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The Ultimate Guide to Customer Reviews and Testimonials

Tag: feedback

PayTabs
Mohab Customer Experience 0

customer reviews

The Ultimate Guide to Customer Reviews and Testimonials

As the Internet emerged, customer reviews and testimonials have appeared as an indirect method of  promoting goods and services. The usefulness of customer reviews has increased with the rise  in e-commerce and online shopping. Shopping websites invariably carry a large number of testimonials and customer reviews for most of their products. Such reviews are not only helpful for the business but also for the customers as they get unbiased information and get to make an informed choice about the products prior to purchasing them. Here are some of the reasons why a business should actively manage its reviews and testimonials and how they should do it.

What is a Customer Review?

A customer review is a written statement and provides an opinion about a product or an entity. This statement reflects the customer’s opinion as well as their experience. It is estimated that over 90% of online shoppers read customer reviews before making a purchase. These reviews have now largely replaced personal referrals as people find these reviews to be more relevant and objective. A business can use reviews received to expand its market share and broaden its customer base. Further, these reviews may also help a business to get better search engine rankings.

Top Customer Review Strategies

In order to utilize the benefits of customer reviews and testimonials, it is important to take stock of your objectives and draw up a relevant strategy. These strategies will ensure that you get better bang for your buck.

  1. Ask Your Existing Customers: You can harness the power of your existing customer base to create new markets. Request them to provide reviews and testimonials in return for a shoutout or corporate giveaway for example. In order to induce them to write a meaningful review, you can also provide them with benefits such as discount coupons or exclusive deals and pricing. Additionally, you can also provide them with information about specific details to be included in the review. This step will ensure that you do not have to carry out extensive editing of the reviews and the reviews are relevant to your potential customers.
  2. Find the Promoters: While reviews are expected to be unbiased, you can still boost your positions by focusing on people who are more likely to provide positive reviews about your business. Promoters are the people who are very pleased with your services and therefore are more prone to recommend your business to their family and friends. You can also automate the process of approaching such promoters and asking them to leave a review. There are many tools available for this purpose and you can more than recover your cost by boosting your topline.
  3. Guide Your Customers: While your customers may have very high view of your products, they may not be accustomed to the nuances of online reviews. Such inexperience may render reviews ineffective and unable to garner proper results. It is imperative that you guide your customers to help them write powerful yet unbiased reviews. You may also guide them towards proper places where they should post their reviews. While many businesses post review on their own websites, they may also rely upon third party review websites. In such situations, it is important to steer customers in the right direction.
  4. Manage User Generated Reviews: With the increase in the popularity of aggregating sites and review sites such as Yelp and Twitter, it has become a little more difficult for businesses to properly manage their reviews. However, the businesses are still required to monitor such sites carefully so as to present a truthful picture of their operations and offerings. You can encourage your customers to leave their reviews on such websites by incentivizing them. One of the ways to do this is to add link to such websites in your web content. You can also start your own fan page on Facebook and other social media websites and gather reviews there.

In the e-commerce era, customer reviews are more than just a statement. It is a comprehensive marketing strategy which combines written testimonials with the wise use of social media influencers and promoters. With a customized approach, you can transform customer reviews into a viable and efficient marketing and PR tool.

4 years ago
How to Use Customer Feedback for improving User Experience?
Mohab Customer Experience 0

How to Use Customer Feedback for improving User Experience?

According to a report by Lee Resource, for every customer who complaints, there are 26 other unhappy customers who have remained silent.

This data shows exactly how important it is to understand what your customers are thinking. The only way you will know that is when you listen to your customers. Once you know what they want you to improve, you can decide how you can do it.

There are numerous ways to collect customer feedbacks, such as surveys, emails, product reviews, analytics reports, and so on. The question is how do you leverage customer feedback data to offer value to the users? Here we discuss ways to utilize customer feedback to derive maximum value and ultimately, enhance user experience and propel the growth of your organization.

Creating customer-oriented Products

Evolving trends and data analytics can give you an insight into what to create for the consumers. But customer feedbacks will provide extensive data like desired features, defects in products, problems with the processes, and so on. As customers are using products and services on a daily basis, they can identify areas that have a scope of improvement. They can give you ideas that you might have skipped in the planning stage. Identify customers who leave detailed and practical feedbacks, and invite them to collaborate and innovate with your team.

Discover New Possibilities

Reading customer feedbacks lets you analyze the demands of the consumers, thereby, instigating you to develop a new range of products and services. The emerging needs of the society compel consumers to ask for more. They discuss their problems and write about ideas or features in the reviews, surveys, and feedback forms. It’s your responsibility to assess available information, have a discussion with the team, and determine the future course of action.

You can also engage with the customers on the community forum, blogs, and ask technically-inclined individuals to review and submit feedback. This is a great way of accumulating crucial information.

Engage with Customers

Customer feedbacks are not just about spearheading innovation and development. You can actually use customer feedbacks to strengthen bonds with your existing and new customers. For example, if customers leave either a positive or a negative feedback on the product listing, engage with them, appreciating them for rendering a positive response and addressing their grievances in case of a negative response. When you engage with the customers, you build trust that will be fruitful for your business in the long run.

Moreover, you can request satisfied customers to refer your products or services to their contacts on social media or by personally communicating with them. This is an excellent technique of mouth publicity to grow your sales.

Addressing Bugs

The research and development wing maybe doing a commendable job when it comes to designing products, releasing updates, and integrating new technologies. But the customer feedback shows the real image when it comes to overall experience with respect to a product or service. For example, if the majority of the customers complain about the payment gateway process, you should dig further and identify the weak areas. Based on reviews, you can learn about the bugs that can be addressed. This will improve the quality and also prevents any blunders in the future.

Building a Roadmap for the Future

If you are a businessperson, you must have a long-term vision to establish your brand. However, your roadmap may not be aligned according to the customer expectations. You have deployed everything to be on the right track. But if customer feedback is not on your list, do it right away. The feedbacks will generate enough data for you to determine and implement the future course of action. Let’s say you are into payment gateway services, and you have got some feedbacks about integrating UPI payments. You can consider this suggestion and incorporate UPI options for taking payments online, a clear sign of product improvement.

 

Your customers are human beings, influenced by emotions. Try to engage with them emotionally to know about their genuine views, ask for ideas and improvements, and enhance their experience. This will establish your credibility, thereby, paving the path for your success.

6 years ago
Five Tips to Increase Customer Retention
Mohab Customer Experience 0

Five Tips to Increase Customer Retention

If your company’s focus is solely on customer acquisition, you need to pause and reconsider your strategy. A study by Bain & Company in collaboration with Earl Sasser of the Harvard Business School shows that a 5% increase in customer retention rates increases profits by 25% to 95%. That should be enough motivation to focus on customer retention for your business.

Let’s first understand the “why” of Customer Retention –  

Some of the reasons to invest more in customer retention include:

  • Customer retention is cheaper than acquisition.
  • Loyal customers are more profitable than new customers.
  • Long-term customer relations boost your brand reputation
  • Repeat purchases from repeat customers translate to repeat profit especially when you accept payments online
  • Loyal customers are less price-conscious than new customers
  • Loyal customers stand by your brand even in tough times
  • Loyal customers offer free word-of-mouth advertising
  • Retained customers offer valuable feedback

Now that we have established why you must have a customer retention strategy, here are some tips which can help you build that plan.

Tips to increase customer retention

Like with any other business strategy, you have to be proactive and innovative to increase customer retention. The following are customer retention ideas you can implement for your business:

  1. Create a VIP program for your customers

The status an individual achieves in life can motivate them to act in a particular way.  When you accord your loyal customers an elevated status and give them exclusive offers, they become motivated to stick with your brand. They feel honored and their new status creates a sense of belonging and they will continue shopping with you.

  1. Target customers with special offers

The best CRM tools will also provide a lot of data about your customers. A customer’s purchase history comes in handy when you want to create specially targeted offers for them. Targeted marketing not only increases conversion but also builds a strong bond between your brand and the customer.

  1. Be where your customers are

If you want to compete in your industry, you have to keep up-to-date with consumer behavior and be present where they are available. If your data shows most customers are on social media, make sure you invest in a social media strategy and interact with your customers here. You have to provide a consistent and seamless experience on all channels if you expect to retain customers.

  1. Go big on feedback and act on the information

If you don’t understand your customers, there is no way you will improve customer retention. If for instance, you have installed a new feature on your site, you need to get reactions from your loyal customers and act fast on the information. Don’t believe your team alone but ask for regular customer feedback and leverage it to increase customer retention.

  1. Build a consistent customer experience

To build trust with your customers, you need to provide a consistent user experience.  For this reason, map out a consistent customer experience such that your customers can rely on you to always come through. Don’t offer nasty surprises thinking that it is a revolutionary move.

In essence, customer retention requires a clear-cut strategy touching all areas of your business. From your free payment gateway for website to the customer service support, use these tips to increase customer retention.

 

6 years ago