Turning Reviews Into Customer Stories That Build Stakeholder Empathy
Meet Kat, a working mum with a toddler in tow. She's just picked up her son from nursery and has 70 minutes before she needs to pick up her daughter
Consumer reviews are a valuable source for uncovering pain-points across the user experience. Customers don’t just report what went wrong, they often describe the context around the issue and how it made them feel, offering insights into both emotional impact and possible causes
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When you analyse these reviews, you’ll typically uncover a set of recurring themes and track how often each one appears. While it's essential to summarise the data in graphs or tables, those formats alone can feel dry and disconnected from the real customer experience.
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A powerful way to bring this data to life is by turning pain-point themes into composite customer stories, structured using principles from UX storytelling. While traditional UX stories are often based on interviews or individual journeys, these stories are built from patterns across multiple reviews. They don’t reflect a single user, but instead represent common experiences.
The Process​​
A logical way to start is by taking each theme from your analysis and ask: which of your personas does this most affect? For example, in reviews of Sainsbury’s, the closure of in-store amenities like post-boxes has the greatest impact on elderly customers.
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If a theme significantly affects multiple personas, don’t be afraid to assign it to more than one. That allows you to show how the same issue plays out differently. For instance, closed toilets are a challenge for both elderly customers and parents with young children, just in different ways.
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Once you’ve sorted your themes by persona, aim to ensure each persona has a reasonable spread of issues. You can shift things around slightly if needed to balance them out.
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Then, using the themes assigned to each persona, build short, realistic scenarios that follow a typical journey, for example, from arrival to checkout. Include emotional touchpoints like confusion, frustration, or being ignored, these are the moments stakeholders connect with and remember.
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(While this article focuses on surfacing pain points to drive improvements, the same approach can also be used to highlight moments of delight, helping teams understand what’s working well and what should be preserved or scaled)
Here’s an example of a composite user story based on pain-point themes extracted from Trustpilot reviews of Sainsbury’s in March 2025.
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I used the persona of a ‘Busy Parent' (a likely Sainsbury’s persona) to illustrate the experience behind the following recurring themes:
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SmartShop functionality issues
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Lack of in-store connectivity for digital tools
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Unclear store layout changes
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Short-dated items regularly stocked
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Poor quality of fresh produce
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Insufficient availability of manned checkouts
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Reliance on self-service when inappropriate
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Self-checkout not suited for large or complex shops
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Customer Story: A Parent’s Frustrating Shopping Trip
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Meet Kat, a working parent. She's just picked up her son from nursery and has 70 minutes before her daughters after-school club lets out. She needs to squeeze in the weekly shop, in particular, picking up chicken and veg for the roast her in-laws are coming over for on Sunday.
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Kat usually relies on SmartShop to save time by scanning items as she goes. But today, the handheld scanners are out of stock, and when she tries to use the app on her phone, it won’t load as there’s no signal in-store. Without SmartShop, the entire trip is going to take longer and feel more stressful especially with a restless toddler already asking to go home.
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To make things worse, the store layout has changed again, and she finds herself having to double back through the aisles just to locate basic essentials like tinned tuna and nappies. When she finally reaches the fresh section, many of the vegetables are wilted or close to expiring, and the chicken she needs has a use-by date of tomorrow. What good is that for Sunday’s roast? And when is she supposed to find time for another trip? She’ll have to make do with whatever she can grab from the Tesco Metro around the corner. She can already hear the comments from her in-laws.
At the end of her shop, Kat looks for a manned till, but there’s only one open and the queue snakes halfway through the store. The self-service line is shorter, but her son will insist on "helping" to scan each item, and the small packing areas are not really ideal for a large shop.
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As she scans a bottle of wine, the age check alert goes off. She looks around for assistance, but there’s no staff in sight. A quick glance at her phone reveals there's now only 25 minutes left until she has to be at the school gates. After several minutes of trying to catch someone’s eye, she resorts to waving her arm in a ridiculously exaggerated fashion. It works, but she can’t help feeling embarrassed as the assistant finally arrives and silently taps in their ID.
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With the alert cleared, Kat gathers her bags and her son, and races for the door.
Insight: Kat’s experience reveals how small instore pain points such as no signal, poor stock, confusing layout, limited staff can quickly snowball into major stress for time-pressured users. Her story underscores the need to design for real-world pressure, not just ideal conditions.
Final thoughts
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Once created, these composite stories shouldn't just live in a slide deck or Slack thread, they should actively inform decision-making. They can be used to spark discussion in journey-mapping workshops, or guide prioritisation in CX roadmaps.
While some stakeholders may initially question the subjectivity of storytelling, grounding each narrative in patterns across multiple reviews ensures they reflect broader truths rather than isolated anecdotes. When used effectively, these stories help build stakeholder empathy and support efforts to improve key customer pain points.
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Consider refreshing the stories every six to twelve months based on recent reviews to ensure they stay relevant, human, and grounded in the latest customer experience data.
​​​Get in Touch
Customer reviews are just one example of how customer reviews can be used. I specialise in analysing Trustpilot reviews to identify patterns, pain points, and opportunities that often go unnoticed, from usability and service friction to unmet expectations and untapped ideas.
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If you’re curious about what your reviews might really be telling you, I’d love to chat.
Email jen@offthebenchux.com
Connect with me on LinkedIn
View my Trustpilot Services