Overstock.com’s Jacob Hawkins on Customer-generated Reviews

Few marketing touchpoints put customers in the driver seat the way customer product systems do. While this tactic has its detractors—those worried about negative publicity and those pointing out the ability for marketers to post fake reviews—consumer approval is convincing larger numbers of online merchants to take the plunge. JupiterResearch reported last year that 48 percent of online shoppers it polled find customer reviews helpful in making online purchasing decisions.Overstock.com, the Salt Lake City-based mass merchandise e-tailer, has not needed any prodding on this front. The company launched in 1999 and opened up its site to customer-generated reviews just two years later, says Jacob Hawkins, senior vice president, online marketing. In 2005, it upgraded its system, outsourcing this function to Bazaarvoice. This week, we talked to Hawkins about the benefits of customer-generated reviews, touching on a few pitfalls to avoid.TM: What steps does Overstock.com take to populate customer reviews on as many products as possible?JH: Originally, we had a link on the product page where customers could click and leave a review for the product. And we found that if we did that, the only people who left reviews were people who had bad experiences. We found that customers abide by the mentality, “No news is good news.” Where, “If I buy from you and you don’t hear from me, you’ve done a good job.”So we found it was necessary to go and ping the customers—send them an e-mail—usually as soon after they receive the product as possible, while they are still excited about the product and more willing to share some feedback about it. That way we can get people who have had a positive experience with our product leaving feedback on those items. So that’s the first thing we’ve learned, that it’s important to proactively go out there and ask them to leave a review on an item.Some companies will pay or give some bonus to people who leave reviews, and you have to be careful doing that. You want people to come and leave unbiased reviews for the sake of leaving the review, not for the sake of getting a prize. TM: How have you managed the posting of customer reviews?JH: Originally, when the reviews were launched, we had our buyers manage them, the same people who were going out and buying our products. And can you guess which reviews showed up on the Web site? Surprise, surprise, it was always the top reviews that said the products were fantastic—all where the review was smart enough to see the product the way the buyer did. We received a lot of negative feedback from our customer base saying, “I buy these items and if I don’t have a good experience, you don’t leave me any channel to voice my concerns about those items.” As we thought about this—and primarily in the last three years—Overstock’s focused heavily on improving the customer experience on our Web site. When people come to our site, interact with our site, when they buy from us, when they call our customer service line ... any of the touchpoints we have with customers, we want to make sure it’s a valuable point with the customer and that we’re treating them well.If we have a 100 units of a given product on our Web site, and three people buy it and three people have a bad experience with that product, I’d much rather have those three people leave bad reviews on that item so that no one else buys it. Because, as a company, it’s not about selling product online. It’s about creating long-term relationships with your customers. We now have a team of people who go through and manage our product reviews, and if we have items that have heavy negative review percentages, we will actually pull those items off-site. We’ll review the item, see if the description is incorrect, if the picture is not correct or doesn’t best represent the item. And we’ll see if we just need to change up the creative and copy on it, or if it’s just not a good product. And if it’s not a good product, we’ll go and liquidate the item. We’d rather burn it in back of our warehouse than sell it to a customer and lose that customer.So two years ago, we [outsourced our review system], and our buyers no longer have control over our review system. It runs through marketing and a neutral third-party group. And we’re very willing to put negative reviews on the Web site. It makes it a nonbiased review system; it adds credibility to the review system. It actually adds to the buying experience for the customer, where if a customer buys a desk and leaves a negative review saying, “I had hoped this was a heavier weight desk, and it’s actually lighter in weight than I thought,” then someone who is looking for a lightweight desk might find that helpful, and it will help them make a more informed buying decision. They’ll be more satisfied. As long as they’re constructive reviews … they’re saying the product is terrible and they leave a constructive review as to why that is instead of just ranting and raving, we’re happy to put those on the site because it leads to more satisfied buyers. They’re never going to all be perfect, and that’s part of having an unbiased review system.TM: How are customers reacting to the ability to post their own product reviews?JH: We’ve seen some information, and we haven’t measured this heavily, but we do know that items that receive some positive reviews versus no reviews at all sell better. There’s a point where there’s a critical mass on reviews; one positive product review is not as good as three positive product reviews. Generally, when items first come on site, it takes some time for customers to leave reviews … as they get those reviews, and people can go and read those reviews, they’re more willing to buy those items and take chances on items that they’re on the cusp of purchasing.So they absolutely do make a difference. I don’t have hard numbers for you, but we know they absolutely do make a difference.TM: Any plans to enhance the customer review tool beyond the current configuration?JH: We’re always looking for ways to make it better, to display it in more places, to make it easier for customers to sort by reviews. There’s everything from video reviews, where customers can leave a video review of what they thought of a product … As silly as this sounds, there are these people who we call “mavens”—from Malcolm Gladwell and “The Tipping Point”—they are these inherently helpful people, he says, and they buy an item and they feel morally obligated to tell other customers what they thought of that product.So there are a lot of ways that instead of just putting [customer reviews] on the product page, you can incorporate them as a sales tool and as a customer experience tool on your Web site, in your customer e-mails, in the search functionality of your Web site, in the browsing functionality of your Web site … just in a number of places. We’ve gone so far as to use some of that information in our marketing correspondence, because I feel it’s a great way to communicate people’s connection to the brand of Overstock and to the products they’re getting through Overstock.So, we use that information in a number of ways, and we’re also looking at ways to expand that out and make it more meaningful and valuable to customers.TM: Any advice for companies thinking about allowing customers to post reviews?JH: One, if you’re going to do it, make sure you work with someone who knows what they’re doing. It’s not an easy thing to incorporate reviews across your entire Web site, especially if you’re a mass merchandiser. The questions you need to ask a customer to see if they’re satisfied and what they thought of the different attributes of a product will vary by category. With a camera, you can say, “Does the optical zoom?” and “Was it as efficient as you thought it would be when you read the product description?” For a down comforter, it could be, “Was it as soft as you expected?”Also, make sure that you proactively go out there and ask customers to leave reviews.Have a team of people who are reviewing those reviews to make sure that anything that is obscene or is derogatory in general but not constructive toward the buying experience is pulled off the Web site. If you have partners who are selling on your Web site, make sure there is some policing mechanism in case they are leaving malicious reviews for other partners’ [products].Then, really stop and think as you put those reviews in, how do you incorporate that data into your marketing plan, on your Web site and in your correspondence to your customers?

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Overstock.com’s Jacob Hawkins on Customer-generated Reviews

Hallie Mummert

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