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Happy customers can be your best advertising strategy
Nowadays, it is important to take care of professional customer service and positive customer experience. Positive reviews of your clients presented on the website of your company or a Facebook page can have a huge impact on your business and attract potential buyers. A happy customers who will convince others that you do a good job can be your best advertising strategy. What is the meaning of personal recommendations and how to ask for them?
A success story – importance of positive customer reviews
Almost 70% of the world’s population (according to the “Digital 2022” report) spends time on the Internet, reads blog post reviews, searches for the information on social media, and talks to friends.
Some of them can be your potential happy customers, on condition that you think about collecting reviews in advance. A positive review can play a significant role in telling other people about your company and its products or services. As a business owner, you have to be aware of how important it is.
Think about how a customer perceives your business
It doesn’t matter if your run a local business or a big company – good relations with clients should be your priority. If you have loyal customers, it will be easier for you to ask for their honest feedback, and, consequently, gain more reviews.
The more positive reviews you gather, the better for you and your company. A happy customers who are satisfied with the cooperation with you and your team can be your big asset.
Most customers check online reviews about products or services that they are interested in. They want to know if the goods have negative reviews, and what to expect. Valuable feedback from other happy customers is important because it can lead to a positive purchasing decision.
What about being authentic?
Authentic reviews cannot be ignored. People trust them in a similar way as the opinion of a friend or a family member. They look for a company that gives them good quality products or services and is reliable.
Customer reviews can affect your business directly and are essential for new happy customers. Do you build relationships with customers? Do you send them follow-up e-mails after important meetings?
The reviews increase, if your customers have positive impressions. Consider all the facts and take a closer look at your company’s website. Is it modern? Is it a good place to leave reviews? What do your customers feel if they visit it? What are their impressions? Are they willing to provide you with more reviews?
Pay attention to your company’s website – online reviews are important
Positive words from your customers can contribute to the development of your business, and lead to more sales. If you cooperate with a customer and the collaboration goes well, you can ask for a positive review. You can send a short review request via e-mail. After receiving it, do not forget about the marketing point of view, be thankful, polite, and send a follow-up e-mail.
What can you do next? Use your customer review and present it in an interesting way. Turn customer quotes into interestingly designed graphics and put such business reviews in visible places on your website. Be sure what information you can use and if your customer agrees to reveal their personal data. It is wise to meet with a lawyer to find out what you can do not to infringe the law.
If you write a blog about your company’s product or services, enable customers to express their opinions below the articles, and encourage them to write blog post reviews.
What else can you do to get more customers and be more visible on the web? Check what review platforms are the most popular (e.g. Google reviews), and make sure that your company has great reviews there.
You never know which review will be the most convincing to your customer.
Use a simple web form
As far as the company’s website is concerned, you can also put there a simple web form to gather customer reviews. Allowing customers to do it on their own is a good idea. Some people prefer it to a conversation over the phone.
However, you should pay attention to the simplicity of this process. The web form has to be intuitive and easy to fill in – it is a part of a positive customer experience. You need to simplify it to generate more customer reviews.
If you run an online business, ask your customers to give opinions in your online shop. Comments, star ratings, numbers – these are solutions chosen the most often. This opportunity is a sign to customers that their opinion is meaningful to you and they are able to provide feedback whenever they want.
As a business owner think about the character of your company and choose actions that are appropriate for you. How important are customer reviews? People can find numerous information about your business with a quick Google search. Do you know that search engines reward good content with higher positions in search rankings?
Remember about positive reviews on social media
Customer reviews are not only important on your website but also on social media. They have a strong influence on the image of your company and if it is perceived as authentic or not.
According to the recent findings of the “Digital 2022” report, about 58,4% of the world’s population and almost 94% of all the Internet users use social media. So it becomes obvious that if you aren’t interested in customer testimonials, you can lose a lot.
How can you gain the trust of customers by using social media? Sharing reviews with others through social media will be easier if you create beautiful graphics with customer quotes.
The role of video testimonials
Remember also about video testimonials – ask politely your customers if they want to film a testimonial video that you could share on your web age or social media. More reviews will enrich your company profile on Facebook.
If they hesitate, remind them of your good cooperation, and explain why you take care of customer reviews.
What about negative reviews?
Another thing that is worth mentioning, is the Business Profile on Google. It is still essential to edit it and keep the information there accurate. A lot of people treat it as the main source of knowledge about both local businesses and big companies. Some business owners forget that gather reviews there too.
Remember that customers share their opinions and you can get Google Reviews. If you see negative reviews, respond promptly, and admit when something went wrong, or you made a mistake. Be honest, customers appreciate it.
Do not wait – just react
A customer left you a negative review, but you think that you didn’t deserve it – explain the situation immediately. Be aware that a positive customer’s experience involves your engagement too
The Internet is a powerful source of information that gets to your existing customers and potential buyers. Therefore, your social media and website shouldn’t be neglected by you.
Not only through the company’s website – the role of referrals
What else can help you to get more customer reviews? It is believed that a happy customer will talk about your company with 3 other people. On the other hand, a customer who is disappointed will tell twelve people about their frustration. Therefore, it is essential to appreciate the significance of your customer review.
However, let’s focus on the positive aspects of the behavior described above. Your customer loyalty can be expressed not only by positive opinions on review sites but also by providing you with e-mails to new customers.
How to attract a potential customer?
Let’s assume that you have numerous positive customer reviews on your website. What more can you do? How to attract a potential customer?
Have you heard about an effective client-referral strategy? If you cooperate with a customer and can’t complain about the results, use the system of referrals and the reciprocity principle. It is often used in marketing campaigns.
How does it work? You can suggest a bonus for your services or offer company gadgets if your customer will recommend your company to friends or business partners. You will find how to do it in the rest part of this article.
Customers and their referrals
If you take care of relations with your existing customers it is more likely that they will provide you with positive reviews and important contacts. Do you focus on your clients’ needs? Have you tried to understand their points of view and resolve their problems? How your customer feedback can help you to improve the quality of service?
Building lasting relationships with customers is a demanding process, however, it can be really effective. Good reviews can be interesting to people who don’t know your company. They are sources of knowledge about your customer service, the quality of products, if your strategy of helping customers is effective, or if you send follow-up e-mails.
Remember that every customer review gives a piece of additional information about your business. People who read it can be your potential customers.
What is more, if you build good relationships with existing customers, it is more likely that they recommend your company to their own network.
How to gather referrals from customers?
- Do you have many positive reviews from customers on your website? That’s great! You can contact those clients and tell them about the customer referral program in your company. It is a marketing strategy that is relied on rewarding your customers for being your brand advocates. You provide them with extra bonuses or discounts on your products or services.
- During a conversation over the phone with your customer, ask for contacts to other customers who can be interested in your offer. You can also ask customers to tell their family and friends about your company. Customers trust people who they know and their opinion are more credible than a sales pitch.
- In order to make it easier, you can send your customers a ready-made form template that has a special place to put contacts to other potential customers. It will be also faster.
- If you have a direct meeting with your customer, take a chance and explain why positive customer reviews and referrals are important to you, and how they can lead to more business and better prospects in the future.
- From time to time, for example, once in six months, you can send a customer satisfaction survey to your clients. It is a questionnaire that a business owner sends to customers in order to know what they think about products or services. It allows businesses to know what processes are good and what has to be improved. You will read more about the customer satisfaction survey in the rest part of this article.
Something more than positive reviews. How can you know if your customer is satisfied?
As we have mentioned in this article, it is important for customers to be understood and listened to. Therefore, it is valuable to build and maintain good relationships with customers. Thanks to this, they don’t feel forgotten. It is nice when a salesperson calls them from time to time and asks about their opinions and impressions. Sending follow-up e-mails after meetings is also a good strategy.
If you want to know what else you can do to check if your customers are satisfied or not, read more about the customer satisfaction survey.
What will you know from the survey?
It is good to send the customer satisfaction survey in order to know what your customers think and react if you feel that it’s necessary.
Nowadays, sending this kind of survey means a lot more due to the fact that everything is present on the Internet. A negative online review can be read by many people and spread fast. It becomes obvious that it is better to react in advance. Don’t wait until your customer is frustrated and can leave reviews that can damage your business.
The same situation can be observed in social media. Customer reviews are important to shoppers and they are likely to share negative opinions.
As a business owner think about your clients from a wider perspective. Appreciate the positive experience of your customers and be aware that happy customers can be your best advertising strategy.
The opinions of customers, their value, and what you should ask about
The customer satisfaction survey can deal with different elements, e.g. products, services, customer service, the quality of the website, sales process, or general impressions of customers. There are a lot of questions in surveys and people can use different methodologies in such documents.
But how many questions should be asked in a survey? It is good to know that the number matters a lot. If you ask too many questions, it can be too complicated for your customers. The fewer questions the better.
Don’t forget that the questionnaire should be understandable and questions have to be easy. Scientists love the large amounts of data, however, it’s not a great example for you.
The questions you may ask in your survey
- Would you recommend our company to your family and friends?
- Was it easy to solve the problem with our technical support? Did we miss anything?
- Are you satisfied with our services? On a scale of (1 –5) how would you rate it?
- Was our customer service helpful? On a scale of (1 –5) how would you rate it?
Customers use a scale of (1 –5) or (1 –10), where 1 means a lack of satisfaction, and 5 or 10 means being content. You can also use the NPS score – a standard customer satisfaction metric to know how loyal customers are to your company.
How to ask more detailed questions?
Sometimes you can see more detailed questions in questionnaires that allow a company to gain more information.
Several examples of questions that help to gather more information:
- What was the problem that our customer service has helped to resolve?
- What could we do better?
- What do we do really well?
Why do you need them?
These questions can be helpful if you are going to use customer reviews on your website (and of course, you have the appropriate consent). Thanks to those questions, you will find out more about the opinions of your customers and know the details about the sales process. As a consequence, you can affect customer experience.
You know the meaning of a good ready-made template, website, and taking care of your social media. More importantly, you are aware that positive reviews and the customer satisfaction survey are significant to your business. However, an interesting case study is also indispensable.
What does a case study tell your customer, and how can it help you in sales?
If you write a case study, you should remember about its most important role – it should sell your products or services. More importantly, if you can boast about the successful cooperation with a customer whose brand is well-known, do it! Put the information on your website.
Writing a case study, bear in mind the point of view of your potential customers, and think about details that are the most interesting to them. Consider what you want to share with other people.
Consider that you can reveal to others
Remember that it’s not a blog post and it’s not an ordinary customer review. It is a relevant element of your marketing materials.
You should be aware that you share the information about your customer. Be sure what you can write, and how many details you can reveal. Maybe you should meet with your customer and discuss it?
Readers and your potential customer will pay attention to the information presented in the case study: challenges, problems, and solutions. What was the effect? What was the role of your company? Were you helpful? In what way? Are you innovative?
What is worth mentioning in a case study?
If you write a case study, remember that it should be credible. Customers trust descriptions that contain not only big ideas but also smart solutions.
Describe the position of your customer. What were the biggest difficulties? How about your client’s expectations? Don’t forget to write how you and your employees overcame the obstacles.
Numbers are also important, and they can excite your clients’ imagination. What is more, the exact data prove that your actions led to a successful ending, and the problems were solved.
What else can you describe in the case study? Write about how many employees benefited from your solution, what processes were improved, and what were the real profits for the company.
If you have written the case study, make it available for many people, and potential customers – post it on a Facebook profile, and place it on a company’s website.
Why customer reviews are so important and you should not forget about sharing them
We have already written a lot about customer reviews in this article and their significance. But what is your opinion? Do you know why is it relevant to gain more reviews? Why are customer reviews important? Is sharing reviews a good way for you to develop your business?
Read our summary about the positive effects of customer reviews.
What are the advantages of gathering customer reviews?
- Every customer review can be important. Gathering customer reviews and their number on your website are significant because they prove that your company is credible.
- Customers trust the opinions of a given family member who bought your product, but also trust other unknown customers who leave reviews. It is a psychological phenomenon called the social proof. People want to know what others think before they buy a given item. If they don’t know how to behave, they do what most people do.
- Positive customer reviews on your website accompanied with a recognizable logo of a well-known company (and your customer as well) are your best advertisement. Several sentences about your excellent customer service, follow-up e-mails, thorough analysis of needs, smart solutions of problems, or quick responses can be really helpful. People want to be sure that they choose the right company, so boast about good relationships with customers. Remember also about the social proof.
- The more reviews you have, the bigger your conversion rates can be. You can attract more clients just by sharing customers reviews.
- If you write a thorough case study that is visible on your website, you let customers know that you are a reliable business partner. You have nothing to hide and can be trusted. More importantly, you helped your customer and put theory into practice.
- If you share positive customer reviews, you have more chances to gain even more reviews and reach new customers.
- Don’t forget about the role of Google reviews and other review sites. Treat them as the source of opinion about your business which can also advertise your company. As the reviews increase, customers know more about products or services.
Check how the Reference customers module works
In this article, we have mentioned the importance of customer reviews and their recommendations. Salesbook meets the needs of companies and presents the Reference customers module that you can find in the tab Customers.
In this module, a salesperson has access to the most important information about finished tasks in one place. Salespeople can use a filter to find data that are the most relevant to a given customer, for example, photos or descriptions of an installation. They can add customers one by one or upload a file with many customers.
A salesperson can use the map of customers who are precisely placed on it. It is possible thanks to GPS. Why is it helpful? Your customer sees your previous work and how many similar investments have been completed in one area.
Another useful option is the ability to divide customers into categories and give them specific colors. Thanks to this, it is easier to find a given customer and an investment, and use it as a sales asset.
The Reference customers module is a good solution if you want to convince your customer that you have made similar investments and have the exact data to support it. The information included in this module can also be helpful if you want to resolve your customers’ problem.
Check the module from Salesbook
You know the importance of a positive review and gathering customer reviews, but you look for something else? Try the module from Salesbook.
If you want to add the new module to your application, please contact your account manager in Salesbook, or write an e-mail: sales@salesbook.com.
If you have not used the Salesbook app yet, sign up for the free demo.
