How to Ask for Online Reviews

Have you ever wanted to collect some online reviews, but you’ve been afraid that even though it seemed the customer had a good experience you just never know what they’re going to say?

I’ve got a tip for you on how to make asking for online reviews work great to properly showcase your business.

We all always hope that we provide great customer service, and that our customers are happy with whatever product or service they receive.

We also know, in reality, there’s going to be some customers who refuse to give you a 5-star rating, just like you had a teacher in school who refused to give anyone a 100 on an assignment because they say no one is ever perfect. (I had one teacher who insisted on this, and it really annoyed me!)

Or your customer is perfectly happy they day the receive the widget from you, and the next day they drop it off a third story balcony and it breaks and they’re no longer happy, even though the reason their item broke wasn’t related to you or the product. It should have survived the impact of a 30′ fall.

Sometimes we just never know how someone’s going to rate and review us despite our best efforts. Which makes a lot of small businesses uncomfortable to ask for reviews for that very reason.

BUT … you don’t have to be worried, and you don’t have to limit the request to only those people who you know would give you a glowing review – like your mom. There’s a simple process you can use (you know we’re all about simple processes here!)

How it works:

Step 1: Send past customers email

You send an email to your past customers and asking them for a review. You provide them a link to do so.

Step 2: Email links to a feedback form

The link takes them to a form (not directly to the review site) which you can set up on Google Forms,Jotform or Typeform – whatever your preferred platform is – and the first question is how they would rate you on scale of 1 to 5.

Step 3: High raters are given link to review site

If they answer 4 or 5, you put some skip logic in the form (be sure you’re using a form that allows skip logic!) that takes those people who rate you high to the next step of sending them to your review site, such as Google My Business review, Facebook review, Yelp. You can provide more than one link, but we find offering only one option increases the percentage of people who are clicking through and actually providing a review.

The people who are rating you highest – 4 and 5 – are handed the link to the review site. You make it super easy for high raters to submit a review.

Step 4: Lower raters are asked for feedback

For the people who rate you 1 through 3, you have different skip logic that instead takes them to a comment section on your form where they can provide feedback how you could do better next time. This feedback comes back directly to you so that you can respond to them and thank them for bringing the concern to your attention, and you gather that feedback to further improve your business.

These people rating you 1 to 3 are not given the link to the review site. They can still find it themselves, they can go to Google or Facebook directly and leave you a review, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Psychologically, if someone is unhappy, they most often just want to submit a complaint and be heard – and if you’re allowing them to do so on your feedback form, they may not feel the need to go find your review link otherwise, although some still will.

This method is a quick and easy way you can feel comfortable that the people who rate you highest are directly given access to go give you a review on any of these sites. It’s your own online review easy button.

Step 5: Respond to all reviews, both those on the form and those on the review site

I do recommend no matter what the review is, you respond to all reviews. If it’s a good review, thank them. If it’s a bad review, also thank them and answer them truthfully and factually – most importantly keep it professional.

Don’t let one mistake derail you

All businesses make mistakes, and I have the same outlook that most consumers do, it’s not the fact that you make a mistake because we’re all human, it’s how you fix the mistake.

There’s also instances, and people know this is becoming more prevalent, where competitors are having people leave fake reviews. You look in your history and you’ve never had a client with that name. You can respond and say “I’m sorry, I don’t see your name anywhere in our client records, if you can tell me the name that the service or product was purchased under, I can research further.” Most people know this is happening, and they take that into account. But if you don’t respond to those reviews, the people reading it later will never know for sure – they have to guess if it’s a valid review or not and may assume that it is if you’ve not made any comment.

The point is, you don’t need to be concerned about asking for online reviews worried that you’ll end up getting a bunch of random low ratings. This simple process you can implement so that those people who have already said they are going to give you the high rating are the ones directly given the link to your review site.

The easier method to gather online reviews

We offer this online review request service as part of our online reputation management services and handle the process of following up and asking for reviews. There are additional online reputation management services you can benefit from as well.

Request a consultation today so that you can learn how to keep your online reputation stellar!