Collecting customer testimonials is crucial for every business. You can’t improve the customer experience and drive business growth if you don’t know what your customers think. Customer testimonials are the most effective form of content because of the power of the customer voice in the form of reviews as social proof.
But let’s face it: getting meaningful customer stories is a difficult task. To address this challenge, we’ve written an article detailing how to get more good customer reviews and how to automate this process. At the end of the article, we’ve provided a checklist so you can get started today.
Sommaire
What questions should I ask to get good customer reviews?
If you want to reassure your prospects
Did you know that 84% of people trust consumer reviews as much as personal recommendations and spend 31% more with businesses that have good customer testimonials? What’s more, by having customer testimonials in your possession, you can present them as social proof on your website and build trust around your business.
If you want to know more about the overall customer experience
These questions will give you crucial information about the essential parts of your services.
- From one (unhappy) to ten (very happy), how would you rate your overall satisfaction with our services?
Sometimes the numbers speak for themselves. The 0-10 scale helps customers fill in the survey more easily and gives you quick results. It is also a good idea to provide open-ended questions to leave room for all kinds of comments.
- What parts of our services can be improved?
If you want to evaluate the loyalty of your customers
Customer loyalty is a major asset for your company. Every company should do its best to turn prospects into loyal customers and, consequently, increase the number of referrals. Instead of using tools to automate your sales prospecting, try to keep your existing customers first. Here are some questions you could ask them:
- What would you like to see us continue (and/or stop) doing?
- What problems have you experienced with our services and how do you think we could solve them?
- How would you react if our service disappeared?
- Would you trust us to help one of your friends?
One of the most obvious results of having loyal customers is getting a recommendation. If customers really trust you, they will recommend your services to others, especially their friends and family. This means new potential customers.
If you want to know more about the competition
It is important to know your strengths and weaknesses. And it is also important to know what your prospects and customers think of you and your main competitors.
- What would you choose as an alternative if our services were no longer available?
- What distinguishes our company from its competitors?
- Compared to the market, is the quality of our services better, worse or about the same?
- Compared to the market, are our prices higher, lower or about the same?
Let’s face it: today, everyone is influenced by price. Be sure to ask if your customers think your prices are fair. This information can help you develop excellent strategies foracquiring new customers.
How to get more customer reviews?
Be generous
Try to offer your customers gifts (an FNAC gift card, a VISA prepaid card, a short free consultation, etc.) to increase your visibility and thus obtain customer reviews. Choose a gift that is useful for the customer. For example, high value-added content such as a white paper related to their industry, an internal study, etc.
Salesdorado’s tip
To automate this part, look at Rewards Genius.
Ask for feedback at the right time in the customer journey
You have a better chance of getting quality feedback during or just after your customer’s purchase. Don’t wait for them to forget about you and ask for their feedback at the right moment in the customer journey.
Keep your questionnaire short and simple
Minimise the effort your client will have to make. Limit the number of questions and add a touch of humour to your questionnaire, if possible. No one likes a long, boring survey.
If you send your customers to review platforms, generate a direct review link to avoid each of your customers clicking 4 times to get to the form.
How can I automate the process of obtaining customer reviews?
Here the process is quite simple:
- 1. Arrange with the client to obtain a testimonial,
- 2. Prepare a personalised questionnaire depending on how the customer prefers to leave feedback (text, video, interview etc.),
- 3. The customer receives a link to the satisfaction survey and leaves a video or text testimony,
- 4. You approve the testimony and customise its appearance if necessary,
- 5. The testimonial is posted on your website, on any page.
And that’s it!
Checklist to get started today
It is important for every business to get meaningful video and text testimonials. In this article, we have put together the questions you can ask to collect high-quality testimonials, as well as the most convenient channels to reach your customers.
Let’s summarise this information to provide you with concrete steps to start collecting text and video reviews from your customers today:
- A good testimonial should tell a story: offer the story you want to tell to prospects,
- When preparing a survey, make sure to include three main questions: What was the problem? What solution(s) did they find? How does the solution now improve their life/business?
- Keep the questionnaire as short and simple as possible,
- Offer an incentive to complete the survey (e.g. a gift card),
- Send the customer a link to the personalised survey and get a video or text testimonial,
- If necessary, personalise the testimonial you have just collected and include it on your website.
By following this process, you will minimise the number of negative emails and testimonials you may receive.
Now you are armed with various techniques to get more reviews from your customers. Which of the above-mentioned review collection techniques have you already tried? Feel free to share your own techniques in a comment below!
