Webroot boosts review volume and response rates across all retail partner sites

Webroot specializes in online data and security protection for businesses and individuals. It empowers its customers with cyber resilience against any digital threats or data disasters. In 2019, Webroot (and its parent company Carbonite) were acquired by the enterprise information management leader, OpenText.

A strong indicator of Webroot’s success and credibility is its loyal customer base. “Once people are within the Webroot ecosystem; once they’ve gotten one or two of the products and have been with us for a couple of years, they tend to stick with us forever,” says Keenan Humphrey, Webroot Community Manager.

One of the top reasons customers cite for staying with Webroot is the high level of trust they have in the company, service, and products.

Consumer trust in Webroot is apparent in its many glowing reviews, but this impactful user-generated content (UGC) was only reaching a fraction of the channels where its products could be found. This challenge was compounded by the fact that the number of reviews it did have was too much for a lean customer support team to manage using its current system.

That meant leaving most reviews that contained questions or concerns unanswered, and leaving behind all the valuable insights that could be used to improve products.
Webroot’s need for more review visibility, management, and analysis sparked a relationship with Bazaarvoice.

Webroot extends reach and instills buyer confidence with review syndication

Retail partnerships are instrumental to the success of Webroot’s consumer products. One of its strongest is with Best Buy, but others were proving to be missed opportunities. “Best Buy has been a really long-standing retailer partnership for our consumer products,” Humphrey says. “So we always sold really well on Best Buy, but we weren’t selling well anywhere else.”
Syndicating customer reviews beyond Best Buy to other important retailers like Walmart and Staples has thus been a game changer for Webroot. “The fact that we can leverage that popularity on Best Buy’s platform and transfer some of that value over to other retail websites has definitely gone a long way to increasing visibility and driving a lot of sales,” Humphrey says.

With retail syndication, Webroot knows it’s reaching consumers through a large volume of authentic reviews on all partner sites where its products are available. Bazaarvoice’s unmatched retail network of over 1,750 global retailers attracts 20x more shopper traffic compared to other networks.

By putting this service to use, Webroot gets far more eyes on its product reviews, which can significantly increase product page conversions. Over the last 12 months, webroot has seen a 9,168% Review Volume Impact on destination sites

Webroot’s review response rate makes a huge leap

According to Humphrey, Webroot’s review management was lacking. But now, by using the Connections feature of Bazaarvoice’s Ratings & Reviews tools, he says, “One of our key tactics lately has really been increasing our response rate and improving our response time.”

The Webroot team utilizes the filters option within the tool’s workbench feature to ensure they are responding to priority reviews as fast as possible. This has resulted in:

A response rate of almost 100%
An increase in its response time by nearly 70%

“I think that’s gone a long way to increasing consumer confidence,” says Humphrey. With this process, they can respond to all one- to three-star reviews quickly to resolve any issues and retain customers. This is an important business practice, given that 87% of customers expect a response or further action after leaving a negative review.

Reviews are a valuable resource for customer feedback too. By analyzing reviews, the Webroot team can diagnose problems and determine solutions. That might entail helping the customer troubleshoot the issue or connecting them with the right contact on their sales team or technical support team. Webroot can also follow up to provide updates on support ticket status and any other pertinent information.

Webroot leverages insights to improve products and departmental collaboration

Insights and Reports are pivotal to Webroot’s UGC program and contribute to the overall success of the company. “Some of the biggest benefits of utilizing the Bazaarvoice platform has really been the ability to organize and track data,” Humphrey says. “The insights module is insanely useful. That’s probably where I spend the majority of my time.”

Humphrey takes customer sentiment data from our insights tools and presents it to other departments and company stakeholders to validate and inform business decisions. They follow leads that come up in data trends, like getting to the bottom of recurring customer questions and complaints.

They’re also able to compare product releases and updates with changes in review ratings and sentiment. Webroot can tell very clearly what’s popular or not and how its customers feel at any given time about its current offerings. “That’s really tangible evidence that I can bring back to a number of departments, from product to product marketing, that proves whether or not that update did what we wanted it to do,” Humphrey says.

This kind of customer feedback allows Webroot to stay nimble and act faster. For example, it was able to improve the performance of a big update to its mobile product, which it could tell was initially poorly received from a deep plunge in review ratings. Using this data, it compared notes and timelines with its mobile app development and support teams.

Webroot utilizes competitor analysis with Insights and Reports

The ability to compare Webroot’s performance against industry competitors is another key benefit of the insights tools, Humphrey says. As he puts it, they can “make sure that we stay honest about our performance” and find opportunities for growth.

Not only does it improve products from insights and knowledge, but it also proactively elevates the customer experience and prevents issues before they arise. Humphrey also manages the Webroot Community, where he posts FAQs and tutorials as a valuable customer resource. Even customers who aren’t community members can access this information, which will come up in relevant search results.

Excellent client service arms Webroot with the support and knowledge to thrive

It’s not just Bazaarvoice products and solutions that make a difference. For Humphrey, his favorite part about working with Bazaarvoice is the customer success management aspect. Which is our favorite feedback to receive. It’s always nice to hear positive feedback about our people.

The expertise and service that our customer success manager provides ensures that the Webroot team has all the tools and knowledge they need to understand their performance and data. “It’s a really solid communication feedback loop that we’ve been able to get into, and it’s just been so consistent.”

Get in touch here to see for yourself what makes working with Bazaarvoice so special.