September 28, 2011
By the ZippyCart Content Team
An online shopper is comparing cases for one of her most precious investments: her laptop. She wants to be sure she’s getting something that will do the job, and not just for a week, so she reaches out to her fellow ecommerce customers for opinions. Will our heroine solve her dilemma before it’s too late? Will her laptop be cozy and scratch-free, or will her search continue into the holiday shopping frenzy? Join us in this highly theoretical–but entirely plausible–journey down Ecommerce Q&A Lane.
(Potential) Customer: “I’m thinking about buying this laptop case, but I’m wondering about the durability of the zipper. It looks a little flimsy in the picture, especially for the price tag. Can anyone vouch for it?”
Q&A Forum: [crickets]
[Two Days Later]
(Apprehensive) Customer: “…Hello?”
[Another Day Later]
Q&A Forum: “Hi there, I’m Dave from [website] Customer Service. I can assure you this product is a great value and comes with our 30-day no-risk return, standard on all our items. If for any reason you’re dissatisfied with the product, we’re happy to help.”
(Not a) Customer: “Thanks. For nothing.”
The Customer Service Rep has thwarted our heroine. There is certainly nothing wrong with getting the opinion of an employee; let’s make that clear. Sometimes a customer’s question could only be answered by someone who works for the store, such as inquires about return policy or shipping costs. Other times either a CSR or a consumer could help, such as with a clarifying question about materials. However, in this case, it’s obvious CSR Dave was not the right person to contribute his opinion. Dave has only provided assurance that if her suspicions about the product are correct, she can return it. But really, wouldn’t you rather just buy a durable product in the first place? So would our heroine. That’s why input from actual consumers on a Social Q&A is so valuable to shoppers.
Why not just trust product reviews? According to George Eberstadt, CEO and Founder of social ecommerce solution TurnTo, reviews can be a good tool when available and employed properly. However, Q&A offers some advantages in conjunction with reviews.
“We’ve … done sentiment analysis on social answers and found that it tends to run more positive than for customer reviews,” he told us, adding that “reviews tend to come disproportionately from those who have had extreme experiences – the 5s and 1s.” The ability to ask a specific question and get targeted answers can reduce that bias that comes from an employee or general product review. And “exposing sincere criticism has been shown to have a net positive effect by building credibility,” according to Eberstadt.
TurnTo released some exciting data for the Q&A world this week. They posted questions to four different categories of online stores across three different Q&A providers: PowerReviews, BazaarVoice, and themselves. They asked four questions per site. TurnTo’s Social Q&A forums generated 117 customer answers over four weeks. PowerReviews and BazaarVoice combined only got 16 consumer responses in that time. That’s less than 14% of TurnTo’s results. (The two of them also got a total of 15 replies from store employees.)
With this kind of success, where’s Social Q&A headed next? How might it play into Q4 and the upcoming shopping season? Eberstadt has a good feeling about the future:
“My guess is that 2012 will be the year that social Q&A starts to become commonplace on ecommerce sites, and by the end of 2013, sites that don’t have it will be the exception rather than the norm – much like customer reviews are today. As far as the 2011 holiday season: there are a number of sites out there using social Q&A today, but consumers haven’t yet become accustomed to it the same way they have to ratings and reviews.”
Social Q&A: the world of tomorrow, today!
Lucy Weiland is a recent graduate of Western Washington University, majoring in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing. She's also the Content Marketing Manager at ZippyCart, a Seattle native, an avid consumer of all things mango, and something of a runner. She considers laughter as necessary as blinking. She hopes it occurs nearly as frequently as blinking, too.
