Anyone in business knows that the customer is the most essential element to success. How the customer journey is designed, down to their actual experience and resulting feedback can make or break your business in a huge city like Toronto. With the rise of the digital age and the growing conversation online, it helps to tune in and listen to what your customers have to say.
But how exactly can you do this? It’s simple: by looking at their customer reviews, improving your process based on their feedback, and gathering a fresh round of testimonials that will in turn, help persuade a new batch of customers.
That cycle paints a nice picture, but in reality, it’s easier said than done. For starters, how do you get your customers to review your business? More importantly, how do you ensure that their reviews are genuine, converting, and can be easily solicited after greatly improving the customer experience? With the help of a digital marketing company in Toronto, here’s how you can get customer reviews that will help you do business better:
Start with What You Have
You’ve certainly come across more than one happy customer in the past, and they’ve probably said a nice thing or two about their experience. With no fresh reviews on hand yet, you can recover and repurpose these existing testimonials. Dig through your social media pages, check emails or the comments section, and pick out a few that may have been buried in the past years.
When published for a fresh audience and likely, your potential customers, these refreshed reviews are sure to be part of their decision-making process. People love to trust products and services others have tried in the past, and live to tell the story. In addition to reviews found just about everywhere on the Internet, such as Yelp, your Google My Business Listing, social media, and a ton of others, digital marketing companies in Toronto recommend making these testimonials available on your website through a dedicated page.
Keep Your Clients Well-Informed
It’s true what they say about honesty – it really is the best policy. When you’re certain you’ve promoted a hassle-free and satisfactory customer experience, make sure the happy customers you serve know that you will be asking for feedback. This way, they are not surprised, or feel like they’ve been “put on the spot’, and as such, are prepared with what they want to say.
To establish this practice at the start, your digital marketing company in Toronto recommends having past testimonials visible on your site, as well as discussing these with customers as you work together. For instance, you can mention that you really appreciate any feedback they can give as they use your products and services. You can also say that if they’re getting great results, and they’re comfortable with sharing their experience, you would like to ask for a testimonial to put up on your website.
Just make sure that they have time to think about what they want to share – rushing your customers can result in weak and less converting testimonials, so give them ample time!
Timing is Everything
Timing really is everything, and you don’t want to catch your customers at a bad time. For instance, don’t ask for a review or testimonial while the work is in its initial stages, such as when you still have a lot of pending deliverables based on a product or service plan they contracted from you. Doing this can leave them with the impression that you’re only putting your best foot forward so far for the positive feedback.
Instead, digital marketing companies recommend that you ask for reviews from your customers when they have experienced great results from your work. This doesn’t mean you have to wait for everything to be over, but at least when there’s tangible progress they can note.
Another key point is not to ask ask for a review or testimonial directly, but instead ask your client how they are progressing, or what their experience has been like so far. When they get back to you with happy or promising answers, that’s when you know that a good testimonial could be asked. On the other hand, if they sound like they’re struggling to see results, you can still turn the customer experience around, with a good review coming up in the end.
Know What to Ask
As with any digital marketing hack, asking for testimonials has a caveat. It’s easy for some clients to provide direct feedback, but not so much for others, especially if they’re not yet getting the results they hoped for. So while easing in, it’s important to know not only what they like about the experience, but how it can be improved, so you can deliver an even better customer experience.
When asking for testimonials, or leading the conversation towards it, make sure to ask the right questions. To be really powerful and converting, you’ll want customer reviews that include specific results, as opposed to generic phrases and otherwise empty reviews that use staples like, “great service”, and its variations.
Digital marketing companies have observed that the more information potential customers gather about your business, the easier it is for them to decide whether they want to bring you business. By incorporating specific results past customers achieved, they’ll have a better idea of what they can expect and gain when they choose your products and services among others in Toronto.
Additionally, empower your customers to influence others with integrated calls-to-action in their reviews. Statements such as “if you’re thinking of hiring these guys, go for it, you won’t regret it,” are powerful; not only will your customers be able to influence others, but this creates a level of trust among your potential customers, since they the invitation to subscribe comes from people external to your business.