How the Fragrance Shop used reviews to boost sales and improve customer service
Established in 1994, The Fragrance Shop is the UK’s largest independent fragrance retailer. HQ’d in Manchester, they employ approximately 1,250 staff.
The Fragrance Shop operates in the hugely competitive UK retail environment, where consumers are targeted across multiple channels. In this competitive arena - brands need a way to stand out.
With more choice than ever before, and commoditised products, The Fragrance Shop recognised that a fantastic customer experience was the key to its success.
Understanding their customers
In order to achieve an ambitious objective of providing the very best service and experience in the marketplace, they went right to the heart of the issue: understanding their customers.
Unaware of what their valuable customers thought and with no way of collecting or measuring feedback, the retailer enlisted reviews and customer analytics platform, Feefo. With a proven track record of providing incredibly valuable and actionable insights for thousands of brands, they were confident that Feefo could provide the same for them.
Furthermore, reviews have been proven to be hugely influential on purchasing decisions, with 75% of consumers saying good reviews would persuade them to buy a product (Feefo 2016).
Healthy internal competition boosts morale and sales
Over the past year, The Fragrance Shop has been asking every customer (both in its 178 UK-wide stores and online) to leave feedback on their service (a star rating from 1 to 5, and a short comment if they so desire).
The entire business was involved in this project and had a responsibility for helping the business achieve its objective. From individual shop workers to the CEO; receiving direct customer feedback impacted the entire organisation.
The Fragrance Shop used feedback to create a league table of store service and enable the best performing stores to be showcased internally for excellent customer service. This friendly competition helped boost morale and propelled levels of customer service.
Reviews platform, Feefo, is exceeding expectations
By using Feefo, The Fragrance Shop was able to hear from, respond to and use customer reviews to see incredible results:
- Website traffic increased by 38%
- Achieved a 4.8 star rating for service both offline and online
- 48,842 reviews have been left to date
- Total sales increased by 9.4%
Barry Spence, Customer Operations Manager says:
“Feefo has exceeded our expectations. Not only has Feefo made noticeable uplifts in our conversion, click-through rates and sales but it also has made a difference to our staff’s motivation. Staff listen and take on board to the feedback that Feefo collates and our customer service has improved as a result.”
Critically, Feefo is transparent, trusted and operate an invite-only model. This means that only customers that had made a purchase with The Fragrance Shop would be invited to leave a review, eradicating any possible fakes. Fake reviews continue to affect the space with yelp stating that 25% of reviews are false, and Feefo are committed to eradicating this problem.
Authentic customers receive a personalised invitation, containing their order information requesting their review. This attention to personalisation, coupled with the sleek and mobile optimised user interface, achieves an industry leading response rate of over 16%.
Listening and responding to customers is at the heart of the business
By using reviews platform, Feefo, The Fragrance Shop was able to enhance its customer service by listening, responding to and building deep relationships with genuine customers. As a result, the brand achieved a 9.4% increase in sales, and enjoys a 4.8 out of 5 star rating.