How customer reviews can boost employee motivation by Lars Gronnegaard Hansen, Product Manager, Trustpilot on 17-Jan-2014

Customer reviews provide an invaluable trust signal to potential customers says Lars Gronnegaard Hansen, Product Manager at Trustpilot. By leveraging user reviews, you’re telling the world that you care what customers think, that you welcome their feedback and that you’ve nothing to hide. You’re also doing your bottom line a big favour. Using a trusted online review solution provider could see your conversion rates climb up to 58%.

But customer reviews can provide a raft of benefits to a business operation even closer to home: your employees. Forget the traditional notion of a 'Lone Ranger' leader, single-handedly buoying employee morale and motivation. A growing body of evidence shows that customer reviews are playing an increasingly central role in rallying the troops. Here’s how:

• Impact
  In the old days, customer service was a face-to-face transaction and the effect of your efforts was tangible. But in this digital world, it’s easy to feel alienated from the end result of your work. Customer reviews demonstrate to employees that their actions do have an actual impact on the lives of others, imbuing their efforts with greater meaning and purpose.


• Empathy
  Again, thanks to our digital existence, it’s easy to think of customers as faceless online entities. But customer reviews make them 'real' and employees are better able to empathise with them and their stories of good or bad service. After all, they’re customers themselves and know how annoying it is when things go wrong!


• Recognition
  Everyone likes a pat on the back and, while your employees may well get that from you, it’s far more valuable to their sense of worth and purpose that they feel their efforts are part of the greater good. Reading accounts of happy and delighted customers makes employees feel appreciated. Happy employees are more productive and adaptive to change. Plus, this 'buzz' heightens the impact of a negative review, so the employee is more likely to take steps to ensure the problem doesn’t recur.


• Credibility
  Managers and supervisors can wax lyrical about morale and motivation, but according to the Harvard Business Review, 'When leaders attempt to deliver inspiring messages, many employees react with scepticism, questioning whether leaders are just trying to get them to work harder. End users, however, can deliver convincing testimonials of their experiences with the company’s products and services, showing that leaders’ messages are more than rhetoric'. Customer reviews provide a more credible source of feedback for employees, then.

• Make sure all employees are aware of your review platform. This increases cohesion between staff and customers, creates a friendly atmosphere and fosters a community your employees will want to serve.
• Internal promotion - such as a 'review of the week' on the intranet or a poster of reviews in the lobby - is a great tool to boost engagement with reviews ...
• Create a straightforward response policy that allows employees to respond to reviews without huge amounts of bureaucracy and 'signing off'. If necessary, provide training sessions detailing your in-house guidelines for interacting with customers.
• Make customer reviews a default part of team meetings and utilise the old 'criticism sandwich' technique: talk about a positive review, then discuss any issues arising from a negative one (remember, customer reviews provide invaluable insight into ways your business can be better), before finishing on another high note.
making customers happy
• Make customer reviews part of your internal feedback and appraisal process. Employees need to see that you know they’re making customers happy.

• Customer reviews are playing an increasingly vital role throughout a range of business operations.
• Consider actively inviting your customers to review your company and service. That way you should get a realistic reflection of your company's current service performance and customer satisfaction.
• Actively collecting reviews reflects a more realistic picture than just collecting unsolicited feedback, which can mostly be negative.
• Employees can use customer reviews to boost their morale and motivation.
• It’s up to you to leverage customer reviews in this context and get the ball rolling on increased employee morale.

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