Monitoring Brand Reputation with 1440's Jon Jessup

PVSB 0:01

Hello and welcome to the CPG Guys Podcast, set at the intersection of commerce and tech. Your hosts, Shri Raja Gopland and Peter V. Bond, explore how brands and retailers engage consumers in a digitally driven world. And now, here are the CPG guys.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Consumer Engagement in an Omnichannel World. I'm your co-host, Peter V. S. Bond. I'm the vice president of retail strategy at Power Views. And as always, uh I am joined by my co-host. He is an e-commerce industry luminary. He is an entrepreneur. He wears many hats with uh tremendous amount of CPG experience working at uh tiny little companies like PepsiCo and JJ and Revlon. Uh, please join me in welcoming my co-host, Sri Raj Kapalan. Sri, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_03 0:54

Peter, thank you so much. First of all, I want to wish all our uh followers and those that are actually watching this video or read this article the best of health. Um hopefully we're emerging from this pandemic and life's gonna be awesome for everybody. But I wanted to really thank our guest who's joined us today, who Peter's about to introduce in one second, because we're trying a new format for the first time. And I'm personally very excited about it. You don't have to watch just Peter and me having a discussion between ourselves about CPG and e-commerce, and we actually have a guest. And how exciting is that, Peter?

SPEAKER_02 1:25

Oh, it's really exciting, Shri, and I am very, very happy and pleased, St. Rives, John Jasop. John is the founder and CEO of a company called Reputation Studio. Now, they built a platform on top of Salesforce Service Cloud that allows their client to use this platform to respond to ratings, reviews, and other types of user-generated content across multiple retail platforms and what have you. So uh uh I want to really uh thank John and introduce him. John, welcome to our show.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Well, thank you, thank you guys. Really appreciate having me on. Um I you know really want to take this opportunity to talk about just the power of customer reviews. You know, we're all consumers and we all rely on reviews to make purchasing decisions. Um we've obviously seen the last couple months just the increased volume of e-commerce and reliance on you know reading reviews to make purchasing decisions. Um and so obviously with you know with Amazon and with Walmart and with Target and with you know owned e-commerce sites, uh user-generated content and reviews are are hugely valuable and really help drive e-commerce sales.

SPEAKER_02 2:33

Yeah, John, I uh thank you for that. I can I can absolutely uh uh echo what you're saying. Not only has e-commerce been going up, but the actual content being generated through e-commerce has been explosive. We're seeing that in our data. I'm really excited to learn about uh about what your platform does and and why you think it delivers value to brands as they're trying to uh build and maintain a very positive reputation with consumers. I should let everybody know for transparency's sake that John and I met last September at the grocery shop conference in Las Vegas. And over the last month and a half, we introduced a new partnership between Power Reviews and Reputation Studio, which allows their clients uh who are also our clients to use the Reputation Studio platform to respond to content that's being generated on the Power Reviews platform. So uh we're very bullish on this capability. I know some of that will come out in our conversation. Um so today, Sri and I put together a series of questions for you, and uh we know you'll have some great answers for us that really get to that. And before I pass off to Shree, I'm just gonna remind everybody if you look at the bottom of the screen here, uh if you want to follow us on LinkedIn or on YouTube, just go to the hashtag Shree and PVSB, and that's the easiest way to find us on those social media platforms. So with that, I'm gonna pass it on to Shri. He's got the first question for you, John.

SPEAKER_03 4:02

Sounds good. Thank you, Peter. Uh John, I'm obviously very intrigued by the name itself, Reputation Studio, because to me that conveys reputation, you know, social conversation brands have um with consumers as well as consumers have about brands. But the word studio also rings a bell to me about storytelling back in return. And given what's going on in the last five, ten years with digital transformation, to me, it's so important that brands engage with consumers online, have the discussion with them, and actually encourage a lot of social conversations. So obviously, John, the first question that comes to my mind is we're in the middle of what is arguably a global pandemic, and things are being bought online in many categories in many countries, 80-90% of all retail is now online. And in that sort of a scenario, why does customer engagement become so important?

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Yeah, I mean it's a great question. Uh I for, I mean, I think for what we're seeing with a lot of our customers, um, you know, there's a lot of great feedback about our products that you know that we're purchasing, but there's all there's also some negative feedback as well. And so for brands to understand what's going on with their products across multiple markets, multiple channels, um, there's there's valuable insights for brands to clean uh to gain from this information. Um and there's also global consumer care teams, which I'm sure you know from your past experience, that are in charge of you know responding to consumers if there's any kind of adverse effect. Um and again, we're all making purchasing decisions based on this user-generated content. And if there's a negative review and the brand hasn't responded to that, uh a lot of us consumers are gonna sort of just go on to the next product and look for one that doesn't have issues where the bronze the brand's actually engaged. Um, the other thing that we've been seeing recently is uh when you think about a share of market, um, so you've got a certain product that's in a certain category, and let's say it's number three on Amazon, um, the brands that are actually being very successful in terms of gaining additional market share are the ones that are actually engaged with their consumers. And the ones that are not are actually dropping in terms of uh you know the consumers of what the what the what the consumers think about that product.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

That's great. That's very helpful, John. Uh I can tell you, I know from talking to quite a number of brands and also the retailers that sell those brands that increasingly uh the scores that they're getting uh are determining uh how that that product is treated on the site. Do they get uh do they get placement on the site? Uh are brands getting penalized. So I hear brands very, very focused on I gotta address these bad reviews. So what should brands be doing to address bad or low-rated reviews is as the terminology means.

SPEAKER_03 6:51

John, if I can just append to that question, in addition to what can brands do to address these bad reviews, you know, my humble belief is every review is equally important and the consumer wants to engage, or whoever submitted the review wants to engage. So do you treat the bad ones versus the good ones differently? If you can just uh build that into your answer?

SPEAKER_00 7:12

Yeah, no, absolutely. So that's that's a great question. So I I think it really depends on the the product in the category. Um if there's an adverse effect where you know it's like a consumer is taking something uh either topical like on their face or they're actually consuming it. And like there actually are FDA requirements, as I'm sure you know, um, where you actually have to respond with us within a certain period of time. And there's actually a business process that you have to follow. Um obviously if it's a five-star review that somebody says they love it or it did really it did wonders for them, you know, there's you you have more time to respond to that. We we still believe that you should respond to that. Um, but I think us as consumers, um, we we're we're constantly reading reviews, making purchasing decisions based on them. Um but if you know if I see some that that somebody's, you know, for example, like a like a pet, like a pet supply food, but you know, get if I'm gonna give it to my dog and somebody else's dog had major issues with that product and the brand didn't respond to it, I'm I'm definitely not buying it, right? Um so so I mean the brands have to respond to the negative ones faster. Um and when you talk about FLAs, I mean, if it's an adverse effect of somebody, you know, consuming or or using that product, um, I mean, three, four, or five business hours is is is pretty much like the the max. Um, but the problem is for a lot of these brands, they don't have tools to manage, you know, they don't even know that a one-star review's been written for a day, right? Um, and so I've even seen a lot of brands their SLA doesn't actually start until when they receive the negative review. But if they don't get if they don't receive it, um, then did it not happen? Um and so uh, but uh but obviously if you know if the longer that negative review is out there, um you know, and consumers are looking at it, I mean that that's definitely gonna affect affect sales.

SPEAKER_02 8:58

Yeah, that's great. Uh I I know from our data that uh if you don't respond to uh a negative review, uh that person becomes even more vocal. But if you do and you address their needs, they can actually become one of your strongest brand advocates. I think Sherry and I have have talked to uh them about that. The interesting thing about ratings and reviews is the ratings kind of occur after a consumer has conducted a transaction, they bought the product. Um and while consumers that are looking for uh looking for other genuine authentic feedback to help them make their purchase decisions, sometimes it's not just a review. Maybe a review doesn't answer the question they have. Talk about um questions and answers also as a mechanism that that brands really need to pay attention to.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Yeah, I mean, QA is really interesting. Um, I mean, I've I've read probably in my in the last you know two years of starting Revitation Studio, I've probably read uh 10,000 questions that consumers are asking. And um it's it's just really interesting to see what types of questions people have about products. Um and I've also seen a lot of a lot of really bad answers to questions, right? Um and and as I'm as I'm sure both of you guys know, uh QA is kind of a it's kind of a social thing that's that we put into our e-commerce experience. And you know, when you know, if I were to go ask a question and then Peter, you know, the the the know-it-all Peter goes in and answers thinking he's got the right answer, but then Sheree comes along and he's like, why is Peter answering this question incorrectly? Um most of the platforms out there, you know, Amazon and Walmart, um Power Reviews, actually actually give they they promote that the answer came from the brand. Um, and the brand actually has the ability to comment on somebody else's answer. So there's the ability to sort of have the brand respond to it and be like, hey, I that's actually not true. Um, this is actually the facts, right? Um, but I think what's really interesting about QA as well is just um it's it's a common theme across all e-commerce channels now. Almost all sites have QA now, right? Um and if there's questions being asked and brands are not not answering those questions, then it's kind of like what's going on, right? Like, do they not care about you know answering consumers' questions, right? Um and so I think answering questions is super important, but it's also a way to fix your content, right? If people have questions about does this contain this ingredient, um, you know, um, I mean, there's so many different types of questions that consumers have, right? Um, but it's it's ways for consumers or for brands to understand how can they make the product descriptions better, maybe images. I've seen a lot of examples of like our customers will change the packaging. And so um, you know, the packaging's changed, now the and the images are changed, and now people asking questions is this is this still the same same product? You know, what's what's actually changed about the actual product that I'm gonna be that I'm gonna be getting? Um, and so you know, there's I think there's just so many amazing um you know use cases for QA. Um, but it's super important for brands to be engaged there as well.

SPEAKER_03 12:01

You know, my humble opinion is all of this should be non-negotiable for a brand. I mean, if you look at you know how much has changed in the last two and a half decades have been CPG, reputation was primarily legal or Tony oriented, and a brand, if if it was like an absolute adverse event that somebody put an ad out in a newspaper complaining about something, class action lawsuits. Now it requires one consumer and one review to change the game completely. And I feel the reason why brands struggle with this and an entire need of help with folks like yourself and Reputation Studio is the ecosystems brands have aren't built for answering every single consumer. And the focus on marketing traditionally has always been mass marketing, like emotional-based mass marketing, and so has the follow-through with consumers in many ways. So, you know, one of the things I feel strongly about is brands struggle with this because things are sold, their brands are actually sold on so many diverse channels. It could be B2B, B2B2C, B2B, B2B2B, it could be B2C, could be via a retailer to a consumer at a pickup point, could be click and collect, just collect that our ways, or just even direct to consumer. So, what are all these various channels that a brand should be monitoring and respond to? Do you address all of them? Do you cherry pick? Is it like the top 5%? Like, how do you actually get your grip, get a good grip on this?

SPEAKER_00 13:23

Yeah, no, it's a great question. So um we really like so about two years ago, we started with Amazon, because that's what we were hearing from most of our customers was like the most important, but also the most challenging channel. Um, and if you think about Amazon, there's 18 site, 18 Amazon sites globally. So all through Europe, um, I mean in Japan, um, even down in Mexico, Canada. And so, but managing Amazon is very difficult from a ratings of reviews and QA perspective. Um, and but to answer your question in terms of channels, we we're constantly listening to our customers in terms of what channels are they, you know, are they you know having having challenges in. Um, like Flipkart in India has been a really interesting one that we've added um for the past couple months because of customers you know seeing a lot of review volume there. And I think the the the really the right way to look at it is volume. Like how many reviews are being posted on those channels um where there's actually recent reviews, right? Um we we do have customers that come to us and they're like, hey, like what about this review channel over here? And I look and there hasn't been a review posted on there for two years, right? Gosh. Um, so I'm like, there's no point in looking at it at that channel because you know consumers aren't really there. Um, but uh I think and it's also in terms of countries, right? Like there's a lot of e-commerce sites that I've learned of over the past few years that I've I had never heard of, right? Uh like there's Lazada and Shoppy um in like Singapore. Um obviously we're all familiar with T Mall. Um the the review volatility on T Mall is insane. Um I saw yesterday with one of our clients, uh, they had like 4,000 comments on a product in one day on T Mall. So um the consumers are super you know focused on it. It was a lot of negative stuff being said too. Like, you know, so that's that's it's crazy. Um but going back to power reviews too, I mean, um a lot of the a lot of these brands that we're working with, they have um, I mean, they're they have 40, 50 brands they have to manage. And I mean, as you guys both know, um the e-commerce teams are typically the ones that are in charge of like the UGC strategy, but they're not the ones that are like that know the the details of uh you know a particular product that's under a certain brand, right? And so one of the big one of our big strategies is getting the the digital capabilities in the hands of the people that actually know the answers um and that are actually uh uh judged like the performance of their job is managing customer and and consumer engagement. And so that's what I that's honestly what I love most about uh helping these companies like achieve digital um you know sort of capabilities that they've never had before is getting the the information in the hands of the people that are actually in charge of that part of it, right? Um and the other thing I've seen too is um a lot of there's a lot of these companies that use BPOs. Um and they'll use a BPO in a certain in the if you don't if you're not familiar with BPO, that's a business process outsourcing. Um but they'll use a certain BPO in certain regions, right? So they might have a BPO in Europe, um, and that BPO speaks German and Italian and French. They might have a BPO in the US, this managing Canada and North America. Um and what's good about a BPO is they have the ability to scale up their resources quickly, right? And so um, I mean, there's two ways to streamline a business process, right? One's with technology, the other one's with actual process, right? And tech um, and so what the BPOs have is they have the ability to add more, add more bodies to something, right? Um, and so um I think that's that's kind of the key is being able to sort of outsource certain aspects of it, but also have the brand still have um visibility over what's going on across these channels and being able to track SLAs and you know, know how they're doing when it comes to response.

SPEAKER_03 17:01

Yeah, before we get into the next question, one of the things that came to my mind as you were describing T Mall and you were describing Flipkart was does Reputation Studio handle multiple languages and language translation? Because I gotta imagine not every review is in English.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Yep. Yeah. So translation's been a huge thing for us. Um and uh it's it's actually been so like uh and I'm I'm actually kind of shocked, but the Salesforce ecosystem, which I've been a part of for like 15 years, doesn't really handle translation well. So we actually had to build our own translation capabilities. And we've actually just started uh doing that as just a core feature as well, right? So because if I mean if you think about a call center, like a an email comes in or a web chat um or like a web form post, and that's in German. And you know, the you know, the corporate offices in New Jersey, like I don't speak German, right? Um and so uh translation translating that from German into English um and under so the corporate can understand what's going on. Um also a lot of the AI tools, like the sentiment and intent tools, uh don't actually handle multi-language very well. Um and so what we've done is in terms of we'll we'll translate like a review or a question into English and then run the analysis against it. Um and I mean Google and Microsoft, um, I mean their translation capabilities are pretty amazing now. And it's also very inexpensive, right? To to translate 50,000 reviews is is like 500 bucks. Uh whereas before in the past, like it would be pretty expensive to actually translate that with good quality.

SPEAKER_02 18:32

Well that that's actually uh excellent to lead into the next question I had. Let's flip the lens. We've been talking more about the brand's expectation to respond to the cons the customers. What do cut from your research, what what do customers expect from a timeliness of response to to content or feedback that they've shared with brands?

SPEAKER_00 18:53

Yeah, so I mean, I think it really depends on the channel um and and the type of product that you're on. Um and but I mean what what we see is I mean, cut cons consumers really want the to know that they've been heard. And they'll typically give a company a day or two to respond to them. And then most of them will kind of write you off after that. Um and so I think from a you know, from a response uh speed, um definitely responding quickly um is is key. Um, but definitely responding to those negative ones quickly. Um, but I I don't know. It's uh I mean I'd be kind of I can be kind of curious, like your your your feedback or Sherri's on that. Like, I mean, is you as a consumer, like how I mean if you were I mean, do you I assume we you guys write write reviews, like how fast do uh do you expect a response?

SPEAKER_03 19:40

I mean personally for me, because I'm in the e-commerce space and I'm like have been an e-commerce leader for very large brands. For me, anything more than 24 hours is is just an off I feel like it's an offense to the consumer. It's just wrong. Yep. You're offending the consumer.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

You're much more patient than I am, Sri. Especially when it comes to other forms of of feedback and what have you. If I've got a plot problem with an airline and I sent them a message through through direct message in Twitter, I I want them to respond back to me within minutes. But yeah, for ratings and reviews, uh I'm I'm probably uh a little bit more tolerant. But yeah, 24 hours to me is at least a business day. You know, if I if I send something on a Saturday, I think I'm realistically understanding I'm not gonna get a response until Monday. But that that's usually what I want.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

I think it's also kind of interesting, right? Like uh, you know, there's been a lot said around you know, one-day delivery, right? You could order something today and it's there tomorrow, but then we have the same like, and that you're actually like putting something in a box and shipping it to somebody. Yeah. And we have the same expectation that if I if I if I'm not happy, they have the same amount of time that it took me to get the product to them to have the brand actually respond to them, right? It almost seems like the faster the fulfillment gets, the faster our responses should be.

SPEAKER_03 21:00

You bet.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:02

So, John, what comes to my mind is we just had a conversation, short conversation here about how how brands have to respond within a certain time period, which is dynamically evolving. I said 24 hours, Peter said as fast as possible. Consumers are reasonable, I think, for the most part, and understanding weekends and time zones and things of that nature. But just before that, we also talked about the number of platforms a brand can be, and therefore, if you wear a brand lens and it's about a SKU, you probably are overwhelmed as a brand manager with the amount of responses you got to uh get out there and and and the speed and dynamism with which you got to get out there. So, are there like any specific technologies, automation that can help a brand do this quickly and dynamically so they can keep up with the space and also make sure that it actually helps them talk to every consumer who does want to engage with them?

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Yep. No, 100%. Um, and I mean the first thing is just consolidation. You've got to, you know. You got to figure all the channels that you care about. And I would argue that all of the channels are important. But consolidate every consolidate everything into one platform. And there's definitely a lot of automation you can do in terms of routing it to the right people. And so I, you know, we had talked about you might, you know, might you might have a company that has 40 brands, making sure that if you've got a team that knows that a certain particular brand really well, like automate it, automatically routing those to them and also tracking SLA, right? I mean, say you come in in the morning and there's a hundred reviews that you need to respond to that morning, making sure that they know that like this, these are the older ones and these are the newer ones. And so being able to sort based on based on that, um, that that's huge. Um also like response templates are really helpful. Um, and having the response templates be channel channel specific and rating specific. So you can have a, you know, you can have a like a Lysol one-star review template. Um, and uh this is where the AI piece comes in too, is if we know that it's a one-star review about the scent, we can sort of filter down, you might have a hundred you know, template templated responses for a brand, but you can, based on the context and what the consumer sentiment and intent is of the review, you can you can sort of narrow it down to you know, this is a negative review about the scent. Here's four or five things that you know we we might say as a with our brand voice around if people are complaining about the scent. Same thing if it's a five if a five-star review and people love the scent. Um, you could be like, you know, I mean, based on your brand message and your brand voice, um, a lot of these brands have playbooks as well. So they'll put in put into a uh into place playbooks so that when you join as a consumer care agent it with that with that brand, you know how how we talk as a brand. Um, approvals are one of the other things that comes come up a lot.

SPEAKER_03 23:50

I think what you're alluding to, and which actually scares me a little bit, and and I'd love for you to address that as you as you complete this response is given the volume of reviews, it sounds like you're alluding to automation automation of responses or automating responses by CSRs. And that to me sounds actually scary because I feel I feel it's very robotic, like an Autobot in nature.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

Yep, yeah. And I'm definitely not talking about automated responses. I'm talking talking about assist using technology to assist the agent, right? The agent, I mean, a human is gonna have to read that review. Um, but if if I'm an agent and I have a I have I have I've got a hundred different things I that I might choose from, it's it's too much information. And so it's about it's about guiding the agent um down the path so that they can that they can you know answer the cut the customer quickly and and uh and efficiently, right? Um the other the other big thing is that you know we talked earlier about adverse effects. Um a lot of brands actually want you to call them and they want to give you a reference number. Um, and um the last thing you want to do is provide like an incorrect phone number, uh, or have to like copy paste um things from you know some other systems or something, right? Um and so like just simple automation like that um is is hugely valuable. Um the the one area where where I would say automation is is actually really helpful and and I think totally, totally cool um is if somebody were just to give you a five-star review but not but not say anything, or write a one-star review but not say anything, I think the brand is okay like there saying thank you for the five-star review. Um, I mean, there's not really anything like additional context that that I can I can tell from that. Or if I, you know, and this this actually happens a lot on Google. Um, you can actually rate like a company with a one-star review but not say anything. And so the brand could say, hey, like we're sorry that you we didn't meet your expectations. Um can you can you please like let us know more information? Right. Um and I've even seen, I mean, it doesn't you don't need a human being to go to go respond to a one-star review when there's no context, right? But I totally agree with you. You you don't want to let AI bots start you know managing your brand for you. Uh that could probably turn out pretty bad.

SPEAKER_03 26:00

What I do hear from you is that in certain isolated instances, it is perfectly okay to automate a response, especially the example you gave of an kind of incomplete review where you get a one-star, but there's no logic rhyme or reason, there's no explanation. That makes all the sense in the world. Because you have to actually dig out and get more information. So, in reviewing what Reputation Studios does, I do have a question related to software and you know, having a reputation management platform built on the Salesforce Cloud platform, game changing for a brand? What do you think? And and also why?

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Yeah, I mean, I I honestly think it is. Um, the a lot of the brands that the global brands that we're working with, they're they're undergoing some massive like digital transformation strategies. Um and it's not just about ratings and reviews, it's about their call center. Um, it's about um how they're customer service. Yeah, well, customer service, but also marketing, right? Um they're trying to figure out who their consumer is. They're also trying to understand who their competition is. Um and so, really, I mean, consumer insights and and um, I mean, and also too, like they want to bring new products to market um that are innovative, um, and they want to capture more market share. Um, and so digital capabilities, I mean, it's it spans commerce, it spans, it spans customer service, it spans marketing. Um, I've seen a lot of brands recently um taking five-star reviews and actually using that in their marketing content. I mean, I'm sure, I'm sure we've seen TV commercials where they're taking the reviews of a product and um and plugging it right into their ads, right?

SPEAKER_03 27:34

They're smart ones are doing it for sure.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

Yeah, but but definitely Salesforce has been, you know, I'm I'm definitely a Salesforce fanboy, um, but it's it's been the platform that we're seeing that most global brands are choosing for this digital transformation effort. Um, I would say in the mid-market, um, we're like from a customer service perspective, we are seeing a little bit of Zendesk. Um, and we are building a version of Rep Studio that will that will work with Zendesk. Um and then, but but again, it it's not people aren't doing digital transformation on Zendesk, right? They're they're supporting customers on Zendesk. Um but global brands are looking for, you know, what's this competitive edge and competitive angle that I can I can do across my own e my own e-commerce, which obviously helps me understand who my customer is, but you can't you can't ignore Walmart and Target and Amazon. I mean, those are massive channels globally for most brands.

SPEAKER_02 28:27

Yeah. Uh John, one of the things you mentioned was how uh how brands are using ratings and reviews beyond the traditional placement on a on a PvP uh uh examples. It's hard for me to scroll through Instagram without uh seeing one or two ads that highlight the star rating. Amazon pretty much has them on every ad they place on Instagram. Uh and then I see them in retail. Uh I saw NYX put uh on the top of their their uh their uh corrugated cardboard display, uh scored four and a half out of five scars on uh target.com. So yeah, everybody's using it to really uh try to build authenticity into how they communicate with customers, regardless of whether they're in a physical store or in a digital environment. Uh so I hear you talking a lot about a really great platform and really great technology and to enable processes, but coming come what comes with that is the ability to actually measure how effective it is. So analytics, that's kind of where I come from. I just love to know what can uh brands learn about customer experience and engagement from uh from analyzing and aggregating all this data that's kind of coming through this platform.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

Yeah. And the the, and I mean it's uh these are these are like very uh I'm I'm having these conversations every single day with brands. Um and it's really fun because it's uh I'm not I'm not historically an analytics guy, but I'm becoming one. Um and uh you know, there's a lot of great analytics tools out there. Um and a lot of these companies already have some kind of analytics tool or BI tool, um, but they don't have the um sort of knowledge and expertise to figure out how to really analyze the sentiment and intent of a consumer. Um and also it's a lot of it's geographical, like read you know, and regional. Um and and and we talked about language earlier, right? You've got reviews that are in Japanese, um, and you've got a you know certain a product that does really well in the US but not doing well in Japan. Um, you know, why why is that? And so I think the biggest thing is um, you know, making, you know, having all this data and analyzing it is is great, but it's got to be actionable, right? What what what does the br what can the brands do with this data to to make the products better, right? To um to market their products to the right consumer, right? Um and so the that's really what we're working on is and and I I think Sheree, you've talked about this in the past and somebody some of the content I've written right around you is uh like predictive, right? It doesn't really matter like I mean it matters what's happened in the past, but it's uh it's it's really about what's going to happen in the future, right? Um and so that's that's really where like predictive analytics are are going, is you know, and and also trending, right? If you have a product that was that was a 3.9 and you've started engaging with the reviews, responding, and now it's a 4.3, that's that's that's a great trend, right? But it but if but if you're on the if you're on the opposite side of that and you were a 4.4 and now you changed a couple things in the product and now it's a 3-9, like you're you're gonna be feeling the hurt on that pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_03 31:39

You know, as I hear you say that, John, totally ad lib over here, uh I'm I'm thinking about how unprepared brands are for like ratings and reviews and reputation analytics. Yeah. Literally coming out of like FAQs, coming out of QA, coming out of like actual star ratings versus the language translation of what's in it. To me, traditionally for brands, what all of this analytics has been about predicting and passes on Nielsen data or idea. No offense to anybody, but it's fascinating the the things that a brand has to think through to stay elite. And maybe that's the reason why all the little brands are slowly eroding away at categories.

SPEAKER_00 32:19

Yep. I I think there's definitely some some truth in that for sure. Um, but but but also too, I mean, a lot of the little guys don't have the digital capabilities either, right? Um, I was actually just reading uh are you guys familiar with Salimo? It's the Amazon brand for Google and healthcare and everything. Yep, sure. It's but the the reviews are terrible. Um and you would think that you know Amazon could figure out you know how to how to you know um take some of the data they have access to, but they're they're not in the in that in that case. Um and so if you look at consumer sentiment and intent of the Salimo brand, you know, not not so good.

SPEAKER_02 32:56

Yeah, I I just completed an analysis of the men's shaving category at Amazon, and what you just said about Salimo was they were miles apart from the major national brands in terms of their average star rating. They it's interesting, they had the longest, the longest reviews of all the brands, but that was because people had the most to talk about because they weren't happy with the brand.

SPEAKER_00 33:21

So um, so that's I think the the other thing that's really interesting in analytics that that we're seeing and and having having conversations with our customers about is uh especially with COVID and with out of stocks. Um, you know, let's say you're you're you're normally uh you know a customer of one brand, but that brand was out of stock and you weren't able to buy it. Um you actually had to buy the competitive product. Um, and you turn you it turns out you actually like the competitor's product better than your the original product you used to be using, or vice versa, you were forced to buy the competitors and you realized how bad it is. And so one thing we're seeing in the reviews is a lot of comparison happening because consumers weren't able to buy the product they that they thought they wanted, right? And so what one thing we're doing now in the analytics is um like looking for references to competitive products in or or references of your product product in your in your competitors' reviews, and then helping you figure out like, are you losing that customers? And if you are, why? Right? Is it because you're you know they they have a feature that you have, or there's some something about the competitor's product that a consumers like more than than than your product?

SPEAKER_02 34:25

Yeah. John, this is great. Uh, I have one last question for you. Uh and it let's assume a brand has has invested in something like Reputation Studio and has built the infrastructure to kind of do this. Um, what are they doing to ensure that they are making the most of all of these capabilities to actually turn it around and go from a 3-5 to a 4-4 average star rating? What are the other practices they need to put in place to make this work?

SPEAKER_00 34:56

Yeah, I mean, uh I think the uh I mean, there's it's a lot of the stuff we've already talked about, uh, but sort of you know, to sort of recap it, it's you know, it's consolidating, it's it's doing some good analysis on it. Um, and you know, understanding is is it a problem with my product? Is it a problem with my content? Um, obviously fixing content is a lot easier than fixing your product, um, but also getting getting RD involved. Um, and I mean one of one of my favorite you know lines is you know the best way to have a five-star review is to have a five-star review, right? Um, or to have a five-star product. Um and um Hey brands, please listen to John.

unknown 35:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:32

Say that one more time, please. That's like that's like honey.

SPEAKER_00 35:36

Yeah. And so, but it but it's funny, like when when RD's not involved with the consumer engagement, it kind of kind of blows my mind, right? It's like dramatically, these are the guys that are in charge of making the product. And if they're not listening to what consumers are saying, um, I I also I I I just ran some some uh kind of high-level information for a big global brand that we know, and they said they'd meet monthly to review consumer sentiment. I'm like, like once a month is like how the best you guys can do to like figure out you know what's going on with changing. Changing every day. Um and so I mean, I I would say, you know, probably twice a week we should be meeting and figuring out what you know what's going on. Are there things we can do to tweak certain things? And a lot of it's customer expectations, right? Like if you know, if you've got a if you've a $30 item and the expectations are that it's a it's a good product, not a great product, you know, consumers are like, okay, like you know, I'm I'm buying the cheaper version of this, right? Um, but um I I don't know. I just and and I and I think the other big thing is is just uh the AI aspects of this um is I mean, I think we're in the empathy of what AI is going to be able to do for brands. Um, because we talk about speed of response, um, we talk about routing to the right teams, um, but we also talk about understanding uh what's going on in our are there any like issues that are popping up that we can quickly squash. Um and then also, too, as brands bring new product to market, what are the things that they can do based on historical to make sure that that new product they're bringing to market is going to be successful? Because if I were to launch a new product and in the first 30 days, it's a 4-8. Like, I mean, that's that's a that's a game changer for brands, right? Uh, I mean, that product's gonna skyrocket from you know an unknown product to one of the top products on Amazon or, you know, or Walmart, um, assuming that it can get some volume because review volume is also key.

SPEAKER_03 37:26

Hey John, just listening to you speak, I think you mentioned earlier about the difference in reputation management on Walmart versus a Target versus an Amazon where Target where Amazon is its own ecosystem, but the others tend to be syndicated reviews. I'd love to invite you to come back to us and chat at a later episode, perhaps, on how different is reputation management across retail, including your own D2C.

SPEAKER_00 37:49

Yeah, absolutely. Love that.

SPEAKER_02 37:51

Well, John, uh, thank you for joining us today. This has been a very illuminating conversation. I know Shri and I uh uh appreciated your feedback. Uh it's a different angle to how we've been talking about uh customer feedback, and and it's a great example of how brands really need to be thinking about investing in constantly responding to and cultivating the reputation that they have for their customers because it's gonna it's gonna have a positive or a negative impact on sales, depending on which way you're going to invest your effort. Um it's been a great show today. I want to thank everyone for joining us. And as uh as I always do at the uh beginning and the end of the show, I remind them if you want to learn more about what we're what we're talking about, just follow the little hashtag at the bottom of the screen here. Hashtag Shree and PVSB on LinkedIn and on YouTube. You can find our content. So, John, thank you for joining us today. Thank you, John. Uh, as always, thank you, and we'll look forward to getting back together with our followers in the next episode. Thanks. Thank you. Have a great night.