Riccardo Osti on Why It's Hard to Get Many Reviews

Reviews represent the number one factor that influences the purchase decisions of future customers. 90% of customers say that reviews have played a crucial role in their decision-making. At the same time, reviews are the most useful source of insights for product and marketing teams. Why? Well, first of all, they are voluntarily shared in a free text format, which makes reviews one of the few marketing data sources that are really unbiased. Reviews also give an honest representation of customer satisfaction levels. So if someone tells you that people leave reviews only if they are extremely happy or unhappy, tell them that is not true.

In fact, the majority of reviews are positive, with star ratings ranging between 3.5 and 4.5 points. We can imagine that your next question at this point is, “How do I get enough reviews and start benefitting from it?” Therefore, we asked none other than CX-fanatic and founder of Wonderflow, Riccardo Osti, why it's so darn hard to get a lot of customer feedback.

Riccardo shares below

Having customers write reviews is difficult, so if you’re not successful at it, we understand. Only 10% of customers write reviews every now and then. Only 1% do it frequently. Based on my experience at Wonderflow, I can tell you that the minimum number of reviews that you need to increase learning and sales is around one hundred and fifty per product or service, obviously.

‍If only 10% of customers write reviews, it means that you would need to sell more than 1,500 units of a product to generate the bare minimum of 150 reviews. That’s a huge number, isn’t it? So, how can we maximize the sales we make and get several reviews? You can do two things:

Option 1: Create opportunities for customers to write reviews. Does it seem too obvious to be true? Trust me if I say that the number one reason for companies not to get reviews is because it’s actually difficult to leave one. It should be possible to leave reviews on your website, through links on social profiles, and on your app if you have them. A simple and smart solution would be to add a widget to your product pages. Nothing special, just a simple form with a star rating and free text.

Option 2: Ask customers to write reviews. Timing is key in this case, as you don’t want to ask them to write a review too early when they haven’t used the product yet or too late when they almost forgot about it. Sending them an email or a message is the most common way to do so. However, it’s also successful to give them a call to ask about their experience. Customers will be impressed by the attention that you may have to their satisfaction. You have nothing to lose, but if you don’t reach out to them, only a few will write a review.

Some Specific Tips to Get Customers to Leave Reviews

There are countless ways to encourage customers to leave reviews, whether you want them to be solely positive or if your brand is open to some negatives to help you identify room for improvement. Here are some modern examples of how to get more customer feedback:

• Follow up with customers via email by requesting a quick feedback survey, leaving a feedback request link in your email signature, or asking directly/gently reminding them in the email.
  
• Reach out to your customers via social media like Twitter or Instagram to ask for a review by suggesting in comments, threads, or captions. Having also followed them or engaging with them via post-tagging could build a more personable bond with them, thus encouraging customers to leave reviews.
  
• Business cards may feel like a thing of the past, but they're not (just as much as emails and traditional blogging). Nowadays, businesses are slapping QR codes on their physical business cards that directly take customers to their Google business page, where they can leave reviews via the ever-so-popular Google Maps platform, for instance. Thus making the review-writing process easier for customers.
  
• Who says only go digital? Slap a strong call-to-action for review reminders all over your business or in prominent areas like on the back of a menu, invoice/receipt, toilet door, front entrance, and so on. They can be humorous (subtle) signs to remind your customers to leave reviews.
  
• Go above and beyond by making fun flyers or social media posts on how to leave reviews to make things easier for customers. Some may not write them simply because they don't know where to begin, even with positive customer experiences. Give out tips like questions they should think of when reviewing your service and 1-2-3 quick steps on leaving a review, such as where to navigate to on popular review platforms like Amazon or Facebook.
  
• Take advantage of your customers while he or she is already there in person! If they make a positive remark about your service, try to get them to write it down, and no, not much with pen and paper these days. We're talking more about opening your phone for them to leave feedback or getting them behind the service desk to fill out a quick feedback survey on your tablet or desktop.

With so many more simple yet effective tactics to extract more voices from your customers, in the end, it's all about providing a memorable and positive customer experience that will make your buyers not only return but leave reviews. For more from me and my team, check out Wonderflow's blog on the latest VoC learnings.