If you’ve ever looked for a local tradesperson, compared hotels or considered buying something from an unfamiliar website, there’s a good chance you’ve spent some time reading customer reviews before making your decision. In fact, online reviews have become such an important part of how people choose which businesses to use that it’s increasingly difficult to imagine making certain purchases without checking what previous customers have said about them. However, while most businesses recognise the value of having positive reviews, there’s still a surprising amount of uncertainty about whether they should actively encourage customers to leave them.
I’ve come across quite a few businesses that are reluctant to ask customers for reviews, either because they think it might seem a little desperate or because they’re concerned about encouraging somebody to leave negative feedback. Others take the opposite approach, contacting practically everybody they’ve ever dealt with and repeatedly asking them to leave five-star ratings. Personally, I think there’s a sensible middle ground between these two approaches, although there are some important things to consider before you start asking customers to review your business.
Why Are Customer Reviews So Important?
One of the biggest problems facing any business is establishing trust, particularly when somebody hasn’t dealt with you before. You can spend thousands of pounds creating a professional website, writing convincing sales copy and telling potential customers how fantastic your products or services are, but ultimately that’s just your business talking about itself. A positive review from an independent customer can be considerably more persuasive, particularly when it’s accompanied by a detailed explanation of their experience.
Reviews can also be useful from an SEO perspective, especially for businesses that rely on attracting customers through local searches. Google My Business listings display customer ratings and reviews alongside other information about local companies, allowing potential customers to compare businesses without necessarily visiting their websites. Google has also confirmed that positive reviews and ratings can help improve local search rankings, although they’re obviously only one of several factors involved.
However, I think it’s important to distinguish between collecting reviews to improve your online visibility and collecting them because they’re genuinely useful to potential customers. If you’re concentrating entirely on getting your average rating as close to five stars as possible, there’s a danger that you’ll overlook the information that makes reviews valuable in the first place.
Should You Actually Ask Customers for Reviews?
Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with asking customers to leave an honest review, provided you’re not putting them under pressure or attempting to influence what they say. Most people probably won’t think about reviewing a business unless they’ve had either an exceptionally good or particularly bad experience, which means companies that don’t actively request feedback could end up with a rather unrepresentative collection of reviews.
Imagine a local electrician who completes 200 jobs a year, with 195 satisfied customers and five who encounter some sort of problem. If those five dissatisfied customers are considerably more motivated to leave reviews than everybody else, the business could end up looking far worse than its actual customer satisfaction levels would suggest.
Simply sending customers a polite email after completing a job, thanking them for their business and inviting them to leave a review could help create a more representative picture. I’d recommend making the process as straightforward as possible by providing a direct link to the relevant review platform, rather than expecting customers to search for your business themselves.
However, I wouldn’t repeatedly chase people who haven’t responded. There’s a reasonable chance that somebody who was perfectly happy with your service might become considerably less enthusiastic after receiving their fifth request for a review.
Be Careful About Offering Incentives
One thing I’d strongly advise against is offering customers rewards in exchange for positive reviews. You might be tempted to offer a discount on their next purchase or enter them into a prize draw if they leave a five-star rating, but this creates some fairly obvious problems with the credibility of the resulting feedback.
Google’s policies prohibit businesses from offering incentives in exchange for reviews, while UK consumer protection rules also place restrictions on misleading endorsements and reviews. The Competition and Markets Authority has been investigating fake and misleading online reviews for several years, and in January announced that Facebook and eBay had agreed to take action against people using their platforms to buy and sell fraudulent reviews.
There’s also the practice of selectively asking only your happiest customers to leave public reviews, while directing everybody else towards a private feedback form. Although I can understand why businesses might find this attractive, it creates a misleading impression of customer satisfaction and is something I’d recommend avoiding.
If you’re going to ask for reviews, I’d suggest asking customers for their genuine opinions rather than attempting to manufacture an artificially positive reputation.
What About Negative Reviews?
This is probably what concerns businesses most, particularly when they’ve spent years establishing a good reputation. Nobody particularly enjoys receiving criticism, especially when it’s published online for everybody to see, but I think negative reviews can sometimes be surprisingly useful.
Firstly, they provide an opportunity to identify problems that might otherwise go unnoticed. If several customers complain about slow delivery, confusing instructions or difficulty contacting your business, that’s probably something worth investigating rather than simply dismissing their feedback.
Secondly, the way you respond to criticism can influence how potential customers perceive your business. A polite, professional response acknowledging a problem and explaining how you’re going to resolve it can be considerably more reassuring than an angry reply accusing the customer of being unreasonable.
I’d also argue that a business with hundreds of exclusively five-star reviews can sometimes look less convincing than one with a slightly lower rating and a mixture of genuine customer experiences. Very few businesses provide absolutely perfect service on every occasion, and most people understand that things occasionally go wrong.
Which Review Platforms Should You Use?
For local businesses, I’d probably concentrate on Google My Business initially, particularly if customers are likely to discover you through Google Search or Maps. However, other platforms such as Trustpilot, Reviews.io, Facebook and industry-specific review websites might be worth considering, depending on the type of business you’re running.
For ecommerce retailers, product reviews can be particularly valuable because they provide information about individual products rather than simply the business selling them. Platforms such as Shopify and WooCommerce offer various ways of collecting and displaying this feedback, although I’d recommend making sure reviews are genuine and that negative comments aren’t simply being hidden.
Personally, I’d avoid trying to establish a presence on every review platform simultaneously. You’re probably better off concentrating on one or two relevant services and collecting a reasonable number of genuine reviews rather than spreading your efforts across half a dozen different websites.
Should You Make Reviews Part of Your Marketing Strategy?
I think so, although I’d be careful about turning the whole process into an exercise in generating as many five-star ratings as possible. If you’re providing good products or services, there’s nothing wrong with encouraging customers to share their experiences, and a polite request at an appropriate point in the customer relationship can be perfectly reasonable.
However, reviews should ultimately reflect what customers genuinely think about your business, rather than what you’d like potential customers to believe. If you’re receiving consistently poor feedback, the answer probably isn’t to find more creative ways of collecting positive reviews, but to address whatever is causing the dissatisfaction.
My advice would be to make it easy for customers to leave honest feedback, respond appropriately when they do and avoid attempting to manipulate the results.
After all, the best way to build a reputation for providing excellent customer service is probably to provide excellent customer service in the first place.