Zendesk is a robust omnichannel tool with which to serve your customers. Wherever your users are, this service will gather their feedback and deliver it right to your support agents, even if they complain about your product across the app stores. Here’s all you need to detect a problem, talk to your users, and change their opinions about your app. Now, you can do it even faster, and flawlessly, by using the App Store & Google Play Reviews app.

The app is a timesaver for customer support teams, as it helps them:

1. Cover feedback from the main app stores: App Store, Google Play, Microsoft Store, Amazon Appstore.
2. React swiftly to an emergency, for example, catch a major bug after the app release or respond to a review where the rating has gone down.
3. Group the feedback easily, depending on the language and your team’s capacities.
4. Get back to your customers fully armed with the whole history of reviews and replies updates, enabling you to ask them to give you 5 stars.

World of Tanks Blitz grew their support team and doubled agents’ productivity thanks to replying to app reviews directly from Zendesk:

“When we started replying to gamers’ feedback from the app stores, only one agent had access to App Store Connect and Google Play Console. We soon realized that it was not adequate in speeding up the response time. We switched to the Zendesk app by AppFollow and have been using it for about a year. Since then we’ve grown our support team to 40 agents and are able to cover all the feedback including the app stores. It’s great to get everything we need in Zendesk.”

- Yaroslav Demidyuk, Operations Manager, WoT Blitz

Even if you’ve never replied to your users in app stores, here’s how to start.

Receive app reviews in Zendesk instantly

A new simplified integration form lets you set up the app in 2 minutes and get 100 of the latest reviews into Zendesk within an hour. All the following reviews will be received as soon as they have been published in the store.

Find our guide to setting up the Zendesk app.

How to set up your workflow

You really don’t need a new workflow to work with app store reviews. The App Store & Google Play Reviews app will send you new reviews as separate Zendesk tickets. If a customer changes their feedback, the app will reopen the same ticket with the updated content. All you need to do is assign them to the right agent.

You can sort and tag the reviews using the Views feature. For instance, you can separate reviews from different app stores or assign a dedicated agent to cover that feedback.

In the tickets queue you will see the app name, the number of stars, and if the review has been updated, the UPD flag. Source: zendesk.com

One ticket holds the whole history of review changes and your team’s responses — don’t stumble around in the dark when responding to a user. What’s more, no other app shows that crucial data.

When a user changes anything in their review, your agents get an updated ticket. You won’t miss a thing. Source: zendesk.com

Advanced Settings for Reviews that Matter Most

It’s perfect if you can respond to everyone, but that’s not always the case. When you don’t have enough agents on a shift, or are getting an unexpectedly high number of reviews after an app update, you have to choose the tickets to reply to first. We've got you covered.

Use the advanced settings to assign the right reviews to the right support teams. For instance, choose to reply to only 1-2 star reviews, specify the language that the team uses, or react only to the reviews that describe something (not just a “thank you” note) by clicking the “More than 3 words” option.

You can adjust the filters while setting up the app, or edit them anytime afterwards. Source: zendesk.com

React immediately when something’s wrong, and a user changed a rating and made it worse. You’ll never miss such reviews thanks to the new filter “Became worse”. Hopefully your reply will resolve the issues, and the user will end up gladly giving you 5-stars. Find out when users are especially happy by using the “Became better” filter — it will help you to analyze how your support team is doing.

You can add several integrations with different filters, for example, to assign your senior staff to work with difficult users. Source: zendesk.com

Remember: by responding to 1-star reviews you are only putting out a fire, but you won't improve customers’ loyalty. Here are the types of app reviews you should watch out for.

Improve Your App's Conversion Rate 

Tell your marketing team that you can help them improve their conversion rates.

There are special app reviews that are featured and visible to everyone on your app page. They’re like Google reviews that are displayed to everyone searching for your company name. Without a proper answer, these reviews have a negative affect on your conversions and discourage potential users from downloading your app.

From now on, react to these special reviews instantly and make sure they have detailed and friendly responses. Regard your app page as your business card and attract new customers more easily.

You can either use a featured tag for sorting these reviews, or create a dedicated channel for featured reviews by clicking “Featured reviews only” when setting up the app. Source: zendesk.com

How App Reviews Impact Customer Experience

Some companies still don’t consider feedback from the app stores as particularly useful or they don’t have sufficient workflow to deal with it.

There are two pros to consider when reacting to app reviews. On one hand, they are the “face” of your app across the app stores, and covering them along with regular requests, is a reputation management issue. On the other hand, users tend to ask questions about apps and their functions in the reviews. Your quick response will turn them into regular customers. And that’s how you can improve the customer experience here.

Use the power of AppFollow and Zendesk and join 40,000 companies that transform their app store reviews by using AppFollow.

If you’re using the AppFollow email integration with Zendesk, give us a shout, and we’ll help you out with the app’s settings.