How do you hear from customers who never leave a review?

Why do so few customers talk about everyday products?

Because everyday products are used alone, at home, where nobody else sees them.

Think about your own bathroom shelf: the soap, the toothpaste, the face wash you have used for years. When did you last mention any of them to anyone?

I heard this put well by Shantanu Deshpande, founder of Bombay Shaving Company, on his podcast The BarberShop. A suitcase gets seen at every airport. A shaving cream gets seen by nobody. His customers use the product alone in the bathroom, and never talk about it afterwards. It has stayed with me.

Most everyday products live like that: used every day, loved or quietly put up with, and never talked about.

Who does leave reviews?

Mostly people with something strong to say, and they lean happy.

A 2009 study of Amazon reviews, published in Communications of the ACM, found that 72 to 78 percent of ratings for books, DVDs and videos were four stars or more. When everyone who used a product had to rate it, the ratings came out roughly normal: a few high, a few low, most in the middle. The researchers’ conclusion was that the average online rating is a biased guide to quality, because of who chooses to write one.

The people in the middle, who found it fine and quietly moved on, mostly write nothing. They are the ones deciding your reorders.

What do quiet customers do instead of complaining?

They keep buying, or they stop, and either way they rarely tell you why.

A new face wash goes on the shelf, right at the front. Two weeks later, the old one is back in front, and the new one has slipped behind it. Nobody decided against it. Nobody complained. It just stopped being the one anyone reached for.

Often the verdict is a small detail you would never see in a sales report. In a 2022 US study in the journal Cognitive Research, 36.4 percent of people said they re-wash clean clothes if they don’t smell clean. Think what that means for a detergent. It can clean perfectly and still lose the reorder, and nobody writes to the brand to say the shirt smelled of nothing.

The second purchase is the truth, and it gets decided at home, long before any dashboard notices.

Who at home is the quiet customer?

Often not the person who bought it.

A new packet of biscuits comes home. The kids take one bite and push it away, and the rest of the packet goes stale on the shelf. That brand doesn’t get bought again, and the person who paid for it didn’t decide that.

In India, there are usually several people under one roof. The average household has 4.4 people, and 41.8 percent of households are not nuclear families, according to the government’s National Family Health Survey (2019-21). The buyer brings it home. The family decides whether it stays.

How can you hear from them yourself?

By asking, at the right time, the people you would otherwise never hear from.

1. 1Call customers who bought once and never came back. Ask what they use now, and why. It’s an awkward call, and usually a useful one.
2. 2Ask three customers who bought a month ago one question: is it still at the front of the shelf?
3. 3Ask a happy customer one more question: what did everyone else at home think?
4. 4Ask what they would change first, not whether they liked it, and say plainly that a complaint helps you more than a compliment.
5. 5Ask after a few weeks, not on delivery day, once the product has had to earn its place.

What can’t you hear by asking your own customers?

The people who never chose you.

Everyone you can call has already bought from you once. The families you want next, who have never picked you off the shelf, won’t be in any of these calls. I’ve written more about that gap in Is WhatsApp feedback enough to know if your product works?

What this means for your brand

The customers who decide your second sale are the ones least likely to tell you anything, so you hear them only by asking, after they have lived with the product. That’s what Foydy does: people who fit your buyer use your product at home for two weeks, they earn the same whether their feedback is positive or negative, and you get a report on whether they would buy it again, at what price, and why.