Background

Scentre Group owns and operates the pre-eminent shopping centre portfolio in Australia and New Zealand. This comprises 39 Westfield shopping centres which have strong franchise value and the ability to attract the world’s leading retail brands. Westfield shopping centres are an essential part of the community’s social and economic fabric with more than 525 million customer visits in 2016.

Scentre Group was created in 2014 through the demerger of Westfield Group, and the merger of its Australian and New Zealand operating platform and management with Westfield Retail Trust.

The Challenge:

Meeting a Change in Business Direction

Scentre Group were working towards a total change in business direction, looking to move away from the traditional ‘landlord-tenant’ relationship, and wanted to understand the end customer better and grow their customer engagement.

“Before 2016 our focus was very much a transactional landlord collecting rent, we allowed our retailers to dictate the standards of customer service. We realised that with a lot of decisions that we made, we didn’t consider the Voice of the Customer,” explains Michael Scarfe, Research Manager.

Previous to working with Reputation.com, Scentre Group were conducting surveys, however this only provided them with one route to understanding the Voice of the Customer, and so they decided to seek out an omni-channel listening solution.

Scentre Group were looking for a fully optimised, truly comprehensive ORM solution to meet their needs and support their ambitious plans for the future.

The Solution:

A Turnkey Online Reputation Management Solution

Reputation.com was chosen because of 3 key factors:

1. The platform provides everything associated with the Voice of the Customer in one place without having to custom-build a solution, saving Scentre Group precious time and money,
2. The ability to make better informed decisions using the insights received via customer engagement and feedback from all sources,
3. The assurance that they were doing the right thing for the shopping centre visitors in order for Scentre Group to become a true customer-centric organisation.

“The platform could provide everything we needed as standard, it definitely gives us a competitive advantage – it is a better product. In the end, it was a no-brainer to choose Reputation.com,” comments Michael Scarfe, Research Manager.

The platform is used every day by over 500 Scentre Group employees in a variety of positions across all of their shopping centres with a high staff engagement.

A Service You Can Rely On

The Reputation.com platform solves a number of headaches for organisations because of its holistic approach by including online reviews, satisfaction surveys, social media, business listings and operation insights, all within one intuitive platform.

Scentre Group typically rely on three facets of the Reputation.com platform:

• Ticket Management: Scentre Group were one of the first enterprise businesses to fully utilise this feature. Through the Reputation.com platform, each shopping centre manages and solves important customer issues in an efficient and timely manner.
• Reputation Score: This patented solution works in a similar fashion to a credit score for business’ online reputation, and enables the Scentre Group to set a benchmark for all of their centres to improve upon.
• Reporting: The management team receives reports but also take a lot of data off the platform to both analyse themselves and report to the business the trends of Reputation Score, as well as looking at the volume and sentiment of reviews.

Example of internal report on Customer Experience

The Results: 800% increase in response rate

90% response rate to online reviews, from only 10% prior to Reputation.com.

100% of all raised tickets are responded to within 24H

98% of all raised tickets are closed

The Results:

Changing Mindsets

With Scentre Group’s change of direction, their challenge was for their vision to trickle down to all employees. The platform has been instrumental in changing the mindset of their staff to focus more on the customer experience in each of their locations.

“It has fundamentally changed how our teams view the customer experience. They’ve now got a much better insight into what our customers think – what are the pain points in our centres, what customers like and what they don’t like. Before we had the platform, we didn’t have this insight, so that really changed the mindset of our centres and the teams who run them,” comments Michael Scarfe, Research Manager.

The scale of the Reputation.com platform means that Scentre Group are able to work closer with each of their centre’s tenants, from household names to smaller businesses, to share feedback they’ve been receiving online.

A Solution to Customers Listening

The Reputation.com platform isn’t just a part of Scentre Group’s customer listening process, it has become their integral solution to managing the Westfield brand online.

“It doesn’t so much enhance our customer listening, it IS our solution to customer listening. It is our comprehensive method of listening to, replying, and monitoring customer reviews,” explains Michael Scarfe, Research Manager.

From a brand point of view, the Westfield brand itself is very important and must be protected by Scentre Group. With Reputation.com, they are able to stay on top of all feedback and mentions associated with their brand and each location – positive or negative.

Testimonial:

Michael Scarfe, Research Manager, Scentre Group

“Reputation.com doesn’t so much enhance our customer listening, it IS our solution to customer listening. It is our comprehensive method of listening to, replying, and  onitoring customer reviews.

“We really needed to understand our customers better, so we sought a solution whereby we could listen and respond to all customers to generate insights to inform our decision making.

“Before we had the platform, we didn’t have this insight, so that really changed the mindset of our centres and the teams who run them.”

Finding a Solution That Works For You

Reputation.com helps location-based organisations earn better star ratings and reviews across the social web. Our platform helps you capture and enlist the voice of the customer to deliver exceptional customer service and drive better business performance.

To book a no-obligation platform demonstration with one of our Online Reputation Management experts, simply go click here to submit your details and we’ll be in touch.