How Product Reviews Can Sharpen Your Customer Success Assets

By Attie Vandermerwe, Vice President, Consulting Services

What do your customers really think about your products and services? One of the best ways to find out is by reading product reviews on sites like Gartner Peer Insights, G2 Crowd, and TrustRadius -- to name just a few of the most popular sources of high-tech industry user reviews. Think of these sites as “Yelp for IT.” Here you’ll find candid opinions – good, bad and indifferent – written by actual users of your software and hardware. And you can find out what they think about your competitors too.

Product-review sites contain rich stores of product-usage data and insights that you can utilize in multiple ways. For example, your development teams can use the feedback to improve the product and directly address issues discussed by users in these online forums.

But don’t forget that your marketing teams can also leverage these sites to create more focused and effective customer messaging and communications. Product review sites can serve as “listening posts” to help you hone in on what really matters to your customers, which is not necessarily your typical solution brief hype.

Mainstay has been helping tech companies compile and analyze user reviews – and then leverage the findings to create more powerful sales and marketing assets (customer stories, blogs, videos, infographics) that respond effectively to what your customers say they like and dislike about your products – and those of your rivals.

Here’s what a typical engagement looks like:

•        Phase 1 – Strategic review of relevant product-review sites

•        Phase 2 – Create a Product Review Scorecard

•        Phase 3 – Use the scorecard findings to review existing customer-facing assets and identify gaps and misalignments

•        Phase 4 – Update existing and create new assets based on the review

After realigning and/or refreshing your customer assets, Mainstay can provide regular updates of peer-review sites and monitor changes to user sentiment. We’ll issue alerts when we see significant new feedback related to you or your competitor’s offerings. We’ll also provide a demographic summary of the product reviewers, including the size and type of company where the user is employed, and his or her job category.

To date, our product-review assessments have revealed a spectrum of insights from actual users. These include critiques – and praises -- of technical features, costs, service performance, implementation and integration difficulties, training, product roadmaps, and more.

Remember these peer-reviewers are often key influencers at the organizations that buy your products and services. It only makes sense to put your hand on the pulse of these front-line opinion makers with the aim of creating extremely relevant marketing messages and assets that address their real-life experiences and needs head-on.

To learn more about our Product Review Assessment Services, reach out to me at Attie@Mainstaycompany.com.