May 2, 2018

7 Strategies to Promote Positive Customer Reviews

There are a lot of factors that go into a customer’s decision to make a purchase from your company.

And nowadays, when it’s fast and easy to make purchases online without ever connecting with a sales rep, the internet does the selling for you — and that can have a huge impact on if a customer purchases from you or not.

The fact of the matter is, your company’s best marketers and sales reps aren’t your employees — they’re your customers.

According to BrightLocal, 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations — the single most trustworthy and credible source of “advertising” out there. And HubSpot Research found that 60% of consumers believed customer reviews were either trustworthy or very trustworthy — meaning that businesses that can accumulate positive reviews had a good chance of them helping a customer make a purchase decision.

The same BrightLocal survey found that positive customer reviews make 73% of customers trust a business more, and 57% of customers visit a company’s website after reading positive reviews. That also means that, in order for businesses to grow in today’s competitive, online-first marketplace, they need happy customers sharing positive reviews of their experiences in order to even get visitors coming to their site for the first time.

So, how do you get your customers to write the glowing reviews that help close deals? How do you ensure a customer is satisfied and happy enough to ask for the kind of positive reviews you need? Read on to adapt strategies that will make generating positive customer reviews a cinch.

1. Create different spaces to leave reviews.

Before potential customers even make it to your website to learn about your business, make sure they can learn about you no matter where they’re conducting online research about making a purchase.

There are a few typical third-party sites people consult to learn more about a business or a product:

1. Yelp

BrightLocal found that Yelp and Facebook were consumers’ most trusted source of customer reviews in the U.S., so make sure your business is registered and up-to-date. You can learn how to claim your business (or add it, if your business is brand-new) using Yelp for Business Owners.

Make sure you’re regularly monitoring communications coming from this profile — responsive business owners are highlighted with an average response time and response rate that could encourage readers to move forward in the process towards becoming a new customer.

2. Facebook

You should also claim your business’ Facebook Page so potential customers can find you to learn more about you without having to leave their social network. This is another site that rewards high levels of responsiveness, so make sure you assign someone to monitor incoming messages across the channels you’re trying to optimize for new customer acquisition.

3. Google

Next, use Google My Business to claim your business on the world’s biggest search engine, where potential customers might find you if they’re searching for information on Google, or searching for directions in Google Maps. (This is of particular importance to brick-and-mortar businesses trying to attract foot traffic — learn more about local SEO in this blog post.) People also leave reviews using Google, which appear in the search results for your business.

4. Amazon

If you’re an Amazon seller, make sure to claim and customize your Amazon page.

Amazon serves up a lot of different results for different searches, so make sure your Amazon page tells your business’ story the same way your website does. If a shopper finds your brand over the course of an Amazon search, make sure your Page highlights product details, testimonials, and reviews.

5. Better Business Bureau

For businesses in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, you can register with the Better Business Bureau — another highly trusted source of customer reviews.

There are also industry-specific review sites you should claim if they’re popular within your business’s vertical — such as TripAdvisor and Oyster in the travel and hospitality industries, G2Crowd and Capterra in the software industries, and OpenTable and HappyCow in the restaurant industries. Make sure your contact information, website, hours, and key offerings are available on these more niche sites, too.

2. Optimize your content.

Your customer reviews might be coming in unsolicited from happy — or unhappy — customers on third-party sites.

But once people are already on your site, make sure it’s easy for them to leave reviews there, too.

Optimize your website to provide quick and easy avenues through which to write reviews by:

Setting up website badges to quickly and easily direct visitors to your Yelp, Facebook, and Amazon pages to read and leave reviews
Optimize your website for mobile devices for people who come to your website when they’re browsing social or conducting searches on their phone
If you’re asking for customer reviews via email, keep the asks short and sweet.

3. Create incentives.

Your time is valuable, and so is your customers’, so make sure you’re giving customers a reason to leave a review.

Offer incentives to make your customers want to write a review — such as discount or coupon codes, entrance into a contest for an even bigger prize, or gift cards for coffee, online shopping, or cold hard cash.

4. Ask at the right moments.

Make sure you’re soliciting customer reviews at the right moment in their journey with your business to get optimal results.

Think about it: If you ask for a review at the wrong moment, it could result in a customer leaving a negative review that hundreds more people read when considering whether or not they want to buy from your business.

Ask for customer reviews after positive moments along the customer journey, like:

After they experience or demonstrate success with your product or service
When they re-purchase or re-order
After they tag your brand in a post on social media
If they are spending time on your website browsing other products or services
If they refer another customer to you

These are just a few examples of signs that your customer is satisfied enough that they would leave a positive review of your business.

5. Meet customers where they are.

Don’t email your customers to ask them to leave you a positive review on Yelp.

Instead, make sure your requests match up with the avenue where you want your customer to write a review. If you’re sending out an email asking for a customer review, make sure the email links to exactly where they can leave their feedback. If you want reviews on your Facebook Page, send the request via Messenger. And if you have to ask for a customer review cross-platform, make the request as integrated as possible — for example, by linking to your Yelp page in your email signature, or asking customers to review their purchase from your Amazon store in a follow-up email post-purchase.

6. Ask open-ended questions first.

Don’t start by coming out and asking directly for a customer review.

Instead, start a conversation — and use an open-ended question to kick off the process.

By asking customers “how are you liking the product?” or “are you ready to renew/purchase again?” or “how was your recent interaction with customer support?” you can start a conversation and gauge their level of satisfaction before actually asking for the review.

This is helpful in two ways:

You can source helpful customer feedback
You can avoid the awkward mistake of asking a customer for a review before learning they had a bad experience

Use the open-ended question to genuinely collect customer feedback — and to sneakily make sure the customer is happy before offering them a reason to submit a review. There’s nothing you can do about negative reviews coming onto various sites, but if there’s a customer who needs a resolution, focus on that before you ask them to rate your business.

7. Respond to negative reviews.

Nobody’s perfect, and mistakes sometimes happen that result in a customer leaving a scathing one-star review on your website, on Facebook, or on Yelp.

When you get a one-star review, though, make sure to take the time to respond thoughtfully, without being defensive, to come to a resolution. It’s the right thing to do if you work in customer service, and it could actually help your business in the long run.

Harvard Business Review found that businesses responding to negative reviews online actually resulted in better ratings overall. Your customers are human beings too, and the value of empathetic and compassionate customer service strikes a chord and actually leads to an uptick in total reviews, particularly positive ones.

Source: Hubspot.com