One of the best ways to stand out from the pack is with positive customer reviews -- a lot of them. It feels daunting to collect reviews when you’re getting started, and while it’s a slow process, it’s pretty simple. Here are our 7 tips for getting reviews from customers: Provide Excellent Service
To make reviews work for you, you first need to provide excellent customer service. There are two times people are most inclined to post reviews, when they are incredibly happy or extremely unhappy with a service or product. You want to always strive for the former. Be Present Online It’s challenging to gather online reviews when you don’t have places for people to post them. Create a website with places for testimonials as well as pages on all the big social media names, Yelp, Google, and Facebook, to make it easy for customers to review you. (Need help with this? Schedule a consultation today!) Ask for Reviews This may not be mind blowing advice, but it works. After delivering a product or service reach out to your customer and ask for them to post a review. Provide them with a link to make it even easier. The biggest secret here is to not over do it. Reaching out more than 3 times can have negative consequences. Be Responsive - Even When it Hurts So you messed up, it happens to the best of us. Negative reviews aren’t the end of the story, they are just the beginning. If you received a negative review, RESPOND and respond quickly. Express your thankfulness for their input, apologize for their experience and offer a solution, when applicable. Most importantly, don’t allow your emotions to get the best of you. Crafting a calm and polite response will be helpful, replying with hate will do more harm than good. (More on recovering from mistakes here). Make it Easy Customers need to have easy access to your review pages. Consider adding a page on your website to allow customers to submit feedback and reviews. Use these reviews to help you improve your processes and publish them to a testimonials section on your website. Create an Email Campaign Create emails to send after the sales process is completed asking for reviews. Consider including a link in regular emails you send out as a call to action. If you want private reviews instead of public reviews, create a survey to send out. Getting private feedback can be a huge value to your company. If you need help designing and implementing this process, we can help. Say Thank You Creating a gracious persona on review sites can go a long way. Be sure to always thank customers for their reviews and input. Seeing how much you and your business appreciate the reviews received will encourage others to post a review as well. What have you done in the past to generate customer reviews? |