Consider this:
88% have read reviews to determine the quality of a local business.
85% of Consumers Say They Read Up To 10 Reviews.
88% of Consumers Say They Trust Online Reviews As Much As Personal Recommendations.
I hope these stats have sufficiently demonstrated the significance of garnering reviews from customers.
Now, let’s look at some tips to get more reviews from your customers:
1. Don’t wait to ask
Just asking your customers for reviews, is the first basic step to maximizing the number of reviews. It is also, important to ask the customer at the right time, for example, right after you resolve a problem for the customer, they are more likely to respond to your request for a review.
The key is to strike when satisfaction and appreciation are still in the air. Here are some examples of the best time to ask:
- You just provided technical support to a customer for installing your device and it’s working!
- A customer paid you a compliment via mail or phone.
- You acted immediately on a customer’s request/feedback and fixed the issue.
- You noticed that a particular customer is bringing in sales for you from his contacts.
These are just a few, you must learn to capitalize on customer satisfaction by asking them for a review and by asking them right away.
2. Make it a walk in the park
Yet another basic, but important step – make it easy for your customers to give reviews.
How do you ask? Here are some ideas:
- Have profiles on multiple platforms.
- Allow them to give reviews directly on the website.
- In the case of testimonials, you can draft them and send them for your customer’s approval.
- Leave links on the website like ‘Rate us on Yelp’, ‘Appreciate your feedback’ etc
3. Segment efforts according to demographics
If your customers are mostly millennials, they are more likely to share their experiences online may be on Facebook or a review on Amazon etc.
5 out of 6 millennials in the US connect with companies on social media networks (SDL) and so it is quite likely that they will post their experience with you even without you pushing them to.
Wasting your time and energy by sending frequent emails for feedbacks customers under the age of 30 will probably piss them off.
On the other hand, for older customers, it is not quite likely that they will post a review unless you ask for it and not only do you have to ask them, you might also have to show them how. Now, in this scenario, you must put the considerable effort from your side.
4. Spare some spotlight
Everybody likes attention – especially when a customer has taken the time to write a great review for you.
Why is this important? Giving your reviewers attention can encourage other customers to give reviews too.
For example, let’s say a blogger who is your customer, posts a great review for you online, you can demonstrate a bit of giving and take relationship, by mentioning their blog and their review on your website.
Now this way, the blogger is bringing in traffic for you and you are bringing traffic for the blogger, but most importantly you are ready to share your spotlight, encouraging other customers to post reviews.
A few other suggestions:
- Create a video testimonial with a bunch of video clips from your happy customers mentioning their names.
- Mention them on your website or place small quotes from the customer on your homepage.
- Create a podcast with recorded or live customer reviews.
5. Incentivize the task
Let’s admit it, we all need a little incentive to push us into action, the same is the case with your customers. May be they are indeed, very happy with your service, it’s just that they don’t want to take the time to go online and write a long (or a short) post for you. Well, give them a reason to.
Some ideas:
- Have some monthly give-outs for reviewers.
- Offer a 20% discount for a customer if they give a review (Just a review, not necessarily a positive one.)
- If their reviews have brought you sales, send them a special ‘Thank You’ gift.
Well, you gotta get creative here and figure out ways to reward your customers for their reviews, but make sure you are rewarding them for reviews and not positive reviews (that would be bribe!)
6. Put your free plans to users to get reviews
SaaS product and service companies like ours, usually offer free trial periods to users. At my startup Hiver, we were particularly successful in getting a lot of reviews from users in the free basic plan.
Here’s why – after the end of the trial period, we don’t automatically move our customers to the free basic plan. We send them an email asking if they want to continue with our services, and then only do we move them into the free plan.
What this does is – it creates an opportunity to have a human interaction with the customer first, which is always better than an automatic downgrade, and if they agree we then move them to the free plan.
Now, because we took the time to personally connect with our users before moving them into the basic plan when we ask them to post a review for us, they agree to it much more easily, than otherwise.
7. Finally, the good old way – Provide excellent customer support
Well, nothing can beat this one. Like the old saying goes, ‘Do good and good will come to you’
Building a customer-centric organization is ultimately the mightiest weapon to be loved by your customers.
Here are some practices of businesses that provide excellent customer support:
- They respond to the calls and questions even in the middle of the night.
- They maintain a quick response time.
- They go a step or more, beyond. For example, if a customer asks for help to install, they don’t just give the link to a tutorial, they walk through the tutorial.
- They provide proactive support. If a new customer hasn’t yet installed their product, they check in to see if the customer is having trouble setting up.
- They avoid Call trees and automated calls for customer support. In the last year, 67% of customers have hung up the phone out of frustration they could not talk to a real person (Source).
Finally, something to remember:
“Our customers and the word of mouth they’ve spread about Zappos have been the biggest reasons for our success. We realize that and are focused on continually doing whatever we can to improve their experience.” – Nick Swinmurn
“Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.” – Walt Disney
One important thing that a CSR always keep in mind when asking a customer about review is “The Right Time”. Never ask for a review at the end of every single call. I agree with all the suggestions that you gave when asking for review. A CSR must ask for a review when they resolve some technical issue of the customer because no time can be perfect than that when your customer is truly happy and would most likely review you product instantly.