Larger reviewing platforms such as Feefo and Trustpilot have become an industry standard to hold on a huge variety of different sites. Showing a positive indicator through customer feedback, assures newer visitors and potential future customers that you’re not only trustworthy but that what you’re offering is also of quality. All of the advertising and social work you do could be in vein, if your customer reviews don’t live up the standards you’d like to set forward – but how can you ensure the reviews you’re getting help, rather than hurt?
1. Engage – As with social media, a great way to ensure that you’re getting the correct feedback from your reviews is to engage with the writers. If they have had a bad experience, reach out to them and ask what they feel could’ve been improved upon and what you can change. If you’ve received a glowing review, be sure to reach out and offer gratitude, but also to not be afraid to ask from feedback here too. Just because you’ve received a good review, it doesn’t mean there isn’t any gaps you may need to fill. Engagement can’t be underestimated as a powerful tool in gauging your feedback.
2. Reach out to the experts – Although customers may have the best intentions, they may not be the most reliable at offering a well thought out view – that’s where experts come in. Reaching out to people who understand the field and who can provide a little more in-depth testimonial can certainly help. This has been used to great effect in the trading industry as seen across many of the leading forex brokers. The trading market is one that is gaining in interest with more and more people looking to get involved, despite not having great knowledge. By seeing reviews from experts, this helps for people having confidence to use these platforms and is something we continue to see across so many different industries around the world.
3. Avoiding fake reviews – In recent years there has been a growing reliance on the usage of fake reviews, so much so that tools have even been created to detect the likelihood of a review being real or fake. Also, to provide the most accurate representation of a product or service despite these reviews. This works two-fold, if you think you may have been receiving some fake or doctored reviews, you can use these tools to explore if they’re real or not and remove reviews based on that merit. Alternatively, if you had been considering the path of purchasing fake reviews then you can understand the growing risk of doing so.
4. Use different sources – Your users will come from a host of different platforms – some may have found you through social media, some through organic searches – use all of the tools available to you to promote a positive review. Whilst your site may use a reviewing platform such as those mentioned above, not all users will comment here and some might do so on your social media instead, have a plan for incorporating the two so no positive mention is left out.
5. They open the door for new consumers – As with the first point, engagement has become largely expected and a driving factor behind some responses. If you’re seeing actively engaging with your consumer, you’re more likely to attract new people as they see you’re willing to discuss any issues or expand on a previously offered good service. It provides a personal touch in a digital world that can often be all too impersonal and where engagement can be invaluable to gauging your existing feedback, it can also be essential to generating further and new interest in what you’re offering.
Well documented and responsive reviews will go a long way to helping you display in searches too. The content itself provides a wealth of information to the various search engines with the algorithm promoting those sites with good feedback, and as such these positive reviews may not only work wonders in helping to attract new consumers but to also push you higher in the search rankings. As (hopefully) positive content continues to provide highly valued returns and results when being searched for – so keep pushing for those reviews and do as much as possible to reach out to the reviewers.
