Sport Headphone Analytics (Part II)

- A case on Powerbeats2 wireless headphone

In Part 1 of sport headphone analytics we analyzed the high-level features and the comments from the 1-star customer ratings on the Powerbeats2 wireless headphone. We learned that product quality is the customer’s primary consideration when buying the headphones, more than specific features. This article goes further into the voice of the customer feedback. We examine the product quality and eCommerce site feedback.

Voice of the Customer — Product

Customers love the sound quality, which provides a deep bass, and it works well among different types of music. Many users noted a complaint that a wireless connection issue can appear when watching videos, resulting in a slight lag. The Beats website has a firmware update that fixes this problem, but it is annoying to the user to install a software fix on a new product.

Customers provided negative feedback on some elements of the product quality, specifically the volume control coming apart after few weeks/months of the purchase. This is annoying, as the customer needs to send it back for repair and wait a couple weeks to receive a new one. Sound is the critical component of headphone products. If Beats can improve the quality of volume control, then more customers will decide to buy their product. PS — people don’t like the design where the volume control bar just hangs on one side.

Battery issue — customers sometimes can’t turn the headphone on and get a flashing red light when trying to charge it. It could be a poor-quality micro USB port problem. In addition, the product comes with a short micro USB adapter cord but not a USB power adapter, which makes customer a little disappointed.

Product Managers can use Signals to analyze their own products and their competition. (For a related blog post read Brita Water Pitcher Data Analysis.)

Voice of the Customer — eCommerce Sites

Customers have a choice in where they purchase the headphone. We examined each eCommerce site and looked for customer feedback on the pricing, return policy, speed of delivery, and other aspects of the purchase.

Best Buy

Best buy had a great deal on Black Friday; product price was “half off”. Even when the products on sale are limited in each store, fans are excited to get into the long line and come out happy with the $100 discount. It is a perfect Christmas gift for their family and friends, and the price savings offset other desired traits of the ecommerce experience.

Amazon

Fast shipping as always — that’s the amazon prime benefit.

Due to the great return policy and process time, most of Amazon customers who faced any issues with headphone return it directly rather than replace with a new one. People don’t want to risk getting the same issues in the future.

Apple site

Image attribution: TechCrunch

Beats by Dr. Dre is now a part of Apple — they acquired Beats for $3 billion in the middle of 2014. It is not surprising that many sites mentioned Apple products, and the main topic is customer service. People have high expectations for Apple, and it turns out that most customers are satisfied with the Apple support. But on the other hand, Apple makes the return procedure more difficult than other retailers like Brookstone.

Verizon

There were about 100 product feedback comments on the Verizon site. Other than textual comments, it also has rating information such as ease of use, design, features, and performance from 1 to 5 stars. Design and features are the two categories that get low ratings — this might be the key reasons of why people who do not recommend the product to their friends (see chart below).

Design distribution, “I do not recommend this product”

The Product Manager for Beats can use these customer insights to develop an action plan to improve sales. Correcting the problem areas, and working with the sales channels (eCommerce sites) to improve the customer experience, can lead to a rise in product revenue. Signals provides the ability to pivot the data with custom widgets. For example, you can look at comment with a specific star rating, or specific geography. See related blog post Customer Filters Yield Customer Insights. Signals also allows side-by-side comparisons, useful for comparing the eCommerce site feedback against each other.

Would you like to analyze customer feedback comments on your product from multiple sites? Signals provide an easy-to-use platform that combines the structured and unstructured data from the customer reviews together, and helps you improve business decisions. Contact us on clientsupport@stratifyd.com for a free trial account. We’d love to work with you!