When deciding to make a purchase, whether it be for a product or service, people will go through what is called a “buyer journey”. The main stops on this journey are the same, no matter what the end product or service is. It is all about getting from ‘thinking about buying’ to being comfortable enough to ‘make the purchase’.
A pre-purchase buyer journey, in its most simple form, looks like this:
When designing our marketing messaging and communications activity, we must consider each step that a potential customer goes through and what information they need to see and consider each step of the way.
For this article, we will focus on the importance of reading reviews to verify their decision.
It is a known fact, that people buy from people. No matter how large your company is, people resonate with other people, and the way they feel when they interact with people.
However, when deciding to make a purchase, it’s not what the people within your business have said about your product or service that will convince customers to buy – far more often than not, it’s what other customers have said about their experience with your business that will convince consumers to, or not to, buy your wares.
Customer reviews are held in high regard from potential customers, and most will seek out these reviews when they are thinking about purchasing something. At this stage of the buying journey, potential customers want to be reassured that the impression they got while researching your business, is the actual experience they will receive then purchasing from your business.
Think about it – you’re planning on booking a holiday (remember those days?!), and you’ve found the hotel you want to stay in. The write up sounds fantastic, the photos are stunning – all in all it sounds like you’ve found a winner. But just before you press ‘book’ you flick over to Trip Advisor and have a quick read of the reviews. One of two things will happen:
- You see a plethora of positive reviews and a high rating of 4+ confirming that you’ve chosen well, leaving you comfortable booking this hotel knowing that your first impression was close to the mark.
OR
- The overall rating is between 1-3 and there are some good reviews, but some not so good reviews, with previous customers describing mould in the bathrooms, thin walls in between rooms, and a truck thoroughfare right outside the hotel with noisy traffic all night. You’re going to re-think your choice to purchase, yes?
So, you can see – reviews can make or break your business as potential customers will give A LOT of weight to reviews they read when decision whether to support your business or not. Reviews written by customers on websites not owned by you, generally give a fairly accurate account of a customer’s experience with your business.
So, how do you get customers to leave a review?
- The simple way is to just ask them! If people have had a great experience with your business, they will often tell their friends about it, and that’s about it. You need to invite them and prompt them to extend this praise and leave a review for you online where more people can benefit from it.
- Make it easy for people to leave you a review. Enable your Google My Business, and send them a link to there. Alternatively, if you’re in the travel industry, set up a profile on Trip Advisor.
- If you do a lot of your promotion and advertising on Facebook, then enable reviews on your business page and invite customers to leave you a review on there. The easier you make it, the more likely people will take the time to leave a review.
- If you do a lot of your promotion and advertising on Instagram, invite your customers to upload a photo of themselves with your product, tell people about it, and tag you in it. You can then share this on your profile, in your advertising, on your website etc.
- Send your customers a post-purchase email thanking them for your purchase, and inviting them to leave you a review.
What do you do if you’re worried about people leaving less than positive reviews?
Often business owners are apprehensive about opening up public review pages because they fear that people will leave bad reviews and it will damage their reputation.
Our advice for this is – if you do your best to provide a good customer experience, chances are your customers will appreciate this good experience and speak highly of you.
Think about your business from your customer’s perspective – are you easy to deal with? Is your customer service helpful? Were they easily able to get the answers or help they wanted when they wanted it? Did they have to wait on the phone for 30 mins before they could speak to someone? Did your item arrive on time and as expected? Did the product / service deliver what you said it would?
If any of these things fall short for you, then do what you need to do to FIX THEM. It’s that simple. Make the experience a good one for your customer, and they will appreciate you for it. And most importantly – do this experience audit of your business through your customer’s eyes regularly, because what is a stellar experience now, may change in 6 months time as your business has grown and processes have changed.
What do you do if a customer is having a bad experience with your business?
Sometimes, despite the rock solid processes we set up, our customers can have a poor experience. Things go wrong, parcels get lost, freight gets damaged, the wrong product gets shipped from the warehouse. The product breaks. The service didn’t meet their (realistic, or non-realistic) expectations.
The best thing you can do, when inviting customers to leave a review, is to email them and ask them to leave a review if they’ve had a good experience OR contact you directly if they’re not 100% happy, so that you can work through a solution.
Often, it is not an issue that is the problem – it’s how you deal with it. So if you’ve had a delivery that has been damaged, make it as easy as possible for customers to contact you and let you know, and then do everything that you can to rectify it in a way that is as seamless as possible from their end. If you do this, it won’t be the problem that they write about in their review, it will be about how you went above and beyond to rectify the situation. Be accountable for your business and your customer’s experience. Show up. Show gratitude. Be professional.
What do you do if a customer leaves a bad / negative review?
Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we simply can’t please everyone. Some people just can’t be pleased, and just really like to let people know about their displeasure. If a customer leaves a bad review without giving you the chance to rectify their issue (or maybe after you’ve done all you can to try and rectify the situation and they’ve left you a bad review anyway), do the following:
Step 1: DON’T PANIC!
In the scheme of things, one bad review amidst a sea of positive reviews will not ruin your business. Prospective customers who are reading reviews will use these reviews to get an overall impression of the business, and they’ll see that overall people had a positive experience, so that should be enough for them to validate their initial impression of you based on the marketing you’ve put out there.
Step 2: Leave a professional and polite reply to the review:
In cases of a negative review, prospective customers will put more weight in your reply than they will in the actual review. If you have someone complaining in a review that they received a damaged product, but this is the first time you’re hearing about it, then simply reply with:
“I’m so sorry to hear that our product arrived damaged! We will give you a call now to chat about it, and will organise a replacement/repair straight away for you!”
Don’t be defensive. Don’t put it back on them to do anything. Lead on the front foot and contact them directly to take responsibility and rectify the situation.
Step 3: Actually DO what you’ve said you’re going to do in your reply:
At the end of the day, we all want to try our best to have happy customers, so if you’ve said you’ll contact them, then make sure you do it straight away. Strike while the iron is hot and have the hard conversations now – don’t let it slip to the bottom of your To Do list. More often than not, people are much more abrupt when typing online than they are in person, so just hearing your nice, professional voice on the phone will be enough to calm them down and work with you to implement a solution.
Lastly, what do you do if a perfect stranger who has never purchased from you nor interacted with your business leaves you a negative review?
There’s no denying, this is one of the more crappy things about online reviews. They are accessible, they are public, and people can abuse this for their own gain or agenda.
If a perfect stranger leaves you a negative review, you are best to reply politely and professionally with something along the lines of:
“I’m sorry but we do not have any record of you purchasing from us or interacting with our business. Please kindly remove this negative review.”
In this case, you’re not actually expecting the person to have a change of heart and remove their review, you’re simply clarifying that this person is not a customer in an open and transparent way that your prospective customers will see.
After that – move on. Put it out of your mind. Your time and energy is better spent focusing on love-bombing your actual customers than stressing about rude, vindictive strangers on the internet.
Lastly, how can you use your positive reviews to build your credibility?
Reviews are GOLD for businesses. So if you’re building a nice bank of positive reviews and records of positive customer experiences, don’t just leave them for people to search for and find themselves. Amplify them in your marketing.
- Add them to your sales pages on your website
- Post about them on your social pages
- Add them to the bottom of your email newsletters.
- Add them to your business page bio on your social pages.
Don’t assume that just because something is on the internet that everyone can see it – put these positive reviews in places where people are looking. Make it easy for them. This is called ‘social proof’ and will boost your credibility exponentially.
I hope I’ve given you enough clarity around reviews and the confidence to embrace reviews in your business and amplify the good ones. They really are the best way to build your credibility and help prospective customers convince themselves that the first impression they got from reading your online presence is accurate and build their confidence to move forward with their purchase from you.
Remember, the best marketing is not what you say about yourself, but what your customers say about you!