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User-generated product reviews offer consumers the chance to learn about the perks and downfalls of a business's products or services from other customers. According to Econsultancy, more than two-thirds of customers read online reviews before they decide to buy a product. This means that reviews have become an essential part of e-commerce sites.  

However, customers aren't the only people who benefit from user-generated product reviews. Within the comments and complaints lie valuable insights that businesses can use to their benefit. With proper analysis, leaders can discover valuable insights within user-generated product reviews that help them do the following:

Improve Existing Products

Few brands launch products and get them right on the first try. A classic example is Apple. After launching new versions of the iPhone, the company often sends additional software updates to fix unanticipated bugs. Companies can use data analytics to sift through user reviews of their products, and glean information about things that do or don't work, or features that could be modified or enhanced and make adjustments as needed.

Innovate New Products

Often user-generated content includes insights into products your customers *wish* existed. For example, an outdoors outfitter might see that many of their customers mention in their online reviews of a two-burner camping stove that they wish the company made a portable camping stove with only one burner. Voila! A new product idea is born. Again, these types of insights can be unearthed through data analysis projects focusing on text analytics of user-generated content. 

Leverage Customer Voices

Savvy marketers have realized that they can tap into their customer reviews, and even give some of them a brighter spotlight, which creates an air of authenticity around the brand. For example, Kellogg Insight recalls a Domino’s Pizza campaign that invited food bloggers who had previously criticized the brand's pizza to try their new pizza recipe. Domino’s then featured their new -- and improved -- reviews. Leveraging customer voices in a smart way improves customer experience. 

Address Customer Complaints

An increasing number of consumers use social media to vent their product or service frustrations and complaints. Typically, they expect a response from a brand's social media account team. With this in mind, many brands have created social customer service teams to directly address and resolve issues raised on social media platforms. SproutSocial recommends that businesses sift through and handle complaints raised across not just social media sites like Facebook, but also look at online review sites. They can identify these complaints with the help of data analysis and text analytics. Doing so helps "create new opportunities to foster customer loyalty and win lifelong fans."

How Solution as a Service Can Help With Analytics

Finding insights within user-generated content is a difficult task, particularly when a business's customers generate large volumes of product reviews and social media comments. The job requires skilled data analysts and a powerful engine to derive insights from the reams of information. 

Still, many businesses lack the talent or time to handle this type of analytics work. When this is the case, leaders can opt to work with a vendor that offers a Solution as a Service (SolaaS) approach to analytics. Through a single vendor, SolaaS combines the experience of the industry's top data scientists with a top-of-the-line analytics backend. 

The SolaaS analysts are committed to working closely with clients to determine business goals, and identify relationships among data sets. They then deliver a customized, user-focused presentation of insights and offer business recommendations based on their discoveries. 

Summary

User-generated content (UGC) often helps consumers, as it gives them the opportunity to read product reviews and opinions from other consumers. However, UGC also contains vast amounts of information and insights that prove valuable to business leaders. When analyzed by a Solution as a Service (SolaaS) vendor, UGC can reveal a startling number of insights that help business leaders make better data-driven decisions to improve and innovate products, address customer complaints, and more.