The benevolent factor in customer advocacy

A recent research by Marketing Technology Insights delves into why customers are motivated to submit reviews.

It has a lot of numbers as the research slices the customer responses in many directions.

For me, a big takeaway was how large the “benevolent factor” shows up in driving consumer advocacy, that is providing feedback, not because of promotions, discounts, free samples, etc., but just to make an impact by helping others.

In this post, we look at all the research numbers to bring this point to light.

Do customers submit reviews?

• 76%: submit reviews within the first week
• 52%: submit reviews more than once per month

The benevolent factor

• for 67%, the key motivation is “helping and guiding others”
• for 65%, the key motivation is “helping a brand improve a product”
• 86% submit a rating and review for a good product with low review volumes. An indicator for a sense of duty to provide feedback for the betterment of the consumer collective
• for 77%, the key motivator to answer questions from other customers online is a “desire to help and guide others”

Conclusion:

• Don’t expect gathering feedback to require discounts, free products, etc. If you have not started actively gathering customer feedback, start now.  You will be surprised how many customers do it without strings attached
• Expose as many as possible points of customer contact as an opportunity to ask for feedback
• Make the feedback point as light as possible. Open the door for customers with much to say, to leave optional comment.  For others, just an on-the-go press of a button or a QR code scan.  Keeping the feedback simple will allow you to place the feedback points in many places without irritating your customer

Go-Do:

• If a cost is an issue, start with a do-it-yourself solution to create a simple feedback system based on QR codes. This blog post can be a good resource to get started
• To be able to see alerts, reports, but keep it simple, try AirVote – its unique QR smileys is a clear message to the customer that their response in just a scan on-the-go, without going to any websites with a list of questions
• If you have larger budgets and only need a few places, use the services such as HappyOrNot with smiley button stands

You can read full Marketing Technology Insights post here.