Testimonials Are A Must!
I’ve discussed elsewhere the power and value of using testimonials from satisfied customers to help promote your business online. If you have an effective system in place to collect high quality testimonials, they can serve many purposes:
- Customer reviews/testimonials can aid in producing good copy for your website.
- They educate on what products and services have quality or appeal.
Depending on the size of your business, you may eventually collect large numbers of testimonials. Having a well organized system in place to file reviews by product type, subject, and so on, so information from them is easily accessed as needed. You may also want to incorporate the collection of testimonials into the structure of your business routines. Set aside specific blocks of time to phone or e-mail customers to solicit feedback, and include forms or other ways to acquire feedback at the point of purchase.
Not all your customer feedback will be positive, solicited or otherwise. Negative feedback can be a form of constructive criticism. Whether or not you decide to use customers’ comments in your online copy, you can learn from what they’re telling you. By encouraging feedback you have enlarged the base of useable information and creative ideas for running your business. Taking customer suggestions to heart, with results that they can see, is a surefire way to promote their loyalty.
Your customer feedback process needs a well-thought out way of soliciting information. The way you speak to your customers can encourage positive reactions. Flatter your customers by pointing out how important their opinion is to you, but don’t be over-zealous! Ask them easy-to-answer, more specified questions at first about the product
- When did you receive it?
- Does it work properly?
- Would you recommend that product to others?
- How would you rate this product out five stars?
You get the idea. Then build to more involved general questions about the product’s value to them and their experience with your business overall. Don’t forget to ask them if they are willing to have their comments used for your marketing purposes, including asking them to sign a release.
SIDE NOTE: Resist the temptation to write fake testimonials. Ethics aside, people can usually see through it. The words of real customers are going to be more convincing, even if they’re less smooth, than artificial copy. If your questions can tease enough detail and specificity out of your customers the testimonial will ring so much truer.
What is one thing you can do this week to incorporate a couple easy questions you can begin to ask your clients/customers that will enable you to start a customer rating/review aspect to your business…? Don’t just think online, think offline too!
