Your customers just paid for your products or services, so asking them to do one more thing, like leaving a review, might feel like too much. But it’s important to keep in mind that reviews matter. And happy customers don’t mind giving them.
The key is learning how to ask customers for reviews without being a pest. Here are six tips.
1. Ask while the experience is fresh in their minds. If people have had a great experience with your company, they’re usually more than happy to share the details, especially when the experience is front and center in their minds. That’s why it’s important to follow the adage “strike while the iron is hot.”
If a customer expresses his or her gratitude to you or your employees, follow up by asking the person if he/she would be willing to write a review or testimonial. If the review or testimonial is for your site, you could even offer to write it for the person and then get his/her sign off.
If the review is for an independent site, such as Yelp or Amazon or Houzz, then simply send the person a link to the appropriate page and ask if she/he would be kind enough to leave a review. Some sites, such as Houzz, have an “ask for a review” function baked right into the platform, which makes the process turnkey for you and the customer.
It’s important to make sure everyone in your company who interacts with customers is on board with this approach. Why? Because you never know which employee might encounter a happy customer. So, for example, if your sales rep gets a thank-you email from a customer, the sales rep should follow up and ask if he/she can pull a quote from the email and add it to the testimonial page and other pages on your site.
If a customer service rep does a great job handling a customer issue, and the customer is incredibly grateful for the help, the customer service rep should ask the happy customer to share her experience by leaving a review.
And so forth—you get the idea.
2. Provide non-intrusive reminders at different marketing “touch” points. Here are some examples of what we mean by non-intrusive reminders:
- If you have a testimonials page on your site, you could add a blurb saying, “We always love hearing from customers. Feel free to drop us a line and share your experience.”
- After the customer completes a transaction on your site, you could prompt them in the confirmation email to share a review of the customer service experience.
- If you’re an ecommerce site, you could send a “rate your experience” email a week or so after purchase (Amazon is famous for doing this).
3. Create a “Help us spread the word” page on your website. Your biggest fans will be eager to help spread the news about your best products and services. People do this for many reasons: they like sharing great finds/deals, they love looking like heroes to friends and family, and/or they like being ahead of the curve when it comes to cool products or services. Whatever their reason for wanting to sing your company’s praises, make it as easy as possible for them to do so.
Create a page on your site that outlines all the ways people can become brand ambassadors for your company. One of these ways will cover the many places where people can leave reviews. In addition, you should create compelling call-to-action buttons that you place throughout the site that point people to this page.
4. Post reminders on Facebook. Open with “Here’s a testimonial from a happy customer…” Then at the end add, “Our happy customers are our best form of advertising. Have you told your friends and family about your experience with our company? Share this post and let them know!”
The goal, of course, is for people to share the post and add details about their own awesome experience with your company.
5. Devote a bonus section of your next newsletter to happy customer comments. It needn’t be long—simply highlight three to five recent customer reviews from various outlets (Yelp, Amazon, Facebook, and so forth). End with a call-to-action saying, “Would you like to leave a review? Here’s how.” You could link it to the platform where you want to boost reviews, or you could link it to your “help us spread the word” page that we talked about earlier.
6. Get innovative with video. If you deal directly with customers in person, get proficient with your smart phone’s video recording functions and video happy customers talking up your products or services. (Get their OK first, of course!) Then make a plan to share this video content on your website and social media.
How do you ask customers for reviews and testimonials? Share in the comments.