I think the quantity and quality of customer reviews are on the increase as well as manufacturer’s attention to them. I have noticed that being in the business of development of tools for Customer Feedback Management (which is a part of Social CRM).

I disagree with your position on Respected Customer Reviewer – such people already exist as bloggers who specialize in reviewing specific groups of products, but as they gain following and attention of manufacturers, they stop becoming “Customers” It is common practice for influential bloggers to receive the products for review free of charge. One cannot automatically assume that it compromises their opinions, but their experience with products are not the same as a regular customer would have, and for that reason I threat them as “professional” reviewers, like those who work for magazines and CNET. For that reason a number of venues dedicated to “real” paying customers reviews will increase and bring more value to OEM and Consumers.

Below is my complaint with online customer reviews and a possible solution.

Complaint:
As Carol has pointed out, people are lousy reviewers for several reasons forcing me to gauge the reviewer’s value while I’m trying to gauge the product’s value. This is an extra burden on me and only muddies the waters in my investigation.

Possible Solution:
Businesses need to champion the Customer Reviewer. Meaning, there should be some fame or fortune allocated to customers who provide meaningful product reviews with honest feedback. These Customer Reviewers are the “word of mouth” advertising that all business craves. The anonymous shopper needs a high quality review. The Customer Reviewer needs the respect of anonymous shoppers. The business needs the respected Customer Reviewer to convince the anonymous shopper to buy.

Of course this means the respected Customer Reviewer could torpedo a new product. But if the business is smart, they will bring their respected Customer Reviewers into the loop sooner to get honest independent feedback without the baggage of internal politics.

This is certainly more business process than analytical technology, however I think a solution would be needed to aggregate the reviews of respected Customer Reviewers across multiple product categories and companies. Perhaps I write great reviews of Blu-Ray players, Kayaks, and Espresso machines. The aggregation of that information would reveal any potential cross-promotional opportunities and accurate psychographic profile information.

Again sending this to you as I know you have an interest in this area, and I suspect a clever business with clever technology implemented could break into new ground. Perhaps reduce the value of dedicated online review sites?