REVIEWS COUNT – GIVE YOUR CUSTOMERS SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT

‘Every business has reviews. It’s more obvious in the retail and B2C world, but even B2B companies are reviewed by their customers.’ BARE shares an article by Shep Hyken for Forbes with the importance of customer reviews.

‘In addition to Yelp, Google and other retail-focused review platforms, customers from all industries talk and compare notes. It may be on a digital forum, or it could be in a group of users of a particular product or service. That said, here is some interesting information about reviews that’s worth noting.

As part of my efforts to find out how customers think, we surveyed more than 1,000 consumers and asked them a simple question:

In the past 12 months, have you left an online review about the customer service and experience you received?

Forty-three percent said yes, meaning 57% said no. In other words, roughly two out of five people have left a review. That’s a large number. How does that 43% break down? Did customers make more effort to leave negative or positive reviews?

• 49% of those who left a review made a positive comment.
• 19% of those who left a review made a negative comment.
• 33% of those who left a review expressed both positive and negative comments.

This is good news. There are far more people—more than twice the number—who are willing to paint the prettier picture.

Reviews play an important part in the decision-making process. Even though we’re talking about customer service, think about shopping on Amazon’s website and reading product reviews. It’s a simple five-star rating system, which makes it easy to spot the products you would be comfortable buying. The same applies to the customer service and experience, not just the product, your customers receive.

What can you do to get your customers to talk about you and leave a review—ideally a positive review? Here are several ideas:

1. First and foremost, give them an experience or sell a product they are willing to talk about. The well-known steakhouse, Morton’s, doesn’t traditionally advertise. Its marketing department is the team in the kitchen preparing the food and the servers managing the guests’ experiences. It relies on the experience being so good that the guests will tell others and come back. The best marketing results can come from others telling the story of their experience. This comes in the form of recommendations, referrals and reviews.
2. Ask your customers to leave a review or a referral. Think of the NPS (Net Promoter Score) survey. You ask, “On a scale of zero to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?” If they give you a nine or 10, that means they are likely to recommend you. Why not ask to whom they would recommend you? As long as you are asking a customer to fill out a brief survey, give them the option of posting to an online forum like Yelp or Google. If you don’t ask, you don’t receive!
3. While not exactly based on a public review, there is another opportunity worth exploring. Depending on the type of business or industry you’re in, especially in the B2B world, pricing is ever-changing. There is often negotiation. Why not include in the negotiation that if you meet or exceed the customer’s expectations, they will post a positive review and make five introductions to potential new customers for you? These introductions could be some of the best leads you’ll ever get.

As I came up with the title for this article, I couldn’t help thinking about the Bonnie Raitt song, “Something to Talk About.” That song may have been about love, but the lyrics stand out in my mind … “Let’s give them something to talk about!” 

If your product does what it’s supposed to, and you deliver it in a style that meets, and ideally exceeds—even if it’s just by a little—the customer’s expectations, you have an opportunity to get them to talk about you, refer you and become your executive in your best marketing strategy.’

Read the original article in full here.

With the holidays coming up, here’s a gift from us to you!

Disclaimer of endorsement: Any reference obtained from this article to a specific business, product, process, or service does not constitute or imply an endorsement by BARE International of the business, product, process, or service, or its producer or provider.