5 Methods to Inspire Customers to Leave Positive Reviews
Whether you operate as a service-based online business or work as a retailer with a website, customer reviews, testimonials and social proof, in general, can stimulate further lead generation. According to Forbes, 96% of customers report that customer servicing is an important part of their brand loyalty and advocacy toward a company, while 83% of companies genuinely believe that customer happiness is important to continued revenue growth.
Likewise, according to Adobe, over 80% of organizations are expected to shift their competitive efforts toward professional Customer Experience (CX) delivery, and with organizations which provide omnichannel customer engagement retaining an average of 89% of their customers, the importance of lead nurturing cannot be overstated.
One of the best ways to learn what works and doesn’t work for your own audience base is to encourage them into leaving reviews of your services or products post-engagement. However, given that not many people have the habit of leaving reviews if their experience was positive, inspiring them to do so shortly after the engagement is highly recommended.
That being said, let’s take a look at several ways in which you can nudge satisfied customers into leaving positive reviews for your company and the reasons to do just that.
Why Would You Encourage Customers to Leave Reviews in the First Place?
Let’s talk about why reviews are important for business before we jump into the methods to encourage just that with your customers. It’s easy to spot the pattern of poor CX being followed by negative reviews (which is a justified response from a customer who invested time and money into your brand).
However, positive reviews are less frequent than negative ones – after all, “it goes without saying” that the experience was positive if there are no complaints to be made. This is exactly the mindset which you should disprove in your customer base going forward.
Cynthia Hale, Chief Customer Service Agent at TrustMyPaper spoke on this topic briefly: “Customers should be made aware that positive reviews can be highly useful for you when it comes to attracting even more likeminded individuals to your business or online store. If customers leave only bad reviews and consider good reviews an anomaly, you will have a hard time gathering positive feedback and words of encouragement to be used in future content marketing and brand advertisement efforts.”
In short, a “review” isn’t a “complaint” – it is a short and descriptive piece of written content which can encourage more customers to consider buying your products/services. As such, gathering positive reviews can lead to several beneficial outcomes for your company, including:
- Better search engine ranking for your website
- Better public image as a pro-consumer business
- Social proof gathering pipeline, allowing for testimonial-based marketing
- Drive further engagement, purchases and brand advocacy in new customers
Methods to Inspire Customers to Leave Positive Reviews
The last thing worth pointing out before we dive into the methodology of encouraging customer reviews is that you cannot discern a satisfied customer from a dissatisfied one at a glance. Once a review has been created and submitted, you will have an opportunity to analyze it, learn from it and potentially use it for future marketing efforts via writing tools such as Studicus and Evernote.
Emphasize positive reviews in your marketing and social proof showcasing but don’t ignore negative reviews and strive to learn from them as much as possible – with that, let’s dive further into the topic.
#1. Remind them Post-Engagement
While some customers may respond negatively to frequent emails, those which will inquire about their satisfaction with your brand are bound to perform better. The best way to inspire customers into leaving a review of your services and products post-purchase is to reach out to them 24/48 hours after the fact.
You can reach out to engaged customers via email and attach the survey link to it for quick access. Make sure that your email’s subject line and opening addresses your wishes to hear the customer’s opinions, suggestions and rating of your services which will then be used to improve your company’s CX going forward.
#2. Create a Survey-Based System
Customer feedback forms and surveys with open-ended questions and numerous required fields will likely lead to high abandonment rates on your customer base’s part. To avoid that, you should outline a series of questions with multiple-choice answers and numeric ratings, while leaving the open-ended fields for the final steps of the survey.
This will encourage customers to engage with the survey and fill it out with their thoughts and opinions while being far less likely to abandon the survey once the initial, closed-system questions are answered. To make the process even easier for your customer service team, you can refer to writing platforms like WowGrade and Readable for assistance in editing and formatting of the survey’s content.
#3. Make the Process Simple
One of the reasons customers (satisfied or otherwise) neglect to leave a review is because it simply takes too much time to do it. In order to amend for that fact, you should strive to make your review process as simple and straightforward as possible. The easiest way to do so is to rely on a professional customer survey platform which will allow you to build a seamless and user-friendly review process.
This will allow you to create survey templates, as well as adjust your wording and approach to the target audience in question. Delivering said survey to your customers via different channels such as social media messaging, email or even SMS will ensure that the survey is always only a click away from the satisfied customer.
#4. Appeal to their Emotions
Customers who are happy and content with your services are very likely to respond to positive emotional stimuli in the post-engagement messages you send to them. Make sure that your requests for reviews and survey fulfilment are personalized and address each customer by their name or surname.
Avoid sending generic, robotic and distanced emails or social media messages which are obvious copy/paste content (which is generally frowned upon by customers of all calibres). Taking a personalized approach will effectively appeal to their emotions and facilitate far more positive reviews to be filled and submitted for your benefit.
#5. Offer Incentives to Do It
Lastly, building a customer loyalty program around your review system can become a win-win scenario both for your customer service team and the customers. Satisfied customers are very likely to fill out positive surveys and offer constructive comments if they plan on buying your products/services again – engagement which would be further stimulated by above-mentioned coupons or discounts.
You can refer to writing tools such as SupremeDissertations and Hemingway to outline short and informative calls to action for your appeal, as well as for the purposes of editing your survey’s questions to be read more quickly.
Incentives such as points toward free products, discount coupons or even affiliate link to be shared with friends as rewards for filling out surveys can do wonders for your engagement.
In Conclusion
Customer reviews are the best avenue for promoting your brand and products to future customers. Positive reviews can be used for the purposes of promoting your business on social media or as testimonials and social proof published on your website’s landing page respectively.
Treat your customers with genuine interest when it comes to hearing their reviews, and make sure that your desire to do so is presented accordingly in the message which accompanies the survey. Combined with a personalized approach and a symbolic loyalty incentive, your business will have no trouble generating positive reviews from satisfied customers in the foreseeable future.
- 5 Methods to Inspire Customers to Leave Positive Reviews - May 6, 2020
