While it can be a daunting task to ask your customers to leave reviews online about your company, software, product or service, the payout can be worthwhile if you gain even one referral in the process. Today we're sharing various channels, outlets and strategies your business can implement in order to find the most successful route to gain healthy and positive reviews from your customers. Not all of these work for every business, so make sure you test, test, and then... test some more.
1. Incentives - Our most successful campaign
Offer customers some kind of incentive, like 10% off their bill if they complete an customer review survey, or a $50 Amazon gift card (our customers love this!) for taking the time to answer a few questions for you. Make sure you impress upon them the importance of being honest; the incentive isn't to boast about your business - it's about getting honest and helpful feedback. You want your customers to be completely truthful so your business can assess the criticism and the praise and improve from both.
2. Company newsletter
If you already take the time to create and send a newsletter, you might as well add a little something extra to make it worth your while. Even if it's as simple as a postscript (P.S.) with a simple link to leave a review, you'd be surprised at how many customers will follow the link and participate in the survey.
3. E-blast
If your business uses a marketing automation platform like Hubspot (and if you don't, you should!) sending e-blasts is a no-brainer, thanks to list segmentation and scheduling. You can easily draft up an e-blast to 20, 50, 100 customers asking them to complete a simple survey and providing them with a link. Simply add the list of customers, schedule a time and date, and BOOM! You're done.
4. Social Media
A great way to encourage your customers who are active on social media to participate in customer surveys is to share current reviews. This can easily be done by screenshotting a current review and tweeting it or posting it on your company's Facebook page. In doing so, your customers will see a current review, the length, what other customers are saying, how concise and detailed they are; it really paints a picture for them. Providing examples is a positive way to get what you want because it makes it easier to understand what you need from them.
5. Give them a call
There may be some customers where your relationship is strong enough that you feel comfortable enough doing this. If so, do it! Getting them on the phone and expressing the importance of something shows that their opinion matters to you, which is likely to motivate them more to participate. Bad customer experience isn't typically something that customers will brush under the rug. If they're having a rough experience and you ask them for a review, chances are good they'll tell you over the phone what's going on. It may provide you the opportunity to be more proactive than you otherwise would have been.
6. CTA in your email signature
If you spend any amount of time emailing customers, it's worth it to put a link to a customer survey in your email signature. Include a link with some easy to read text like "Answer 5 Questions & Get an Amazon Gift Card" or a simple button prompting them to click for the survey. You can even mention the link or CTA in your email ("Please see the link in my signature below") to preface the survey and gauge their interest with their response.
There are so many ways to get your customers to complete surveys about their experience with your company. It's not always easy, and you will definitely have to get creative. Enlist the help of various departments in your business and see what they can come up with. You may be surprised with what you find!
