I suggest this to all my clients. Very few follow through. The result of ignoring this advice can be awful.
Following it can catapult you ahead of your competition with minimal work and no cost.
I’m talking about asking customers to review you online. Ideally, you can make this automatic: a follow up email goes out to everyone saying something like:
Thanks for your business. We hope we’ve exceeded your expectations. If not, please reply to this email and let us know what we can do to fix things.
If you are completely satisfied, it would mean the world to us if you’d go online and write a review of us on Google: [and a link to your Google listing]
That’s it. It’s good customer service because it encourages people to get in touch if they aren’t happy and shows a willingness to solve any problem. It’s good marketing because customer reviews are more convincing that your best sales pitch.
One of my clients, an attorney, has done a great job with this. Here’s what people see when they Google his firm compared to his biggest competitor:
Which would you rather hire?
Now, you might think you aren’t really losing anything by not bothering with this. None of your competitors have a ton of reviews either, so it’s no big deal. The danger in that thinking is that one or two unhappy customers can take you from neutral to awful.
Here’s what shows up when you google a customer of mine who has failed to solicit reviews despite me suggesting it regularly for over 2 years:
Three bad reviews aren’t a big deal if you have 47 great ones. If they are all you have, you’re losing the reviews race.