Learn why customer reviews and testimonials are important and how to generate more positive reviews that prove value to prospects.
Written by: Kristen Baker20 Prompts to Respond to Your Customer Reviews
When thinking about purchasing a new product, what would you trust more: A sales pitch or a customer review?
People consult reviews and testimonials to determine whether or not they trust a product, service, or even a seller. Though the two terms may serve the common goal, they may differ in how businesses use and get an advantage out of them.
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There are many sites where consumers can leave their reviews. These include broad customer review sites, such as Google Reviews, Facebook, and Yelp (where any business can be reviewed), as well as industry-specific customer review sites, such as TripAdvisor, a travel-related review site, Zomato, a restaurant and food-related review site, and G2 Crowd, a site dedicated to software reviews.
Let’s dive into two of the more broad customer review sites that people use: Google Reviews (which is part of Google My Business) and Yelp.
Google Reviews is currently the most commonly used platform for customer reviews. This is because … well … It's Google. All types of businesses can be reviewed and rated on a 5-star scale.
With the help of a Google My Business profile, anyone can create a presence for their company so it can be found via Google search.
Step 1: The first step is to set up your Google My Business profile. Setting up your business profile entices the details such as business name, business category, address and information like working hours.
Step 2: Once you set up your profile, you need to create a review link so customers can write about their experiences or give you a rating based on a five-star scale.
Step 3: Make sure you have both a link to your reviews that consumers can find through a Google search as well as a link using the Place ID Lookup tool. With this, customers can write a review by simply looking up your company or searching for your location on Google Maps.
If you are the reviewer and are hoping to leave information about your experience on Google, all you need to do is provide your first and last name. Google does not allow any reviewer to remain anonymous. Anyone can see your name along with your review, as well as any other reviews you‘ve left and photos you’ve added to Google Maps.
If you have a Google account already, you have an “About Me” page that Google My Business will link to your reviews. Here's an example:
Google requires you to give this information for three reasons:
You may be asking yourself, “What if someone still decides to leave a fake review about my company?” Or, “What if I want to respond to a positive or negative review?” Google helps you out with all of this.
Responding to reviews is very straightforward. After you've signed into your business account, find the original review you want to respond to and click Reply.
Although you can’t remove negative reviews, Google will remove reviews that do not meet the requirements of their User Contributed Content Policy. Some of the reasons that a review may be removed include hate speech, fake comments, spam, illegal information, a conflict of interest, and more. If you notice something Google doesn’t, you can flag the review, and they will check the content and remove it if necessary.
Now that you see how popular and important Google Reviews are for all businesses, you may be wondering how you can optimize your Google My Business profile. After all, reviews are just as necessary for your business to improve as they are for customers to make informed decisions.
Here are some ideas for optimizing your Google My Business profile to get more customer reviews and (hopefully) positive interactions:
Due to the popularity of Google Reviews for consumers and the importance of actually ranking on Google businesses, this is an exceptionally powerful and important tool for every company.
Yelp is like a business directory for the providers in a range of categories such as restaurants, salons, doctors, bars and more. While it is equally legit as Google Reviews, the Google reviews tend to rank higher than Yelp because of its favorable search engine algorithms.
One unique feature of Yelp Reviews is that the website instructs companies on how to use both positive and negative reviews to their advantage and how to respond to these reviews. The way you react to a review or rating can make or break your business, which is why the training Yelp provides is a great bonus.
To create a profile for your company on Yelp, you’ll have to start by claiming your business. This is a free process that puts you in charge of any information that customers and reviewers can read on Yelp.
Visit the Yelp Business Page to start your claim. During the process, Yelp may contact you to make sure you are the rightful owner of the business. You definitely don’t want just anyone running the content on your profile, do you?
Once you've created your profile and Yelp has given you the green light, you’re able to update important profile information, add photos, respond to reviews privately or publicly, and track views and leads.
If you want to be a reviewer on Yelp, you’ll have to create a free account. To write a review, click on the business you want to review through the search bar and begin writing. You cannot post anonymously on this site either.
Have you ever been in a situation where you had a really bad experience with a business or product and went online to write them a poor review . then customer service impressed you by immediately contacting you and rectifying the situation.
You might then have felt obligated to write another review and retract what you said. Not a problem with Yelp! You can find your original review, click Update below it, and tell everyone on Yelp how the company listened to you and helped solve your initial issue.
Yelp makes it easy to respond to customer reviews — just go to the original comment and click “Write Response.”
Keep in mind, however, that putting your profile on a customer review site means not everything is going to be a happy tale of a customer loving your company. If you get a positive review, then that’s fantastic!
But whether or not you agree with what someone wrote, the way you react to criticism says a lot about your company’s values and character. Remain positive towards all reviewers — and ask for more detailed feedback if you need it — no matter how frustrated you might be that this review is viewable to potential customers.
Like all review sites, Yelp gets its fair share of fake reviews too. The site has an automated review filter, which is part of their Recommendation Software, that is used to weed out false information and spam. They also investigate all tips given to them by other reviewers and Yelp visitors to ensure only legitimate information is on the site.
For more information on other popular customer review sites and their features, check out this blog post.
Businesses of all sizes need reviews to gain new customers and build trust. But how do you get reviews? Sometimes, you just need to ask.
Here are a few ways you can do that ethically and professionally.
If you’re talking about your business with someone, or if they tell you how they feel about one of your products or services, ask them if they would be willing to write you a customer review.
Of course, don’t force your mom to write a raving review of the product you sell (unless she actually uses and loves it … and says she’s your mom) since that would be a conflict of interest. All of your reviews should come from legitimate sources.
When someone tells you how much they love their purchase or experience, whether it’s in-store, over the phone, or online, ask them to share that information in a review. Make it easy for them by providing a link to your business review page.
If your company has an email list, send a message that asks for honest feedback. Provide email recipients with easy-to-follow directions on how they can complete a review. And since the reviews aren’t anonymous, you can always provide reviewers with a reward of some kind to say thank you!
After a customer makes a purchase, ask them for feedback. Stores do this all the time — you often see a prompt to write a review or provide feedback at the bottom of your receipt.
For information on strategies to promote positive customer reviews, read this blog post.
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