It’s no news that customer reviews are a prime factor for generating sales.
This makes it important for you to get reviews from your customers about your brand. You are a smart person. You know how crucial customer reviews are to your business, so I won’t go into all that. You obviously have done some research and read a few blog posts before now on how to get some.
We even have a few on here.
A lot of the tips in the blogs you have read before now worked well in time past.
However, in 2021 you have got to do things differently. From upgrades in Google’s algorithm and changes in privacy policies, some of the things that worked before have been made redundant.
Without further ado, let’s look at 7 effective ways to generate customer reviews in 2021:
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Know The Right Time To Ask According To Their Buyer’s Journey
To get reviews from your customers, you need to be strategic. Long gone are the days when you jump in your customers face and ask for a review.
You want to create a plan that will help guide your review-generating actions. This plan would include knowing what stage in the buyer’s journey every one of your customer is in.
Because asking a customer for a review at the wrong time could potentially piss them off.
And you don’t want that, do you?
To help you with that plan, here are some strategic moments you can ask your customers for reviews:
- After they have bought and used your product/service to successfully solve their problem.
- When they stick around on your website looking at your other products.
- When they reorder or repurchase your product/service.
- When they refer a new customer to your brand.
- When they tag or mention your brand in social media post.
These are but a few examples of strategic moments when it’s right to request a review from a customer. The goal here is to move in for a review when a customer demonstrates any signs of satisfaction with your brand.
Timing is key here. You want to be sure the customer has actually enjoyed the value of your product/service. Some products/services take time to fulfill their purpose in the lives of your customers. Therefore, you want to know what the usage time frame of your product/service is.
This will help you catch them at just the right time when they are basking in the relief derived from using your product/service.
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Pick A Method That Works For Your Brand And Scale It.
Review is review and it makes no difference when they are given, right?
I am afraid not. Just like bread, stale reviews lose their taste and, hence, their ability to persuade potential customers. Therefore, you need to make review generation an ongoing project in order to get fresh reviews.
To do this efficiently, you need to choose a few methods that work and then do it at scale. Here are a few time-tested channels that you could use:
- Train your customer service staff (and everyone else where possible) to request for review after every successful purchase or service.
- If you run email automation campaigns, you should include review requests in them.
- Employ Net Promoter Score (NPS) channels to identify your brand evangelists and get your team to build a relationship with them.
- Include review links in your checkout or “thank you” page. (Use this option only if your product provide immediate solutions to your customers’ problems. Remember, you should only request for reviews when your customers have benefited from their purchase).
Consistency is key to winning the review generation game.
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Make An In-Person Request
Asking customers for reviews directly is one of the most effective ways to generate reviews.
Why does this work so well, you ask?
Simple – human contact. People prefer to interact with other humans. And so, it is easier to persuade customers in person to leave you a review than, say, through email. Customers would not want to come off as rude and therefore, they will not be able to ignore an in-person review request. Tell them you value their feedback or opinion about your brand.
Note: Only do this when you have a physical relationship with your customers. Again, wait until they have expressed satisfaction with your product, and then ask.
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Take Advantage Of Customer Happiness Moments
Imagine a customer calls and says, “Hey Dan, I just achieved such and such with the help of your product/service.” Or “Your product/service has helped solved a problem I’ve suffered for 10 years.”
I bet you’d feel ecstatic and fulfilled. However, you may be distracted by feelings and miss a crucial “gimme a review” moment.
The moment a customer gives you a testimony to you about how your product/service help relieved them of a pain, they are truly happy. This is the best time to ask for a review because they will be more willing to write you one.
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Employ Open-Ended Questions
Asking your customers for reviews directly can sometimes come off as pushy, or worse, offensive.
The best way to go about this is to initiate your request with open-ended questions. Here are a few sample questions to drive the idea home:
- How’re you liking our product?
- Are you ready to renew/purchase again?
- How did your communication with our customer rep go?
- Is there anything more we could do to provide more value with our service?
Starting your request like a conversation helps keep your customers at ease. This makes it an effortless process to collect feedback that could help improve your business. Plus, it saves you the embarrassment of finding out that your customer has been unhappy all the while.
Imagine that. Asking a customer for a review only to find out they have been having a bad experience with your business. That’d be terrible.
You want to make sure they are happy before asking for a review. Starting off in conversational manner is one way to go. Resolve any pending issues or grievances before requesting feedback.
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Get Rid Of Obstacles Where You Can
I said this many times: humans are generally lazy. And I mean no disrespect.
As humans we don’t like doing anything difficult/painful so much so that our brains are wired to avoid them. For instance, when was the last time you filled a 5-part sign up form? Never, right?
That’s the point. Your customers also want to avoid doing the hard stuff online. If they get the slightest hint that leaving you a review would be any bit difficult, they’d abandon it.
You want to remove all obstacles and make leaving you a review as easy as pie.
Here are a few ideas:
- Provide several platform options for your customers to choose from. This way they can pick what platform is most convenient for them.
- Reduce your review “funnel”. Provide them a link that takes them directly to your review page and remove any extra steps.
- Prompt them on what you want them to write a review about. For instance, if they have just renewed their subscription, ask them to write a review about their experience with the previous subscription.
These ideas will help if you use email as a primary channel to request reviews.
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Tell Them How Long It Will Take Them
Writing a review is already tedious, especially when the moment is gone. Add that to a time-consuming review process and you have got yourself a recipe for empty review pages.
To remedy this, you need to tell them in advance that the process won’t take any time at all. You could include lines like “Kindly leave us a review about your last visit. It will only take a minute or two.”
And make sure it doesn’t take longer than you promised.
Finally…
Customer reviews/feedback is crucial for your business. No doubt about that. However, having a strategy to collect them is equally important. You want to make review generation an ongoing process if you want to have fresh, updated reviews. Try and create a strategic system that works for your brand and stay with it.
You also need a way to respond quickly to reviews to give customer the impression that you are eager to hear from them. Find out more here.
POSTED ON February 15, 2021