TTI increases PDP engagement with UGC

Reviews support TTI’s customer-driven transformation

In a highly competitive environment, many of the most successful brands differentiate themselves by adopting a more customer-centric approach to all parts of their business.

TTI, a manufacturer of power tools, outdoor power equipment, and floor care appliances, recently made this transition, and the efforts are paying off.

The building and renovation industry is growing by leaps and bounds, and companies know there’s always going to be demand for these kinds of products, said Pinkky Bhatia, Head of Digital (Consumer) at TTI. However, it’s concentrated among just a couple of major players who only focus on cost and aren’t innovating with solutions that solve what customers actually want.

TTI and its brands, including Ryobi, AEG Powertools, and Vax, seized the opportunity to stand out by fuelling business decisions with the customer experience in mind.

Our ‘aha’ moment was when we recognized that we don’t just sell products – we sell a service, which is the whole experience throughout the purchase and post-purchase lifecycle. That meant having a customer focus in every single thing we do going forward, said Bhatia.

Driving sales with the voice-of-the-customer

Customer opinions serve as a core component of establishing a positive customer experience, and TTI uses Bazaarvoice Ratings & Reviews to give consumers the confidence to buy.

No matter how well crafted a brand’s content, it will never be as compelling as content by a fellow consumer, and reviews are an integral part of our consumer-generated content strategy, said Kon Romios, Head of Consumer Marketing at TTI.

The growth in the number of shoppers who rely on consumer-generated content (CGC) to make informed decisions is global. Nearly half of all shoppers in APAC interact with CGC before buying, according to Bazaarvoice’s Shopper Experience Index Report, which studied how consumers engage with more than 5,700 brand and retail websites in the Bazaarvoice Network.

So many of our purchases are influenced in this way that reading reviews has become a habit. Thinking about going into a restaurant? Check Facebook or Zomato. It’s the same for books on Amazon, movies on Netflix, random stuff on eBay and apps in the app store, said Bhatia.

Making it easy for shoppers to find the kind of authentic information they want is proving effective for TTI.

The biggest impact on conversion is based on the human nature to get validation from friends and others for a sanity check that the product is worth the money and help them make better decisions, said Bhatia.

Reaching shoppers in the moments that matter

TTI puts the CGC in front of shoppers when they need it most by distributing reviews to key retailers.

We sell Vax through a dozen retail sites across Australia, and we’re getting fantastic results from syndicating content to those sites. We’re reaching an audience that’s in-market for our category of products, said Bhatia.

The benefit of reviews extends beyond the digital space, as TTI sees the content as a means to driving more in-store success.

We see the impact that online reviews have on offline sales. There’s a connection between shopping on a retail site and buying in a store, and we converged that experience. So many customers are either looking at online reviews prior to purchasing or while in the store aisles, said Romios.

Reducing the need for direct customer support by interacting with customers at-scale

The company also leverages Bazaarvoice Questions & Answers to connect directly with shoppers and address customer queries publicly.

Questions & Answers has essentially become a service channel, which means customers are getting an even higher level of support without having to pick up the phone or sit on their questions. On average, we have noticed increased engagement of 10 seconds on product pages with reviews and questions and answers, said Bhatia.

Taking advantage of data and insights

The insights TTI gets from CGC also adds to the company’s larger efforts around using data to better understand customers and deliver on their wants through personalisation.

In looking at the multiple providers of product reviews, one key reason we choose Bazaarvoice is that we didn’t want to compromise on our data. We invested in Salesforce, rather than having our data across many platforms, so it was very compelling that Bazaarvoice integrated so well with Salesforce, said Bhatia. We can sync all our customer data to continue maintaining a 360-degree view of the customer.

Continuing to use CGC as a key component of success

As part of our ongoing digital transformation, reviews are the natural answer in giving customers the assurance needed to choose our brand and having Bazaarvoice as the solution provider legitimizes the authenticity of these, said Bhatia.