Europe’s best-known brands and retailers came together at Inspire, Bazaarvoice’s biggest European client event, to discuss best practices around consumer-generated content (CGC).
Here are what some of the big brands had to say:
GHD
Rob Pye, Global eCommerce Director for ghdhair.com: “Ultimately what customers are looking for is confidence. If you don’t have a CGC strategy in place, you’re losing that confidence, and therefore sales. You need to take emotion out of the debate and focus on the data and results.” That’s exactly what GHD did as part of their Global Hair Days Campaign. “It’s important to put work in and monitor customer engagement. We ensured that hashtags for the campaign were continually monitored, with each being put into one of four pre-defined categories. This in turn enabled us to use API integration to filter results based on specific characteristics, such as hair type and hair colour. By utilising CGC, not only can brands increase conversions, but they can also create more content-rich pages, helping to increase SEO.”
O2 (Telefónica UK)
Giuliano Gasparini, Senior Content and Digital Manager, O2 added: “As a customer led organisation, CGG helps us to gain greater customer insight allowing us to deliver higher customer satisfaction and helping to boost SEO significantly.”
Philips
Valérie Goncalves, Global Lead Ratings & Reviews and CGC at Philips, discussed how the brand is continuously looking to improve the customer experience through cutting edge innovation, for 3 billion people by 2025. She commented: “As a world leader in healthcare and lifestyle, Philips integrates technologies and design into people-centric solutions, based on fundamental customer insights.
We listen and learn from our customers by deriving insights from social data sources such as ratings and reviews to evolve both our products and our communications strategy. Specifically, we aim to outreach to all customers who post negative reviews, and are committed to improving brand perception and make unhappy customers happy.”
Philips currently has ratings and reviews systems in place in 48 countries. Philips responds to reviews on Philips.com and external websites, answers questions on retailers’ sites and is syndicating ratings and reviews to strategic retailers globally. The Management Team of Philips Personal Health Businesses have embraced ratings and reviews as a crucial KPI for the organisation.
And the rest…
Additional customer speakers included Debenhams, King of Shaves, Avon, Mars Petcare, Dreams, Lego, Lipsy, L’Oréal, Canon, Saturn, JD Williams, Netrauta.fi, Moonpig, Feelunique, Sephora, Argos and B/S/H. The one-day event is designed to inspire and encourage businesses to share their experiences and see how others successfully use CGC and feedback as part of their overall marketing strategy to take the customer voice even further.
Prelini Udayan-Chiechi, VP Marketing EMEA at Bazaarvoice, adds: “This year’s Inspire was our biggest European client event ever, testament to the growth of the CGC industry and interest and commitment from our clients. We’ve reached a point where Europe’s biggest brands and retailers have put customers at the centre of their strategies by fully embracing CGC, and have therefore achieved excellent results like increased sales conversions, SEO and long-term customer loyalty. It’s also exciting to see businesses across a variety of industries wanting to explore other forms of CGC, other than ratings and reviews, to be in line with the evolution of the CGC industry and consumers’ behaviour.”
Inspire follows on from the publication of Bazaarvoice’s 2017 CGC Index, which revealed that the best-in-class performing brands saw a 90 – 106 percent lift in conversions when consumers interacted with CGC during the shopping process, and more than 101 – 116 percent lift in revenue per visitor in 2016 when consumers interacted with CGC during the shopping process. The research also explored how brands can use CGC in multiple moments throughout the shopper journey, the continued growth and influence of visual content, and how businesses can leverage CGC to improve their products and customer service experiences.
