Samsung’s top target is: Offer customers an optimal customer experience. The consumer electronics brand has numerous touchpoints where customers rate their products or simply ask questions. Without professional review management this would hardly be possible. Samsung uses the gominga software for this.
Review Management is a serious customer service channel!
To ensure the best possible customer experience it is important to answer customer questions quickly, regardless of whether they are asked in stationary retail, in Samsung’s web shop, in the mobile app stores, in their own community, on online marketplaces, in Google Maps or on the social web.
Marcus Nessler – Head of Customer Experience, Samsung Electronics GmbH
Of special significance for Samsung is the online marketplace Amazon: “We are aware that many customers use Amazon reviews to inform themselves, to research, compare and find out more about a planned purchase or product, even if they do not intend to buy at Amazon in the end,” says Marcus Nessler, who is Head of Customer Experience at Samsung and responsible for customer communication with all customers who are not directly served.
“In this respect, reviews at Amazon are extremely important for us, not only because of the sales or market share of the e-commerce giant.”
One single password to the Amazon account is not the solution
But how do you best manage product reviews and customer questions on Amazon?
Miriam Aust – Jr. Project Manager Digital Service & E-Commerce, Samsung Electronics GmbH
For Miriam Aust, project manager for digital projects, digital services and e-commerce support, it was clear from the start:
“You don’t do that by giving a number of Samsung employees the password to the Samsung account on Amazon. You need a software solution. And we came across gominga.” Through the
gominga software solution, the manufacturer receives, among other things, structured information about how its own products reach customers, how the performance develops after the market launch, which questions are frequently asked and how satisfied the customers are – not only on marketplaces, but also on other relevant customer touchpoints such as its own webshop.
“Of course, we don’t just want to offer a particularly good service here,” says Aust, “but we can also establish individual solutions here.”
Many negative reviews on online marketplaces concern delivery processes, which one can only influence to a limited extent. In their own webshop, on the other hand, one has completely different possibilities
to “present solutions and initiate improvements in internal processes.”
Q&A on Amazon requires speed
By now, a double-digit number of employees takes care of customer reviews and questions.
“For us, this is no longer an avant-garde theme, but a serious channel,” says Customer Experience Manager Nessler. After all, product reviews and questions are replacing the salesperson on the floor who gives
purchase recommendations to unsure customers.
“Customers believe in the mass and the algorithm,” says Nessler. Especially with new product launches, the number of reviews increases, but also questions that the marketplace Amazon displays, for example on the
product detail pages in a separate Q&A area. This is where reaction speed is required.
“If I’m already in the buying decision process but have a question about the product, I don’t really want to wait three days until I get an answer,” says the expert. Accordingly, he considers accessibility, speed, but also completeness of the response to be important KPIs for measuring success in customer care, on which they work “every day.”
Classic market research one nose length ahead
The authentic insights into the customer perception of their own products are of course not only of interest to the teams in customer service which directly influence them. Product management, research and development and quality assurance also benefit from the data.
“The systematic analysis of the reviews brought product management and marketing closer to the customers,” says Nessler. “In the past, they had only market research as an instrument and it was relatively expensive, very abstract and very much downstream in time.” With the help of gominga, the closed loop in research, development and the factories has been “significantly simplified.”
In the future, Nessler is sure, the number of touchpoints where customers use reviews and ask questions will explode even further. “Stationary retailers take over features from online retailing to remain competitive. And if you think towards IoT, 5G and Geolocators, you can already see where the journey is going: Customers receive at certain locations from Google Maps & co. directly on the mobile phone or in a navigation system information that an algorithm believes is of interest to the customer,” he predicts.
In order to increase support speed without increasing the number of employees, Samsung will rely on AI-based support in the future. “That’s where we are going into development, so we can work as automated as possible,” says Miriam Aust. “Of course, nobody wants a robot answer. But you can support many questions on the system side and thus increase the speed.”