Kusmi Tea boosts its Retail & Web sales through customer reviews.

Kusmi Tea is a French tea brand “made in Normandy,” with its production facilities located in Le Havre. Certified B Corp, all 90 tea and herbal infusion blends are organic. The brand has an international presence, operating 6 e-commerce sites and 85 stores in France. Kusmi Tea is committed to values of diversity, inclusivity, and purpose, with the mission of introducing the best tea to as many people as possible.

• Improve in-store satisfaction and enhance the entire customer journey
• Leverage customer feedback as a driver of acquisition and conversion across both online and offline marketing and sales efforts
• Share reviews with the R&D team to support product development
• Create a consistent customer experience across retail and e-commerce channels

How do you strengthen customer satisfaction after a period of major transformation? That’s the challenge Kusmi Tea set out to meet after the COVID crisis and its shift to 100% organic products. Retail teams observed a growing need for reassurance and a closer connection with customers.

On the digital side, two insights emerged: first, while customer feedback was generally positive, it was underutilized in marketing and sales campaigns; second, product reviews were mostly seen as just a score, whereas they could help inform product development and selection.

In this context, Kusmi Tea identified customer voice as a strategic lever to re-engage clients, better steer product offerings, and unify the experience across all distribution channels.

• Send a satisfaction survey after every in-store purchase to measure experience and identify improvement areas
• Implement “review balancing” to improve e-reputation and average ratings on third-party platforms (Google, Trustpilot, etc.)
• Feed marketing assets (signage, ads, social media, product pages) with fresh, relevant customer reviews
• Use reviews to support product launches

Collecting reviews after in-store purchases, using a standardized indicator like NPS, enabled Kusmi Tea to gather valuable feedback without adding friction to the customer journey. This setup became a strategic decision-making tool and a driver of continuous improvement. Reviews now serve as a performance management tool for field teams, including store rankings and the sharing of best practices. In addition, every review now receives a personalized reply. This new feature, powered by AI-assisted response, saves time for teams while ensuring faster and more transparent customer communication.

The brand also adopted a review balancing strategy (reposting Verified Reviews content on open review platforms) to better reflect the diversity of customer feedback across all touchpoints. This approach significantly improved Kusmi Tea’s average ratings on Google and Trustpilot, while also boosting SEO.

On the digital front, Kusmi Tea is gradually integrating reviews into all its campaigns (emails, social ads, etc.). Quotes and star ratings are used in paid campaigns to increase conversion, especially for new products or emerging markets like Germany, where reassurance is essential.

A project to display reviews in Google Shopping is also underway, with a dedicated effort to categorize feedback by product variant. The goal: enhance product pages with honest, useful, and recent reviews, and strengthen brand credibility.

Customer reviews are also used to improve products when repeated feedback highlights the same issues. These insights are shared with R&D, which adjusts recipes accordingly to better meet customer expectations.

• Over 100 reviews posted on Trustpilot
• Trustpilot score increased from 2.2 to 4.3/5
• 4.7/5 on Google (+0.1 point), by integrating in-store reviews into the overall online rating
• Time saved in review management thanks to AI
• Improved online visibility and better SEO

The strategic integration of Verified Reviews and AI-assisted review management has delivered measurable impact across Kusmi Tea’s omnichannel operations.

Through review balancing, Kusmi Tea saw a dramatic improvement in its e-reputation. The brand’s Trustpilot score surged from 2.2 to 4.3 out of 5, driven by the addition of over 100 new verified reviews, reflecting a more accurate and representative picture of the customer experience. Similarly, their Google rating rose to 4.7 out of 5, aided by the integration of in-store feedback into their online ecosystem.

By automating review responses and leveraging AI-powered suggestions, the team was able to reduce the time spent on managing customer reviews while maintaining a high level of personalization and transparency. This not only freed up internal resources but also ensured that customers received timely, thoughtful replies to their feedback.