Customer Experiences are redefining businesses. Customers are influenced by the reviews given by other customers a lot. Customer reviews are the feedback of their own experiences towards a particular product or service. As per the statistics, online reviews affect customer purchasing decisions, around 67.7%.
The most prominent and often most effective customer reviews in the prevailing market is “word of mouth”. Customers look for Positive reviews, and they are the most influencing factors for uplifting the sales and services predominantly in the prevailing world of digital marketing. The reviews given by the actual users about a product or service influences the online reputation that drives business to generate leads and run the business smoothly.
Let’s discuss why people look for online reviews
- Proof of other customers satisfaction
- Learn more about the product or service
- Gather information to avoid making a wrong buying decision
- The highs and lows of the product to benefit them from limitations
The list mentioned above has an impact on customers to direct them towards purchasing a product or service. Businesses need to get positive reviews from their customers to boost their sales and services online. Here are the five techniques which inspire customers to review online as follows.
Request Reviews from Social Platforms:
Social Media grabs customers’ attention very quickly, for example, if a user is watching a video on YouTube, in between the video there will be a quick survey pop-up prompting viewer to complete survey to continue watching the video. The survey makes many users write up their feedback forcefully. These surveys will usually be in Yes or No form, and they will be simple and easy and attractive.
Apart from social media marketing, some third-party sites conduct surveys and get reviews from customers. The most effective social media platforms are as follows; LinkedIn Recommendations, Facebook business page, Instagram, manta, YouTube- create videos and ask for reviews underneath, Google- using the google my business page, Yelp- claim or add your business to start getting studies, Yellow Pages- akin to help, it’s the digital counterpart of the iconic listings book, Four square- for brands in hospitality.
Other different sites will act as the source to get customer reviews. The main motto for all the platforms mentioned is to get reviews from their customers.
Use the Website as the Mode of Review:
Business websites can become an excellent tool for getting customer reviews. Web pages and blog posts are optimized to allow users to leave comments and share their views easily on a particular blog post. Along with the blog post, the business site should route their users to social media channels and make sure that the website should be optimized so that they can access through mobile. If a business has an e-commerce site, we can add a live chat CHECK option to receive on the spot feedback from customers.
Requesting Reviews via Email:
One of the most important ways of communicating with people for review is email. When sales a product is sold to a customer, after receiving the product business may send them a mail stating the range of satisfaction on a particular product or service. When people see and reply, that will be the most honest feedback regarding their satisfaction towards the product or dissatisfaction towards the product. Based on their reaction business can work on its negatives to control those kinds of mistakes not to happen again.
Instead of asking for a review, we can make them write on their views or thoughts about our company by just leaving a link. Polls and surveys are set up to analyze the customer’s ideas about how efficiently they are working, and they can pull out the results with statistical data.
Give Offers for Reviews and Polls:
If we directly ask a customer about a review, they will not feel good about it. Most probably they will ignore the review pop-up, to encourage customers to give a feedback we need to provide some incentives such as discounts, coupons, gift cards etc. to make them participate in the review section. It will incite them to participate and give an honest review, and they will refer such kind of contest to other people too.
Lidl a shopping mall in Ireland which encourages its customers by providing a contest stating one lucky customer can win up to 100 euros. This competition details will be on the billing label, and people will scan the QR code to participate in this and give their genuine reviews for what they have purchased.
Perfect Time is Important for Customer Review:
There are many chances for a business to ask reviews for a customer either through emails, social media or through a link, but we all need to think about one thing, and that is timing. When we ask for a review at a wrong time it will negatively impact the feedback. So timing is the most important aspect for a business to ask for a review.
Some of the essential timings when we can ask a customer are at a time when the customer interacted with our brand and re-order a product or tagged our product in social media. We have all the data about who is coming to our sites. When we get to know what they are looking for from us and how satisfied they are, it will be the best time for a business to ask for a review.
Conclusion:
There is no perfect and practical way to get real reviews, but if we follow the above tactics, there is a massive chance for the business to get many reviews. If the company prioritizes the reviews as their source for future sales, they should adopt it as early as possible. Once the strategy is set up, a business can get reviews from multiple sources and achieve its targeted results. Customer Experience is the Key
