it? Make sure you have enough time and employees dedicated to getting and using your consumer insights.
- __Decide your collection method.__ How you’ll collect data is extremely important. Are you targeting a specific audience? Existing consumers? Will you use a survey? A focus group? These are important questions. Trustpilot's Review Insights tool is a great way to get started.
- __How will you use the data?__ Make sure your efforts are not going to waste. It’s important to plan and think ahead. Once you have the data, start thinking about what departments, processes, strategies, and initiatives might be affected and what the plan is for that.

Lastly, get started! It can be a challenging process to build up a stable of customer insights, but it can massively pay off in the long run. 

Find out how Trustpilot reviews can help you collect great insights, learn about Trustpilot's [Review Insights tool here](https://business.trustpilot.com/features/review-insights), or create a free Trustpilot account today to start collecting reviews.

Why consumer insights are now crucial to the finance industry

Woman with glasses looking straight ahead

Consumer insights are an interpretation of human behaviour used by businesses to gain a deeper understanding of how their audience thinks and feels. Learn how to use them to better understand your customers, meet their needs, and grow revenue.

Listening empowers you to learn from and talk to your customers in order to create ever-improving experiences.

Businesses with quality data are more likely to collect actionable customer insights, which can help them grow their bottoms line in the long run.

## So what are consumer insights, exactly?

A consumer insight is an interpretation used by businesses to gain a deeper understanding of how their audience thinks and feels. Analysing human behaviours allows companies to really understand what their consumers want and need, and most importantly, why they feel this way. 

When consumer insight research is conducted properly, it should improve the effectiveness of how a company communicates to its customers, which is likely to change consumer behaviour, and therefore increase sales.

But [collecting good consumer insights can be challenging](https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/reviews/learn-from-customers/introducing-trustpilots-new-machine-learning-tool-review-insights), so here is what you need in order to collect and use consumer insights properly:

__1. Good data quality__

Data quality is vital to the collection of consumer insights. Without high-quality data, your conclusions or results might suffer.

__2. A dedicated analytics team__

The role of your data analytics team is essential in order to understand how your customers think and behave. If you don’t have the right analytics team, it’s hard to understand what the data is telling you.

__3. Consumer research__

It’s important to understand and acknowledge consumer behaviour and consumer insights should help you engage with customers emotionally. In order to do that, [it’s essential not to ignore the results of your consumer research](https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/reviews/how-staysure-uses-the-power-of-ai-to-build-customer-trust), whether you agree with them or not.

__4. Database and segment marketing__

Database marketing is a form of marketing using databases of customers to generate personalised communi cations. These databases can lead to personas, different sets of audiences or segments. As consumer insights remain theoretical, database marketing is another essential element to your research when it comes to testing and learning. Indeed, test actions are necessary if you want to turn insights into facts.

## But what’s the difference between market research and consumer insights?

__Market research__ can be defined as an effort to gather information about customers or markets. It provides information about market needs, market sizes, competitors and customers. It is the “what” of customers and markets. 

Market research delivers statistics and knowledge. 

__Consumer insights__ deliver the same, but tend to come with recommended actions that will help you amplify the company’s growth. This means the team in charge of consumer insights will deliver both data and narrative, allowing you to make use of the data.

Long story short, research tells us what is happening, whereas consumer insights tell us why it’s happening, and will allow us to make changes to our business in order to improve customer satisfaction, customer retention, and increase our bottom bottom line.

If you’re still unsure how you should be using these insights to influence your business and better engage customers, we’ve got you covered.

## Using consumer insights to amplify your marketing efforts

__Consumer insights help analyse the competition__
Whether or not you are the market leader in your industry, looking at how consumers talk about products and services in your industry can reveal a lot about consumers’ needs, and what you can implement to improve your own product, service, or business. 

Being aware of consumers’ conversations when it comes to other products can be extremely valuable, regardless of whether or not they mention or are aware of your business.

### Consumer insights help improve the customer journey


The customer journey’s 5 different stages: awareness, consideration, purchase, retention, and advocacy. Mapping your customer journey will help you understand your customer’s experience and should highlight any gaps you may have.

The customer journey’s 5 different stages: awareness, consideration, purchase, retention and advocacy.

Consumer insights can also help companies map their customer journey and identify any gaps where there might be some, as well as find what works best, and what can be improved for a better user experience and customer journey, from awareness to purchase and advocacy.

Forbes covered [a great example](https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2017/12/15/leveraging-customer-data-to-create-relevant-customer-experiences-2-examples/#731b07d961d3) of how consumer insights was used. Wayfair, a multi-billion dollar online home goods retailer conducted consumer research and analysed their data, and realised they needed to improve their overall customer experience. So they built an app that lets users take pictures of items they see and like giving the information needed so Wayfair can offer recommendations.

Not only did this research allow the business to improve customer experience, but the app now also provides the company with new insights into customers’ styles and needs. As a result, Wayfair saw a 50% increase in customer retention the year the app came out.

### Consumer insights help personalise your marketing

Mass marketing is a strategy in which a company decides to ignore targeted marketing and speak to a whole market instead. The example below illustrates mass marketing perfectly.

An example of mass marketing advertising: toothpaste advert

An example of mass marketing advertising

Today, companies offering a service or product used by many still tend to use mass marketing, like this toothpaste advert. Indeed, by definition of mass marketing advertising, mass-market products do not necessarily need to personalise their communications in order to sell more. 

But in a world where competition is so tough, personalisation has become a necessity for many retail brands out there. Targeted and personalised help communicate a better, clearer message, and therefore attract and retain customers.

That’s why consumer insights can help businesses understand why people buy certain products over other ones and what’s driving those preferences. 

This can help you refine your personas, and determine the best way to speak to your different audience segments. Here are a couple of examples of personalised marketing.


Very personalised website homepage

An example of personalisation

*Very* uses personalised messaging based on sign-in information and seasonal weather data to make a more intimate connection with the site visitor.

Spotify billboard displaying social proof and personalised content

Spotify’s new billboard campaign uses internal consumer data to create unique singular stories that highlighted how personal listening to music can be.

Netflix's personalised homepage

Netflix, on the other-hand, uses algorithms based on previous viewing behaviour in order to recommend the right kind of content to viewers.

Whether it’s with algorithms, internal data, or a mixture of internal and external data, consumer insights help refine the way you communicate to your customers - these brands all use consumer insights to better understand their audience and personalise their marketing and offerings.

Insights are essential to learn about and understand your audience better, as well as find deeper, more actionable insights to improve the way you market your business. 

There are many ways you can use insights to boost your company’s bottom line - so we’ve put this list of steps together to get you started!

### Getting started with consumer insights

- Establish what you want to learn: before conducting research, make sure you know what (and how) you’ll get your data. 
- Identify your resources: How will you obtain data, who’s going to collect it, who’s going to analyse it? Make sure you have enough time and employees dedicated to getting and using your consumer insights.
- What’s your collection method?: How you’ll collect data is extremely important. Are you targeting a specific audience? Existing consumers? Will you use a survey? A focus group? These are important questions. Trustpilot's Review Insights tool is a great way to get started.
- How will you use the data? Make sure your efforts are not going to waste. It’s important to plan and think ahead. Once you have the data, start thinking about what departments, processes, strategies, and initiatives might be affected and what the plan is for that.

Lastly, get started! Obtaining consumer insights is hard work but can pay off in the long run. Find out how Trustpilot reviews can help you collect great insights, learn about Trustpilot's [Review Insights tool here](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/learn-from-customers/introducing-trustpilots-new-machine-learning-tool-review-insights), or create a free Trustpilot account today to get started.


What are consumer insights and how do I use them? An introduction

Untitled Artwork 45 (1)

What type of metrics measure customer success

We all know customer satisfaction is important, but with many different variables it can be tricky to measure. Learn some of the different metrics to monitor and work on for an improved customer experience.

These are more long term questions, but customer satisfaction levels are also constantly changing, so brands need to keep an eye on them in the short term as well. If levels dip, action needs to be taken immediately to prevent further decline. If they rise, figuring out what changed and replicating it across your business can lead to even more success. 

And even if your customer satisfaction has long been in decline, it’s never too late to try and create a better experience for your customers — the kind that will help you gain more loyal customers and see more success in the long run.

Measuring customer satisfaction can feel a little intimidating, but it doesn’t need to be. And it’s okay if there are some areas where you’re falling short. But if your customers are unhappy it’s much better to understand why and resolve the issues than to keep your head in the sand and hope the problems magically disappear. 

So, where to start? There are a few important customer satisfaction metrics to help you understand how you’re doing already and find areas for improvement. Even a tiny improvement in the following focus areas can mean a better experience for your customers, and a better bottom line for your business.

## Customer satisfaction metrics to guide your business
Depending on your business, some of these will probably make more sense for you than others. You don’t necessarily need to focus on all of them, but committing to monitoring a few of them can bring you great results for your business. The more of them that you can focus on, the more your customer satisfaction will likely improve. 

### Customer retention and churn rates – do they stay or do they go? 
[Customer retention](https://www.salesforce.com/eu/learning-centre/customer-service/customer-retention/#:~:text=To%20calculate%20your%20customer%20retention,E%2DN) looks at which of your customers stay with your business over any given period of time. You can figure out how to calculate yours [here](https://blog.totango.com/2021/03/how-to-calculate-and-improve-your-customer-retention-rate/ "How to calculate and improve your customer retention rate"). 

Because acquiring new customers is generally more expensive than retaining your current customers, customer retention rates can have a huge impact on your bottom line in both the long and short term. 

There are a few different [strategies for boosting customer retention](https://www.shopify.com/blog/customer-retention-strategies "What is customer retention? 5 strategies to keep customers"). Starting a customer loyalty program can be an excellent way to incentivize customers to keep spending with your brand and so can offering a discount towards their next purchase at the end of their transaction. Better email engagement programs and win back campaigns sent to customers who have already moved on can help as well. 

### Repeat purchase rate
To figure out your repeat purchase rate,simply divide your total number of customers by your return customers. This is an excellent way to measure customer satisfaction because if you have a large number of customers returning that indicates that your customers are happy enough with your product or service to keep coming back. The numbers speak for themselves.

Unless you’re selling something where people truly only need one or can use the same product for a long period of time, a low repeat purchase rate is typically a bad sign for your business. It means it’s time to ask why your customers aren’t coming back. 

If you’re suffering from a lower repeat purchase rate, there are plenty of [ways to help improve it](https://blog.smile.io/how-to-calculate-purchase-frequency/ "How to calculate purchase frequency and how to improve it"). And even if yours is doing pretty well, any improvements to this will still translate into large financial gains for your brand. 

### Customer lifetime value
Closely tied to repeat purchase rate, your [customer lifetime value ](https://blog.hubspot.com/service/how-to-calculate-customer-lifetime-value "How to calculate customer lifetime value")is the total amount of sales your business will typically see per customer. And it stands to reason that the better your customer experience, the more business you will likely see from each of them. 

This is a great metric to keep an eye on as you put more of a focus on customer satisfaction. If you do it properly, you’ll be able to watch it grow over time as your focus on their experience has them coming back more and making larger purchases. 

Once you get to a point where you’re seeing higher lifetime value from each customer, you can really put all your focus on acquiring new customers, because the ones you have are already happy with your brand and extremely loyal to it. 

And here’s the real beauty of working to improve your customer satisfaction levels: the happier your existing customers are, the easier (and cheaper) it will become to [attract new customers](https://business.trustpilot.com/guides-reports/browsers-to-buyers/the-complete-guide-to-reviews "The complete guide to marketing with customer reviews").

### NPS – are your customers promoting your brand? 
Your NPS – [Net Promoter Score](https://blog.capterra.com/what-is-nps-net-promoter-score-explained/ "What is NPS? Net promoter score explained") – measures how likely your customers are to recommend your business to a friend. This is done with a brief survey asking your customers how likely they are to recommend your business on a scale of 1-10. Chances are, you’ve encountered this survey question embedded right into a software product you frequently use.

Answers between 0-6 reveal your detractors, 7-8 are your passives, and 9-10 are your promoters. Subtract the percentage of detractor responses from the percentage of your promoters and you’ve got your score. 

This can be a great option for businesses because it’s a relatively simple survey that your customers are likely already familiar with — and possibly more likely to engage with. It also takes just a moment to fill out. You can also [get a lot more out of it](https://blog.hubspot.com/service/what-is-nps "The ultimate guide to your NPS score") by leaving a spot for your customers to be able to leave qualitative feedback about how your business could improve. 

Re-calculating your NPS score over time can help you see how your customer satisfaction levels are rising or falling, so for best results you should do this once or twice a year.

### Customer reviews for qualitative and quantitative feedback 
Customer reviews go straight to the source about how your customers feel about you. And because they consist of both star ratings and the actual review, they also provide you with both quantitative and qualitative feedback. 


Customer review Swappa

Reviews can also tackle two different customer service issues, right at the source. [Responding to reviews](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/learn-from-customers/how-to-respond-to-negative-reviews "How to respond to negative reviews") and resolving customer issues helps keep individual customers happier. But taking it a step further and making changes to your business based on [common trends in your reviews](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/learn-from-customers/introducing-trustpilots-new-machine-learning-tool-review-insights "Review insights: using the wealth of insights in your customer reviews to better your business") helps ensure that future customers won’t have the same issues. 

Because of this, customer reviews are both a metric for customer satisfaction and a tool to help you engage with your customers and offer them better customer service, all at the same time. 

Customer reviews are a powerful customer satisfaction tool for one other reason. They offer your customers a place to engage with your brand – and for you to build trust in your brand by engaging with them. Your customers are going to be talking about your brand online either way, but collecting and responding to your customer reviews allows you to be a part of that conversation. 

### CSAT scores for a quick and simple pulse check 
[CSAT scores](https://www.qualtrics.com/experience-management/customer/what-is-csat/ "What is a CSAT and how do you measure it?") are another method of direct customer feedback. You survey your customers and give them a 1-5 scale to rank how satisfied or unsatisfied they are with your business. You take the number of customers that gave you a four or five – satisfied or extremely satisfied – divide by your number of survey responses, and multiply by 100. That gives you your percentage of satisfied customers. 

These can be emailed to your customer base as surveys, come as a popup at the end of checkout, be sent through SMS, or any other way you communicate with your customers. 

CSAT scores are a great way to get a general pulse of how your customers are feeling, but the main limitation here is the lack of qualitative feedback. CSAT doesn’t help you figure out where you’re missing the mark for your unsatisfied customers or how you could improve their experience going forward. 

## When you grow your customer satisfaction, you grow your business
Not all of these customer satisfaction metrics are going to be right for your business so it’s important to take a look at each of them and decide what’s right for you. Once you have an idea of which ones – and we definitely suggest more than one – make sense, then you can get started. 

We know that negative feedback is never fun, but shying away from it only hurts your business in the long run. Confronting your negative feedback head on is the only way to improve your business moving forward and create a better experience for your customers. 

If customer reviews seem like a good metric to measure and [improve your customer satisfaction](https://business.trustpilot.com/customer-stories/training-education/how-kaplan-internationals-customer-satisfaction-skyrocketed-with-trustpilot "How Kaplan International's customer experience skyrocketed with Trustpilot"), we’re here to help. [Click here ](https://business.trustpilot.com/request-demo "Trustpilot request a demo")to speak with one of our specialists and start collecting reviews from your customers today. 


What type of metrics measure customer satisfaction

What types of metrics measure customer satisfaction? 

Use the insights in your customer reviews to better your business

Use the insights in your reviews to better your business

Your reviews contain powerful insights that can be the key to improving your business and making your customers happier. Learn more about using these insights to your advantage. 

Some companies believe that with so many different customers, it’s impossible to please all of them — and pointless to try. When it comes to [customer experience](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/learn-from-customers/the-role-of-customer-experience-in-outperforming-industry-peers "The role of customer experience in outperforming industry peers"),  neither of these extremes are true. 

You’ll never be able to please every single customer, but if there are areas where the majority of your customers are unhappy then you should be listening. And if there are areas where the majority of your customers love what you’re doing, you should make sure to lean into that and keep it as a focus for your brand. 

Think of your customer reviews as a wealth of [consumer insights](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/learn-from-customers/what-are-consumer-insights-and-how-do-i-use-them "What are consumer insights and how do I use them? An introduction") that hold the key to success for your business. But the more reviews you have, the harder it can be to try and guide your decisions with such a vast amount of – often conflicting – data. 

That’s why our team developed a tool called [Review Insights](https://business.trustpilot.com/features/review-insights "Review Insights") — so businesses like yours can easily uncover the consumer insights trends within your Trustpilot reviews. No heavy lifting required! 

## Consumer insights answer questions before you ask them 

Terms like data and insights might seem vague, which can make it hard to relate them to your brand. 

Having website or checkout issues during large volume shopping periods? New trends in your reviews could help you be aware of these as soon as possible so you can get back up and running and minimize any lost revenue. 

Relying on a lot of customer service reps or sales reps? By adding tags to your reviews it can automatically tie each review to an individual rep, so you can spot trends within feedback around each of them to understand where training is needed and how well they’re each performing. 

Struggling to get pricing just right? In depth insights into how your customers are mentioning pricing in their reviews could help you understand if you could raise your prices a little for a better bottom line, or lower them a little so you can appeal to more customers, grow your customer base, and stop losing potential customers to prices that may be a little unrealistic. 

There are so many ways that trends in customer reviews have [helped companies improve their businesses](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/learn-from-customers/7-ways-reviews-can-provide-actionable-consumer-insights-and-better-roi "7 ways reviews can provide actionable consumer insights and better ROI for your business"), and the list is constantly growing. 

## Go deeper than a simple star rating 
When you use Review Insights, our AI is automatically sifting through all of your reviews. It easily spots all of the trends in them that might help you improve your business. You’ll even receive a monthly consumer insights report that simplifies these trends, easily guiding decisions in different areas of your product, customer experience, and more. 

Trends in customer reviews

Looking at reviews in terms of star ratings can only get you so far. Often 4-star reviews will be mostly positive but contain one or two negative comments. These negative comments show you the areas where your business came up just a little short of delighting your customer. 

### Insights can change your customers from satisfied to ecstatic

The negative comments in otherwise great reviews are a gold mine for you in terms of knowing what you need to do to turn your satisfied customers into ecstatic customers. But going through these reviews manually to do this exercise would be an absolute nightmare. 

Review Insights can detect many different sentiments in each review, and it knows whether each is positive or negative. It’s smart enough to understand that there are positive sentiments in negative reviews, and vice versa. 

Once the tool pinpoints the negative sentiments in your 4-star reviews, you’ll easily see where you’re coming up short and what you need to do to turn those 4-star reviews into 5-star reviews. This means more customers raving about your business and influencing those around them to try out your brand. 

## A look into your business from the most important angles, at any given time

Depending on the nature of your business, some terms will come up in reviews more frequently than others. 


Looking at different common terms in your reviews

Whether it’s your shipping and delivery, pricing, or something more specific to your business Review Insights gives you a snapshot into exactly how each different aspect of your business is performing, at any given moment. It also shows you how they change over time. Watching these terms month over month gives you a quick snapshot into areas of your business that are improving and areas that are declining. 

This helps you spot problem areas that you need to be focusing on. With Review Insights quickly identifying potential issues for you, you're able to handle and correct them before the problem gets any larger.  

### Be alerted as new trends emerge 
The thing about review data is that it’s constantly changing. As your business changes, your reviews change with it. This is why it’s so important to keep monitoring these trends, instead of just checking how your brand is doing here and there. 

This allows you to stop negative trends as they’re happening, instead of finding out about them after you’ve potentially lost business. 


Watch as new trends in your reviews emerge

Fortunately, Review Insights does this for you. On top of monthly consumer insights reports, you’ll also receive detailed reports as new trends emerge within your reviews. This allows you to adjust your business operations to keep your customers as happy as possible. 

## The data is already at your fingertips. Tap into it with Review Insights 
Using reviews as a way to engage with your customers is excellent for your customer experience, especially with customers that are unhappy. But fixing the larger trends behind why many of your customers are unhappy removes the problems before they even begin. 

With [Review Insights ](https://business.trustpilot.com/features/review-insights "Review Insights Product Features")you can better understand your customers, so you can give them exactly what they want and keep them coming back for life. 

Ready to get started with Trustpilot? [Creating an account is free](https://business.trustpilot.com/signup?cta=free-signup_header_home "Create your free account") — and our experts are [just a call away](https://business.trustpilot.com/request-demo "Request a demo") if you’d like more information.

Review Insights: Using the wealth of insights in your customer reviews to better your business

Highlighting areas of improvement 

In this article, we'll show you how to improve customer service on your eCommerce site in order to increase your retention rate, improve your reputation, and increase your revenue.

And while many businesses utilise tactics like lowering prices, increasing deals, or offering discounts, they fail to realise the one area that can make a huge difference - customer service.

Good customer service has now become vital. Consumers are looking for friendly, customer-centric brands who care about what their customers think and feel. Review data from our upcoming research report shows that one-star and 5-star reviews most commonly mention ‘customer service’

Great customer service keeps your customers happy and loyal, brings your business more insights on what currently works and what can be improved, and helps you acquire new customers.

An Adobe Digital Shoppers Index report found that return and repeat shoppers make up over 40% of an eCommerce site's revenue despite only making up 8% of total shoppers. Repeat shoppers also generate five times more revenue per visit than first time shoppers. A great way to increase the chance of return and repeat visitors is by focusing on customer service.

This article will show you how to improve customer service on your eCommerce site in order to increase your retention rate, improve your reputation, and increase your revenue.

## Developing and improving your eCommerce customer service

### 1. Make your contact information easily accessible

Every page that contains information about your company, your products, or your services should contain your contact information, or at least an easy-to-find link to your ‘Contact’ page. You should also include contact information in the main navigation tab, the footer and consider adding your phone number or email address to both your ‘Contact’ and ‘About Us’ pages too.

These changes will reduce the amount of effort and friction customers or browsers will experience if they need support or have some kind of question. By giving them a way to get their issues sorted onsite, you’re decreasing the chance of having a visitor navigate away from your site and increasing their chance of making a purchase.

To provide more direct access, consider a pop-up or a permanent banner on the side. That way, if one of your customers feels the need to contact you while checking out your website, they can do so on the same page they’re browsing.

The Glossier 'Contact Us' page is both informative and helpful

Glossier Contact Page

Include your details in your FAQ section too. If your customers can’t find the answer to their question, they’re more likely to contact you straight away. If they can’t, then they might navigate away.

__What to include on your contact page:__

- Company name
- Address (consider including a map)
- Phone number
- Email address
- Contact form
- Opening hours
- Closing dates
- VAT number

### 2. Ask for feedback

To pinpoint the exact areas where you can improve your customer service, collecting customer feedback is one of the easiest ways to do it. Direct feedback will help you understand what your customers like and don’t like, what can be improved, and how to do it.

By asking for feedback, you’re showing your customers that you care about their satisfaction, and that you are constantly working towards ensuring potential customers are having a fantastic experience. Collecting feedback is necessary in developing your eCommerce business, reduce customer churn (or attrition), and boost loyalty.

__Different ways of asking for feedback:__

- On the phone
- By email
- By SMS
- With third-party review platforms
- Survey customers

Your customer feedback can also present an opportunity beyond customer service. By giving you insight and quantitative information on your reputation, you can leverage it as social proof for your marketing channels, increasing its performance.

### 3. Provide real-time help

When your site visitor is confused and upset, it’s better for your business to offer help as soon as it can, and that usually means instantly. It’s a great way to differentiate yourself from the other eCommerce companies, improve your customer service, and increase the chance of having that potential customer leave your site having made a purchase.

On-site live chats are a great customer service tool that allows you to engage with your existing or future customers via your website. Real-time customer service helps reduce churn, and boosts customer loyalty by increasing their chance of returning.

According to Kissmetrics, “44% of online consumers say that having questions answered by a live person while in the middle of an online purchase is one of the most important features a website can offer.” Answering questions directly on-site means customers are more likely to have their issues resolved quicker, which keeps them engaged and interested in your business for longer.

95% of unhappy customers are more likely to return to your website if you have resolved their issue quickly and efficiently.

Nike Store offer a live chat function right on their product page

It’s also recommended to hire a community manager in order to look after your brand’s social accounts. Someone taking care of your social media accounts full time will help you assist angry customers on Twitter and Facebook, and will help you showcase how much you care about your customers’ satisfaction. It’s also a way to provide immediate help if a browser or customer has a question or concern.

With nearly half of digital buyers saying that reading customer feedback on social media influences their buying journey, you wouldn’t want to miss out on great customer service on social channels, would you?

### 4. Use your own customer's voice

With over 84% of consumers not trusting advertisements anymore, and 80% of people trusting other consumers’ feedback as much as personal recommendations, it’s become essential for eCommerce companies to use user-generated content (UGC) as much as possible. If you’re wondering how UGC plays into customer service, it all starts with the community.

Letting your customers review your product or service gives potential customers the opportunity to look for answers to their questions without having to get in touch with your customer service team. By leveraging reviews, you’re letting your customers create useful and unique content that will help people looking for basic answers. And by displaying them either via a third-party site or directly on your site, you’re showing visitors that you do care about your customers and their experience.

Encouraging UGC is also a great way to build communities of customers and create brand advocates. Loyal customers who are part of a brand community are generally willing to help new customers.

Dusk showcase reviews and user-generated content on their homepage

Estrid display their customers' most common questions on their FAQ page

Integrating your customers' most common queries on your FAQ page will help you address common pain points to reduce the number of customer calls. It’s a great and easy way to integrate unique content to your website while helping customers in the middle of their journey. It will save both you and your customers a lot of time.

### 5. Make your on-site experience seamless

All eCommerce companies should invest in their own website’s experience. After all, a poor site navigation experience makes for a poor customer experience, and you’re likely to lose out on potential customers as a result.

Let’s start with the search bar.

It’s important for customers to find what they’re looking for quickly and most of all, easily. Consider investing in a search bar that anticipates your customers’ questions or keywords as they type. McDonald’s website has a perfect example of this.

ASOS autofill their search bar with commonly typed keywords

Moving on to navigation… It’s important to speed up your website. 30% of people would abandon a website if it took more than 6-10 seconds to load.

Crazy, right?

The less consumers spend time looking for what they need, the better. If possible, try to make every product page accessible within 3 or less clicks, and make the checkout process as easy as possible with few ways to navigate away from the page.

## Great customer experiences are a must

A great customer experience means your customers are less likely  to come across a problem during their customer buying journey, which saves you time and money when it comes to the work your customer service team will have to do in the long run.

Using your own customers’ feedback to improve your customer experience and satisfaction is the best way to improve your overall customer service in the long run, and keep customers happy and buying.

To learn how Trustpilot reviews can help improve your customer service, request a free demo below.

5 Ways to improve your customer service on your eCommerce site

Trustpilot Consumer Insights: Buying habits to know for a successful festive season

As the eCommerce space continues to become busier, standing out from the competition is getting increasingly harder – especially in the second half of the year. In this article, we'll give you tips and tricks to help you succeed during the holiday season.

The global pandemic has pushed consumers to spend almost entirely online. A survey of US consumers by McKinsey & Company gives a detailed breakdown of [the shift to digital shopping channels](https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-great-consumer-shift-ten-charts-that-show-how-us-shopping-behavior-is-changing) throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, the survey showed a 15 to 30% growth in US consumers who made purchases online across a broad range of product categories.

Mastercard also found that [online sales increased by a whopping 54% in February 2021](https://www.businessinsider.com/e-commerce-sales-rise-up-february-pandemic-mastercard-online-shopping-2021-3?r=US&IR=T), compared to the same month last year. Even though most global consumers were forced to shift to online shopping due to national lockdowns, it is believed that the eCommerce boom we’ve all experienced in the last year is here to stay. 

As the eCommerce space continues to become busier, and as shopping behavior continues to shift, standing out from the competition is getting increasingly harder – especially in the second half of the year. So to help you prepare for success, we’ll discuss:

- The state of reviews and what we expect in the second half of the year
- Consumer behavior and buying habits from the last two holiday seasons
- Industries and categories you can expect to see trend in the next few months
- Successful strategies you can put in place for the  the last few months of 2021

Without further ado, let’s dive into it!

## The importance of online reviews in the second half of the year

To understand the role of online reviews in the last two quarters of the year, it’s best to start with an overview of the state of reviews as a whole. 

Service reviews left on Trustpilot.com between January 1st 2019 and December 31st 2019. Here, we can observe a significant increase in service reviews from October onwards.

Here, we can see that over 2.7 million global service and product reviews were left in December 2019, up from 2.4 million in October and November 2019. In January 2020, over 2.5 million reviews were left, a 200,000 review drop from December 2019, due to the end of the busiest shopping season of the year. 

Overall, in 2019, we saw a 47% growth in reviews from January to December.


Product reviews left on Trustpilot.com between January 1st 2019 and December 31st 2019. Here, we can observe a significant increase in service reviews from July onwards.

In 2020, things weren’t too different. Over 4.5 million global service and product reviews were left in December, up from 3.7 million in November, and 3.4 in October, and 58% more reviews were left in December 2020 than in January 2020.

4 million reviews were collected on Trustpilot.com in January 2021, a 500,000 drop compared to the previous month, demonstrating once again that the second half of the year continuously gets more reviews than the first half.


Service reviews left on Trustpilot.com between January 1st 2020 and December 31st 2020. Here, we can observe a significant increase in service reviews from October onwards. 

Product reviews left on Trustpilot.com between January 1st 2020 and December 31st 2020. Here, we can observe a significant increase in service reviews from October onwards.

So what does this tell us? Well, we saw a whopping 58% growth in reviews from the end of 2019 to the end of 2020. If the past two years are any indication, the festive months clearly have a positive impact on how many reviews are left on Trustpilot.com, which suggests that shoppers rely even more heavily on third-party reviews to make sure their holiday shopping goes as smoothly as possible.

During the months of November and December – with holidays and events such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday – consumers tend to descend upon retailers to spend significant amounts. With such a major opportunity, it’s safe to say that competition increases dramatically at that time of year. 

Retailers who commit to their consumers are bound to see better results. It’s during that time that reputation, reviews, and expectations matter most, which is why it’s in your business’s best interest to collect and showcase third-party reviews from September onwards.

We’ve observed that consumers leave more reviews in the second half of the year. But what types of businesses are they looking to read and write about?

In the next section, we’ll look into the categories that received the most profile views and the most reviews on our platform during the last two holiday seasons.

## Consumer shopping behavior and buying patterns from the last two holiday seasons

We also took a deep dive into our global review data to identify the categories that received the most profile views and the most reviews on Trustpilot.com during the last two holiday seasons.

With our findings, we’ll forecast which industries we can expect to see do well in 2021, and which categories could be the most popular for gifting this holiday season. 

### The most researched categories of the 2019 and 2020 holiday season

When looking at the five most popular categories in October, November and December of 2019 and 2020, it is interesting to see that the top five industries were the same year after year.

In the final quarter of 2019 and 2020, the categories with the most profile views on Trustpilot.com were shopping and fashion, electronics and technology, money and insurance, home and garden, and entertainment, in that order.


Industries with the most profile views in Q4 2019

This comes as no surprise as some of the top holiday buys often include:

- Clothing and accessories
- Phones, headphones, sound systems and TVs
- Homeware items such as festive decorations, and tableware for entertaining
- Games, films and music for guests and family entertainment

However, it is interesting to see that money and insurance was the third most popular category in the last two holiday seasons. This could be due to consumers looking into better alternatives to manage their money while planning their holiday season shopping budget. It could also be due to consumers looking for better money and insurance providers for the new year.


Industries with the most profile views in Q4 2020

When comparing the total amount of business profile views between the last quarter of 2019 vs. 2020, we can see that the volume of traffic received in 2020 was, however, much higher than in the same period of the previous year.

This was anticipated, due to the shift in shopping patterns during the global pandemic and the lift in service and product reviews left on Trustpilot.com during the same period (as observed in the first section of this article).

Overall, looking at our consumer data, we should expect to see a continued growth in the amount of profile views in the second half of 2021. 

__*Based on the last two years, we can forecast to see the same five categories  this festive season, in the same order as the previous holiday seasons.*__

### The most reviewed categories of the 2019 and 2020 holiday season

When we compare the categories with the most reviews in the last quarters of 2019 and 2020, they’re pretty similar for the most part. 

Shopping and fashion, home and garden, and electronics and technology all make sense as top gifting, and therefore top reviewed, categories. 


Service reviews by industry Q4 2019

The business services category is where we see a change. It’s the only category that changes rankings from 2019 to 2020, from the third most reviewed category in 2019 to the top reviewed category in 2020.

Service reviews by industry Q4 2020

Business services include shipping and logistics. This explains both why it’s so high up with the other gifting categories and why it saw such a huge jump in reviews in 2020. 

Because most of us were forced to do our pandemic holiday shopping online, the world was relying on shipping and logistics companies a lot more than during regular holiday seasons. This category also includes office supplies – something that many of us were shopping for throughout the pandemic – as we looked to make our work from home setups more comfortable and productive. 

Although we can’t be sure where business services will fall for the last quarter of 2021 – with new COVID-19 variants it’s impossible to know how many of us will be back in or out of lockdown through the next few months – it’s safe to say that the other top categories will likely remain the same. 

If your industry falls into shopping and fashion, home and garden, business services, or electronics and technology you should plan on receiving a large amount of reviews towards the end of the year. We highly recommend monitoring your customer reviews during high volume times, as this can help you fix issues as you go and improve customer satisfaction. 

But whether your business falls into these categories or not, you’ll need to focus on delivering great customer experiences and customer service to succeed this holiday season. 

## 7 Strategies to help your business be prepared for success in the second half of 2021

Let’s get into the good stuff. What are the concrete ways that consumer trends are going to affect your brand in the second half of 2021? And how can you best prepare so that you can see great ROI and happier customers? 

We’ve rounded up our seven biggest predictions on how brands can best position themselves for success as 2021 comes to an end.

### 1. A holistic approach to mobile users can only help you succeed

Each year, the amount of eCommerce sales completed on mobile devices increases. By some projections, this year’s  eCommerce sales could make up for [72% of this year’s sales](https://www.statista.com/chart/13139/estimated-worldwide-mobile-e-commerce-sales/). As long as you provide an excellent mobile experience, your brand will be in place to benefit from this trend. 

But a mobile-first world isn’t just limited to how your site looks on a mobile device – although that’s extremely important as well. SMS open rates are as high as [98% compared to just 20% of emails](https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email-marketing/roi-showdown-sms-marketing-vs-email-marketing/). 

Why not let your customers opt-in for text message updates on their orders and shipping instead of just email? This is an excellent way to communicate more effectively with your customers while they wait for their order. 

### 2. The pandemic surge in online shopping is here to stay 

Although many customers will do more brick-and-mortar shopping this year than they did last year, online shopping will still be where a lot of the holiday purchases take place.

One study found that [38% of consumers](https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-e-commerce-fits-into-retails-post-pandemic-future) still intend to do more of their shopping online, while visiting retailers that provide excellent in-store experiences. For brands that have brick-and-mortar stores, this means focusing on improving your in-store experience as much as possible. 

Brands that sell both online and in-store are likely in the best position to succeed this holiday season. 

### 3. Free shipping is a great way to stand out from the competition 

More and more consumers [expect free shipping](https://smallbiztrends.com/2021/06/consumers-expecting-free-shipping.html). 

66% of US consumers expect it on every purchase they make online and a whopping 80% expect it when ordering above a certain amount. 

If you’re able to offer free shipping, this is one of the best things you can do to stay competitive at this time of year – especially to keep up with eCommerce giants such as Amazon and Walmart. 

### 4. Shoppers still expect free and painless returns

Shopping online – where customers can’t try on or see the product in real life – means that some amount of returns are going to be inevitable. 

Similar to free shipping, today’s consumers expect to be able to easily send returns, without any cost to them. 

We recommend trying your best to offer this to your customers. Why? Well, because if a customer receives a product that they aren’t totally satisfied with, and need to jump through a lot of hoops to return it, they’re more likely to be dissatisfied with your customer service levels. 

This could mean never shopping with you again, writing a negative review, or telling their friends and family not to buy from your brand in the future.

### 5. Less uncertainty means higher spending 

Last year, many families were unsure of the future of the pandemic, layoffs, and more. As a result, this affected how they chose to shop for gifts, and how much they were willing to spend during the festive season. 

With economies starting to [bounce back](https://www.wsj.com/articles/turbocharged-u-s-economy-attracts-foreign-investors-11624263520) and less uncertainty around the future, this isn’t as likely to be the case this year. 

This means [more opportunities for your brand to win business](https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-economy-grows-by-48-in-second-quarter-as-post-lockdown-reopening-drives-spending-spree-12379320), if you provide an excellent experience and product or service for your customers. 

### 6. Let your customers shop how they want and offer curbside pickup 

As more and more consumers have gotten used to the convenience of ‘Click and Collect’ or ‘BOPIS’ – buy online pickup in-store – and [curbside pickup](https://news.yahoo.com/why-curbside-pickup-is-here-to-stay-for-some-retailers-162847022.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAM9ZTFzJO5_8xXB0zzDty-f1J8DxEr6WQ-6J9U1IAcVasUMPv4RsFkJughRDZiEh9Wmz1KzaTo7kC554yX5fTK8TlQVtsVUcom_kfbdmz5Kpt0739sL2aVF0asykvwZbcGUyfVm1WXIxvLr3VWbzorYgZBsLRI0XVAPBe5LG8sDn), this will continue to be a great way for brick-and-mortar retailers to let their customers choose what kind of in-store experience they’d like to have. 

If you’re not already offering this, it’s worth looking into now before the holiday rush starts. If you are offering this, look into different ways you can [improve your pickup experience](https://blogs.oracle.com/marketingcloud/post/improving-all-5-steps-of-a-curbside-pickup) for shorter waiting times and a better experience for your customers. 

Even small improvements can translate into large increases in customer satisfaction. 

### 7. Supply chain delays mean an earlier start to the holiday shopping for some, and increased need for clear communication 

[Supply chain delays](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/03/shipping-crisis-strikes-black-friday-shopping-amid-europe-china-floods.html) have been a big part of 2021 and they don’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon. This means that many consumers will try and get their holiday shopping out of the way earlier than usual, to avoid delayed deliveries. 

However, this could also present a potential problem for brands out there, as some customers might not think ahead and still expect their gifts on time – even if they order at the last minute. 

The best way to minimize fallout with these customers is to be extremely transparent about shipping expectations. Be clear about when the last day to order – if you want to receive your gifts in time –- is, and try to keep customers in the loop as much as possible throughout the shipping process. 

Customers are often understanding about waiting times, as long as you’ve communicated this beforehand. If you overpromise and underperform – leaving customers unexpectedly empty-handed on Christmas day – you’re likely to get more negative reviews, and never see those customers again. 

## Consumers will be looking for ease of use this holiday season

If the last two holiday seasons have shown us anything, it is that reviews and online shopping are continuing to grow year on year, partly because of the shopping behavior shift we all witnessed in 2020 and 2021 due to the global pandemic, but also because of the need for ease of use and convenience (avoiding crowded shops, home delivery, easy return policies, more product or service choice…). And although many customers could opt for brick-and-mortar shopping this year, online shopping will still be where a lot of the holiday purchases take place.

Business services, shopping and fashion, electronics and technology, money and insurance, home and garden, and entertainment were the most researched and reviewed types of businesses on Trustpilot.com during the last two festive seasons. Whether your business is part of these industries or not, your success in the last quarter of the year will be strongly influenced by some of the strategic choices you make. 

And with a lot of people willing to spend higher amounts this year, our top tip to be prepared for the busiest time of the year is to continue to provide great experiences to everyone.

- Continue to offer ease of use: think [free shipping](https://thegood.com/insights/offer-free-shipping-right-way/) and free returns, as shipping or return costs are some of the top reasons for cart abandonment, especially at this time of year.
- Omni-channel experiences are key. Offering a seamless experience from shop to mobile or desktop is more likely to convert shoppers as today’s consumers like to navigate through different channels before making a purchase. In fact, marketers using three or more channels in any one campaign earned a [287% higher purchase rate](https://v12data.com/blog/25-amazing-omnichannel-statistics-every-marketer-should-know/) than those using a single-channel campaign.
- Communicate clearly and set expectations before purchase. This is especially important during the last quarter of the year, when consumers are in a rush, or looking to get their orders before a set date. Set expectations straight away. This can be done through your website, social media or via email marketing too.

It’s become apparent that today more than ever, consumers need to be able to trust in the brands they shop with. Finding ways to implement our seven strategic tips will give your brand the best chance to succeed this holiday season, [alongside a strong review strategy](https://business.trustpilot.com/guides-reports/browsers-to-buyers/the-complete-guide-to-reviews).

*Don’t have a review strategy just yet? *

Don’t panic! There’s still time to [create a free Trustpilot account](https://business.trustpilot.com/signup) today, or book your Trustpilot demo below.

keeping customers happy and buying

keeping customers happy

In this article, we'll remind you of one of the cornerstones of marketing: your existing customers actually offer the ripest opportunities for further monetization.

But what if we slightly shifted the underlying idea here? What if we focused as much - if not more - energy on retaining customers as we do on attaining them?

What if we could shift our strategies to create more loyalty among those whom we’ve already earned instead of over-investing or risking resources in trying to find so much new? We're going to remind you of one of the cornerstones of marketing: your existing customers actually offer the ripest opportunities for further monetization. 

Retention, therefore, represents the most lucrative investment for savvy eCommerce teams looking to break away from the accepted status quo as we move further into 2020.

## The benefits of customer retention

A little time spent on retention activities can have a big payoff. If you haven’t heard about the benefits of client or customer marketing, let us remind you why it’s deserving of much more than a half-hearted acknowledgement.

- It’s 6x-7x more costly to acquire than retain customers, and by boosting your retention rate by just 5%, you can drive 25%-95% more profit.
- Loyal customers spend 31% more with a brand than the average consumer.
- You have only a [27% chance of a customer returning after one purchase… but a 54% chance of them returning after a second or third purchase](https://www.emarsys.com/en/resources/blog/first-time-buyers-active-customers-infographic/). 

These incredible statistics reaffirm this essential truth: *__retention__ deserves __attention__ and __intention__... at least as much (if not more) as acquisition*.

This strategic mindshift *must* be made if you want your marketing to be efficient and effective. 

Today, we're going to show you how to make this shift, sharing several techniques you can implement *right now* to start boosting your retention rate and revenue immediately.

## How to retain more eCommerce customers 

When it comes to retention, depending on your [higher-level marketing objectives](https://www.emarsys.com/en/resources/blog/rethink-your-marketing/), it’s all about inspiring first-time buyers to purchase again, executing personalized repeat and post-purchase campaigns, taking advantage of trigger- or event-based opportunities, and encouraging loyalty.

### A prerequisite – setting the stage for personalized interactions with customers

Go about your retention efforts as you might a new friendship. The best brands know how to take that relationship up to the next level, creating a trusted, go-to friend. The point I’m after is this: you’re creating a real, ongoing relationship with each individual customer.

It’s critical that you take the time, energy, and effort to intimately learn about the interests and preferences of each of these relationships that customers willingly enter into when they choose your brand. You must to get to know one another better… “personalized courtship” is a requirement of a successful retention strategy.

Those of an acquisition-only mindset may rarely stop to think, “How can we lovingly engage those we already have?” But since you’re reading this article, we’ll assume that’s not you. You want the loyal friend!

*How?*

Start with a good newsletter and preference center.

Don’t overlook the power of your newsletter! It’s perhaps the most versatile vehicle in any eCommerce marketer’s arsenal. With a list of opted-in subscribers, a quality newsletter with variable widgets and access to the right automation technology, you can create a world of incredible value… that reaches contacts over and over.

Preference centers (and connection to your CRM or martech solution) are a must-have so that new and long-time subscribers are able to set and amend the frequency and types of content they want to get from you. 

Once you get opt-ins and you begin to get to know customers, moving each through the funnel and attaining that initial purchase, it’s time to begin working with retention techniques. 

*Note: You shouldn’t be throwing around these tactics at random. Ensure they’re a strategic part of your [customer lifecycle marketing](https://www.emarsys.com/en/resources/blog/lifecycle-marketing/) strategy and that they [align with your business objectives](https://bit.ly/2IHaowp).*

### 1. First-time buyer to second time

Congrats — your new contact has made their first purchase! Now it’s time to send post-purchase content to this new customer with personalized recommendations based on what they just purchased. 

Even after one purchase, you can begin to identify customers’ purchase patterns and behavior and drive them toward their second purchase to help them advance in their loyalty status. 

The value of post-purchase emails for first-time buyers can’t be overstated:

brands work hard and smart to convert customers

Getting a first-time buyer to repeat isn’t easy (and you may not get a second chance), so we recommend spending some time thinking about how you want to set up these automations. 

You’ll want to use what you do know at this stage to make personalized offers (related items) including a personalized incentive to drive them toward their next purchase. 

Emarsys customer and fashion retailer, Luisaviaroma.com, saw a 37.5% increase in post-purchase campaign conversions. Outnorth, an outdoor Scandinavian clothing brand, saw a 25% uplift from first-time buyer programs!

Unfortunately, many brands still struggle to convert customers from first-time to repeat buyers. 70%-80% of a typical eCommerce business’ customers are single-order customers! So, you have to ensure that you optimize the post-purchase experience to drive that second purchase. 

*How?*

Use the information and customer preferences you do have at this juncture in the relationship to do follow-up personalization.

It’s important to follow up in a non-intrusive way where customers are opted-in to receive communications from you (whether email, SMS, mobile app, etc.). Additional cross-sell opportunities are the best way to generate revenue post-purchase. 

Bad post-purchase emails offer the same product customers already bought and are too salesy — and more retailers are doing this than should be the case. Good post-purchase content includes helpful content, relevant offers, and timely information related to previous purchases. Make the purchase process a seamless experience, positioning cross- and up-sells as an added convenience to enhance the quality and improve the function of whatever was just bought. 

### 2. Honor special events and milestones

These triggered, special event emails take advantage of a milestone or notable event in your relationship with the customer. 

They can be sent during a number of occasions and show customers that you know and care about them. Of course, each of these should be personalized with as much information as possible: date of initiation with your brand, length of time together, memories or acknowledgements of past purchases, and more.

*How?*

- [Create automations](https://www.emarsys.com/en/resources/blog/video-understanding-marketing-automation/) for birthdays, anniversaries, holiday or seasonal messages, loyalty status, back-in-stock, price drop, and apology (if necessary).
- Birthdays. Who doesn’t love a wonderful discount coupon for their birthday? The aforementioned Outnorth saw a 270% uplift from birthday campaign programs! The most effective birthday discounts utilize personalized codes (as opposed to one-size-fits-all).


personalized birthday email

Birthday email

- Anniversaries (with your brand). A lot of retailers take advantage of anniversaries (one year, two year, etc.) of customer-hood. You can help loyal customers celebrate with custom emails!

- Holiday-related or seasonal emails. Celebrate in style — and provide seasonal availability or hours information.

Seasonal email (sale) from anthropologie

Any good relationship works best when each party feels known and cared about. This is the core of retention marketing and the automations that make customers feel cared for! 

Sometimes, it’s the little things in marketing that can have the biggest impact.

### 3. See if there’s an opportunity to engage on other channels

Even though email should serve as the core, you should always provide implicit opportunities for customers to opt-in or follow you on other channels like SMS, social media, and on your website, to receive browser notifications, for instance. 

*How?*

“Cross-promote” channels.

The goal of diversifying your various touchpoints with each customer within your database is to effectively broaden the scope through which you can market to – or form deeper relationships with – each one. You have a better chance of a customer seeing and converting when they interact with you via email, follow you on social, and enable push notifications through your app than one who’s only receiving weekly emails.

One example of how to do this is to offer a discount within emails to opt-in to SMS updates. Provide in-store signage with incentives for downloading your mobile app. And, of course, enable all of these options on your website with a nice incentive in exchange.

Once you get to know your customers better, you can more overtly and openly request, announce, or show them why connecting with you via multiple channels is a benefit.

### 4. Use other tactics in tandem – and move more customers to become loyal buyers 

There are many other techniques and tactics you can implement at various stages within the buying cycle in a retention-oriented context in order to increase AOV, order frequency, and engagement.

*How?*

Here are three additional ideas for boosting retention. 

__1. Set up browse abandon and abandoned cart emails that will work.__ 

[Abandoned cart emails](https://www.emarsys.com/en/resources/blog/10-recommendations-for-abandoned-cart-emails-gizem-terzi/) effectively give contacts a second chance to buy. They:

- Allow for revenue recovery by bringing the customer back to complete the purchase
- Can be fully automated so there’s no need to think about them once they’re active
- Can include dynamic incentives based on the value of the cart

Why is that so important? 

Well, recovering just a tiny percentage of your customer base could markedly increase revenue. 

__2. Create and execute GDPR re-permission campaigns.__

If your organization relies on consent as the lawful reason for processing personal data, you must make sure that data you hold is GDPR-complaint in order to continue using it.

You must also have an audit trail of how, when, and where consent was obtained, so that you can provide evidence if required. If you can’t identify how, when, and where consent was obtained, the best option in order to be compliant is to *ask (to communicate with contacts) again*.

You can do this most effectively with [re-permissioning campaigns](https://www.emarsys.com/en/resources/blog/definitive-chapter-guide-re-permissioning-campaigns-gdpr-examples/) — where you’ll again seek the permission from contacts to email, text, or otherwise message them.

__3. Re-engage and retarget database contacts who show signs of leaving (or have already left) to get them buying again.__

When a customer begins to defect, it’s important to do what you can (without seeming creepy) to win them back. 

Why? You have history with these contacts — so it’s worth trying to make it work with them, as opposed to starting anew (in reality, you’ll obviously have concurrent acquisition campaigns running), but this is about salvaging what you’ve worked so hard to maintain.

Re-engagement or win-back campaigns show the customer, via their favorite channel (usually email) that “we miss you” and often ask “where have you been?”

Leverage personalized content here.

These emails can include personalized codes, product recommendations, and local information, too.


We Miss You Email

### To sum up...

As tempting as it is to focus exclusively on new customers, it’s your existing ones that offer the most value. 

You’ve got to give (personalized experiences) to get (more business). And we get it! At the end of the day, we all need more customers engaging at higher rates to drive profitable growth for our businesses, and to do retention in the first place.

The best strategies will ultimately find a healthy balance. 

Retention marketing is about getting to know existing buyers, what they want, like, and prefer, and then giving it to them. This is the recipe that will drive higher conversion and retention rates.

If you'd like to learn more about how online reviews can help you keep your customers happy and buying, [check out our Complete Guide to Reviews here](https://business.trustpilot.com/guides-reports/browsers-to-buyers/the-complete-guide-to-reviews)!


*Lindsay Tjepkema* is Marketing Director, Americas at Emarsys and host of the [Marketer + Machine podcast](https://www.emarsys.com/en/podcast/). She and her team deliver resources that empower marketers to seek out solutions and strategies that will allow them to focus on what they love – strategy, content, and creative – not technology. Although her true love is tech marketing, Lindsay's experience is built on time spent leading in-house teams, in agency settings, and independently running her own marketing consultancy.

How to keep existing customers happy & buying

7 ways reviews can provide actionable consumer insights and better ROI for your business

There are a lot of valuable insights in your customer reviews. We've rounded up 7 different ways they can help you improve your business. 

Monitoring changes in your star rating can help you stay on top of how your customers are feeling and make sure you’re giving them the best experience possible. 

But when it comes to making sure your customers are happy, is your job ever really finished? Even the smallest changes to how you operate and communicate with your customers can translate into pretty large boosts in customer satisfaction, resulting in more loyal customers and better ROI for you. 

Your customer reviews contain [powerful consumer insights](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/learn-from-customers/what-are-consumer-insights-and-how-do-i-use-them "What are consumer insights and how do I use them?"), and tapping into them can [shed light](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/learn-from-customers/increasing-loyalty-by-using-customer-feedback-insights-from-trustpilots "Identifying areas for development with consumer insights") on changes you can make to ensure a better experience for all of your customers going forward. 

Some of them – like shipping issues – might seem obvious, but there are also some surprising ways we’ve seen businesses tap into the goldmine of insights within their reviews to improve their operations — and their ROI.  

## Top 7 ways businesses can improve by using the trends in their reviews

### 1. Finding the pricing sweet spot

Many larger brands pour money into consulting on their pricing strategies and struggle to find the perfect balance between making a profit and keeping customers coming back. If you’re a smaller brand, this might not even be an option for you. Whichever you are, the insights in your reviews can really help you here.

If you search your reviews for terms like pricing and overpriced and you’re seeing a lot of negative reviews then it’s definitely worth looking into. Lowering prices on some of your products might feel like it will mean less revenue for your company, but if enough of your customers are taking the time to complain about your pricing they probably won’t be shopping with you again. 

This negative feedback online could also be deterring new customers from shopping with you. We can’t tell you what’s right for your business, but lower prices could mean more return customers as well as more new customers. 

### 2. Effectively managing shipping expectations  
This one might seem a little obvious, but filtering your customer reviews to look at the ones containing terms like shipping and delivery can shed a lot of light on your current shipping practices. For some customers shipping will always need to be as quick as possible, but often the underlying issue here is a breakdown in communication. 

Customer review quick shipping

If you have a large amount of customers writing negative reviews containing these terms, adjusting the shipping policies on your site or putting them in a more prominent location might help ensure that customers have better expectations of when they’ll receive their orders. 

This will lead to a lot less annoyance on their end and fewer negative reviews for you. 

### 3. Identifying website issues 

Having an issue on your site – even if it’s only live for a few hours – can really impact your bottom line if customers are getting frustrated and give up on their purchase. This is especially true during busy periods like the holidays or black friday. And if there are issues, you can rest assured that frustrated customers will likely be talking about it in their reviews. 

We’ve noticed that many successful businesses closely monitor their reviews during these high volume periods so that they can make adjustments in real-time and fix bugs as soon as possible. A [better onsite experience](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/learn-from-customers/how-to-improve-customer-experience-on-your-website "7 ways to improve customer experience on your website") means happier customers and [higher sales ](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/browsers-to-buyers/how-great-sites-convert-visitors-to-customers "How great sites convert visitors to customers")all at once, so identifying and quickly fixing these issues is key. 

### 4. Improving and recognizing your workforce  
Does your business rely on a lot of customer facing sales or service reps? Some review providers make it [easy to add tags](https://business.trustpilot.com/features/review-tagging "Review tagging") to your reviews to automatically track which salesperson or service rep assisted that reviewer.  This can give you unbiased insight into how your different reps are doing. Once you have that insight, it’s easy to level up your workforce. 

If you have employees consistently getting negative reviews, you can schedule training for them to help them improve. And by highlighting employees who consistently receive rave reviews, you can improve their morale or even gamify their performance with a leaderboard for your team, encouraging better performance from everyone.

### 5. Overcoming sizing challenges

This one is very common — and extremely important. With many brands serving multiple countries all with different sizing systems, communicating size conversions is a struggle many clothing brands face. Fortunately, with clearer communication, it can be easy to fix. 


Customer review sizing

If you’re getting a lot of negative reviews that include terms like size and fit, you might want to update the language – and make sure it’s hard to miss – on your site to note that certain products run smaller or larger. 

Including sizing guides can be really helpful as well. Clearer communication around sizing shows customers what to expect, and can improve your customer satisfaction while minimizing returns. 

### 6. Managing third-party support ticket vendors 

Many businesses use third-party vendors for submitting support tickets on their site and this can mean that a big portion of your customer experience is somewhat out of your hands. Outsourcing support is largely a great thing, but having limited control over the support experience can be scary for conscientious brands. 

Monitoring your customer reviews is a great way to easily spot any issues in your support ticketing process. By searching your reviews for terms like ticket and support you can identify how often these issues are occurring and figure out whether it makes sense to keep working with that specific vendor. 

### 7. Putting customer service first 

Customer service is often the biggest thing that customers will either love or hate about a brand. Because of this, it’s extremely important to keep an eye on how your customers feel about yours at all times. 

Reviews make this [incredibly easy](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/learn-from-customers/3-ways-reviews-can-help-you-deliver-excellent-customer-service "3 ways reviews can help you deliver excellent customer service"). Not only do they help you get a general idea of how you’re doing, because customer service can elicit such an emotional reaction – whether positive [or negative](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/learn-from-customers/how-to-respond-to-negative-reviews "How to respond to negative reviews") – reviewers often detail exactly what happened. This helps you know exactly what kinds of experiences your customers are having, and how to improve those experiences in the future. 

## Let Review Insights be your roadmap to better business results

To sum it up, there are a lot of valuable insights hiding in your customer reviews. But for some businesses, monitoring all of these things at once can feel overwhelming. 

Our [Review Insights](https://business.trustpilot.com/features/review-insights "Review Insights") tool can help by doing most of the heavy lifting for you. Instead of digging around for patterns and trends in your reviews, it will automatically uncover problems and [areas of improvement for you](https://business.trustpilot.com/customer-stories/ecommerce/lovebook-reveals-how-review-insights-bring-them-closer-to-their-customers "LoveBook reveals how Review Insights bring them closer to their customers"). It’s constantly working in the background to help you improve your business for your customers and it delivers your insights to you in easily digestible dashboards and reports. 

Ready to get started with Trustpilot? [Creating an account](https://business.trustpilot.com/signup?cta=free-signup_header_home "Create your free account") is free — and our experts are [just a call away](https://business.trustpilot.com/request-demo "Request a demo") if you’d like more information. 

7 Ways reviews can provide actionable consumer insights and better ROI for your business

Customer service + customer experience in a post-pandemic world: what businesses should focus on in the coming months 


In this article, we unveil our CS and CX findings from the pandemic and arm you with important tips and tools to master the art of customer experience and customer service.

Today, a successful customer service and experience strategy should be enjoyable from the customer’s point of view, whilst leading to more conversions or repeat business. 

But building great customer service and outstanding experiences also means investing in your own customers and making sure their journey is seamless, from the top of the funnel to checkout and after-sales service.

It’s safe to assume that customer experience (CX) and customer service (CS) are two things that every business has thought about before, yet, they still often get pushed down the list when more important things come up – especially in times of crisis.

In the last few years, consumers have become empowered like never before, and brands no longer get to control their reputation. Today’s customers share their experiences with others, and not paying more attention to your CS and CX could cost your business its reputation.

CS and CX are unquestionably key to any business’s success. But how has COVID-19 impacted the importance of good customer experiences online?

To better understand the importance they have taken in the last few months, our team took a look at global review activity on Trustpilot.com between January 1st 2019 and July 1st 2021.
In this article, we’ll unveil our findings and arm you with important tips and tools to master the art of customer experience and customer service.

## The growth of online shopping and customer reviews

In 2020, the [online retail sales growth hit a 13-year high](https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2021/01/online-retail-sales-growth-hit-13-year-high-in-2020/). The total online retail sales growth for 2020 was also up 36% year on year – the highest annual growth since 2007.

There’s no doubt that the love for digital is growing. And review platforms are growing with it too.

In January 2021, the amount of service reviews left on Trustpilot.com was 53% higher than the amount of service reviews left on our platform in January 2020, demonstrating once again that the growth of online reviews is directly linked to the growth of online shopping, and especially during the pandemic.


Amount of service reviews left on Trustpilot.com between January 1st 2019 and July 1st 2021

A recent survey showed that [89% of consumers check reviews online before making purchases](https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/guides-reports/build-trusted-brand/the-critical-role-of-reviews-in-internet-trust), and HubSpot found that, in 2020, [69.5%](https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/reviews/build-trusted-brand/the-importance-of-trust-in-uncertain-times) of companies also admit that reviews, social proof and word-of-mouth directly generate revenue.

Online reviews have truly become an integral part of the customer journey, but how does this impact the role of CX and CS in the consumer buying process?

### The impact of COVID-19 and eCommerce growth on CX and CS

In times of uncertainty like we’ve been experiencing lately, shoppers are likely to be reading  more online reviews than usual before engaging with any online businesses.

During the pandemic, we found that the keyword “service” was mentioned in 21% of 1 and 5-star reviews on Trustpilot.com (left between January 1st 2020 to January 1st 2021). Customer experience and customer service have undeniably become two very hot topics during the pandemic, as many shops and businesses have been forced to close and people have had to do more of their shopping online. 

There’s no denying – the growth of online reviews is closely linked to the importance of customer service and customer experience.  

Delivering great customer experiences means you’re more likely to increase customer satisfaction, reduce consumer doubt, and boost conversions in the long run. Did you know that [89%](https://c1.sfdcstatic.com/content/dam/web/en_us/www/documents/research/salesforce-state-of-the-connected-customer-4th-ed.pdf) of consumers are more likely to make another purchase after a positive customer service experience? And [nearly three out of five consumers](https://d1eipm3vz40hy0.cloudfront.net/pdf/cxtrends/cx-trends-2020-full-report.pdf) report that good customer service is key for them to feel loyalty towards a brand.

Customer experience can also influence on-the-spot purchasing too, as [49% of buyers](https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2017/10/25/1300518/0/en/Segment-Survey-Finds-Consumers-Will-Spend-More-When-Their-Shopping-Experience-is-Personalized-but-Most-Retailers-are-Missing-the-Mark.html) have made impulse purchases after receiving a more personalised experience before.

As much as consumers understand that times of crisis mean it’s not business as usual, communities coming together and word of mouth travelling much faster are likely to keep consumers’ expectations at a high level this year and next.

To better understand just how important customer service has become in the last 18 months, we spoke to Velstar, a Shopify Plus eCommerce agency:

“COVID-19 has brought with it extended lockdowns, economic uncertainty and sustained attention on health. Combined, these factors have reshaped customer behaviour forever. Expectations have heightened, as priorities have shifted, which means what was previously considered great customer experience is no longer acceptable. Today, customers demand a seamless shopping experience that suits their needs and makes them feel like a valued customer. Brands must adapt to these new expectations and reassess their approach to customer experience if they want to remain competitive and keep shoppers coming back for more. The survival of their business depends on it,” explains the Marketing Manager at Velstar.

Unquestionably, today’s consumers are empowered like never before, and delivering great customer experiences can help businesses drive loyalty and revenue in the long run, and downplaying the importance of CS and CX in difficult times is no longer an option for businesses out there.

## Consumer behaviour is shifting towards customer-centric brands

In the current competitive landscape, companies have to work harder than ever to stand out from the competition. And while discounts and low prices can help you acquire new customers, they certainly won’t help you retain them. 

[76% of people](https://www.aspect.com/company/news/press-releases/customer-serve-thy-self-new-study-reveals-millennials-desire-for-self-service-digital-interaction-to-change-customer-service-forever) say they view customer experience as the true test of how much a company values them, and while most companies like to say they are “customer-first”, too many of them either do not listen to customers, or don’t have ways to make their feedback actionable.

Trustpilot research found that [61% of people](https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/guides-reports/learn-from-customers/bad-reviews-why-people-write-them-and-what-they-expect) who leave a bad review expect a company to publicly respond to their feedback, and 25% of people said how well companies respond to criticism can help transition them from detractors to overall promoters of that brand. There’s no doubt that responding to reviews – good or bad – and the way you respond can have an impact on your overall reputation.

To support this theory, we analysed our review data to try to understand whether there is a clear [correlation between customer-centricity and customer satisfaction](https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/reviews/learn-from-customers/how-ai-can-help-you-get-a-better-trustscore).


Reviews with replies and TrustScore

We sorted this graph by the average TrustScore as well as the amount of reviews that businesses have replied to on Trustpilot.com. Here, you can clearly see that the businesses with the highest TrustScores have replied to the most reviews. This suggests that listening to your customers and responding to their feedback could be one of the best ways to achieve a better reputation and true customer satisfaction.

Reviews collected and TrustScore

On the second chart, we can observe that most of the businesses with high TrustScores have collected more reviews, which suggests that actively requesting for feedback is important when it comes to being a customer-centric brand. The quantity of online reviews you collect could potentially have a significant impact on your overall brand reputation, and businesses requesting consumer feedback and responding to more reviews could eventually see better results than businesses who do not.

It is clear that consumers tend to gravitate towards brands who care. Improving your customer experience by listening and responding to reviews is one of the first steps towards success, but actively collecting reviews also matters when it comes to improving your brand’s overall user experience.

## The future of CS and CX

In 2020, many customers had no choice but to turn to the Internet for their shopping needs as non-essential stores were forced to close during the pandemic.

While the growth in eCommerce is mostly due to global events, Statista believes that [online sales will continue to grow](https://www.statista.com/statistics/379046/worldwide-retail-e-commerce-sales/) for the foreseeable future. So what trends can businesses expect to see in the coming months? 

### Smaller, customer-centric businesses will beat the eCommerce giants

In the last year, we’ve also observed a growth in interest in [purpose-driven and ethical businesses](https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/reviews/build-trusted-brand/trustpilot-consumer-insights-companies-that-give-back-and-consumer). Consumers have taken a bigger interest in companies that really care about each of their customers. 

This will undoubtedly impact the importance of customer service and customer experience. Consumers choose to shop online for a variety of reasons, such as choice, convenience, payment options, as well as good shipping and return policies.

Whilst many people have had little choice but to shop online in the last year or so, in the near future, customer experience and customer service will determine whether a consumer chooses to shop online or in-store. 

In the coming months, it’ll become essential for businesses to consider [how they can deliver value to shoppers](https://www.salesforce.com/uk/blog/2020/12/why-cx-is-more-important-than-ever-to-fuel-business-growth.html) and customers online. After all, customers are a company’s most precious asset. 

If an eCommerce business doesn't treat its customers well, its reputation will spread, shrinking the customer base, and making it harder to acquire new customers in the long run.

That’s why smaller businesses who deliver personalised experience and thoughtful customer service will often attract and retain more consumers than the eCommerce giants who can sometimes be seen as not being as customer-centric.

### CS and CX will take a new role this holiday season 

[In our 2020 holiday report](https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/guides-reports/browsers-to-buyers/trustpilot-consumer-insights-2020-holiday-readiness-guide), we found that the most common 2-word phrase found both in 1 and 5-star reviews in Q4 was “customer service”. 

Today’s uncertain climate means customer experience and customer service have become key to any brand’s survival and success.

This holiday season, there’s no doubt that great customer experiences and great customer service will help brands drive revenue and stand out from the competition.

To get a better understanding of just how much consumers rely on customer service to do their holiday shopping, we took a look at the amount of service reviews left between August 1st and December 31st in 2019, and in 2020. 

Amount of service reviews left on Trustpilot.com between August 1st 2019 and December 31st 2019

Amount of service reviews left on Trustpilot.com between August 1st 2020 and December 31st 2020

Here, we can clearly see that we’ve experienced an increase in service reviews from October time in the last two years. However, in 2020, the amount of service reviews left on Trustpilot.com in the last 3 months of the year was considerably higher than the previous year (about 1 million reviews more!).

We suspect this is due to the fact that most people were still stuck at home, with the majority of shops still closed, and that many consumers had to do their holiday shopping online. 

This year, as restrictions slowly continue to ease and after months of online shopping, some consumers could be tempted to do their 2021 holiday shopping in-store. 

That’s why we predict that [customer service and customer experience will have an even greater impact on holiday and Christmas revenue](https://www.protocol.com/Sponsored-Content/why-retailers-need-to-put-customer-experience-over-sales-this-holiday-season) in 2021. Brands who can truly showcase great customer service and great customer experiences to their online customers will be more likely to win business than brands who do not show any signs of customer-centricity.

Downplaying the importance of customer experience and customer service is no longer an option for businesses out there, as the voice of the customer continues to get louder, and as restrictions continue to ease and competition gets tougher.

## 4 Easy ways to improve your brand’s CS and CX

Now that we’ve established the importance of great customer service and customer experience, here are four actionable tips you can implement to deliver better experiences.

### 1. Focus on your shipping and return policies 

During the pandemic, most eCommerce businesses started offering free shipping to drive more conversions. So chances are, if you’re charging for shipping, you're losing some of your sales to your competitors. In fact, according to Barilliance, [9 out of 10 consumers say free shipping is their biggest incentive](http://marketingland.com/e-commerce-report-9-10-consumers-say-free-shipping-no-1-incentive-shop-online-180280) to continue shopping online. 

Whether you choose to offer free shipping based on the order amount, for customers with an account only, or during a specific time-frame, shoppers will appreciate the effort.

When consumers do their shopping online, they’re also more likely to opt for a brand with a great returns policy. Brands who choose not to offer improved shipping & returns policies could be seriously missing out, especially during the holiday season.


Check out our other customer service tips

### 2. Optimise your checkout page to reduce cart abandonment

Did you know that the average cart abandonment rate across all industries is [69.57%](https://sleeknote.com/blog/cart-abandonment-statistics#1)?

In the last year, as online sales have continued to grow exponentially, consumers have been exposed to all kinds of checkout experiences. Some of them, better than others. 

As today’s online shoppers continue to grow more and more confident, chances are they will abandon their cart if your checkout experience isn’t up to the industry standards.

Having to create a new user account is one of the biggest reasons for cart abandonment ([22%](https://www.barilliance.com/cart-abandonment-rate-statistics/)). Paypal also found that [24%](https://www.paypalobjects.com/webstatic/mktg/pdf/PayPal_Checkout_Best_Practices.pdf) of consumers abandon their transactions at checkout because the retailer doesn’t offer their preferred payment choice.

Make sure you regularly review your checkout page, and start implementing more checkout options to drive more sales during the busiest shopping season of the year. 

Find out more about how to improve your overall customer experience

### 3. Collect and showcase online reviews

Today, [91%](https://www.vieodesign.com/blog/new-data-why-people-hate-ads) of people say ads are more intrusive than 3 years ago. One of the best forms of marketing a business can partake in is trustworthy social proof and third-party validation. 

In short, letting your customers do the talking is the key to success, because their opinion is more likely to be heard and considered by their peers than your own.

Today’s buyers trust customers more than they trust companies. When marketers harness social proof, it can drive more leads than when a business says “we’re the best brand out there”.

Consumers behave a little differently when the holiday season rolls around, and rightly so. As observed earlier, shoppers all over the globe look for and leave reviews more often in October, November, and December.

That’s a great time for eCommerce businesses like yours to focus on a review strategy. By focusing on showcasing and collecting reviews, you’re more likely to show up in a good light for consumers researching their options online.

Implementing reviews throughout the consumer journey is also a less intrusive way of building trust with potential consumers. So reconsider selling hard, and let the voice of the customer build the confidence everyone needs at this time of year.

### 4. Use feedback to improve your customers’ experiences

While having lots of reviews is certainly great, the benefits of these reviews are limited if you’re unable to learn from them. 

First of all, part of the process of learning from your customers is listening and responding to their feedback. Responding to positive and negative reviews can help you learn from your audience. It can also help you turn negative experiences into positive ones. 

Did you know that [95%](https://www.vendasta.com/blog/50-stats-you-need-to-know-about-online-reviews) of unhappy customers are more likely to return to your website if you have resolved their issue quickly and efficiently and [64% of global consumers](https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/guides-reports/build-trusted-brand/the-critical-role-of-reviews-in-internet-trust) would prefer to buy from a responsive company over one that appears perfect?

Secondly, your customer reviews and feedback can help you detect your customers’ needs, complaints or praise quickly and easily. 

Using your customers’ feedback to identify trends and areas of improvement that you can focus on will help you improve your existing customer journey, as well as your customer service.

Once you’ve identified any gaps, you’ll be able to list what works well, and what can be improved to deliver better customer service, and a better user experience, from awareness to purchase and advocacy. 

From there, you can make changes to your website: start with the easier steps – the ones that you can easily change in time for the busiest season of the year, and establish a strategy for the bigger items.

Find out more about learning from your reviews

## Great customer experience and customer service is a must-have for consumers

Our data shows that customer experience and customer service are two [very important aspects of the overall user journey](https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/reviews/learn-from-customers/5-reasons-why-customer-experience-is-the-pulse-of-every-business).

But in the last few months, the [global shift to online shopping](https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/guides-reports/learn-from-customers/understanding-covid-19s-impact-on-business-imagining-a-post-pandemic-world) has meant that CS and CX have become a real necessity – not just a nice-to-have – for businesses who wish to outperform industry peers.

Brands who choose not to invest time and effort in these two areas could get left behind in the next few months, and especially during the holiday season, when competition gets tougher.

Finding ways to implement our tips will give your brand [the best chance to succeed over the crucial seasonal trading period](https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradbirnbaum/2020/09/30/how-to-meet-customer-expectations-this-holiday-shopping-season/?sh=58d52a793fb9).

If you’d like to find out more about how reviews can help you get your customer service and customer experience just right, why not request a free demo below? It’s quick and easy.


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