What’s the best way to encourage your customers to provide positive reviews?
To help your company receive positive reviews, we asked sales professionals and customer service experts this question for their best tips. From incentivizing honest reviews to relating the review request to a specific employee, there are several ways you can get praise that positively reflects your company’s hard work.
Here are 10 ways to encourage customers to leave you a positive review:
- Incentivize Honest Reviews
- Provide Links to Review Sites
- Directly Engage with Customers in Person
- Be Strategic in your Request
- Proactively Have a Feedback System in Place
- Develop a Review Template
- Boost Credibility by Going to the Experts
- Individually Respond to Each Review
- Establish Exceptional Customer Service
- Relate the Review Request to a Specific Employee
Incentivize Honest Reviews
If done correctly, incentivizing your customers to leave reviews can be an effective way to motivate them to do so. Some people are nervous to utilize this method as they think it’s using an unethical practice. However, as long as you do not tie incentives to a “positive” review, and request they provide only their honest assessment, you can use this method with great effectiveness.
Offering to enter customers into a drawing, providing discounts or access to special deals for them to leave an honest review, gives them the incentive without guiding them as to what the nature of their review should be. By implementing an incentive program for honest reviews, you can drive up the desire to post valid opinions all while maintaining your business’s integrity.
Greg Gillman, MuteSix
Provide Links to Review Sites
The best way to encourage customers to provide positive reviews is to make it easy for them. Provide links to review sites on your website, in your email signature, and on social media. Make sure that these links are prominently displayed and easy to find. You can also include a call-to-action in your communications, directly asking customers to leave a review.
When customers do leave a review, be sure to thank them! This will show that you value their feedback and appreciate their effort. In addition, responding to negative reviews in a constructive manner can also encourage customers to leave more positive reviews. By taking these steps, you can encourage customers to provide feedback that will help improve your business.
Antreas Koutis, Financer
Directly Engage with Customers in Person
If you run a business where you see the same clients in person regularly, such as a school where you teach students weekly, you can ask them verbally and directly to leave a review once you’ve gotten to know them well enough. Be sure to think this through, and only ask those you know feel positively toward your business.
At the end of a lesson, for example, you can politely request them to leave a review on your Google Business page. You can also explain that this will help your online rankings sustain your business. When you explain how this works, especially in person, you will allow your clients to feel how meaningful it would be for them to leave a lovely review.
Miles Beckett, Flossy
Be Strategic in your Request
Typically, the clients that are most likely to give you a rave review are those who have been with you for a while and have expressed their approval of your work in the past without prompting. These are the people you’ll want to ask for official reviews. Asking clients for a review upon a specific benchmark could be a good way to achieve positive feedback without worrying about the timing being off. For example, at the 6-month or 1-year mark, clients will be reached out to and asked for specific reviews through an email. From there we can gauge how our clients would review us and
look for respondents with the most positive feedback. From there, reach out to them with a message specifically for them, asking if they’d be willing to share their positive experience. With negative reviews, this can be more difficult but still worth it. Based on the survey sent out, take their critical feedback and make changes based on that. If the relationship between the client has been mended then it’s an optimal time to reach out for a review. Follow this process and enjoy the steady stream of reviews!
Sara Kate Taylor, Dogwood Media Solutions
Proactively Have a Feedback System in Place
It is important for businesses to be proactive about customer reviews. Have a system in place for soliciting feedback from customers.
One method would be an autoresponder email that goes out to customers when their service or purchase is complete. Explain to them how important reviews are to your business, and ask them to please leave a review. Give them a link to the place where you want them to leave the review, like Yelp or your Google Business Page. You want to make it simple for the customer to follow through. The easier it is for them to leave a review, the more likely they are to do so.
Shawn Plummer, The Annuity Expert
Develop a Review Template
One way to encourage customers to leave positive reviews is to partially write or even completely provide the review for them. Develop a template for customers to follow in terms of the response you’re looking for. For example, whenever you reach out to people you’ve done business with for a testimonial, share a few bullet points about what you feel are the biggest benefits of your relationship that they can either use or ignore.
This approach allows you to influence what they’re going to say. As a bonus effect, your customers won’t have to think hard about sharing feedback, which increases the chances of them providing a testimonial.
Datha Santomieri, Steadily
Boost Credibility by Going to the Experts
Find an expert in your industry to give your products credibility. For example, if you sell nutritional shakes, ask a reputable doctor to rave about the shakes’ benefits on social media. If you own a pet grooming business, ask a vet to post how fabulous his patients look after they’ve used your doggie styling services. You can gain people’s trust by scoring reviews from those in the know!
Erin Banta, Pepper
Individually Respond to Each Review
Your consumers are more likely to think about leaving reviews if you demonstrate that you value them and strive to provide the best experience. In order to do this, you need to personally reply to each review left by your customers. For review websites, register an account and respond to comments as soon as you can.
By doing this, you will draw in both consumers who are currently active in offering insightful feedback and attract those who aren’t. The fact that you address everyone’s concerns by responding will be appreciated by everyone who scrolls down to learn about the performance reviews. As a result, there will be a higher chance that additional visitors will share their opinions and provide comments.
Michael Garrico, Total Shape
Establish Exceptional Customer Service
Exceptional customer service is the best way to get positive feedback from your customers. Your customers will be more likely to leave a review if they feel that you care about them and their experience—and the only way to do this is by going above and beyond what is expected. This means that you must be proactive in reaching out and ensuring your customers are happy with their purchases. If they’re unsatisfied with something, offer them a refund or exchange immediately. If they have any queries, respond promptly and thoroughly.
Inquire directly about customer satisfaction before you ask them to leave a review. If they have any concerns, they’ll likely share with you then, and you’ll have a chance to address any issues then. Once you’re sure that your customers are happy, it’s time to nudge them toward giving feedback.
Yoav Morder, Sonary
Relate the Review Request to a Specific Employee
When asking our clients for reviews, we always frame it as a request for them to provide feedback specifically for the individual in the team that they worked with during their time with us. Asking for generic feedback about the organization is fine, but we’ve found that anchoring the feedback request to a real person significantly increases the response rate.
There’s something about providing feedback about a real person that makes customers much more likely to take the time to share their thoughts. Not only is this great for generating a substantial amount of positive reviews for our business, but it’s also a fantastic motivator for our team members, who really appreciate being the subject of positive feedback.
John White, We Run
This post was created by submitting a question at Terkel. From there we were able to create community-driven content featuring expert insights. Sign up at terkel.io to answer questions and get published.
