We recently spoke to company COO, Carlisle Knight, to find out what prompted review collection, why our solution won out over our competitors’, and how our feature rich platform is contributing to brand growth.
One of our US based customers, Pura Cashmere was founded mid pandemic by ex-professional stylist Maria Knight.
Having spent years styling the women of Hollywood, Maria was well aware of a gap in the market - no one was focused on designing a flattering fit for the over 30s.
So, that’s exactly what she set out to do with a line of quality cashmere sweaters.
With Maria at the design helm, husband Carlisle heads up the operational side of the business, and review collection was on his radar right from the start.
But, it had to be honest and transparent. Rather than a cheap app that allowed anyone to leave feedback, Carlisle wanted a source of verified reviews.
He also wanted a future proof solution - something that allowed the brand to take advantage of the many benefits of review collection.
Google Seller Ratings were a top priority, as were tools that brought added value to each piece of review content. With Trustpilot lacking the feature set he was after, and Yotpo being way too expensive, it was REVIEWS.io that topped the bill.
"If you’re gonna spend the money building a company you need to do it correctly. When we looked at review platforms we looked at the ones that offered a good feature set, integrations and had a really good reputation - and it came down to you guys."
So what are those features that convinced Carlisle we were the best option, and how is he making use of them? Our Social Proof Editor is one.
If you’re not a REVIEWS.io customer, or haven’t got round to using it yet, it’s a pretty powerful tool.
It’s essentially a drag and drop editing suite that allows non-designers to create branded, impactful graphics from review content. You can then use those graphics to share social proof across your store pages and social channels, or to support paid advertising.
Another firm favourite with Carlisle is our Reputation Management feature - a unique offering in the review space.
This allows Pura Cashmere to manage its review score across multiple platforms using a single solution. In short, the brand can publish a selected number of reviews on Trustpilot without having to be a Trustpilot customer, as well as sending reviews to other third party platforms like Facebook.
Perhaps the most useful feature for Pura Cashmere is the ability to collect product/customer attributes.
What this gives the brand is a way of gathering very specific insight - insight it can feed into development to perfect its products.
As an example, prompting customers to rate the fit of their purchase highlighted an issue with the sleeve length on a particular sweater. Repeatedly coming up short, the brand took that first hand opinion, and redesigned the product to match the needs of its target market.
Customers are also asked to rate product quality and comfort/softness.
These questions are particularly important for a premium material like cashmere, and serve to highlight any issues that may have been missed across the supply chain.
It’s also quality control for us. We do a pretty rigorous inspection process, but you can’t check every sweater you manufacture - it’s cost prohibitive. So if we start getting feedback that says this isn’t as soft or it was scratchy, then we know something’s wrong and we can trace that back.
Essentially, Attributes give Pura Cashmere a lot of detail they would otherwise struggle to collect, and help to ensure its products continue to live up to the brand’s reputation for quality.
It’s not just the features built into our solution that Carlisle makes great use of.
It’s also our seamless integration with Klaviyo - a combination he leverages to manage any negative reviews that crop up.
With a dedicated segment and flow sequence, reviews that fall below a certain score threshold are met with a triggered response.
This response includes some key follow up questions that allow Carlisle to understand the customer experience in greater detail, and subsequently better find the right solution.
The quick turnaround ensures the customer feels heard, and the continued dialogue creates an opportunity to turn an unhappy shopper into a loyal brand advocate.
Speaking of loyalty, Carlisle originally adopted Smile.io as a reward platform, but found it had a negative impact on site loading speed.
There’s now scope for the brand to trail our own loyalty solution, Influence.io - the perfect partner to REVIEWS.io and another powerful addition to Pura Cashmere’s tech stack.