Everybody knows they should collect feedback, but how do you land those stellar 5-star reviews?
It’s no secret that reviews are an essential part of any business and can provide insight into your products or services that you wouldn’t have known otherwise.
To collect this insight and use it to entice new customers, there are 3 questions you need to ask yourself before asking your customers for their opinions.
- Why ask for reviews & feedback?
- When should you ask for a review?
- How should you ask for a review?
Once we answer these questions, you will not only be able to land some reviews, but your customers will also be eager to help provide crucial feedback that will help you perceive your product and business in a new light.
Why ask for reviews & feedback?
There are many reasons why collecting reviews is a great idea for any business.
- Building social proof: If you have no reviews, it can often prevent customers from investing in your product. Once you build up a social proof, it will show others that multiple customers believe in and trust your brand.
- Gives insight on how customers perceive your product: As business owners, we see our products from our own POV. Customers will be able to give feedback on how to make your product better or point out problems that you weren’t able to see yourself.
- Can improve your customer relationship: When a customer provides feedback, it helps them feel more connected to your product. They then become inclined to continue to use your product in the future and promote it to others.
When should you ask for a review?
While the ideal time varies depending on the niche, there are a few guidelines that you should follow when deciding how long you should wait before sending out a review request to your customers.
These times vary depending on the type of product you offer or service you run.
Digital Products → 14 Days After Purchase
With software or digital products such as Groundhogg, the time you should ask for a review varies depending on your return policy.
With many return policies lasting 14 days, the perfect time to request feedback would be at the end of this period. If they didn’t have a great experience you don’t want to remind them while they are still within the refund period.
This ensures that those who were unhappy with the product would have already asked for a refund, and those who are sticking with the product are happy with their purchase.
Courses & Education Products → 0-1 Day After Completion
The best time to ask for a review after a course is directly after the customer has completed it.
Oftentimes, the majority of those who complete a course don’t implement the value that they have learned. You want to get the review when they are still hyped about the content that they have learned and are still brainstorming ways that they can better their lives from this content.
Physical Products → 2- 3 Days After Delivery
When it comes to physical products, you want to make sure that you give a reasonable amount of time for people to use the product once it has been delivered to their doorstep.
However, you don’t need to wait too long, since a majority of customers are inclined to start using the product immediately after it has been delivered.
Services → 0-2 Days After Completion
Depending on the labour that the customer ensues during this service, you want to be able to give them time to refresh and appreciate the service implementation.
You don’t want to ask too early as they may be weary from the service itself and not have the energy to provide a stellar review.
How should you ask for feedback?
Over the last few years of asking for reviews, we’ve learned a few things about getting good quality reviews. Here’s what does and does not work for collecting high quality 5-star reviews.
- Incentives don’t work! When offering incentives to give you feedback, such as discount codes or rewards, the reviews that you usually get are lousy as the person writing it is just doing so to score on the discount/reward and wants to get it done as quickly as possible. This is a great way to get lousy reviews, and is really hard to keep track of in the first place.
- Get them hooked in another way: At Groundhogg, instead of using incentives, we ask our customers to leave reviews out of the kindness of their hearts. I know this sounds sappy, but this way, when a review is left, it’s because the customer wants to tell you their feedback. Look at any of our 5-star reviews, 90% of them are several paragraphs long. When a prospective customer sees that commitment it’s a much more powerful selling tool.
- Specify the time investment: Customers are more likely to leave reviews if they know how much commitment it will take. Saying “It will only take you one minute,” will make it sound easier to leave a review than a 10-minute lengthy process.
- Everyone understands stars, so use them.
- Use a trusted third-party source: By using sites like Facebook, Google, TrustPilot or Capterra, customers are able to trust the reviews more than if they are posted directly on your site. Users know that feedback can be moderated on your own platform. We use WordPress to collect our reviews so our customers know they are real and trustworthy.
Writing the email!
When we ask for reviews at Groundhogg Inc., there are two emails that we send out to customers.
- 14 days after their initial purchase
- After a support ticket is closed successfully
Both emails are similar in content and have the same subject line. We have found no better subject line then, “Review please?”
We use stars to gauge customer satisfaction, they also make it easy for the customer to identify the call to action in the email.
It’s all in the stars…
Both emails contain 5 stars in the body of the text that the reader can click based on how they feel about your product or service.
We have different customer journeys depending on which stars they click in the email.
- 4-5 Stars: If they give us a 4-5 star rating we send them to our third-party review site. In our case it’s WordPress.org, but you can use Facebook, Google, or TrustPilot etc…
- 1-3 Stars: If a reader clicks on the 1-3 stars they are then sent to a triage page where we attempt to help solve their problems by booking a meeting with me.
Customer Triage
This triage page asks for the customer to book a meeting with me so we can get to the bottom of the issue that they are experiencing. There is usually an issue if they rate you 1-3 stars.
If the call is booked, we get on the call and go to the mat to help the customer resolve their issue.
Handling bad reviews…
A universal truth is that you can’t please everyone. You make the tough calls that are best for you and the business. Sometimes people don’t like your decisions and lash out.
So what can you do when you get a nasty review because someone is upset with a change or decision you made?
- Reply to 1-3 star reviews. Explain the thinking behind your decisions, offer a compromise or solution. Do not tell the customer they are wrong, that will only encourage more bad reviews in other places.
- Remember you can’t please everyone. You can do your best, but you’ll spend so much time making a few people happy when you could have spent that time solving dozens of people’s problems. Worth the tradeoff?
- It’s easier to get new great reviews than to change the minds of 1 star reviewers…
- Move on, bad reviews are just a reality of being in business.
Using popups to get reviews
With HollerBox, you can also include a popup on your website that will encourage users to leave a review. When doing this, you want to ensure your display conditions are set in a way where the popup will target users who have used your product long enough to want to leave feedback.
For example, if you are a blog or content-heavy site looking for reviews, you can edit your display conditions to have a review popup appear after a certain number of content views.
Showing off your 5-star reviews!
Once all of your hard work is done and the 5-star reviews start pouring in, you’ll want to show them off! In HollerBox’s pro library, you will find the Reviews Exit Intent popup.
Here, you’ll be able to show new users what other customers are saying. You can highlight three of your best five-star reviews and link to the rest. This will help take the guess work out of the decision-making process for potential buyers.
Want to start collecting 5-star reviews?
For popups, you’ll want to get started with HollerBox! You can view our features and pricing page!
For all of your email marketing and CRM needs, check out Groundhogg.
To get started with Groundhogg, you can:
- Start a 14-day demo.
- Purchase a plan.
- Take the free quickstart course.
