SMS Review Solicitation
A kiosk-to-web experience that allows kiosk customers to easily receive a receipt of their order, then leave a review or get help.
KeyMe Locksmiths
Overview
Note: Some content cannot be displayed due to the NDA.
One of the main motivators for copying a key at a KeyMe kiosk is social proof - aka ratings and reviews. The more ratings a given kiosk has, the more credible it seems. However, while every kiosk has customers, not all of them leave reviews on their experiences. Therefore, kiosks with fewer reviews seem less trustworthy, and new customers are reluctant to try them out. We needed to encourage more reviews to draw more customers.
At the time, we solicited reviews via email. After a customer's order was fulfilled, the customer received an email asking about their experience. They were then directed to the Google Buisiness Profile (GBP) page for the kiosk and asked to leave a review. This method was ineffective because:
- Not every customer reads every email.
- The customer's email client may have thought the review solicitation was a marketing email and moved it to spam.
- The experience might not have been fresh in the customer's mind by the time they saw the solicitation.
Our solution was a new feature - SMS receipts. Instead of receiving the traditional email receipt and review solicitation email, customers receive an SMS (text message) containing both a receipt and review solicitation. The SMS asks the customer to let us know about their experience and includes a link to a "landing page" on our website. That page encourages the customer to leave a review and/or contact our CX team to resolve any issues they may have had.
We hypothesized that switching to SMS receipts and review solicitations would be more successful because:
- Customers are more likely to see the SMS than an email.
- The SMS encouraged a review while the experience was still fresh in the customer's memory.
- The solicitation was in the same view as the receipt details, so it was obvious which order the solicitation applied to.
- The SMS made it easier to get help (if needed) and then leave a review since both actions were on the same page.
Due to the complexity of order status notifications for shipped keys (vs. keys dispensed right from the kiosk), we limited our SMS receipts feature to dispense-only orders - which also happened to be our most common type of order. Customers that placed orders including at least one shipped key still received the traditional email receipt and review solicitation. In a future iteration, the feature could be expanded to cover shipped orders too.
(Full process story currently in progress - stay tuned!)
Results
We first released the feature to a subset of kiosks. Within two weeks, review volume increased by 200% to 300%. We later released to all kiosks, and after another two weeks, review volume increased by 121%. However, the average rating also dropped 28%, possibliy because we made it easier to leave any review - including bad ones.
Although a drop in rating wasn't ideal, we considered this feature successful because it increased review volume - our main goal and the most important SEO metric. Then, we started testing different landing page designs to see which one leads to the best balance between higher volume and higher ratings. We found that using emojis encourages reviews, and making it easier to get help with issues encourages more positive reviews.
