You’d be forgiven for fearing customer feedback a little but we all know positive feedback is a force for good too. However, when as many as 93% of shoppers use online views in their purchasing decisions, a handful of “bad” reviews can cause a serious dent in revenue figures.

But are we right to assume that online reviews are predominantly negative? No. In fact, when asked about the last piece of feedback they left online, 75% of shoppers agree it was positive. That’s what we found in our recent research study exploring Voice of Customer (VoC) feedback and the drivers behind it.

This is great news for eCommerce businesses! Not only is positive feedback affirming and motivating to read, it also presents a fantastic opportunity for customer relationship building too.

Where most customer feedback resources focus on the what, why and how of dealing with constructive criticism from shoppers, this article will shine a spotlight on the power of positive appraisals instead.

So let’s dive in…

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Why positive feedback matters

“If you’re not growing, you’re dying”. It’s an ethos that’s shaped many businesses across the world, from small and nimble start-ups to established household names. Perhaps this helps explain why there’s so much attention placed on negative reviews — as a source of uncomfortable, but highly valuable, insight into how not to please your customers.

But what about positive comments from customers? These can be enriching insights, too.

Learning what you’re doing right as a business carries just as much commercial value as ways to improve. Do more of what works and you’ll see your profit correlate upwards in time.

For example:

• Comments from happy customers make for convincing social proof, encouraging more shoppers to convert to a sale
• PR and marketing campaigns can be built from the benefits happy customers refer to most
• Responding to positive feedback helps maintain customer retention rates — and it’s more cost effective for your business to keep one loyal customer than to acquire a new one.

How much value you can gain from positive reviews depends on how you manage them. Leave users to post glowing words on your social media, or let praise-filled emails gather dust in your inbox, and that positive goodwill starts to lose its potency.

It’s easy to forget about happy customers when you’re fighting fires and handling other, disgruntled, buyers. But that’s a real shame. View positive and negative reviews as equally important and you’ll be gathering a full picture of Voice of Customer data and offering great Customer Experience across the board.

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What do customers want when they leave positive feedback?

When passing on positive feedback, close to one-third of customers expect a response in return. This number is lower than with criticism or negative feedback (54%), but provides a clear message nonetheless: don’t let happy customers go ignored!

• 47% of respondents expect a reply within 1-3 days of sending their feedback (positive or negative)
• 51% of respondents want a simple thank you after leaving a positive review
• … some people expect a little more as a show of gratitude: a discount on their next purchase, some free swag, etc. But these shoppers are far and few between.

So a positive piece of feedback arrives on your desk, you send off a quick “thank you” in return, maybe share the review with a few colleagues, and then get back to fighting fires, right? Think again! The Voice of Customer workflow doesn’t stop there — not even for positive feedback.

You still need to use those new insights to improve your eCommerce offer, day by day.

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How effectively do you manage positive customer feedback today?

As with everything in business, the way you collect, store and reply to positive customer feedback needs to be streamlined. If you’re relying on scatty, disconnected channels of communication, things are going to get messy and out of control fast.

Happy customers are great for business and help boost revenue, but only if you’re not spending unnecessary time and money managing them. Here’s how to manage customer reviews more effectively:

Make space for feedback on your website

In 2021, businesses are spoilt for choice when it comes to feedback gathering tools. And that means customers have many ways to get in touch with you too.

From our research, we saw that only 23% of shoppers chose private methods of communication — email and live on-site chat. This means that as many as three-quarters of your feedback is going out on public forums; channels that are harder to search and more time-exhaustive to monitor.

How do you find these happy customers to say thank you? It could take hours. Instead, wouldn’t it be easier to direct buyers to another channel of communication — one that you control, monitor and are alerted by in real-time?

That’s why we built our Active Feedback Widget to capture user insights and feedback while they’re on your site. With quantitative and qualitative data brought together in one place, eCommerce brands can discover how happy their customers are with the current CX and UX. They can also say “thanks for your feedback” instantly — totally over-delivering on customers’ expectations of waiting 1-3 days.

Automate your VoC workflow — publishing positive feedback on your website or social media right away

We’ve already touched on the power positive reviews can have for social proof and sales generation. So why not fast-track those praise-worthy insights from your email inbox or on-site widget and route them straight to your social channels and website?

This helps your Customer Service and Marketing teams work all the more efficiently — harnessing the revenue-boosting value of positive feedback while saving on in-house resources too.

Next up in our Voice of Customer blog post series: growing from negative feedback

Of course, it’s unrealistic to think that only happy customers will get in touch. All businesses need to plan for that other 25%, too.

That’s what we’ll be covering in our next blog post, ‘The difference between negative feedback and constructive criticism? It’s all in how you respond to it’ — out next week via simplicityDX blog. See you there.