How to Ask Customers for Reviews: An Ultimate Guide

Reviews are one of the most powerful marketing tools available online. Customer feedback is beneficial for many reasons, but it is critical for spreading the word about your business and convincing new customers that you are worth a try.

Though customer reviews are essential, any business is vulnerable to them. as not every review will be an enthusiastically positive one. The good news is negative reviews in their own way can be as much of a powerful business development tool as positive ones.

You need to hear authentic customer feedback, no matter if it is positive reviews or not. So how to ask customers for reviews?

• Reasons to ask for reviews
• When to ask for reviews?
• Tips on asking for a review
• How to ask for reviews on PissedConsumer?
• Email template

Why Should You Ask for Reviews?

Asking for online reviews can be intimidating if it’s not something that’s been part of your business practice. Fortunately, the benefits of reviews far outweigh any concerns, and there are many reasons why you should make a point of requesting customer reviews.

• According to Invescpro, 90% of customers read online reviews before they make a purchase or visit a business.
• Positive reviews drive new customers to your business in the same way word-of-mouth recommendations do. A full 88% of customers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
• 31% of customers are more likely to spend more money with your business if you have excellent reviews.
• More consumers are looking at reviews to make purchasing decisions than ever before. Review interaction has risen by 50% since before the COVID-19 pandemic, reports ReviewTrackers.
• 72% of consumers admit they will only take action with a local business after reading a positive review.
• Finally, most customers want to leave reviews for your company. According to BrightLocal, 67% of customers are willing and ready to leave a positive review if they have had a good experience with your company.

If you’re afraid that asking for feedback might result in negative reviews, don’t fret. Even negative online reviews may be beneficial for your business when handled properly. Knowing how to deal with bad customer reviews can help you use negative customer feedback as an opportunity to showcase your customer service skills and bring even more clients into the fold.

In fact, customers are fully expecting you to reply to your reviews – especially the negative ones. According to ReviewTrackers, 53% percent of customers expect a business to respond to a negative review in 3 days or less. Customers want to interact with you, and those interactions help you develop your brand, and your online persona, and are one of the most powerful marketing tools available.

When to Ask for Reviews?

To protect your relationship with customers, you don’t want to pester them for feedback at the wrong time. So, the question is: when is the right time to ask for reviews? Fortunately, there are many opportunities to solicit feedback during or after a customer-company interaction.

You can ask customers for reviews when:

• They are completing a new purchase
• They are making a repeat purchase
• After you’ve delivered a purchase
• After a project is completed
• After an interaction with customer service
• A client expresses interest in offering feedback

If a customer is already online chatting with customer service, it’s easy to direct them to a review platform at the end of the interaction. It’s also a natural extension of a consumer satisfaction survey to ask them to leave a short review online after you help them find a solution.

Important to note that nowadays reviews are easier for customers to create than ever. With most reviews up to 65% shorter than in the past, asking customers for a quick bit of feedback is truly that – quick and easy for them to deliver. Remember that there is no bad time to sort out how to ask customers for reviews.

Tips on How to Ask for a Review From Customers

You know you want to find clever ways to ask for reviews, and you know you can ask at just about any point in the customer journey.

So how do make it happen? It can feel awkward to ask customers to leave a review on a review website that isn’t your own, but there are ways to ask that aren’t stilted and flow naturally with your existing customer interaction.

Asking in Person

If you’ve built rapport with a customer, you absolutely can ask directly for a review on any review website, including Google, which is among the most commonly used review sites. The conversation may be as simple as a customer complimenting you on a great product or excellent service.

You then simply respond with something like, “I’m so glad to hear that! Would you consider sharing that with others by leaving a review?”

Ask Customers Over the Phone

If you’re speaking to customers over the phone, particularly in a customer-service capacity, asking for a review is a nice way to end the interaction. Just a quick blurb like, “Thank you so much for letting us help you today. If you wouldn’t mind and have a moment, will you leave a note on [review website] to share your experience with others?”

Send Review Requests in Text

Sending review requests in the text is even easier than in person or over the phone because you can send them the direct link. If you’ve been interacting with a customer in chat or email, perhaps updating the customer on a job you’ve just finished, you can end the conversation with a simple “I’d love to get some feedback on our project if you don’t mind leaving a short review by clicking on this link.”

Then customers can spend a minute dropping some feedback without any additional work on their part, making the review process quick and easy.

Mail With a Thank You Card

If you want to cultivate a special relationship with customers, take the time to send them a special note in the mail. A thank you card can be easily personalized, and it can also include a link or a QR code to take customers directly to the review website. Just accompany the link with a quick blurb like “How did we do? Share your feedback by leaving us a review at [link].”

Generate Social Media Reviews

Social media platforms, particularly Facebook, are a hotbed of reviews and customer experiences. There are plenty of clever ways to ask for reviews through social media since customers are already interacting with your site. The easiest way is to simply ask customers to leave a quick review because “We love our customers and hope you love us, too! Tell us about your most recent experience!”

Be sure to provide the link in the post so customers can click and respond. You can sweeten the deal with discount codes, coupons, or other special promos as well provided it doesn’t cross the line into soliciting reviews in untoward ways.

Ask for Reviews in an Email

The most common option for review requests is through email, the medium of choice for most business interactions with customers. You have many ways how to ask for a review over email. You can ask them for confirmation of their purchase and then follow up with a link for reviews. Or email directly asking for feedback.

The goal is to catch the customer satisfied and make it easy for them to write up a quick blurb by simply clicking the link you’ve included in your email. Not sure what to write? There are many email templates available online, including at the bottom of this article!

How to Ask for Reviews on Pissedconsumer.com?

PissedConsumer.com is an online advocacy website dedicated to bringing customers and companies together through reviews and customer service opportunities. Review requests for PissedConsumer can be very straightforward.

No matter the method of contacting the customer, you can easily sort out how to ask for a review on PissedConsumer by sending the link to your company’s page on the site as every company has its own subsection. You may share the link through a QR code, a link in the text, a Facebook post, an email, or any other form of communication.

Customers will click on the link to take them to the site where they can see other reviews, your company’s response to those posts, and then hopefully leave a positive review of their own to help develop your online reputation.

Remember to engage with customers by thanking them for the review or addressing concerns publicly. According to PissedConsumer’s data, 64% of companies on the site improved their ratings by replying directly to customers.

How to Request Feedback Through Email: Template

Trying to craft the perfect email to send to your customers asking for reviews? A review request email doesn’t have to be complicated or overly stiff and formal. We’ve included a template here to help get you started!

Dear [Customer],

We are so excited to have you as a customer at [store name.] We are thrilled to work with you, and we want to be sure you’re just as thrilled with your recent purchase! If you are, will you please consider taking 90 seconds to leave us a quick review? We use reviews like yours to help us stay on top of customer needs and be sure we are doing everything we can to make every purchase a success!

To leave a quick review, simply click on the link below. Then just let us know how we are doing!

[Link]

Thanks in advance!

From email templates to social media marketing strategies, there are so many ways to interact with customers and find the best ways to solicit the feedback you need to make your company successful. If you’re having trouble getting new reviews, the solution might be as simple as writing a quick post, email, or text to ask customers how you’re doing!