Do you feel frustrated when you want to rate a product or service but the website doesn’t allow you? If you do, then you already know what your customers feel if they can’t do the same thing on your website.
Now more than ever, you cannot take customer feedback for granted. In a survey by BrightLocal, consumers preferred websites with at least 40 online reviews before they considered it to have an average rating. This number was higher in 2017, which was 34. Customers believe the more feedback, the better.
The question is, how do you generate online reviews? Most of all, how can you use them to your business’s advantage?
1. Use a Performance Feedback Management Tool
Reviews are a wealth of information, whether they’re positive or negative. They can inform owners of many aspects about the product or service, such as price, marketing, and design or function.
The problem, though, these reviews can be from different sources: websites, social media, emails, etc. Businesses need to centralize the process to get a clearer picture of the reviews.
To do this, you can use an enterprise feedback management tool. This platform presents reviews as easy-to-understand data and feeds them directly to the right teams or departments.
2. Incentivize Reviewers
While many prefer to leave reviews, some don’t, and it can be because of many factors. These include lack of time, difficulty in crafting a review, and even the lack of incentives. As customers often ask, “What’s in it for me?”
You can encourage them to leave user feedback by incentivizing them. Perhaps you can extend discounts, vouchers, or coupons for first-time buyers who leave a review.
You can also run competitions. For example, those who leave the best photo of the product with reviews will win a prize.
3. Make Reviewing Easy and Verifiable
Some don’t want to leave reviews because they are complicated. To beat that, you need to simplify the system and make it more convenient to do it. For example, you can provide a star rating scale. Consumers can just click the stars they want to give for the product.
Another option is to create buttons for the most common kinds of feedback, such as “good quality,” “affordable price,” “fast shipping,” etc.
You can also do it the Amazon way. This e-commerce site awards badges to the most helpful reviewer, and these badges can also work as testimonials. Because it’s also not uncommon to rig the system, though, Amazon allows other users to leave questions or reply to the other people’s reviews.
4. Improve the Credibility of the Reviews
Many people trust online reviews, but with the growing threat of fake ones, don’t be surprised if their numbers dwindle later. It can affect your business as people might no longer leave one or stop visiting the site at all.
As early as now, you need to assure your buyers and review readers that the online feedback they see is genuine. Here are some ideas to do it:
- Encourage them to upload a photo of the product they received. You can use incentives to attract your buyers to do it.
- Learn how to spot a fake review.
- Because you cannot catch all the fake reviews, audit them, especially the accounts, regularly.
- Inform the steps you’ve taken to improve the review process.
- Penalize those who create fraudulent accounts and reviews.
An online review system gives you the chance to connect with your customers and provide them what they need: a voice. Make one for your business.
