Things are changing, though, and companies need to take a long, hard look at the consumer information they collect and how they use it.&nbsp;What’s changing? Data is becoming increasingly harder to gather - especially depending on what you want to do with it.&nbsp;The rules around data protection are getting stricter and leading to the demise of third-party cookies. People are getting more savvy about leaving a digital footprint and have become less comfortable with the idea of being tracked and targeted – particularly by businesses they don’t really know. Not only that, governments, and large tech companies, like Apple and Google, are now becoming increasingly focused on the needs of the individual and protecting them.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;So where and how do you uncover meaningful insights that you can confidently use to improve your business?&nbsp;<h2>The types of data available to companies now&nbsp;</h2>Before we move on to what companies should be looking to do moving forwards, let’s take a brief look at the various forms of data available to businesses now.&nbsp;<h3>Zero-party</h3>This is the type of information a person is willing to give a company openly. Examples of this include details people give when entering a competition, filling out a survey, or completing a Feefo review&nbsp;<h3>First-party</h3>The data a business gets when a customer deals with them. Things like the types of products you buy, how often you buy them, what sorts of products you can be persuaded to try with special offers&nbsp;<h3>Second-party</h3>First-party data from another company you’re legitimately allowed to use. This can include, for example, your address details a delivery company would need from a retailer to ship something to you&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<h3>Third-party</h3>Information gathered from other sources, public and non-public, that’s not been openly given by the individual it’s about. Consider the electoral roll, no matter what political party you support, and they can all access your details and contact you whether you like it or not&nbsp;<h2>Which of these is the best to build your business insights on, though?&nbsp;&nbsp;</h2>We agree with Fatemeh Khatibloo, VP principal analyst at Forrester Research, when he said about zero-party data, ‘When a customer trusts a brand enough to provide this really meaningful data, it means that the brand doesn’t have to go off and infer what the customer wants or what their intentions are.’*&nbsp;And gathering zero-party data can be done easily in a number of ways, including reviews, surveys, quizzes, and polls.&nbsp;&nbsp;As <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/resources/business-insights/what-makes-a-review-verified-and-why-it-matters" target="_self">verified reviews</a> experts and the biggest in the world, we’re probably a little biased. But we think reviews from genuine customers that have bought from you are the best way to get zero-party data.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h3>Why?&nbsp;&nbsp;</h3>Because you can be sure the feedback you get from these customers isn’t fake, unlike that you can get from open review platforms - where anyone can say what they want, whether they’ve shopped with you or not. And that means you can confidently use the information you get through us to build insights you can use to boost your business. Our AI technology also helps you spot trends and improve your service by addressing any recurring problem areas.&nbsp;So, what sorts of business changes can you make with the insights verified reviews can give you? Here are just a few examples:&nbsp;&nbsp;<ul><li>Uncover how to improve your customer experience &nbsp;</li></ul><ul><li>Fix or improve a product &nbsp;</li><li>Understand trends and general sentiment&nbsp;</li><li>Identify new opportunities - such as a new product or service&nbsp;</li><li>See where you’re better than your competitors&nbsp;</li><li>The list goes on… and you can see some examples below&nbsp;</li></ul>

<h2>The power of reviews in action&nbsp;</h2>How do you turn customer reviews into business-building insights? Here are some examples of small, medium, and enterprise businesses that made valuable changes using their customer insight: &nbsp;<h3>Case 1: Coffee loyalty cards &nbsp;</h3>With increasing competition from larger chains, the owners of a small independent coffee shop were looking for ways to keep hold of their customers. By using Feefo, they were able to implement customer reviews and ask their customers questions about their products and service. When looking through the most used terms and phrases in the data, they noticed a reoccurring theme. Customers loved the coffee and the ethics behind the brand but were used to using loyalty schemes at bigger coffee chains. The coffee shop introduced a loyalty card scheme – a simple change that quickly gave them back their edge and saw the number of repeat customers quickly increase. &nbsp;<h3>Case 2: Strengthening any weak links  &nbsp;</h3>A car dealership with ten sites nationwide noticed some disparity in the sales figures across the different sites. They didn’t just want to know why some were performing better than others, but they also wanted to bring all the figures in line with the highest-performing locations. The business started collecting customer reviews and quickly realised that certain dealerships were suffering due to poor customer service. The company sent surveys to their staff, and the results showed that the staff in the worst-performing dealerships felt they could benefit from more training. Customer Service training was rolled out in all the weaker locations, and sales gradually began to rise. &nbsp;<h3>Case 3: Reviews highlighted the real issue &nbsp;</h3>A holiday company found they were getting poor reviews for the trailers at one of their properties. At first, they assumed the trailers themselves needed refurbishing and allocated a substantial budget to refresh them. But when they analysed their Feefo review data more fully, they found that the poor reviews were from trailers in one particular location of the park - a more shaded location that didn’t receive any direct sunshine.  &nbsp;So, they moved the trailers to a different area with more natural light. Review sentiment subsequently improved – saving them thousands of pounds on a refurbishment that wouldn’t have addressed the underlying issue. &nbsp;<h3>Case 4: Delayed delivery leading to increased returns &nbsp;</h3>A well-known online gift retailer noticed it was experiencing a sudden peak in returns, so it started collecting customer reviews to find out why. After analysing the insight, the company noticed that the majority of the negative reviews were about gifts arriving too late, often missing the occasion, and then ending up being useless. The business had recently swapped courier companies, so it took swift action to return to its previous delivery provider. A few weeks after, the returns had plummeted, and posts from unhappy customers on social media quickly got lost amongst the positive ones. &nbsp;

<h2>Reviews, insights, and their impact on business - facts and figures&nbsp;</h2>What can you actually achieve with all this valuable, zero-party review insight directly from your paying customers? Take a look at these statistics and consider what a difference verified customer reviews would make to your company:&nbsp;<ul><li>Increase sales - when customers leave positive reviews, studies have shown online sales can be boosted by <a href="https://www.dixa.com/page/reconnecting-the-customer-experience/" target="_self">up to 18%.</a> Reviews are also one of the biggest influences on customers’ buying decisions, with up to <a href="https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey-2017/" target="_self">85% of consumers trusting online reviews</a> as much as they do personal recommendations. Displaying reviews of individual products has also been shown to increase sales by up to 200% better than those without.&nbsp;</li></ul><ul><li>Improve customer experience - <a href="https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/online-review-stats/" target="_self">89% of consumers</a> pay as much attention to the reply to a review as they do to the review itself. So, when you proactively <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/features/respond-to-reviews" target="_self">respond to reviews</a>, especially if things haven’t gone perfectly for a customer, it shows others you’re committed to great customer service.&nbsp;</li></ul><ul><li>Build trust in a brand - lots of things can affect brand trust, and one of the biggest is customer reviews. Using a platform like Feefo that collects genuine reviews from real customers establishes your business as a brand that people can trust. And believe it or not, having both positive and negative reviews on your website increase trust. In fact, the likelihood of someone buying <a href="https://spiegel.medill.northwestern.edu/how-online-reviews-influence-sales/" target="_self">peaks at ratings in the 4.0 to 4.7 range</a>, then starts to decrease as ratings approach 5.0**. Consumers obviously feel a brand that gets just glowing feedback is too good to be true.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li></ul><ul><li>Boost traffic and online conversions - our reviews can help improve your performance in search results and <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/features/reviews-on-google" target="_self">generate Google stars</a> to make you stand out from the competition. Adding our reviews to your adverts can <a href="https://blog.reviews.io/post/how-online-reviews-impact-click-through-rate" target="_self">triple click-through rates</a>. Simply displaying reviews can <a href="https://spiegel.medill.northwestern.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/Spiegel_Online-Review_eBook_Jun2017_FINAL.pdf" target="_blank">increase conversions by 270%</a>.&nbsp;</li></ul><ul><li>Increase customer loyalty - by adding the simply deceptive Net Promotor Score® (NPS) question, ‘How likely are you to recommend the company to a friend or colleague?’ to your review invitation. Analysing your <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/features/nps" target="_self">NPS</a> results can then help you: measure customer loyalty, make business decisions, and fix problems your customers may have had so they move up your NPS scale from Distractors or Passives to Promoters who will buy from you again and again and will tell people that they should use you too. According to <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/economics-net-promoter-score-temkin-group-research-bruce-temkin-ccxp/" target="_self">research from Temkin</a>***, when it comes to loyalty, Promoters are over four times more likely to buy again from a company and over five times more inclined to use a company still if it gets things wrong – now that’s loyalty.&nbsp;</li></ul>

<h2>To sum things up&nbsp;&nbsp;</h2>Even though it’s getting harder to collect data, there is a solution. Feefo. The customer insights we can deliver through <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/features/collect-reviews" target="_self">verified reviews</a> will become the most valuable thing you can own as a business. Having them means you can: &nbsp;<ul><li>Find out how both potential and existing customers perceive your brand&nbsp;</li><li>Take a deeper look into your customers’ buying decisions&nbsp;</li><li>Build long-term relationships with your customers&nbsp;</li></ul><ul><li>Make meaningful changes in your business, which your customers will love&nbsp;</li></ul>

<h2>Find out more - talk to us&nbsp;</h2>To discover how verified customer reviews can deliver the data and the insights you can build your business on, <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/enquiry/request-a-demo" target="_blank">book a demo</a> with one of our experts.&nbsp;&nbsp;

If you want a demo of how Feefo could work for you, or discuss our solutions and opportunities further, get in touch and one of our friendly team will be happy to answer any queries.

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Turn customer reviews into business-building insights

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Gone are the days when you could cast your net wide, hoping to attract customers. In a changing world, customers expect companies to see them as individuals. A <a href="https://www.accenture.com/gb-en/insights/song/human-paradox" target="_blank">2022 Accenture study</a> found 64% of consumers wish companies would respond faster to meet their changing needs.Using a targeted customer insight strategy can significantly move you ahead of the competition by turning consumer insight into marketing that really resonates with your audience. You already see businesses from supermarkets to streaming services sending you personalised recommendations off the back of customer insight. And with more tools than ever available to help you understand your customers’ needs and wants, you can use this targeted approach too.<h2>What is customer insight?</h2>A customer insight is an observation on the behavioural patterns of your customers. You can draw customer insights from analysing customer data and feedback.To perform this analysis, you need high-quality, accurate data. At Feefo, we often talk about the importance of using verified reviews. In part, this is because using verified reviews, means you can rely on the data and feedback that they provide.Consumer insight research aims to help businesses understand how their customers think and feel. It’s an analysis of patterns of human behaviour, which you can use to drive business strategy and as marketing insight in order to meet your customers’ needs.<h2>Benefits of using consumer insights</h2>Customer insight allows businesses to understand:What:<ul><li>Issues their customers face</li><li>Their brand experience feels like to customers</li><li>Areas need improvement</li></ul>How to:<ul><li>Improve conversations with customers from sales teams</li><li>Increase sales team effectiveness by targeting qualified prospects</li><li>Grow sales to new and existing customers</li><li>Deliver higher returns on marketing and promotions investments</li></ul>Consumer insight is the starting point for a whole range of business decisions. No two businesses will have the same findings, or the same objectives.But here are some consumer insight examples of how small, medium and enterprise businesses could make valuable changes using their customer insight:<h3>Case 1: Coffee loyalty cards</h3>With increasing competition from larger chains, the owners of a small independent coffee shop were looking for ways to keep hold of their customers. By using Feefo’s On-Location Feedback tool, they were able to implement customer reviews and ask their customers questions about their products and service. When looking through the most used terms and phrases in the data, they noticed a reoccurring theme. Customers loved the coffee and the ethics behind the brand but were used to using loyalty schemes at bigger coffee chains. The coffee shop introduced a loyalty card scheme – a simple change that quickly gave them back their edge, and saw the number of repeat customers quickly increase.<h3>Case 2: Strengthening any weak links</h3>A car dealership, with ten sites nationwide, noticed some disparity in the sales figures they were seeing across the different sites. They didn’t just want to know why some were performing better than others, but they also wanted to bring all the figures in-line with the highest performing locations. The business started collecting customer reviews, and quickly realised that certain dealerships were suffering due to poor customer service. The business sent surveys out to their staff, and the results showed that the staff in the worst performing dealerships felt they could benefit from more training. Customer Service training was rolled out in all the weaker locations, and sales gradually began to rise.<h3>Case 3: Reviews highlighted the real issue</h3>A holiday company found that they were getting poor reviews for the trailers at one of their properties. At first they assumed that the trailers themselves needed refurbishing and allocated a substantial budget to refresh them. But when they analysed their Feefo review data more fully, they found that the poor reviews were from trailers in one particular location of the park - a more shaded location that didn’t receive any direct sunshine.So, they moved the trailers to a different area, where there was more natural light. Review sentiment subsequently improved – saving them thousands of pounds on a refurbishment that wouldn’t have addressed the underlying issue.<h3>Case 4: Delayed delivery leading to increased returns</h3>A well-known online gift retailer noticed that they were experiencing a sudden peak in returns, so started collecting customer reviews to find out why. After analysing the insight, they noticed that the majority of the negative reviews were about gifts arriving too late, often missing the occasion and then ending up being useless. The business had recently swapped courier companies, so took swift action to return to their previous delivery provider. A few weeks after, the returns had plummeted, and posts from unhappy customers on social media quickly got lost amongst the positive ones.<h2>Market research insights vs consumer insights: what vs why</h2>One of the major benefits of consumer insights is that it can help you target your marketing activity more effectively. Both market research and consumer insight can provide useful marketing insights, but they look at different questions.Market research insight defines the size and shape of the potential market for your product or service. It includes a look at competitors as well as the number of potential customers. It provides you with the raw data about what is happening in your sector.Consumer insight also provides knowledge, but it’s linked to an understanding of your customers – their motivations and desires. It provides the rationale behind customer behaviour ie why they are making particular choices. So, consumer insight highlights where you could make changes to your business in order to improve customer satisfaction.Packaging specialists, Invopak use Feefo’s platform to do just that, Customer Service Improvement Manager, Stuart Rolfe commented:“Feefo give us real insights into customer experience, revealing factors we would never uncover by other means. It gives the customer a voice and provides us with ways of measuring our success we never had before. We have a far greater understanding of our customer experience than we ever did.”Read the <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/customer-stories/invopak" target="_self">full Invopak case study</a>.

<h2>How to develop your own customer insights strategy</h2>In order to make the most of the consumer insight you’ve gained, our seven-step guide walks you through how to create your customer insight strategy.<h2>Define your business objectives</h2>You need to know what your business is really aiming to achieve from examining your customer insight strategy. This could relate to part of a process – for example, why basket abandonment is high or why you are receiving a lot of returns – or a desire to improve the return on investment of your marketing campaigns.Get input from every department in your business to work out which areas you need to focus on as a company, what needs prioritising and where you can make the greatest impact.Once you’ve got a clear list of objectives it will help you ask the right questions of the right customers, at the right time.<h2>Put a timeline in place</h2>Every effective strategy needs some deadlines. In the case of your customer insight marketing strategy, you’ll need to consider:<ul><li>How long you’ll be gathering customer insight for</li><li>When you will be analysing the data</li><li>When the results will be communicated to the key stakeholders</li><li>When you will implement any new actions as a result of your customer insight</li></ul>Make sure you’re realistic when you set your timelines. Take into account any barriers that might slow down the process, such as resources, budget and any potential slow periods of business.<h2>Outline your target audience</h2>You’ll need to refer back to your business objectives to work out who exactly you are hoping to collect customer insight from. For example, you might want to know which of your stores is performing best. In this case you’d need to ask customers from a particular region about their in-store experience once they’ve visited.It’s not all about collecting data from your existing customers – some of the most useful insights come from those who haven’t dealt with your business yet.For example, if you want to get a good idea of how your brand is perceived from an outsider’s point of view, then gathering insight from potential customers is a good way to go about it.<h2>Mapping the customer journey</h2>The next step in your customer insight strategy is all about putting yourself in your customer’s shoes by creating a customer journey map.Knowing how, when and where people come into contact with your brand means you can start to pinpoint exactly when in the customer journey you need to collect customer insight to get the answers you need.You’ll need to plot every single touchpoint in your customer’s journey – from the first time they see or hear from your brand all the way through to the customer service you give them after they’ve bought from you. Through each of these touchpoints your customers will have lots of different experiences which shapes their opinion of your business – and that means lots of valuable customer insight there for the taking.Every customer journey map will be different, so there’s really no right or wrong way to do it, so long as you’re thorough. Here are a few pointers to get you started:<ul><li>Keep your different customer personas in mind. Not all of your customers are on the same journey. If you have lots of different customer personas, start with your most common</li><li>Get the whole team involved. <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/resources/customer-acquisition/customer-journey-mapping-guide" target="_self">Customer journey mapping</a> isn’t just about how customers interact with your website – it includes everything from paid ads to customer service and sales calls</li><li>Make a note of all the actions your customers have to take. This helps you to understand what you expect your customers to do to achieve their goals. If you can simplify this journey, that would be a positive result</li><li>Collect insight as part of the process. Using <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/features/send-adhoc-surveys" target="_self">surveys</a>, for example, can help you add some reasoning and emotion to your customer journey map to help you realise why your customers are making the decisions they’re making; whether it’s clicking away from your website too soon or taking the long way round before they hit the checkout</li></ul><h2>Collect your customer insight</h2>You’ve homed in on the areas that you need to improve and the right places to ask for feedback – now it’s time to start collecting your customer insight.There are lots of different ways of collecting customer insight, all of which can be grouped into two main categories; quantitative and qualitative.<h2>Quantitative customer insight</h2><ul><li>Helps you answer questions such as who, what, where and how many</li><li>Data can be easily transferred into numerical values and displayed as charts, graphs and tables</li><li>Customers often don’t need to spend as much time providing data as other methods, as it usually involves questions that are quick to answer</li><li>Answers are standardised, so comparing and analysing the findings is straight-forward</li><li>Surveys are a good way of collecting quantitative data. By asking closed-ended questions, such as ‘How old are you’ or ‘Where did you find out about our business’, you can quickly gauge anything from who your customers are, to how satisfied they are with your customer service, all on a numerical scale.</li></ul><h2>Qualitative customer insight</h2><ul><li>Looks beyond numbers and figures into the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’</li><li>Often provides the reasoning and context behind the data, giving you rich, descriptive data</li><li>This insight is better when looking at human behaviour</li><li>Collecting qualitative data can take a little longer than other methods</li><li>Surveys can be used in this way too. A mixture of closed and open-ended questions can be the recipe for well-rounded customer insights. Your closed questions are there to give you the hard facts, whist follow-up, open-ended questions are designed to go further to explore the reasoning and gain some context</li></ul>Collecting customer reviews is another great way of getting plenty of qualitative insight from your customers.You can choose what to collect feedback on – could be the products you sell, the service you provide or individual stores and branches. Tools such as Feefo’s Feedback Request Manager tool  supports you to pinpoint exact moments in the customer journey to ask for feedback and when to send those requests. Giving your customers the opportunity to share their thoughts in their own time means you’re likely to hear how they really feel.  Another tool to support with collecting customer insight is <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/features/nps" target="_self">Net Promoter Score</a>. This asks your customers whether they would recommend your business on a scale from 1-10 to determine if they’re ‘detractors’, ‘passives’ or ‘promoters’ when it comes to your service. This can be sent out as part of your feedback requests, so not only can you plot where you stand on the scale, but you can also take a deeper look into the sentiment behind the scores by checking what your customers have said in their reviews.

<h2>Analyse your customer insight</h2>Once you’ve gathered your customer feedback, analysing the data is straightforward with the right tools to support you.Use the following principles to help you sort through the data:<ul><li>Analyse everything - both positive and negative</li></ul>You need to include all the data in your analysis. While sifting through your negative feedback may not be pleasant, negative reviews can actually work wonders for your business as they can highlight where there’s room for improvement. Find out how to make the most of them<ul><li>Categorise your feedback</li></ul>Categorising your customer insight into themes helps provide structure to the feedback. Identifying the most reoccurring themes in your feedback, whether they’re mentioned in a positive or negative light, will help you figure out what’s being talked about the most. Putting your customer insight into categories may even highlight some areas that you didn’t even know were causing issues.Every business is different, and the right categorisation tags for you will depend on what you provide, and what your business objectives are that you set out in step one.Feefo’s Insights Labels tool allows you to tag and track themes across your <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/features/collect-reviews" target="_self">customer reviews</a>, so you can discover what people are saying about your business and make the changes that matter.“Insight tag reporting across all our customer feedback has given us fantastic insight into our business. It lets us recognise trends, quickly identify customer concerns, and monitor customer experience initiatives across the business”.Adam Cornish, Customer Experience Manager, Expedia<ul><li>Identify the trends</li></ul>Identifying trends is where you discover exactly where you’re hitting the mark, and which touchpoints could do with some work.  So, how do you go about spotting these trends in your customer insight? If you’ve got time to spare, then you can sift through the content manually. But it’s probably best to let software do the hard work for you. Not only is the process infinitely quicker but it also eradicates the chance of human error and bias.Feefo’s Customer Sentiment Insight tool automatically analyses your customer feedback, identifies sentiment and gives you an at-a-glance view of the main issues that are affecting your customers. Performance profiling can instantly analyse your customer insight with:<ul><li>Sentiment score: your sentiment score shows the level of positive and negative emotion that’s within your review content.</li><li>Performance graph: this groups your <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/resources/customer-experience" target="_self">customer feedback</a>  into four sections; advertise, focus, monitor and potential, so you can see which areas of your business you should promoting in your marketing and which need more attention.</li><li>Automated sentiment trend analysis: track how your sentiment score changes over time as you receive more customer insight.</li><li>Review snippets: find out which common keywords are used in your <a href="https://www.feefo.com/uk/business/resources/customer-experience" target="_self">customer feedback</a>, and use them to build more engaging PPC ads.</li></ul>“We wanted the ability to show we listen to our customers and Customer Sentiment Insight has given us the perfect opportunity to connect and demonstrate our fantastic customer service. It has helped us to see what we could do to improve our delivery processes and opened up some really interesting conversations between us and Our Customers. The conversations were fed back to the relevant decision makers, who were then able to take action and improve the customer experience”.Rachel Lewis, Customer Response Co-Ordinator, Iceland<h2>Take action</h2>All the insight in the world counts for nothing until you turn it into action to improve your product or service for your customers.But your decision-making process should be a whole lot more straightforward with the data to back up any changes you bring into your business.In conclusion, customer insights are perhaps the most valuable thing that you can own as a business. Having them means you can:<ul><li>Find out how both potential and existing customers perceive your brand</li><li>Take a deeper look into your customers’ buying decisions</li><li>Build long-term relationships with your customers</li><li>Make meaningful changes in your business, which your customers will love</li></ul>

Turn customer reviews into business-building insights

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