Everything You Need To Know About Asking Customers For Reviews / Feedback

Reviews are one of the most crucial elements that constitute customer opinion about your company. Online reviews can elevate the stature of your business and create business credibility as well. The fact that you have good or bad reviews about your business specifies that you have been making a sincere effort at providing excellent customer service and improving on your services. Asking for reviews is an efficient strategy to validate your products, services and your company. In order to get positive social validation for your business, a little extra effort and finesse is required from your end. Moreover, it is the art of connecting with the customers so that they can speak their mind to you.

Reviews are your social proof and that’s why they are so important!

If your existing customers keep giving you repeat business, then this proves that they are happy with your services. Getting your clientele to review your products or services will:

Influence other people to follow their lead
Portray reliable facts about your business to the prospects
Get a higher ranking for your business
Boost traffic to your website

Here are some astonishing facts about getting online reviews for your business:

Approximately 70% of people are influenced by online reviews and they are important deciding factors for them.
Bad reviews are helpful for your business as well. Your prospects will spend a lot more time reading the bad reviews and knowing the solutions provided.
Star ratings for your business shown in the search engine results page have the potential to increase the click-through rates.
Star ratings also help in boosting SEO and organic search results.
Most of the people won’t leave reviews for your products or services even if they are extremely satisfied; you need to ask them once or a couple of times to provide reviews.
Most of the people trust online reviews as much as they would trust personal recommendations by their friends or family.
Having relevant and latest reviews is important. Most of the consumers will not consider a review to be relevant if it is more than one month old. So asking for reviews should be a continuous process.
Most of the people feel that a business is more concerned about their customers if they respond to the online reviews.
Positive reviews influence almost 72% of consumers to trust a business more.
At times people are willing to pay more for a product or a service that is costlier but has good reviews about it.
Getting online reviews is extremely important for local SEO.

You see how important it is to get reviews for your business? Now let’s look at some easy ways and tips to ask customers for reviews:

When To Ask Customers For Reviews?

There are certain instances that can increase your chances of getting reviews and the top three include the following:

When The Customer Is Happy : When a customer is very happy and positive about your products or services, it is the best time to ask for a review. This is the time when the customer will more likely provide the review right away. Always ask customers for reviews when customers are happy and satisfied with the service, you will definitely get one.

After Completing A Service Or Delivering A Product : As they say – ‘Strike the iron while it is hot!’ When you have completed a particular service task or delivered a product, you must ask for a review right away. You will stay at the top of the customer’s mind by doing this.

Ask For Feedback So That You Can Assist If The Customer Is Unhappy : When you think that any of your customers is unhappy with your service, you can ask for feedback instead of a review as this is less intimidating for the customer. Additionally, if the customer has had a bad experience with you, you can address the issues faster with feedback before that customer posts a bad online review about your company. When you ask for feedback, it shows that you care about their opinion.

Tips To Ask Customers For Reviews:

Ask For Review In Person

This can happen in a direct conversation or on a phone call. Although asking for a review in person can be a little intimidating; however, it is one of the most efficient approaches to get reviews. You need to seize the opportunity during your conversation.

For instance, if you are having a call with a happy customer, you should first tell them that you will try your best to resolve the issues (if the call is regarding some issue) or you can say that you will continue to provide the best services. At this, the customer replies with a thank you and this is your chance to ask for a review. You can tell the customer – ‘If you don’t mind, can you please leave a review about the experience you had with us? We will be really grateful!’

You also need to create conversations with the customers that will create an opportunity for getting reviews. For instance, you have called them for an upgrade in service or package and casually you talk to them about leaving a review or feedback.

While doing this, it is also important to know that you shouldn’t force it at all! Don’t ask for a review on the very first positive remark by the customer otherwise, all that you are conveying is that you just provided good services for getting a good review. You need to ask the right thing at the right time for getting a review.

When you are talking o a customer directly or on a call, you need to gauge the situation and the mindset of the customer. At times even the happiest customers don’t want to provide a review and in this case, you can try a couple of times but you need to maintain a healthy conversation and make sure that you don’t lose this customer by asking for reviews repeatedly. Try to remind the customer if they would like to leave a review at some other time and if you feel that you are annoying the customer, stop right away or try at a later point in time.

Asking For Reviews Through Email

Asking for reviews through emails is one of the most powerful approaches for the businesses to get more reviews and feedback. Emails are a great medium for communicating with your customers; most of your customers might be checking their emails on a daily basis before checking anything else online. In an email, you can add a link to the respective review platform; you can also experiment on various formats and languages.

Email Relay

This is an email that will be sent to all the customers in your list. Either you might want to send one brief email or you might want to segment it as you feel is appropriate. Basically, this is a short and simple email that might include a 1-10 scale rating and/or a brief description.

Here is an example:

Hello,

Positive reviews from great customers like you help others in feeling confident about choosing (your business name) too. Can you please take a little time to go to (link to the review platform) to share your experiences?

We will be grateful. Thanks in advance for sharing your feedback.

Customized Email

Nothing can make a customer feel more special and appreciated than receiving a customized email from the business owner. You can select some of the most loyal customers who have done a great amount of business with you, or customers with whom you wish to create long term relationships and send them a personal note that thanks them for their business and asks them for a review.

Here is an example:

Dear (first name of the customer),

As you are one of our preferred customers, your feedback is most crucial to (your business name). We are continuously working towards providing an ideal experience to our customers, and your input helps us in defining that experience. We will really appreciate if you could take a minute to post a review on (name of the review platform).

We hope to see you again soon!

Best Regards,

(your name)

Asking For Reviews In A Purchase Confirmation

Whether the purchase confirmation is through an email or through a thank you page, asking for a review right away may not be right as the customer might not have tried your products or services yet. However, even in this case, your customer can provide feedback about what it is like to navigate within your website or his/her experience on interacting with your staff, customer support team or sales team and going through the entire purchase channel. This is the time when the experience is fresh in the customer’s mind.

Also, some customers might not be purchasing products or services from you for the first time, this may be their second or third or fourth time purchasing from you so they might be comfortable and eager to give feedback.

Here is a sweet way to ask for a review:

Thank you for your purchase! If you are happy with our services, we would appreciate if you take a minute to leave a review here (link to the review platform).

Asking For Reviews On Your Website

You can incorporate Call-To-Actions to ask the customers to leave a review on various pages on your website; however, there are many businesses that prefer having dedicated pages for reviews or testimonials. This page is generally accessible through the main menu as this is one of the most prominent aspects that anyone would consider before making any purchase.

One way through which you can do this is to simply offer the links to your profiles on various review websites. Another way is to add the existing reviews along with the Call-To-Action for leaving a review.

Here is an example of how ratings and reviews are displayed on the MilesWeb website:

Other Ways To Ask For A Review

You can make use of some other creative ways as well for asking for reviews for your business. Here are some ways for asking reviews:

Include A Line In Your Services Email : When you send confirmation emails or emails regarding any updates, you can simply add a line that says – “Got feedback? We would love to hear from you, you can leave us a review at (link to the review website or website page)”.

Request Reviews Through Social Media Or Text Messages : You can send a brief text message requesting your customers to write a review for you and add a link to the review website.

You can use the following tips while asking for reviews on social media websites:

Enable reviews on your social media platforms. For insistence, if you want reviews on your Facebook page, you will have to enable reviews on your Facebook business page.
Do not delete the negative reviews or the 3-4 star ratings, instead work on them and portray the solutions. This is your chance to publically respond to the actions you have taken.
Social media is all about interaction, interact with anyone who posts comments, posts or reviews. This lets people in your network know that you listen to them.
Channel your customer service requests through social media. If you have a process that necessitates the customer to fill a form, open a support ticket, shoot you an email or give you a call, you can also incorporate social media in this process.
Let your customers shop with your through social media platforms. You will get more opportunities to ask for reviews.
Offer exclusive social media only incentives to encourage customers to leave reviews on the social media platforms.
Drive people to your social media platforms for leaving reviews through other websites as well.

Over to you….

Reviews are an important aspect of your website; you need to be very strategic while asking for reviews as this will increase your chances of getting them. It is for you to decide where you want people to review your business; it could be on review websites, on social media or for putting them up on your own website. There is nothing wrong in experimenting with various review platforms and methods of asking for reviews.

Have these points in your mind when you ask for reviews:

Reviews are crucial as they empower your customers to make informed decisions.
Be genuine while asking for reviews and remember not to force them.
Make it very easy for the customers to leave a review, provide them all the information they need for posting the review quickly.
Keep in mind that customers are willing to give reviews; you need to approach this with a positive attitude.
Respond to all the reviews good and bad!

A sturdy flow of reviews will help build your business reputation and credibility, your rankings and ultimately your revenue as well. Let your approach be backed by good timing, good words and finesse and getting reviews will be easier for you.