Maciek, R-GOL is a company with 20 years of history, during this time you have changed from a small, local company into the largest football shop in Poland. How did this change go from your perspective?
The company's beginnings were very humble, starting with sales from the trunk. Then our outlets appeared in Ostróda and Olsztyn, which served not only as a shop, but also as an office and warehouse. At the time, e-commerce was still a fairly modern invention, but we really wanted to adapt to it and saw the need for it. Currently, e-commerce is our main sales channel.
You are the biggest football shop in Poland. What have you built your competitive advantage on?
From the very beginning, we have tried to be a great support to our customers, and to offer a satisfactory service, both pre-sale and after purchase. In addition, we also provide a vast pool of expertise on our products to best advise our customers.
How do you accomplish your consulting mission - after all, you do most of your sales online?
In the world of e-commerce, the role of the store employee is no longer as important as it is for stationary store. Customers are able to find out a lot of needed information about a product or store from other users' reviews. Such reviews allow potential customers to lend credibility to a product or store. - Maciej Pruchniewski e-Commerce Manager in R-GOL
As you mentioned, besides the sales itself, you also focus on after-sales service. It seems that in the era of e-commerce, negative review about a store carries even faster than it used to. I think you will agree with the statement that it is not an art to just sell. The more difficult part is to ensure its loyalty and returning customers, as well as to convince new users.
I definitely agree with that. It is widely known that a person dissatisfied with a product or service is much quicker and more likely to share his/her review on the Internet than a satisfied customer. So we, in an effort to change that mentality, actively encourage all of our customers to give us a rating.
Are your customers willing to rate shopping with you?
Yes, customers are very willing to write reviews on the equipment they purchased. They feel the value of these statements because they read a lot about each product themselves before buying. Likewise, when they are happy with our service, speed of delivery, talking to our staff - they are happy to share that with others.
Your adventure with collecting reviews is very long and you are one of the most important players in this topic in the e-commerce market. Nevertheless, you decided to make a difference. I'm very curious what was the reason - you had about 60,000 views and a 4.9/5.0 average, so it might seem like there's not much room for improvement.
Definitely. The topic of collecting reviews has been close to us not since yesterday. On the platform we previously worked with, we achieved some of the highest scores possible and were at the top of the Sports category for many years. Also from this point of view, it can be said that not much more can be achieved in this subject, however, in the sports environment there is a well-known proverb "who does not develop, will be rolled up".
Sure. What did you expect from the new system? What did you care about?
We were looking for a solution that would show customers not just that we have a high average. We wanted our customers' reviews to act as an advisor, to build our expertise, to help new users make good decisions. Plus there's the multi-market aspect. R-GOL is increasingly entering foreign markets, so we were looking for a solution that would simultaneously allow us to collect these reviews in multiple markets in local languages.
I just wanted to touch on that aspect. How to prove yourself on the foreign market? How to build trust in a brand that is still unknown locally?
Unless you are a giant in the global market, like the producers of the branded products we offer as a multibrand, you have to build up customer confidence in the foreign market. I have not yet come across a case in which a company that is well or even very well recognized in a given category on the local market would automatically enjoy equally high recognition after entering the international market.
So what can be done to build this recognition?
This is where the reviews collected in other markets come in handy. Without reviews from other customers, both local and international, such a successful expansion fails or takes much longer.
Changing the topic a bit - have you encountered any problems when starting the service? Did anything surprise you, either positively or negatively? Is there anything we could improve to enhance our collaboration?
From my perspective, the implementation of the system went very smoothly and I have no major comments. As with any new integration, there are always some minor or major technical stumbling blocks, but in this case it was definitely nothing major. Great respect for the support you have given us in the implementation, we received very quick feedback on the reported issues. If all integrations were like this, the world would be a better place. I have experienced many integrations and unfortunately, not all of them go as smoothly and seamlessly as it was handled here.
That's nice to hear - thank you. As you say, we can't guarantee that everything will go smoothly, but we can guarantee that we will do our best to solve these problems.