Customer reviews are 100% under your control. Learn how to set the tone, encourage posting, and weave reviews into your marketing strategy.
I kept trying to get customer reviews off my plate. They belonged in marketing’s bucket, I argued. There was no way for the customer support team to change people’s opinions on the product. That was beyond our control.
When my whining got me nowhere, I researched how other companies handled public reviews and took note of their strategies. Years later, I’m sharing those insights with you (hopefully you can skip the whining part).
Taking our lead from some of Groove’s top customers, we’ll breakdown the best ways to solicit customer feedback, provide tips for managing reviews, and present some inspiring examples to get your creativity flowing.
Here are the lessons learned from 10 good customer service reviews and examples:
- Provide good customer service
- Harness social media glory
- Reply to positive service reviews
- Quantify reviews onsite and off
- Explore co-creating video reviews
- Give credibility to reviewers
- Make reviews easy to give and find
- Use influencers for affiliate reviews
- Beyond Google, Yelp, and Amazon
- Reviews don’t have to be reviews
1. Provide good customer service
We start with the most obvious way to attract good customer service reviews. Shocker: provide good customer service. Think that goes without saying? It doesn’t.
Go above traditional standards—and beyond robotic responses—to deliver personal customer support. Human-to-human contact prompts loyalty like nothing else.
Take the app reviews for Parabo Press for instance. Their top two reviews headline great customer experiences. One even mentions a support team member by name.
In the case of Rymera Web Co., founder Josh Kohlbach directly asks happy customers to write reviews after a great experience.
“If you know they’re happy, if you’ve fully solved their problem, send them a note and ask for a review.”
Josh Kohlbach
The result looks something like this:
Humanity lies at the core of all customer experiences. Provide empathetic and personal support to connect with the human behind the screen. It nearly guarantees customer satisfaction and a glowing review.
2. Harness social media glory
The best publicity is, well, public. Tap into your most public-facing resource by engaging with customers on social media platforms.
Encourage customer feedback and positive interactions with fun hashtags, quick responses, and a dedicated brand manager. Use social media to give your company a persona and a voice. Customers should feel like they’re talking to an individual rather than a business.
HITRECORD boasts a highly engaged Twitter community of over 100k followers. They retweet users’ content like crazy and foster a positive, supportive tone among all their tweets. This ignites customer love and prompts unsolicited positive reviews like this:
Honestly HITRECORD is such a good outlet for de-stressing. Highly, highly recommend to anyone who likes being creative but has a hard time coming up with ideas. There’s a wide selection of prompts- and it’s not just all about writing! There’s voice acting, graphic design n more! https://t.co/lmYTFZwzec
— Ana Cuenca. (@ana_michellec) December 1, 2019
By promoting your loyal customers, you create a loop of endless gratitude. Harness the omnipotent power of social media to constantly engage with your community and build a team of advocates.
3. Reply to positive service reviews
I’ll be honest. One of the most satisfying parts of working in customer service is turning an angry customer into a happy one. Because of this, support agents don’t just respond to helpdesk tickets, but instead tend to live in the dark corners of the online review world. We see opportunity in every negative review.
But there’s potential in good reviews too. Positive reinforcement can go a long way. Happy customers need to be heard just as much as unsatisfied ones.
Forward2Me makes a point of responding to all their five-star reviews on Trustpilot. Beyond that, they personalize each reply to show they actually read it and care.
Excellent customer service doesn’t end after a five-star review. Continue putting those customer service skills to work. Show you’re listening and taking ownership of the interaction even after it’s “complete” to really impress potential customers.
4. Quantify reviews onsite and off
There’s trust in numbers. With so many options for online consumers, a large following signals a positive sentiment of its own. Improve reliability by constantly upping your review numbers both onsite and off.
Wolf & Badger proves their legitimacy by amassing an impressive 1600+ ratings on Feefo:
Not only does this number provide context for the star rating, but it allows customers to quickly and simply get the information they need.
Many e-commerce and retail customers won’t take the time to wade through written reviews. Let the numbers do the talking in these circumstances.
Meanwhile, Fairway Market claims almost 300 reviews offsite on Yelp:
Customers trust good reviews paired with high numbers. Track quantity just as much as quality.
5. Explore co-creating video reviews
Lean into the wave of the future with video testimonials. Okay, it’s not exactly the wave of the future at this point. Still, widen your idea of a traditional review.
Content lives well beyond text now, as do customer reviews.
Nutsac understood this concept when they sent one of their bags to a popular video blogger. With over 15k views on this video review, they reached a completely new audience and validated their product in a more stimulating way.
Get creative with customer reviews by co-creating them. Start by sending products to influencers in your space, then ask for user-generated content. Actively collect videos to use onsite and in ads.
If you have the means, produce your own video case studies with your happiest customers—use your existing reviews to identify them.
6. Give credibility to reviewers
Putting names to faces and names to reviews legitimizes your cause. Just like personalizing customer service emails can elevate the experience, so too can personalizing reviews.
Think of each review as a story. The more personal, detailed, and direct, the better.
Speakeasy Berlin captures reviews on Facebook to highlight authentic customer stories. Each review includes personal details and links directly to their Facebook profile.
Look to social media platforms to bring this authenticity to your customer base. Photos and names come standard with profiles. Plus, the far-reaching network is a great way to seamlessly permeate your brand through your users’ community.
7. Make reviews easy to give and find
The goal is to reduce customer effort in every capacity. Surface reviews throughout your website, not just in one area. And feature customer stories on all the mediums your company uses, in addition to your own website.
Make it easy to both give and find reviews.
Navage has an entire page on their website dedicated to customer reviews. Even though they sell products through third-party sites, and most customers leave reviews on those platforms, Navage knows how it important it is to streamline efforts as much as possible.
For some businesses, third-party sites reign supreme. Most customers will either find your company through these websites or go directly to them for guidance. You’ll definitely want to have a presence on these sites, but find a way to incorporate it on your own website as well.
8. Use influencers for affiliate reviews
We’re all familiar with influencer potential in the world of customer marketing. But influencers can also be a great resource for reviews.
Given their authority with your audience, influencer reviews are as authentic as any other customer… with the added benefits of being more powerful, persuasive, and far-reaching.
Sensibo got over 40k views on a popular video blogger’s review. It included a discount code tied to an affiliate link. Everything was transparent. Customers commented with thanks, questions about the walk-though, and even posted about purchasing the product!
Influencers build trust with their followers by showcasing products they actually love and use. Audiences have come to understand the trade off. And more often than not, they’re happy to purchase something knowing their favorite blogger will get a kickback.
9. Beyond Google, Yelp, and Amazon
Reach for the most popular review sites, but don’t forget about more targeted options. More eyeballs on your products or services are great. More sales, even better.
At Rymera, they saw the benefit in rising to the top of WordPress’ search rankings. It’s not Google nor Yelp, but the people in this platform were so much closer to converting.
All they needed were more positive reviews to keep them in the top spot. Over email, Rymera asked customers specifically to leave a review on WordPress. Their review page speaks for itself:
Find out where your customers are, and target them in pointed ways. Create a customer journey to track each touchpoint and get creative with review strategies.
10. Reviews don’t have to be reviews
We scratched the surface of veering away from traditional star ratings when we spoke of video reviews. For our final customer service review example, we’ll look at how you can use content completely outside of the usual review template to prompt the same ultimate reaction: Getting people to love your brand.
Samual Zeller shared his experiences in an article titled, “I’ve been sharing my photography for free on Unsplash for the past 4 years, here’s what I found.” There’s no star rating or blurb of text. He didn’t set out to write a review of the site.
But after reading, you’ll absolutely want to check out Unsplash.
Formal reviews are just one aspect of customer sentiment. Build a solid reputation to get unprompted outpourings of love and loyalty in a multitude of ways.
Customer service reviews are under your control
As we put all these lessons together, it’s clear that your own communication and consistency lies at the center of all good customer service reviews and examples. Reviews should be thought of as another limb of your company.
Your team has as much control over them as any other part of your business.
When you prioritize customers and provide excellent service, you create the reviews you want. You can determine where, when, and how these reviews get posted. You can even set the tone and voice of the customer by reflecting it in your engagement with them.
Customer reviews are powerful marketing tools. Include them in your marketing and customer experience strategy to control the narrative and create meaningful dialogue with your customers.
Note: All the examples above are real customers of Groove. Our intuitive customer service software helps them provide personal support at scale. Start your free trial today to improve customer sentiment for your business.
