Guide to customer reviews: Tips on how to get them and examples

Given how connected customers are in today’s digital world, businesses can’t avoid ratings. Buyers can find customer reviews on your company website, third-party sites like Yelp and Google, and even on social media.

Instead of dreading this input, make customer reviews work for you by mastering how to ask for—and deserve—excellent reviews.

In this guide, learn what customer reviews are, why they’re important, how to ask for a review, how to handlenegative reviews, and ways to tell if a customer review platform is credible.

What is a customer review?

A customer review is a reflection of a customer’s overall experience with your products or services. You will usually find customer reviews on Yelp, Facebook, Amazon, and Google.

Many prospects will browse a business’s reviews to determine if the products or services are worth purchasing based on the feedback of past customers. According to research fromDixa, 93 percent of customers will read online reviews before making a purchase.

Customer reviews can be positive or negative and can go a long way in determining who will purchase from you.

Importance of customer reviews

From retail to B2B and SaaS, reviews impact how customers perceive your business—ultimately affecting your profits. Below, we explore the benefits of customer reviews.

Build trust

Customer reviews are powerful because they come from real people and often feel more authentic to buyers than traditional marketing. Research shows that49 percentof customers trust reviews as much as personal recommendations from family and friends.

Customer reviews are essentially word-of-mouth marketing online. In our digital age, customers can get feedback from people they care about and know in real life and other consumers who have real experiences via online reviews.

Get valuable feedback

Reviews provide insight into what’s working well for your customers and where there’s room for improvement—from your product quality to the effectiveness of your customer support.

Reviews enable businesses to keep an eye on their brand at all times. You can’t be everywhere and doing everything at all times, so reviews allow you to get abundant feedback.

Improve the bottom line

Like a community forum within a knowledge base, reviews can help customers get answers to their questions before they reach out to your support team. For instance, a customer can go to a restaurant’s Yelp page to see what’s on the menu. Or, they can read Amazon reviews of a product to learn how it works or determine whether there’s a warranty.

When there are fewer support requests coming in, agents can focus on high-value tasks and urgent inquiries. As a result, agents can spend more time providing high-quality customer experiences. And good CX directly impacts your bottom line—according to theZendesk Customer Experience Trends Report, 60 percent of consumers have purchased something from one brand over another based on the service they expect to receive.

How to get positive customer reviews

Getting more reviews is a two-step process. First, you need to give your customers an experience worth reviewing, and then you must make sure you encourage them to share.

Earn them

consisten公司收到积极的反馈tly create review-worthy experiences through excellent customer service. That doesn’t mean you need to spend a ton of money or do something elaborate. Everyday things stick with customers, like solving issues quickly or reaching out before a problem escalates. Showing you care with your actions is how to get customers to leave reviews.

Online retailerZapposhas arguably the most famous customer service culture of any modern-day business. The company encourages its support team to stay on customer calls for as long as they need to so they can solve the issue and build relationships.

Below are some helpful ways to earn customer or client reviews.

• Listen to customers’ needs

  Use customer feedback to create a better experience. Feedback can include comments in satisfaction surveys, pain points mentioned in your community forum, or something customers continuously tell agents.

  Postmatesis one company that’s hitting customer listening out of the park. For example, the customer experience team partners with the product and analytics teams to usecustomer feedbackfor product decisions.

• Actively engage with customers

  Give your customers the opportunity to connect with your company by cultivating an online community on social platforms. Assign specific team members to respond to customers’ comments and questions, and use chatbots for 24/7 interaction. This is also a great way to boost yourcustomer engagement strategy.

• Show customers your appreciation

  Feeling unappreciated can send customers to your competitors. But when customers do feel valued, they’re more likely to share their experience with others. Toshow customer appreciation, consider creating a loyalty program for long-time buyers and invest in social causes your customers care about.

  This also plays into meeting customers where they are. For example, you don’t want to ask your customers to leave a Yelp review via email. Instead, make sure the type of review you’re requesting lines up with the appropriate channel:

  • Ask for Facebook reviews via Facebook Messenger.
  • Ask for a website review via a follow-up email.

  This shows that you appreciate their business as well as their time.

Request them

如果你经常经过创造伟大的支持nces but your reviews aren’t taking off, give your customers an easy way to rate your company. If a customer has to work hard to leave a review, they likely won’t. Here are some ways to request a review from customers.

• Offer multichannel review options

  The first step to increasing customer reviews is to make the experience as easy as possible. Consider linking to your Yelp page in yoursocial media customer servicebio and email newsletters. Set up your messaging software so customers can leave their reviews directly through the channel they’re using to connect with you.

  Likewise, if you’re communicating via email, customers should be able to leave a review in the body of the email.

• Follow up on recent purchases or interactions

  自动请求输入recen后通过电子邮件t purchase or customer service interaction—this is one of the most common ways businesses ask for reviews. Use yourcustomer service softwareto send customers a satisfaction survey after an interaction, with an option to leave a review.

• Offer incentives

  Many customers who aren’t writing reviews need some extra motivation to do so. Incentives like discounts or free company swag can give customers the push they need.

What to do with your customer reviews

Once you start receiving customer or client reviews, there are several things you can do to help keep the momentum going:

Respond to all reviews

Not only do you need to follow up on interactions, but you also need to respond to all reviews, including negative ones—45 percentof customers say they’re more likely to visit a business if it responds to negative reviews.

There’s a lot to be said about a company that responds to reviews; it shows that you’re listening and seeking to achievecustomer empathy. Doing so can help you gain morerepeat customers.

Share positive reviews on your platforms

Show off positive reviews to spread the good word and encourage more customers to leave feedback. Consider sharing them on your website and yoursocial media channels. For example, you could:

• Reshare positive Facebook reviews in a post on your blog
• Use positive reviews from your website as quotes to post on Instagram

Many review sites, like Google, allow users to mark reviews as helpful. Take advantage of this to highlight the top reviews.

Reward customers who review

Aside from incentivizing customers to leave a review, you can alsoreward customerswho do. Consider giving out a surprise gift after a customer writes a review, like a discount code they can use towards their next purchase. This can add an extra “wow” factor to your customer’s experience and help encourage customer loyalty.

How to handle negative reviews from customers

Even for the best brands, negative reviews are inevitable. It’s impossible to please 100 percent of buyers 100 percent of the time. Don’t lose sleep over them, and don’t try to take them down. Hiding this feedback can destroy customers’ trust in your transparency. Instead, learn how to properly manage negative feedback.

Here are a few helpful tips that can help yourespond to a negative customer review:

Customer review examples

Customer reviews can come in many different forms, and your responses will vary for each one so you can keep your message as personal as possible. To get an idea of what this looks like, here are examples of both positive and negative customer reviews:

Positive customer review

Negative customer review

Common customer review sites

管理客户的一个重要组成部分eviews is understanding where customers post them and where they go looking for them. Use this quick guide to get up to speed on common review sites:

Popular third-party customer review sites

Considerations:

• While Google ranks as thetop review siteoverall, Yelp is popular for brick-and-mortar businesses, with40.47 million monthly visitors.
• Online retailer Amazon has made a business model out of reviews. Many ecommerce shoppers buy more from Amazon than any other website due to the sheer volume of customer reviews.
• Glassdoor offers employer reviews. Today, many job seekers turn to Glassdoor before even filling out an application.

3 ways to tell if a review platform is credible

The table above is by no means exhaustive. Thousands of review sites exist, but not every site is trustworthy. When trying to determine if a review platform is legitimate, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does the site go beyond ratings to include quality content?

73 percentof people believe reviews with written comments are more important than ratings. Consumers want to know the “why” behind the reviewer’s score and the details of their experience. A legitimate site should encourage reviewers to provide a written explanation for their feedback, not just a number rating.

2. Does it filter for spam reviews to keep ratings authentic?

Technology can create a good user experience, but customers want reviews from people—not bots. For example, Yelp allows businesses and consumers to report harmful or spammy reviews. The company also has a team dedicated to reviewing all inbound flags.

As a business owner, sometimes it’s appropriate to flag a review, like if a customer goes after an employee with demeaning language or if an ex-employee aggressively bashes a business. Reviews are about helpful—not hurtful—content.

3. Are the reviews verified?

Another way to assess credibility is to see if the reviews on the site are verified. This means the reviewer is a verified customer who’s purchased a product or service from the company they’re reviewing.

It’s important to note that not every review platform has this capability, but some platforms (like Google Business Profile) will indicate under the reviewer’s name whether or not they’re a verified customer.

Provide good customer service to attract positive customer reviews

Receiving good reviews starts with providing good customer service. That’s wherecustomer service softwarecomes in—it helps streamline interactions between you and your customers and makes it easy for your buyers to get a hold of you on the channel of their choice.

To ensure your customer service is top-notch, use sophisticated customer service software for streamlined support to help attract positive customer reviews.