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If you wish to grow your online presence, you need to get customer reviews. Whether you are a service-based business or you sell products, it is paramount that people say what they think about your company. Their input not only helps other customers but also aids you in learning how they perceive your brand. While all this holds true, people still find themselves dumbstruck when they need to actually ask for customer reviews. So, let’s use this article to explore how, why, and when to do so.
The difficulty in asking for customer reviews lies in the fact that customers rarely want to give them. Either they are uninterested in your brand and therefore don’t want to give it a second thought, or they are looking into your brand and don’t want to stop in order to provide a review. Therefore, it is easy to find yourself stumped on when to ask a customer for a review and how to phrase your question. Luckily, there are ways to figure out both the timing and the phrasing.
The first thing to do is to figure out why you are asking your customers for reviews. Do you want to get their feedback, or do you simply want them to mention your company? Do you want them to elaborate on what working with you is like, or do you want them to rate you on a scale? While reviews, it is important to know why you are asking for them. Understanding this is crucial as it will guide the rest of the process.
When it comes to modern customer engagement, personalization has become the norm. Even when it comes to asking for customer reviews, you need to integrate personalization to a certain degree. While there are many ways to do so, we feel that two are the most effective. Firstly, you need to track customer behavior on your website. Knowing what individual customers do, you can outline the best time to ask for reviews. Ideally, you will have a dynamic algorithm that will automatically ask for a review. But, even if you don’t, simply tracking user behavior and outlining patterns will aid you in getting reviews.
Secondly, if you wish to ask for reviews through emails, you really ought to avoid sending generic ones to as many customers as possible. Even here, personalization plays an important role. Through it, you can assume that your customers will actually read your emails and go through the trouble of giving you a review.
Regardless of your customers’ motivation, assume that no one wants to provide a lengthy review. Yes, some may feel inclined to write paragraphs about your service and provide detailed impressions of your brand. But, while there are easy ways to display them, you shouldn’t push for lengthy reviews. For the most part, assume that reviews will be 2-3 sentences max. This is the best way to promote reviews with web design.
Similarly, when you ask for reviews, don’t go off on a tangent. Don’t elaborate on how reviews help your SEO or how you value customer input. Instead, simply let your customer know that you would appreciate a review and make them feel motivated to give one.
Whether or not an indecisive customer will give you a review usually boils down to timing. Those already motivated to give you a review will give one regardless of when or how you ask. Those that won’t—won’t. But, for the most part, the timing of your asking is crucial. Ideally, you want to ask for reviews right after your customer has done dealing with your brand. If you ask before, you will likely ruin the experience that they have with your brand. Wait too long, and that experience will leave their mind, and they won’t feel inclined to review you.
This is why most service companies ask for reviews in person. By doing so, they make use of the good mood that the customer is in after a job well done. When it comes to local citations, this tends to be the best practice. With product companies, this can be a bit more difficult, as you need to give your customers time to try out your products. Usually, a couple of days, up to a week, is more than enough.
While scales are useful as rating systems, you really need to be careful when using them. Namely, you need to understand what your rating implies and how the customer will perceive it. If you ask customers to give ratings on your website, you need to explain your rating. While it may seem obvious to you what a 1-5 rating means, know that 2,3,4 rates are essentially subjective. If you wish to learn something from customer ratings, you need to give a brief explanation for every number.
Regardless of what interaction you have with your customers, it is important to set up KPIs. While you may feel that you are doing well with your reviews, there is a chance that you could be doing much better. And the only way to have any analytic capability is by establishing KPIs. It would be best if you had objective insight into how often customers respond to review requests, how long it takes to fill out reviews, and whether the reviews cause changes in their online behavior.
As you can see, there are many things to keep in mind when you ask for customer reviews. This is why it is usually wise that you look into your competitors and see how they ask for reviews. Most likely, you will see different approaches to reviews, both in timing and phrasing. And this will give you the opportunity to experience reviews as a customer and see whether you can improve upon their strategy.
I-AM.AM LLC was founded with the ultimate goal to support the economic growth of Armenia. By connecting Armenian Owned Businesses globally, creating a centralized hub of everything Armenian and implementing numerous projects that will boost the economy of the outer regions of Armenia, I-AM.AM community is creating a self-sufficient economy throughout the country.
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