Before a customer decides to purchase something from your company, they want to know if they can trust you. Since they’re unlikely to interact with a sales rep, they tend to look at your existing customers to form an impression. With customer trust failing and advertising becoming less effective in selling products, you need to rely on reviews and testimonials for growth.
Make it Easier to Receive Customer Reviews
Most of your customers won’t leave a review on your products or services unless they have a negative experience. Angry consumers will go out of their way to scour the internet for your review page, but happy customers won’t make that kind of effort. To receive more positive reviews, you need to make it easier for your customers to leave one in the correct location.
For example, various platforms give their customers a link via email to record testimonials that provide editing tools directly in the app that are easy to use. In minutes, you can give your business a boost in sales because customers can see real people providing honest reactions to a product. This includes apps like VideoPeel, but there are also a number of VideoPeel alternatives that make receiving reviews easier.
Use Open-Ended Questions
Immediately asking for a customer review won’t work. You need to begin the conversation first by asking open-ended questions that entice your buyers to help your business. Ask questions related to their experience like “How are you liking the product?” to gauge your customers’ satisfaction level. Doing this could avoid potentially negative reviews and encourage feedback.
Your customers may have had a bad experience with the product, but if you ask them a question instead of demanding a review, you could fix the problem and turn their frown upside-down. Sometimes negative reviews are inevitable, and feedback is necessary regardless. Most customers can see the difference between constructive criticism and hate.
Respond to Every Review
Mistakes happen, and even large businesses with superior processes will still miss the mark or send products that aren’t up to quality. Unfortunately, most of your customers will remember you for your mistakes and may never order from you again. If they leave a review, they could create a negative impression of your brand. If there is a customer complaint, reply to them, apologize, and state you’re committed to being better in the future. While it may not fix your relationship with the customer, it will show you’re dedicated to improving.
Be Honest with Review Times
Giving a review can take a lot of time out of someone’s day, so they may be unwilling to do a favor for you if you don’t explain how long a testimonial will take. Address this objection beforehand, and they’re more likely to fill out a complete review. Once you get your customer to your website, you’ve already done half the work. Still, they could click off for another reason.
Say you tell your customer the review will take two minutes. That’s great, but what if when they click on the review link there are ten separate questions to fill out? Maybe it will take two minutes, but they may perceive it as a tedious task. Use the 1-5 star method for all reviews, then give your customer the option to write their own custom text in another box to encourage more input.
Create Incentives
Your time is valuable, but so is everyone else’s. Small businesses often miss the mark when they ask their followers for reviews because customers know that they’ve already done you a favor by purchasing your products. While you can’t do this for every customer at every transaction, you could create a promotion that gives away a gift card to every review given.
An incentive doesn’t have to be monetary, but those are typically more successful. For example, you could offer a coupon for 50% off, a $10 Starbucks gift card, or a referral for another business that’s similar to yours. Plenty of industries will come together to market similar products, like flowers and gift cards, to give more sales to a non-competitive business.
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