As a society, we benchmark everything. For example, is your baby the proper weight for his age? We compare that with the benchmark, or the typical average among similar babies, along with other factors. The same is true with businesses.

When we use benchmarks, we keep several things in mind.

• What are the goals? Specifically, what are the micro-goals and what is the main goal that your executives are going to care about?
• How are you measuring your goals? What are your Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)? Do these provide enough information and context for your company to take action? (I found this slide deck helpful in differentiating between a metric and a KPI.)
• Who are you benchmarking against? Who does your company aspire to be? The best in the industry, the best overall, and/or your company’s personal best?
• What do you plan to do with the results? Do you have a project plan to take action? Who are the stakeholders in your company that can use this information?

All of these decisions have to be made by you as a company. One of Avinash’s blogs highlights BP’s presentation in which they measure their customer experience and website performance against some of the best companies. BP does not limit themselves to just their competitors, but compares themselves with companies who they can learn from and be challenged by.

At Bazaarvoice, our Community Managers urge our clients to set out a plan for success, including their business goals and KPIs. When a client is launching, the benchmarks help determine expected performance and initial goals. Once a client has been live, they can check how they are doing and adjust their UGC marketing campaigns and promotions accordingly. Whether it is highlighting their top contributors or sending out a post-purchase email, Bazaarvoice best practices with strategies from Community Managers have been proven to drive UGC volume.

Benchmark data is just another way that we provide value to our clients. For example, if one of our clients is lagging behind in Product Coverage (percent of active products with content) against their industry benchmark, then they may want to dig deeper into the data. One possibility may be that the client has new products that haven’t been reviewed yet, so they will need to consistently run a post-purchase email. Another possibility may be that only certain products are being reviewed, and you might want to target purchases on particular products. Another case may be that some products aren’t even being viewed online.

By viewing the Product Coverage in context with the metric Products Viewed with Reviews, you may see that your product coverage is 35% but your products viewed with reviews is 75%. You can interpret this to mean that although 65% of your products have reviews, only 25% of those products are actually being viewed on your website. Your action item may be to reevaluate your site usability and/or revisit your product catalog. All in all, benchmarks can help pinpoint your strengths and weaknesses, but it is ultimately up to you to take action!

It has been quite a month for Bazaarvoice! We were named Austin’s Best Place to Work, and our CEO Brett Hurt was just named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in Austin. In addition to these very prestigious awards, Bazaarvoice awarded our top moderators by inducting them into the Bronze, Silver, or Gold Club. Together, our moderators have read and moderated over 50 million reviews, with our three Gold Club team members moderating over 100 million characters each! To put it in perspective, that’s the equivalent of moderating War and Peace more than 32 times!

This is a world-class achievement — these moderators have read and moderated more reviews than anyone else in the world!

Bazaarvoice has always been proud to tout its unique culture, and this pride has spread to the Moderation Team as well. When Bazaarvoice does a service project, the moderators are quick to lend a hand. For our Teddy Bear drive last Christmas, the moderators brought in more teddies than any other Bazaarvoice team! And just as Bazaarvoice wears green to cheer on our Sales Team at the end of a quarter, so do the moderators.  We meet regularly for happy hours and team events, and some moderators even meet in small groups to visit client stores they are curious about.

As a world-class organization, we hire only the best, and our moderators come from all walks of life. All of them have Bachelor’s degrees, and many have Master’s degrees and beyond. We have lawyers, teachers, flight instructors, and trapeze artists. Their backgrounds are eclectic and unique, but at the core is their passion for what they do. Our moderators take to heart that they are our “Guardians of the Brand.” If you know someone with the passion and dedication to join our team, we’re hiring!

From left: Heather Brunner (SVP Client Services), Pamela Gentry-Bailey, Melissa Mathews, Amy Aldrete, Charlie Marriott (Manager, Content Operations).

]]> http://www.bazaarvoice.com/blog/2009/06/23/bazaarvoice-moderation-team-%e2%80%9cgold-club%e2%80%9d-reads-more-reviews-than-anyone-else-in-the-world/feed/ 1 http://www.bazaarvoice.com/blog/2009/03/11/optimizing-customer-voice-how-consumer-feedback-affects-your-entire-organization/ http://www.bazaarvoice.com/blog/2009/03/11/optimizing-customer-voice-how-consumer-feedback-affects-your-entire-organization/#comments Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:28:02 +0000 Heather Brunner http://www.bazaarvoice.com/blog/?p=629 This post was guest-written by Heather Lippincott, Bazaarvoice Community…]]> This post was guest-written by Heather Lippincott, Bazaarvoice Community Manager.

On March 4, Bazaarvoice hosted a webinar focused on the benefits of user-generated content (UGC) throughout the entire organization. Moderated by Bazaarvoice's Heather Brunner, the webinar cited exemplary statistics from Bazaarvoice clients Skymall and Oriental Trading Company.

UGC provides intelligence and value throughout the organization, not just in marketing. Forward-thinking companies allow their feedback to improve their overall business structure. In addition to the obvious benefits to sales, UGC can lower operational costs such as reduced returns and support calls, as well as helping reliability departments pinpoint design flaws or manufacturing errors. However, successful permeation requires grassroots initiative within the company as well as from the top down.

Retailer Skymall has integrated UGC throughout all of their customer touch points – on their Web site, mobile site, through their catalog as well as on their CRM system. Many of their phone customers ask, "Is this a good product?" With reviews linked to the CRM system, customer service representatives can provide shoppers with real customer feedback, resulting in higher conversion, higher AOV, and shorter transaction time. The agents also have insight into every reviewer interaction, reaching out to those whose reviews are exceptional, either positive or negative. As a result, Skymall has successfully transformed annoyed customers into happy repeat purchasers.

Oriental Trading Company (OTC) pulled together an eight-person SWAT team, bridging the merchandising, marketing, and inventory departments, to break down review content by the action needed and the department responsible. Thanks to this system, the team were able to catch a design flaw based on reviewers' comments. After investigation, they took the item off their Web site, replaced inventory, and publicly responded to customers about the flaw, creating additional processes to alert them to similar failures in future.

To date, OTC has responded to more than 700 products, updating product images on 10 percent; updating product copy on 19 percent; discontinuing 38 percent; and returning 32 percent to their vendors. As a result, OTC has seen a 16 percent increase in conversion of 4- and 5-star products.

The voice of consumers is powerful for your enterprise. Listen to your customers. Take action. Then close the loop. If you missed this webinar, ask your Bazaarvoice Community Manager to send you the link.

One of the most rewarding aspects of being a Community Manager is the ability to help clients improve customer satisfaction. By now, we all know that UGC increases sales. However, retailers often overlook the ability to identify opportunities to improve products through this content. Ratings & Reviews is a gold mine for uncovering these opportunities. On any given day of the week, I can be heard preaching to my clients on the importance of monitoring, analyzing & responding to negative reviews. I truly believe that every negative review is an opportunity for proactive customer service. I can share countless examples where clients have identified product defects, shipping errors and customer service complaints through UGC. Rather than turning a blind eye to this content, I encourage my clients to respond directly to the consumer to address the issue. I admit this is a lofty task to undertake, but the reward is exponentially greater than the level of effort required. After all, what is the lifetime value of a customer worth to you?

But please, don’t take my word for it – hear it firsthand from one of my clients. I recently had the opportunity to interview Jim Deitzel, Manager of eMarketing & Brand Communications for Rubbermaid, on the topic. Here are his thoughts on “negative” reviews:

What were your goals when adding Ratings & Reviews to Rubbermaid.com?
Rubbermaid had several goals when we implemented Ratings & Reviews from Bazaarvoice on our site. We wanted to facilitate the conversation between consumers using our products, give them an opportunity to rate their experiences, and do a lot of listening. Based on knowledge from previous research, we knew that consumers who visit Rubbermaid.com are looking for better product information. This includes reviews from other consumers and information on how to buy online or in the store.

What results did you expect to achieve from Ratings & Reviews?
We expected a positive experience from Ratings & Reviews. But we also knew there was a chance that we could receive negative reviews on our product pages. Would negative reviews turn our product catalog pages from sales tools into “beware signs”? On the flip side, we wanted the Web site to be a trusted place where consumers could collect detailed product information from the manufacturer and learn from other consumers’ experiences. In the end, we saw any negative reviews as an opportunity to connect with consumers, solve their problems, and learn from their feedback.

What is Rubbermaid’s stance on negative Reviews?
Within the first month of implementing Ratings & Reviews on our website, we were faced with our first problem: some negative feedback. While the majority of reviews were very positive, we were also seeing a handful of similar, negative comments about a new product at the time: Produce Saver. But were they really negative reviews?

Technically, yes; the feedback was negative in nature. But, we quickly discovered that the negative reviews had one thing in common – the product was failing to meet needs but also not being used correctly. You see, to keep fresh produce correctly in the container, you must only store whole produce. If you chop it up, you have no chance in saving it beyond its “rot” date. Almost every reviewer who had a negative comment about Produce Saver was using it to store leftover or pre-chopped fruits and vegetables.

We knew the usage guidelines. But why didn’t these reviewers seem to know? Wasn’t it printed on the packaging or inside the container? It wasn’t. And it was time to revisit the communication of this key information to our consumers.

How did you respond to the negative reviews?
We immediately went to work with the product manager to create instructions and recommended usage for Produce Saver. We posted the usage document on the actual product page of the Web site and linked to it from other areas of the site that highlighted Produce Saver. Then the product manager wrote an informative blog post describing the recommended usage of the product and why it works best that way. Finally, we took this new content and responded directly to the consumers (who submitted the reviews) via the Web site.

By addressing the negative reviews head on, Rubbermaid showed consumers that they truly value their feedback. What a remarkable way to create raving fans out of your customers!

by Anna Skaya, International Community Manager

Londoners are huge talkers! On the mobile, at the tube stations, or in queue at the loo, there is a constant exchange of information on every level and in every direction. Plus – with the reputation of being the most international city in the world – it happens in every language! It is no surprise that I am finding that the online community in the UK to be just as vocal.

Word of mouth IS London. I know it firsthand – as a recent arrival, I already know where they serve the best Sunday Roast, or where to find the best tikka masala, or that I can get the coolest knickers at Primark (no kidding!) – all without ever opening a guidebook or patrolling the city.  Londoners LOVE to talk. On the tube and in the pub, as well as on blogs, and our client’s sites – everyone is doing their part to make me feel like a local.

So far, I have been genuinely impressed with my clients, and some of the biggest UK names like Screwfix, Wickes, Boden and Halfords are driving the UK online industry. Their fresh ideas and forward-thinking Ratings and Reviews and Ask & Answer branding is reaching the best audiences, and growing a fantastic online community. 
What I’ve learned so far…

Brits are positive about products! Our recent study proved that UK shoppers are even more positive than US shoppers when it comes to reviews. 88% of UK reviews have a  4 and 5-star ratings, and 80% of UK reviewers have written six or more online reviews – showing huge brand engagement. I love this stat – I think it shows that the market in the UK is smaller, allowing for more consumer loyalty with set brands. UGC makes that connection and loyalty with the brand even stronger! I knew this story really hit on something big when I saw it picked up in almost a dozen publications this week, including Internet Retailing, New Media Age, NetImperative, and more!

This is tremendous news for our client here – the need for word of mouth and the excitement generated by these stats truly show the importance and necessity of the customer voice in the industry. As we gear up for our Social Commerce Summit in Austin, look to the UK to be driving many of the new ideas on social media, blogging and consumer intelligence. And I’ll be bringing all the learnings back to the UK for our clients who can’t make the trip to across the Atlantic.

UK clients embrace multi-channel marketing! While use of reviews overall continues to build in the UK, what really sets this market apart are the fresh ideas and new brand voices – there is just so much room for creativity and innovation here!  Boden’s post-purchase email is a great example of how they extend their personal voice beyond their site while collecting more reviews, and their “weekend getaway” email is terrific – and so innovative that Kelly Mooney (author of The Open Brand) blogged about them!

My favorite frills and lace client, Figleaves, recently blogged on their uber-fun blogleaves to encourage customers to become their lucky 10,000th reviewer. Way to get the whole community pumped up about your milestone! And check out the ultimate use of multi-channel far beyond the website, even on a double-decker bus! 

This is only the beginning! We are rocking it in the UK – the energy is high, and there is so much to do! My favorite part? Meeting my UK clients in person and helping them innovate with their customer-generated content. It makes the 300 days of rain all seem worthwhile!