Laurie Kawakami writes a nice piece in the WSJ about companies that are providing customers the ability to review products on line. (Read the whole thing.) Kawakami writes:
“Customer product reviews are popular among online shoppers and an increasing number of merchants are rolling them out. But some retailers are struggling with how they should handle a flood of submissions, and in particular, negative reviews that could make it difficult to sell a product.”
Companies that still believe this are in denial. Every customer has his or her own printing press. Exhibit A…check out the top 10 posts for “U-Haul” here, which as of this writing, includes this one and this one and this one (and this one at number 13 and this one at number 16).
The last ‘graph is spot-on:
“But retailers must be prepared to keep the review process open and honest, accepting both positive and negative reviews. ‘If you get caught’ censoring complaints, he says, ‘you’ve blown so much more than one or two bad reviews. You’ve essentially lost the trust component.'”
There we go.