Almost all businesses have an online presence these days. It is commonplace for most people with internet access to carry out a lot of research online before deciding to buy anything. Customers trust reviews from friends and families than they do any other form of advertising and marketing. Online reviews from independent individuals are crucial to any business that has an online presence. About 85% of clients take these as personal recommendations according to BrightLocal.
According to Simon Sule, the Founder of Credit Cards Compare NZ, publicly available customer reviews are a great way to earn visitors’ trust, but you need to be prepared to action any negative feedback immediately or risk losing face. Negative feedback can be hard to swallow, but it helps you improve and do better in the long run.
Here are four creative ways you can collect customer reviews on your website and use them to your advantage.
Make it Easy for Clients to Provide Reviews
Ensure that your clients can learn about your business from various online platforms when conducting their research. Apart from your official website, ensure that your business has a presence on other sites such as Facebook, Yelp, Google and Amazon among others. Make sure that you encourage and make it easy for customers to leave reviews once they are on these sites. You should encourage both positive and negative reviews.
Ask for Reviews at the Right Time
Patience is key here when asking for reviews from your clients. Once you make a sale, wait for the customer to first go and use as well as experience your product. Once you are sure that you have provided them with ample time depending on the product or service, initiate a conversation asking open-ended questions to understand how they perceived your product. You can then, based on this conversation determine the point at which to ask for a review. Rushing to ask for reviews is risky since the customer might have had a negative experience.
Give Out Incentives
Just as you are busy with your work, everyone else is just as busy. Clients might have liked your product, but are too busy to even think of leaving a review. This happens even when they have a negative experience. Out of 26 individuals, only one is likely to complain if they’ve had a negative experience. Considering this, it is effective to encourage your clients to leave reviews by offering incentives. The incentives give them a reason to spare some time and comment on your brand. You can offer goodies, gift cards or even hard cash.
Ask Directly
Considering how many individuals never find time to leave reviews, it is important that you ask clients for the same on the platforms that they are most active. Sending someone an email and asking them to leave a comment on Instagram is a waste of time. Meet them where they are. If it is Instagram, then have conversations on Instagram and so forth. You will get real-time reviews when you do that than if you ask using different avenues.
