Most buyers seek customer reviews when they are ready to buy something new from their friends or review websites. Nowadays, thanks to smartphones and the internet, people do a lot of shopping online. You might have heard that 90% of purchases now happen online.

That means you have to make your business stand out enough on the web so that potential buyers can easily find you — because if they can’t find you, chances are they will take their business to your competitor.

Follow these 15 tips to request a review for your business!

Also read: How to get mind-blowing Google reviews?

Table of Contents

1-Based on the buyer’s journey, determine the best times to approach each buyer.

Be sure to ask for customer satisfaction ratings at the right time in their experience with your business to gain maximum value from them.

Relationships in a business have natural peaks and valleys, from buyer remorse immediately after a request for funds to moments of high job satisfaction after a solution to a problem or problem is achieved. If you ask for a review at the wrong moment, people could leave a negative review that negatively impacts how people think about your company.

Ask your customers for feedback after significant events in the customer journey, like:

After they see their success with your product or service, they utilize your abilities.
When they re-purchase or reorder.
After they post a photo of your brand in a post on social media, or they bring attention to your brand.
They recommend you to another customer.

These are just a couple of indicators that your client base is satisfied enough to give you a positive review of your business.

For example, Etsy asked me to review a recent purchase approximately one month after receiving it. I ordered a party favor for a friend’s bridal shower, so one month later was the right time to make sure I had time to enjoy and use my product.

Some products and services can provide services according to different time intervals. For Lyft’s ride-sharing app, I generally receive a prompt to assess my experience after a ride has ended. For Duolingo’s language-learning app, I often receive an immediate prompt to review it in the App Store after meeting my next lesson goal or reaching a benchmark.

2-Consider using a method that’s scalable for you.

According to BigCommerce, 40 reviews or more per product can be linked to a 4.6% increase in conversion rates.

The takeaway here is that a greater number of reviews signifies more proof and trust and, therefore, more confidence in your brand. Additionally, more older reviews than recent ones might instill less confidence in your product.

Real reviews that you can leverage to fuel your flywheel and take advantage of them as social proof are an excellent part of your process. Here are a few ways you can get these reviews at scale:

Teach your team to request evaluations of every successful project or service.
Use the reviews you construct in your marketing automation campaigns as an integral part of your email campaigns.
Use NPS to find brand advocates (your happiest customers) at high resolution and have your support team foster relationships with them.
Highlight review links on the order receipt or thank-you page as the last step in the process.

Whatever you choose, it should be kept constant and often.

3-Speak to the customer personally.

employee helping a customer to choose a product

If in a customer success manager or account manager position, it can be beneficial to speak up and try different approaches with your customers. If you are widely recognized, it can be helpful to let your customers know about the most recent initiatives you’re working on.

Whenever your customers tell you that they’re experiencing success, let them know that you value their opinions and their loyalty and that you would appreciate their help with spreading the word to new clientele. Most people will provide you with reviews if you ask.

4- Start with a question that can be answered easily.

Instead of focusing on just asking directly for a review, start by asking in an open-ended question such as “What would you like to see changed about the merchandise?” or “Can you use additional support and services?” or “How could we improve our product?”

It’s always possible to begin a conversation and judge a person’s satisfaction level before asking for a review.

This benefits in two ways:

You can learn more from customer feedback.
You can avoid getting past the customer’s complaint by learning they encountered an unpleasant situation.

5-Seek to relieve the friction where there’s a need to do so.

Your potential customers will be less inclined to leave reviews if the process is too complicated. Make the process as easy as possible when asking for testimonials via email or over the phone, so they will feel compelled to leave feedback. Here are some ideas:

Permit the customer to select the most comfortable platform to leave a review on.
Include a single link straight to the page where clients can leave feedback to reduce significantly the number of clicks or actions they’ll need.
Give them a suggestion about what they should include in their review to know what to jot down (e.g. “Will you review your experience with your most recent clinic visit for teeth whitening visit?”).

6-Inform them how long it will take.

It can be discouraging when a business asks for a review and provides no information on how long the process will take. This lack of transparency often leads to customers abandoning the task altogether.

To increase the chances of customers leaving a review, businesses should inform customers upfront how long writing a review will take. This way, customers know what to expect and are more likely to follow through with the request.

7-Set up different channels to leave reviews.

Your target customer base should be able to learn all about you from whatever place they’re performing online research about purchasing a product.

People often use third-party review websites to learn about services and products.

YELP :

BrightLocal, an American company, found a study conducted by Buddy Media for Yelp demonstrating that businesses register on Yelp are more likely to be reputable and trustworthy. Thus, be sure to register your business at Yelp to ensure that it remains at the top of your customers’ trust lists.

Make sure you stay on top of all communications coming from this profile — responsive business owners are highlighted by an average response time and response rate that would encourage closely followed readers into becoming new clients.

GOOGLE

Managing your page on Google My Business will guarantee your business is found more easily on the world’s most popular search engine. This is especially crucial for small businesses trying to draw foot traffic to their brick-and-mortar locations — read more about local SEO in this post.

AMAZON

If you’re an Amazon seller, don’t forget to claim and customize your Amazon page.

While on different Amazon pages, make sure your home page talks about how your business best serves your customers. If an unrelated customer finds your brand in a search result, make sure your page highlights all relevant information.

8-Optimize your website to ensure your reviews are highlighted.

In addition to reviews on your official website, various third-party sites may be getting inquiries in the form of long, unsolicited contributions from happy or unhappy customers.

Website badges can quickly direct visitors to your Yelp, Facebook, and Amazon pages to leave reviews.

Making your website more mobile-friendly allows you to make it convenient for visitors to access mobile-friendly sites.

You may also consider using a tool like Kooyal Aggregator to gather reviews for multiple sites and showcase them on your official website.

9-Think about creating incentives.

Your clients’ time is as valuable as yours, so you must provide them with a reason to leave a review.

Provide incentives to make your customers wanting to write a review entice them by offering discount coupon codes, sweepstakes entries for an even higher value, gift cards for online shopping, or settlement in your physical store.

10-Meet customers where they prefer to be met.

In this digital age, customers are more likely to leave a review if they’re contacted in a convenient way for them. This means that businesses need to meet customers where they prefer to be met, whether that’s on social media, through email, or on a review site. By following up with customers in the way they prefer, businesses can increase the chances of getting a review from them. If you want people to leave reviews on your business’s Facebook page, send the invitation via Messenger rather than email.

11- Respond to every review, regardless of positive or negative.

How To Respond To customer Reviews | OMBEA®

Mistakes sometimes happen, and they do not generally turn out favorably online. It is imperative to react thoughtfully to two-star reviews, watching what you say so that you do not sound defensive.

Harvard Business Review discovered that when businesses heeded negative online feedback, it got positive reviews on the whole. Your customers are also human, and their reviews and comments provide you with an important opportunity to connect with them more personally and earn extra positive opinions.

12-Give positive ratings to customers.

You could make your customers leave you feedback on your profile to start the process.

This isn’t always achievable (depending on your business and product line), but in many cases, your customers might return the favor of your positive words.

Another option is suggesting your client on LinkedIn. If you’re an organization executive who works with individuals over a long period of time, you could recommend them on LinkedIn. Those can help your product’s general reputation and motivate your clients to return the favor by leaving a positive review on your page.

13-Plan an event.

To create opportunities for spontaneous customer reviews in-person and to create distinctive situations where clients are more likely to leave reviews, host a popular user conference or industry event to increase the client experience you provide above and beyond the products you sell.

By designing an inviting, user-friendly experience for customers where they can interact with a community of people like them, get access to new product releases, discounts, and meet the authors and officers of your company, you’ll heighten their positive feelings about your company and encourage these customers to leave more reviews.

14-Handwrite a short note and a gift card.

Although it may seem a little old-fashioned, a handwritten note to your customers can boost your customer service. You might send gift cards to your customers if you’re working at a medium-sized or large company, or if you run your own small business, you may write them yourself.

Whether a customer leaves a review or not, it’s fine to offer them a nice gift as a token of gratitude. Your note can say something like, “We wanted to bring you this thank you gift as a token of our appreciation for your business.”

15-Give employees prizes in exchange for positive reviews.

Rewards encourage your employees to ask happy customers for feedback. It also motivates customers. I wanted to help our guide because we enjoyed our session so much, so my family and I all left reviews thanking him.

You can start implementing customer review cultivation at scale by setting up your plan to incorporate it into your business procedure. Do not hesitate to start using templates and ask your existing customers for ratings and reviews.