Episode 102: How to gain customers’ trust

00:02  

Intro: 

Welcome to the CIM Marketing podcast. The contents and views expressed by individuals in the CIM Marketing Podcast are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the companies they work for. We hope you enjoy the episode.  

00:17  

Host: 
Hello everybody and welcome to the CIM marketing podcast, and welcome to the mad house, the festive mad house, because Black Friday and Cyber Monday have both recently taken place and Christmas is coming up. And you know, during this exciting time for marketers, CIM has been undertaking a project with their newly formed media advisory panel, which is looking into the advertising and marketing efforts of big-name brands during this peak season. And one of the key findings is that forward thinking brands are using these discount days, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the peak festive season in general to develop their relationships with customers. This is encouraging further engagement throughout the year, so you build your relationship at Christmas, and you get the benefit throughout the calendar year to come. And to talk about this interesting trend and more is our very special guest, Alicia Skubick. And Alicia is Chief Customer Officer at a major brand that you will all be aware of, trust pilot, and Alicia champions the voice of the customer in her role. How are you, Alicia, great to have you on the show.

01:35 
Alicia:
Thanks. Ben, I'm so happy to be here. It's great to get a chance to kind of talk about my passion of customer centric businesses, trust and marketing. So it's wonderful to be here. 

01:47 
Host:
Great to have you on the show. This is an interesting trend, isn't it? This is an interesting thing that we've discovered that people are starting to, marketers are now starting to use the festive season as a purple patch in which to build trust, which is interesting, particularly given that the retail experience, the purchase experience, has become more detached. If you think of online as being a more detached, and some people might think, well, as we become online, we're not as close to retailers. We're not as close to the people who sell us things. But how, in your view, has that shift towards online shopping changed the customer experiences? Has it actually made it better or worse? 

02:29 
Alicia:
Great question. So I think there's kind of multiple sides to that answer. I think for consumers, the ability to stay at home and choose the variety and choice that they get has made huge positive impacts in people's lives. At the same time, they lose a little bit of that personal touch which they can feel like that lack of connection to brands, and so that that can be a challenge. I think if you think about the evolution of E commerce and decision making online, it's evolved so much, and I think that's where we see the role of customer reviews and trust playing such an important part. Knowing who are you buying from? How do they respond to things? If there's an issue, will they come back to me and take care of it? It becomes more and more important as that goes on. And then for businesses, they have to really work hard to create that experience, to really sweat the details, I'd say, and improve that experience, like all the way through the journey. I think you and I can remember, back in the early days of E commerce, a lot of businesses would think about the different end to end journey, and think about the end of their experience was when they shipped the product out their door. And so the courier, for example, not my problem, that kind of thing. Nowadays it's that end to end. People make decisions about, what's the delivery like, what's the delivery times like, what's the charges like, not just the product that they get. So we find that for businesses, if they can really sweat the details and that experience from the beginning to the end, it can be really meaningful for them, and as meaningful as an in person purchase.

04:17 
Host:
It’s really interesting that point you make, how the paradigm has changed. 30 years ago, 20 years ago, we would have gone into a department store at Christmas time. We would have spoken to a man or a lady in the department store. We would have built trust directly with them as human to human. We would make that purchase, and we would have driven home or taken the train home, or what have you with our shopping done. Now that process has many more discrete steps in it, all of which sort of belong or are owned by the retailer so it doesn't matter how good your purchase is or how your experiences of E commerce that the point of sale. If the delivery is two days late, or you can't find the guy who's delivering it, or he's delivered it to the wrong street, or what have you, you kind of blame that retailer. So what you're doing is you're saying that that personal experience that we once had has to some degree been replaced by a digital measuring system. And that's where Trustpilot comes in. 

05:17 
Alicia:
That’s right. And I think we talk about things like at trust pilot, like trust redesign, and how do you build that trust? And when you say, for example, use a company that really sweats the details, it was really thinking about the customer, using that measurement reviews at every stage in the journey, using those listening pipes to get those insights, Where are we doing well, where are we, could we improve? You feel that in the experience. So great design, an easy to navigate site, flawless shipping, all of those details really, really matter and can be measured. And so that sort of customer love comes through in that kind of thoughtfulness of design and thoughtfulness of the process and experience.

06:04 
Host:
Why is it so important for, I mean, it almost seems like a facile question. I'm going to ask it anyway, because I think it's worth answering. Why is it so important to get the customer experience right? People get the goods they want at a low price. Why does the CX matter?

06:22 
Alicia:
I think there's a few things around it. I think the customer experience is how you feel about the brand and the experience itself, and so getting things cheaply. I mean, we've all had that experience where you buy something, it's a great deal, and then it breaks the next day, or after the fact, you feel like I would have paid more for a better product or a better service. And so, customer experience, it really is that reflection of whether it's in the shop or it’s online, is the reflection of the values of that company, or that's the perception, right? It's the values of the company. It's how they think about their customers. So it's so fundamental, and it can't be detached from the product itself, that experience that you have as part of it, that's part of the product now.

07:13 
Host:
Yeah, that's interesting. What makes a great customer experience? What leads to the ultimate five star review on Trustpilot? What are the key things that brands have to do to gain that five star?

07:27 
Alicia:
Yeah, I think it starts with the journey that they take, like I talked about, with great design, easy experiences online. I think value for money. Am I getting what I expected at a reasonable price, or if I'm paying a premium, does it feel premium? I think those are really key. If there's an issue, how is it resolved? How is that experience? Do they take it seriously and resolve it beyond expectations, and then ultimately, did I receive what I expected to receive, or like expected or exceeded my expectations is what kind of drives those reviews, and I think it's those personal touches. It's sweating the details. It's thinking about standing in the shoes of the customer and really living and walking a mile in their shoes and going through that and seeing it and feeling it. And then improving those, continuous improvement. It creates incredible customer experiences.

08:25 
Host:
It's interesting, you alluded to the fact that actually sometimes if things go wrong, my inference was customers expect sometimes things to go wrong, but you can still get a five star review, and you probably may be even more likely to get a five star review if those problems are handled well and personally by the brand itself.

 08:46 
Alicia:
That is so true, and I think often overlooked, a bad experience shows you the credibility of the company, their values, and really is that chance to have that personal connection where we've talked about sometimes you don't get that. If a company is trustworthy and stand by their brand and make it right, that is the moment where you can build long term brand loyalty. And I think where that shows up in the reviews, you're absolutely right, that can mean a higher review. And we've often talked about, I think it can be daunting to start in the online reviews world. What will happen? What are they going to say? Thing is, they're already saying it, they're just not saying it to you. So getting a chance to see that content, that information, means you have a chance to address it and address it in a meaningful way and in a really visible way. We talk about a bad review as the start of a better business, because you're seeing the problems up front, you can address them in real time. Customers don't expect and consumers don't expect perfection. But really, that kind of attention to the customer experience, so responding quickly, being thoughtful in the response, those go so far. And in fact, when we look at research, 54% of consumers would prefer to see a mixture of good and bad reviews, because it's more authentic, but they also want to see it addressed quickly, and they want to see non generic responses to reviews and really that authenticity of a brand.  

10:25 
Host:
You use the word authenticity. I have to say, as you've been speaking I've been thinking about my own experiences, and one has to be careful about projecting one's own views onto the public at large. But certainly from my personal view, is that the companies that have handled problems better are the ones I remember, and I sort of feel a loyalty to the brands. I feel loyalty to the ones where I've had a delivery go awry or a faulty piece of equipment that was just a one off, but they've dealt with it quickly and with a personal touch. They’re the brands I remember, and they're the ones that I trust in future. And I wonder if there's something in that. In any case, one of the big interesting things about Trustpilot is this vast database that it is collected of reviews. One of the most important things in sales now are customer reviews. Your own research shows that reviews, online reviews, are a crucial part of the purchasing process. The survey just conducted by Trustpilot last year, which you've shared, showed that they were the second most important sorts of information for customers. So 34% of all customers said that online reviews were the most important thing for them, and that's only beaten by search engines themselves. So 53%, given that everything online pretty much starts with search, you could almost call that table stakes. So beyond search engines, they're the most important thing in deciding a purchase, which just shows how important they are to the process. And yet, three quarters of all consumers, 75% indicated they were concerned about fake reviews online, and this is obviously a cause for concern, isn't it? We've all come across reviews which look a little bit too good, a little bit too perfectly spelled, and wondered whether they are, in fact, to use your word authentic. How is Trustpilot helping mitigate this trend and getting rid or at least exposing reviews?

12:23 
Alicia:
Yeah, we're obsessed with it. I mean, trust is in our name. And we think about ourselves as more than just an online reviews business, like we're a trust business. And so as an example, we have a chief trust officer. We're sweating the detail on this every single day. It is just part of our DNA. When we think about what our mission and vision is, we're committed to being the most trusted reviews platform in the world, and our vision is to become a universal symbol of trust. So if that gives you any sense of it, but to back that up in terms of what we're doing around it, we're constantly looking at our fraud and detection engines, using AI to identify fake reviews. If, when I think about, we removed last year 3.3 million fake reviews. We're constantly enhancing, tweaking and looking at where we can do more and better. And so for us, it is a daily obsession. We also partnered with government bodies to advise on how do we improve legislation to counteract fake reviews, fake review sellers. So we're a part of the coalition of trusted reviews. It really matters to us. So when the Federal Trade Commission came out with their ruling about a month ago now, we were delighted to be mentioned in that ruling 27 times. And that's down to the obsession that we have around this, the work that we've done up front in advance of the ruling long ago, and advising them on what we think trust looks like in the reviews industry. So it's part of everybody's job at Trustpilot to ensure that trust is a part of the everyday experience of consumers and businesses.

14:06 
Host:
Trust pilot in the name, it is a brand that people trust as a source of reviews and a lot of sources online people do not trust. But it certainly does seem to be as good as its name in terms of the way people respond to it. And yet, sometimes reviews aren't great, are they? That's the whole point of reviews is sometimes they're good, sometimes they're bad and sometimes they're indifferent. In terms of how businesses respond to bad or indifferent reviews, they respond to feedback and use it to improve and transform their business, have you got any good examples of exemplars? Have you seen, customers have said this about the company or about the service or about the product they've received, and actually they've used that feedback as a gift to enhance what they do in future?

14:52 
Alicia:
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, as context for me and my background before I joined trust pilot, I worked for sage and for Intuit, who were customers of trust pilots. So I'm a passionate advocate in terms of how you respond, how you improve the business based on the reviews. And when we think about the real value proposition for businesses and the journey that a business goes on, it's first about building trust, getting those reviews, responding to those reviews, and really kind of building that up. It's then about growing, showcasing the reviews, and that helps businesses to higher conversion rates and better reach, more trust. But what's most exciting is then it builds a better business, which is usually the third part. So many marketers will come to Trustpilot, because it is a multiplier on your advertising spend. If you have a star rating and you have the customer verbatim, your conversion rates on your ads on your website go up. But what then happens is you start to get all this incredible insight, and really good businesses start to use that, and so many do in their day-to-day operations. So a really good example is Groupon, who've used the data and the information they have, like notifications on reviews protocols for one star, three to five star, they send the reviews out across the business and take action and have teams dedicated to improving the feedback. And some of the companies I worked for, it was a metric that we reviewed every two weeks as a company, companywide, to review this trust pilot score. What was the feedback? Any trends, anything we need to fix? And when I think about those businesses and how they've transformed it, it's inspiring to us. Ovo energy is another great example. So they have a section on their home page dedicated to five star reviews. They look at all their reviews. So they use it from a marketing perspective, but they also use it to handle customer complaints, reviewing the sentiment, and making internal changes. And that's such a common experience with our customers. You're building your business, you're doing the marketing, but then you're getting these amazing insights. You're piping that into the business. And we have tools that help with that as well. So there's AI insights you can see category groupings of, here's some trends that are coming up. So we help with that to ensure that we make it easier for businesses to be able to pick up on trends or key themes and that information.

17:28 
Host:
It’s interesting, isn't it, that actually there are two steps to using this. One is the window on your own world, see what people are saying about you and it's a trusted form of collating and capturing those reviews. But the second stage is to use it as a tool. So you think about all the money that companies spend on market research, on trying to get customer feedback, and what you're saying is that these guys are giving you this stuff.

17:53 
Alicia:
Every single day, yeah, it's there, and it's actionable.

17:59 
Host:
It's actionable. They're giving you this stuff, for God's sake, use it. Use it to change your business. You've cited one business there that uses it very proactively, Groupon, they go into the nitty gritty of this stuff and find out how can we actually shape our business in future based on what people are saying? I do infer that you think that more businesses could do that than are currently doing? Is that fair?

18:22 
Alicia:
Yeah, I  think so. It's interesting, because I've done a few webcasts and webinars with marketers, and when I first joined trust pilot, the question that got the most energy and the most questions was around, well, gosh, what happens if we start inviting people and they give us bad reviews? What do we do? And so there's that kind of fear, and I think we talked about a little earlier, it's that this is already happening. Your brand is what people say when you're not in the room. And so people are talking about it, talking about you, sharing their experiences with their family and friends, putting it online, and so to actively cultivate that good and bad and see where you can improve, be authentic, address the issues. That is such a meaningful accelerator to your marketing and your company itself. But yeah, it is taking that leap and having the confidence that you can respond to these reviews and address the issues.

19:27 
Host:
Fascinating to hear you talk about it. And one thing that we talk about at CIM and marketing in general is this concept of customer centricity. The customers are effectively at the center of your organisation. It literally means to be a truly customer centric organisation. In your view, what marks you out in terms of the way you respond to feedback online? 

19:50 
Alicia:
Yeah, so I think it's about speed of response. So I think there's an expectation that you are responding in a timely way, 24 hours or under is the gold standard. If it's an issue, you want to acknowledge and apologise. Again if you sometimes can see generic responses and it's not really saying thanks for the feedback, isn't really addressing the issue, and so you want to take a proactive response. You want to respond publicly, so don't shy away from it. Respond always polite. Take it offline. Sometimes it's helpful to say I'm really hard sorry to hear this. Let me contact you directly and we'll address this. I think that creates more loyalty for consumers and customers to see it getting done, politely, done quickly, and then having a true response, not a kind of thank you for the feedback, but let's take this offline and have a conversation, and let me resolve that for you is incredibly powerful.

20:47 
Host:
Does it guarantee good feedback? If you can build that customer centricity, if you can follow those principles, are you pretty much guaranteed to get better feedback in future?

20:58 
Alicia:
I don't think you can guarantee anything. It's partly down to the services you provide and the product that you deliver, but it's certainly going to help in terms of if you are genuinely listening to the feedback, taking steps to address any negative experiences and making it right, but then also improving wherever those gaps are in your business, and taking steps, that is a huge step forward in terms of getting better reviews. There's never a guarantee, but it's likely if you're addressing those areas. 

21:29 
Host:
Let's face it, we talked earlier, you said it yourself that nobody's perfect. No company is perfect, no brand is perfect. Mistakes happen. Things do go wrong, and they always will, but we're marked, we're saying by how we deal with them. So let's put some practical tips on the table for our audience today, and we're going to imagine that we’ve got a bad review or bad reviews. What are your top tips for marketers or even for small business owners for dealing with negative feedback? If you were going out as a consultant to businesses and you were heading out to speak to them, what were your top tips be?

22:11 
Alicia:
I think taking it from all the way back to the beginning, making sure that you're inviting all of your customers to review is important, to make sure you're getting a really, really good view of the experience of your customer, so that's number one. Make sure that it's broad and it's capturing the voice of all of your customers. Really make sure that you've got somebody who owns those review responses. It's important that there's an ownership in the business and the company that you own those reviews and those responses, and there's somebody who's on point to do that, I think again, timeliness. So really ensuring that you are responding as quickly as possible, within 24 hours is ideal, acknowledging and apologising for, you know, whatever, if there's a bad issue, and really being upfront about it, that goes so far. When you look at research, consumers, if acknowledged and addressed like that, makes all the difference in terms of having confidence and trust in a business. Respond publicly and resolve it privately. So, you know, I think, apologise and acknowledge, but then you want to try and take it offline to really kind of get into the detail, solve it and fix the problem. You want to follow up with the customer. You want to make sure that you've the matter is resolved, and ensure that you're genuine, that you've satisfied it to the best of the company's ability. Really fundamental, and then really use whatever insight you got to identify root cause and make sure it's not happening regularly. Is it a one off? Is this a trend? And that's where you can use the tools and the product to start to look at where am I seeing trends? Where is there an issue in the business maybe that we need to address? 

23:56 
Ad break:
CIM membership will help support and inspire you at every stage of your marketing career. Sign up now for a range of exclusive benefits, including access to our monthly webinars. Find out more at cim.co.uk/membership. 

24:09 
Host:
I’ve counted four or five great points. First one I thought was fascinating was that be comprehensive. Invite this stuff. Don't just get your super fans or your super complainers reviewing, ask everybody to review, try and solicit as many reviews as you possibly can to get a holistic picture of your customer base. Have someone take ownership of it. Have someone, or some people in your organisation take ownership of handling the reviews process. Make it a job role. Make it a team role, or a task that people are assigned to timeliness. 24 hours is the key maximum. Get back to people. Don't go silent. Make sure that by the next day, they've got a response from you and recognise publicly but resolved privately, you put a public missive out to say sorry to hear about this. Let's take it offline. We'll talk to you about how we can resolve it. I wondered if there was a fifth one, which was something about admission. We talked earlier about the brands that we remember, and sometimes the brands that we remember and are now loyal to are the ones that have handled a complaint better, and before they can handle that complaint, they have to admit that there's a problem. And sometimes I find with organisations and companies, there's a resistance in the first instance to admitting there's a problem. And you sort of think, well, you know, customers don't have infinite time. They don't ring up and complain about things for the sake of it, if the fact that they're calling you means there must be a problem. But actually, to get past that Rubicon in the first instance, sometimes organisations find difficult.

25:47 

Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. And some research we did, 64% of consumers would prefer for a business to be responsive versus perfect. And again, when we look at like the additional research, 52% would prefer to see a mixture of ratings they don't want. All five stars feels inauthentic. Personally, and I know so many of our consumers do, will toggle on let me see what those two star reviews say. What does a one star review say? Okay, well, there's five. There's a mixture. Consumers have more confidence in a little bit of the authenticity and if their business is within responding to those reviews, it goes a huge way. 

26:34 
Host:
Do you think we should strive for perfection or just strive for authenticity? 

26:41 
Alicia:
It's a great question. I think no business is perfect, and so I think you want to create the most amazing customer experiences that you can, but it's that authenticity of making it right, showcasing when there's a problem, making an improvement to the business. I think that goes such a long way, and really in a world where so many brands are online, going back to what we were talking about in the beginning, it kind of opens the door and gives you some insight into the inner workings of the business, which is really powerful. 

27:13 
Host:
Sometimes you do get, let's be honest, on the other side, let's look at it from the other side for a moment. You sometimes do get vexatious reviews. People have gone over the top or have just been irrational. I'm always reminded of reading a review once for a fish restaurant, and the reviewer, his complaint about this restaurant was that there was nothing in the restaurant for people like him who didn't like fish, which was a rather unfair complaint. We've all seen, or we've probably all seen, the ones where reviewers have reviewed Ben Nevis and complained that at the top of Ben Nevis there's no cafe, no bar, nowhere to buy a snack. It's just the top of a Scottish Mountain, which, again, seems rather unfair. So, customers aren't always fair. They can sometimes be vexatious, and they're often irrational, and they can sometimes give you irrationally negative reviews. And in that case, is there a case, do you think Alicia, for censoring the reviews? 

28:17 
Alicia:
Oh, gosh, no, I think back to the trust point, we will never remove a review because a business asks us to, because it's important to have fair and impartial, and the reviews, are the reviews, and that's that person's experience of it. So absolutely, censoring doesn't reflect the true customer experience. I think when we've looked at the research, we know that 62% of consumers would actually stop using these platforms if they felt there was censorship. So it's really important to truly reflect these experiences. It can be painful for a business to have a very irate customer, but again, it's the breadth, right? So if you've got one irate customer and 50 happy customers, consumers know that they look at the reviews. They don't look at one review and make a judgment. They're looking at the overall rating. They're looking at the verbatim feedback from customers, and so respond back, try and resolve the issue, if it's possible, but you're right, there can be irrationality in it, and then that's just about like, is this reflective of the whole or is this just a one off? And that becomes very clear in the reviews and the review ratings. 

29:37 
Host:
It's interesting, isn't it. As well as you know, the not censoring the slightly irate or perhaps unfair review, we also have to crack down on fake reviews. The FTC is cracking down on these reviews, and what does that crack down mean for marketers? Presumably, it creates a whole bunch of new issues they've got to be aware of.

30:01
Alicia:
You need to make sure that you are following the guidelines. And the ruling really makes it clear that it's a C suite level responsibility to ensure that you are compliant to those the rules. And so that means using a reviews platform that is compliant as well, but also following the guidelines and making sure that you are inviting, after all, experiences, that you're not cherry picking specific experiences that you're obviously never buying reviews in it. It has really lifted the importance of reviews and the importance of the trust and credibility. It's a great thing for everyone. And so absolutely fake reviews. I mean, we spend, like I said, considerable time to ensure that we are removing any fake reviews from our platform and that we are creating the most authentic and true experiences for consumers. 

30:55 
Host:
You talk about buying it in, what about incentivising reviews? Or incentivising good reviews?

31:00 
Alicia:
Yeah, exactly. And that's part of the rule, absolutely do not recommend that. And in the ruling, that is banned as well. So 

31:09 
Host:
So leave us a five star review, and you get 15% off. You get a coupon. Total no go.

31:18 
Alicia:
No, avoid, that’s right. So again, it goes against the if you've got a good business, the reviews are going to be helpful. And I think, like we've talked about the good and bad, balance it out, create that authenticity. Consumers want to see that, and they want to see how you respond to it. So there's no shortcuts here. But I think having a great business, that the dividends and the impact you'll have will come through. 

31:46 
Host:
You know, there's the cliche in marketing that feedback is a gift. And I think too often, we forget that we spend so much money and time as an industry and trying to get this stuff, accept it all as a gift, the good and the bad, and do something with it, is your message.

32:02 
Alicia:
Absolutely, because if you're not doing something with it, say you suddenly get hundreds of one star reviews and terrible feedback. Something's wrong, and you're going to see that in your bottom line eventually, and probably pretty quickly, people are going to be talking about it. It's going to be impacting you. So this is a great early warning detector of any challenges you have in your business, the feedback is definitely a gift.

32:30 
Host:
You know what? I'm going to take your advice here, Alicia, and I'm going to call our audience to leave us a review on Spotify or Apple podcasts. We're not going to incentivise it, send me the good and the bad. I'm sure it'd be extremely good for Alicia Skubick, who's been an absolutely great guest to finish off this calendar year's set of podcasts and to send us off beautifully into the festive season itself. It's been brilliant talking to you, Alicia, and thank you for your time and insights. I'm sure there's lots of lessons there, which our audience will benefit from. I think the final thing to say is Happy Christmas. I hope you get some rest over the festive season. I know it's busy for you. 

33:10 
Alicia:
Thank you. It's been wonderful. I really enjoyed the conversation and Happy Christmas to you and all of the listeners. 

33:15 
Host:
Thank you very much indeed. Great to have you on the show. Thanks. 

33:20 
Outro:
If you've enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to the CIM marketing podcast on your platform of choice. If you're listening on Apple podcasts, please leave us a rating and review. We'd love to hear your feedback. CIM Marketing Podcast.