Why you should be collecting customer reviews
Customer reviews in the year 2022, are essential to your business. While they might be “nice to have”, they provide much more value to your marketing efforts than you might think. They’re not just an ego boost and let you know if your service is good or not, they can make or break the future success of your business, especially as more and more services go online.
And when a good portion of the world looks online before buying anything, how can you expect people to buy from you if you don’t have the required social proof?
The traditional function of customer reviews and word of mouth
Customer reviews have been a “thing” you might say, for as long as businesses have existed. Of course none of these were as visible as they are nowadays with practically every business on Google or Facebook with some form of platform for reviews. Before this, word of mouth reviews were the most reliable way for consumers to get a good idea of what businesses are trustworthy and provide a high-quality service. It’s called social proof, and it’s the reason why we look at reviews to determine whether a product is right for us or not. As humans, we want to make sure that other humans are also enjoying the product or service that you’re thinking of buying.
Word of mouth is still an extremely important source of leads for most businesses, online review platforms have only made it easier for consumers to get good recommendations. It also means that businesses are put under a microscope and customer experience becomes a higher priority than ever before. But that’s a story for another day!
The modern customer journey
The way customers find your business and make the decision to purchase from you, has changed dramatically over the past 10 years. Nowadays, more than 89% of people check online reviews in some form before buying (Oberlo 2021) That’s almost 9 out of 10 people who actively check what other people are saying about your products and services before even considering putting their money on the line.
This is the modern customer journey and it affects every business, whether they’re active online or actively avoid being online. The way consumers look for recommendations and evidence of a good service will be online for the foreseeable future. This means we need to adapt our tactics to suit the new customer journey.
Our customer review process (in a nutshell)
We’ve covered this topic in depth previously so I won’t spend too much time explaining it. If you’re interested in the details of how to collect customer reviews proactively and effectively, check out our other blog in which we take you through that process – Grow your business with customer reviews. Here we’ll explain more about the specific processes including the reputation management system that we use.
If you’re looking for a quick explanation, stick around!
Step 1 – This is when we decide we want to ask a customer for their review and start proactively by sending them a request with a link to our reputation management system of choice – Repuso. This system will be able to take the customer’s review and (once approved by you) added to your site without any need to update it manually. You can of course send them to Google or Facebook to leave a review but there’s an element of risk to that that we’ll go over in the next step…
Step 2 – This is where a reputation management system comes in handy as it will ask for a rating out of 5. If the review doesn’t meet your minimum rating requirements (we recommend nothing less than 5 stars) then it won’t send the customer to leave a review on your site of choice. It’ll let them leave feedback but this never has to go public so you can work on problem areas of your business and focus on improving the customer experience.
Step 3 – If it does meet your minimum rating then it will send your customer to your site of choice to leave their review. This review will then come back through the system and allow you to approve it for posting on your website. The widget on your website will bring it through automatically without the need for any other manual work on your end.
And it really is that simple. This process makes it easy for everyone involved and protects your business against any negativity that can be easily improved upon or made right with the customer. It also gives your business that social proof that potential customers will be looking for in the future, allowing you to modernise your business’ word of mouth marketing.
If building your social proof, word of mouth marketing, or digital marketing strategy is something you struggle with or have no time for, why not get in touch with Autus? Our digital marketing services will help your business grow through gathering more leads, and converting them effectively before the sales dialogue even begins! Take a look at some of the packages we offer below and get in touch today to discuss how else we can help take your business to the next level 👇
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About Autus
Autus provide Revenue Growth Platforms, Marketing & Sales Automation and Digital Marketing services to help sales and marketing personnel and teams build efficient and effective sales and marketing best practices and automate their marketing and sales processes by leveraging personalised content, various digital marketing tactics, segmentation and behaviour of their prospects and customers.
Autus recommend various products for automation, such as Active Campaign, Hubspot, Mailchimp and SharpSpring…it will vary on your requirements and budget the best option for your business.
Find out more here.
Our founder, Tom Berry, also provides selective fractional CMO services and is a member of some client boards.
Let’s keep in touch!
If our team at Autus can help advise further, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our founder, Tom Berry.
