Kiabi review requests: how to automate the ask

Automate review requests on Kiabi.

Kiabi is a French value fashion retailer with a large European footprint, running its marketplace on Mirakl. Value fashion produces order volumes that make manual review requests physically impossible — which is precisely why automation is worth more here than in any high-ticket category, where a seller could in principle just write the emails themselves.

The volume argument, stated plainly

A seller shipping thirty high-value orders a month could, in theory, write thirty personal messages. It would be tedious, but it is possible, and plenty of good sellers do exactly that.

A seller shipping three thousand low-value orders a month cannot. There is no version of that person's week that contains three thousand messages. So they send none, and they collect reviews at whatever rate happens naturally — roughly one buyer in a hundred, skewed towards the annoyed ones.

That is the entire case for automation in value fashion. It is not that a machine writes a better message than you would. It is that the machine writes the message at all.

Family orders make the review about the basket

Kiabi's buyers frequently buy for several people at once: something for each child, a couple of things for themselves. That is a different psychological object from a single considered purchase.

The buyer's verdict is on the basket — did everything fit, did the quality hold up for the price, was anything disappointing. A single weak item in a nine-item order colours the whole thing, which is another reason the returns filter matters: partial returns are the norm here, not the exception.

At this price point, expectations are the review

Nobody reviewing value fashion is comparing it to a designer garment. They are asking whether it was good for the money, and reviews in this category are remarkably fair about that — buyers routinely write "for the price, excellent", which is worth more to your conversion than a grudging five stars would be.

This is why asking honestly, with nothing offered in return, works better here than anywhere. You do not need a glowing review. You need a fair one, at volume, and fair is what people give when nobody is buying their opinion.

What Merita does

We watch every Kiabi order for delivery, exclude anything with a return, refund or complaint including partial returns, and send one message in the buyer's language through the marketplace's own buyer messaging. One per order. At three thousand orders a month that is three thousand asks you were never going to make by hand.

What Merita does on Kiabi

We watch your Kiabi orders for the moment each one is actually delivered, then send one polite message through the marketplace’s own buyer messaging asking the buyer for an honest review. Nothing is offered in return and nothing is incentivised, so the ask stays inside the marketplace’s rules. Orders with a complaint or an open return are skipped automatically. On our live client this took the rate of review collection from roughly 1 in 100 delivered orders to about 5.2 in 100 — a 5.2× lift.

Kiabi — common questions

Why does automating review requests matter more for high-volume sellers?

Because manual asking stops being possible. A seller shipping thirty orders a month could write thirty messages by hand; a seller shipping three thousand cannot, so in practice they send none and collect reviews at the natural rate of roughly one buyer in a hundred. Automation is what makes the ask happen at all.

How are multi-item family orders handled?

They make the returns filter more important, not less. Buyers on value fashion marketplaces frequently order for several people at once and send part of it back, so partial returns are routine rather than exceptional. Merita excludes any order carrying a return, refund or complaint against it, including partial ones.

Do low-price items get worse reviews?

Not usually. Buyers in value fashion judge against the price rather than against premium alternatives, and reviews in the category are notably fair about that — 'excellent for the money' is a common and commercially useful review. Asking honestly with nothing offered in return is what produces that fairness.