The importance of customer reviews
As a web design agency, we understand better than most the importance of presenting your business in the best possible light online. At MyWork, we trade a lot off of our great reputation online, and in today’s high-transparency digital landscape, customer reviews are one of the most important things you can do to establish credibility, build trust, and attract new customers.
4 Tips For Customer Reviews
Although most website owners recognise the importance of customer reviews, getting into the habit of asking for and responding to reviews is often neglected at the end of a project or sale process. Here are some practical tips to help you manage your customers reviews:
1. Don’t forget to ask
Hardly a revolutionary idea, but don’t be afraid to ask your customers for reviews. After completing a project, fulfilling an order, or providing a service, send your customers a follow-up email or text message thanking them for their business and asking them to leave a review. Remember, you’re asking for a favour, so it pays to be polite, keep it short, and explains why reviews are important to your business.
2. Make it easy
Remember your customers, like you, are busy with their own lives and businesses. Make it as simple as possible for them to leave a review by send them a direct link to your review site of choice. This will not only increase your chances of getting a review, but will help guide the customer to leave a review in the right place. Crucially, if you don’t provide reviewers with direction, you might end up with a Facebook review when you really wanted a Google review; so make sure your customer is submitting the review where it will have most impact for your business.
3. Respond to positive reviews
Similar to when asking for a review, responding with gratitude for their kind words and time to leave a review is a quick simple way to show your appreciation. It also reflects positively when potential new customers are checking out your reviews to see how proactive and appreciative your business is. As a minimum, even something as simple as a quick ‘Like’ of the review can be of benefit, but if you can respond in a personalised manner it certainly goes a long way.
4. Also… Respond to negative reviews
Much tougher to do is responding to negative reviews in a professional and helpful manner. By responding to negative reviews, you can show potential customers that you care about their satisfaction and are committed to improving your business…however you don’t want to get into a public back-and-forth with a disgruntled customer. The best advice here is to pick your battles and take them offline where possible. You cannot please everybody, so sometimes it may not be worth prompting further response, but if you do respond, always do so broadly and professionally.
Simply saying something like “Sorry to hear your concerns, we’ve reached out to you directly via email/phone to resolve the matter.” Over the years when we’ve been able to contact a customer directly and be allowed to address their concerns, we’ve found we can often come to a mutual understanding and even had them remove bad reviews after I was able to help. Always a huge win.
Take customer reviews seriously
Customer reviews are an essential tool for any web design agency looking to establish credibility, build trust, and attract new customers. By displaying positive reviews prominently on your website and other digital channels, you can differentiate your business from competitors, provide powerful social proof, and improve your search engine visibility. So don’t overlook the importance of customer reviews and review scores – they could make all the difference for your business.
Allow us to demonstrate
If you’ve found any of the points above to be helpful, it’d be fantastic if you could leave MyWork a Google review here: https://goo.gl/bDhPNn. The team always love to hear feedback from our customers about their experiences; a great review is always greatly appreciated 😊