Imagine this: You’ve got reviews coming in regularly, your overall rating is about where you expect it to be, and you’re proud of how you’re marketing your reputation.
You are doing a great job. Really.
But there’s just one small problem: Your company goals are not being met. There’s pressure on you to improve your reputation even more, and to truly understand the review topics you encounter.
Perhaps you’re reading this and thinking ‘this writer is speaking right to me’. Well fear not, dear reader, for there is something you can do right now to extract the most valuable insights from your reviews.
It’s called Review Tagging, and it’s really simple to get started. Here’s how you can do it to gain every gram of value from your customer feedback.
What is review tagging and how can it help you get better review insights?
It’s as simple as it sounds. You attach a particular word or phrase (a ‘tag’) to a review. Thereafter, all reviews with that particular tag will be grouped together.
However, randomly tagging reviews with generic phrases won’t be much help to you. Instead, you need to start with some soul searching. It’s time to get critical.
Step 1: Ask yourself what you want to measure
By far the most important step.
Take time to decide which areas of your business impact your customers the most.
Ask yourself: ‘What affects customer satisfaction? What do our customers regularly mention as positive or negative? Who are our best performing customer service staff?’
The questions you can ask yourself about your business are almost endless. Yet don’t get stuck asking generic questions. Be specific and spend time drilling down what it is you really want to know.
For example, let’s say you’re a travel retailer, helping families book their dream holidays. However, you’ve realised repeat bookings are quite low, and you want to find out why. Questions you might ask could be:
Which packages are our best selling?
What do customers love about our customer service?
Is there a weak link in the sales chain letting us down? Where is this weak link?
And so on. Now onto stage 2.
Step 2: Track, track, track
Whenever you hear the word ‘tracking’, your heart sinks. I know - it sounds technical and dull.
But it really isn’t technical, and the results you’ll receive certainly won’t be dull.
With Trustpilot, you can create Review Tags and attach these to any number of your reviews, to compare trends and performance across different areas of your business.
Tags can literally be anything, but stick to specifics where possible. Don’t go so specific that the tag makes no sense to anyone (e.g. Package-001-XYZ-Gem-R2D2) but tag intelligently to group together reviews in a logical way.
Using the travel company example from step 1, here are some example tags you could use to answer the questions you’ve posed:
QUESTION: Which packages are our best selling?
TAG: Package holiday name (one tag for each package)
QUESTION: What do customers love about our customer service?
TAG: ‘Good customer service’ or a phrase similar to that
QUESTION: Is there a weak link in the sales chain letting us down? Where is this weak link?
TAG: This could be the product name, particular stores you notice are underachieving, or specific sales reps.
It doesn’t end here. You can pre-tag Trustpilot review invitations with data from your sales system (e.g. this customer ordered this product, from this sales rep, at this store location) so your reviews already filter according to their relevant tags.
It saves you time, energy and cost - and gives you quick results. Win, win, win, win.
Step 3: Analyse your results
Like any great detective, you’ve done all of the hard work. You’ve asked the right questions. You’ve got the answers. Now, Sherlock Holmes, it’s time for the real rewards. Let’s analyse your data.
Let’s go back to the travel company again who specialises in perfect package holidays.
To recap, here are the questions the travel company asked and the tags they applied. We’ve put imaginary example findings and learnings alongside each bullet point too.
QUESTION: Which packages are our best selling?
TAG: Package holiday name (one tag for each package).
EXAMPLE FINDINGS: The travel company knows now that their ‘Colourful Cuban Caper’ is the best selling trip. (Not a bad choice, to be fair.)
EXAMPLE LEARNINGS: There could be elements of the trip that people really love. Perhaps it’s the price, the activities, or something else. But now you know what the most popular trip is, you can take the best bits and see if you can implement them across your other products. Alternatively, you can promote this popular trip even more so online, backed by excellent reviews.
QUESTION: What do customers love about our customer service?
TAG: ‘Good customer service’ or a phrase similar to that.
EXAMPLE FINDINGS: Reviews grouped under ‘good customer service’ show there are common trends, such as ‘quick response’, ‘friendly’ and ‘informative’.
EXAMPLE LEARNINGS: Overall, great job! But are these positive phrases paired with particular customer service reps, or particular store locations? If so, then reward these particular parts of your business for their hard work. Or perhaps these positive reviews have identified some good customer service practices. If that’s the case, record these good practices and be sure to build them into your training of new employees, for example.
QUESTION: Is there a weak link in the sales chain letting us down? Where is this weak link?
TAG: This could be the product name, particular stores you notice are underachieving, or specific sales reps.
EXAMPLE FINDINGS: You tagged particular sales reps here, as you wanted to know how your sales reps are individually performing. You’ve found there is a big difference between different reps.
EXAMPLE LEARNINGS: If you implemented this particular sales rep tag in your business, you could create a sales rep leaderboard where the top performers are rewarded on a regular basis. Another idea could be to use these tagged reviews in 1-to-1 performance reviews, or to use certain sales reps as good examples to anyone who is underperforming.
Step 4: Repeat the process
As we established at the start, the possible list of questions to ask is pretty much infinite. As such, so will be the tags you can use and the learnings you can deduce.
So don’t stop after just one round of analysis. Keep going back again and again - using tried and tested tags, or newer ones - to start spotting the themes in your customer feedback.
Simply: your customers are telling you what works and what doesn’t. Now it’s your job to listen.
Ready to collect more insights from your reviews? Get started today
We appreciate this can be a daunting task, but that’s why we’re here to help you along the way.
Interested in getting started with review tagging and tracking? Reach out to your Customer Success rep to find out more, or get in touch with us at Trustpilot. We’ll gladly show you the ropes and you’ll be a champion in no time.
