5 Great Ways to Get Customer Reviews and Feedback

The benefits of collecting feedback and reviews far outweigh any potential issues. Major marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay heavily rely on product reviews and seller feedback to show buyers which sellers are delivering on price, quality and customer service.

Feedback helps ecommerce businesses to understand why customers are doing something or what they might do in the future. And, when it comes to converting browsers into buyers, customer reviews can really help.

According to a survey conducted by Dimensional Research for Zendesk, 90 percent of respondents claimed that positive online reviews influenced their buying decisions. What’s more is that 86 percent said their buying decisions were influenced by negative online reviews.

Image credit: Zendesk

There are four key consumer motives for looking at online reviews:

1. To see what type of product/service they are buying
2. To mitigate the risk of making a bad purchase
3. To see the product/service benefits and limitations
4. For social proof from people who have used the product/service

Real customer reviews can persuade a buyer who is on the fence to make a purchase. On Amazon, product reviews are vitally important: They provide potential buyers with more information from people who’ve used the product.

Another added benefit of online reviews is search engine optimization (SEO). According to Moz, online reviews make up 13 percent of how you’re ranked on Google.

So, we now know that feedback and online reviews are important. But how can you get them?

Let’s jump in and take a look at each of these.

1. Send emails

The number one way to get reviews is by sending a friendly email asking for it after a customer has made a purchase and hopefully tried and tested the product. Detailed product reviews on your site can help with SEO and boost a product’s page in search result rankings.

Honest feedback from customers can also help influence your buying decisions and address any areas of your business that need improvement. Customers who have purchased multiple times from you or with a high order value are more likely to leave you a review than someone who has made a one-off purchase or bought something of low value.

Are you an Amazon seller looking for reviews? Don’t offer incentives because it’s against Amazon’s policies. Instead, check out these great tips for optimizing customer engagement with your product review requests.

2. Online surveys

Online surveys are easy to set up, scalable and easy to analyze. I recommend using software like Survey Monkey to make the process a breeze.

Just create some questions and send out a link to your customer list. You could also send it to your social media followers or add it to your site for visitors to complete after they’ve made a purchase.

Surveys allow you to learn more about your customers. Design your questions so you gain a better understanding of how people are feeling about your prices, delivery methods, products or customer service.

When creating your questions, use simple language and ensure that what you receive will be useful. Whatever your goal is, be specific with your questions. A typical question might be, “How likely are you to recommend our company to a friend or relative?” with the customers providing a response on a scale of 0–10.

Pro-tip: You should also try to include some open-ended questions to get an idea of what your customer is really thinking.

It’s also important to make it easy for customers. No one wants to spend half an hour filling out a survey and a long survey can often lead to poor results and lots of unfinished responses. Instead, be concise.

3. Live Chat

We live in a society where people want and now expect instant replies. By adding Live Chat to your ecommerce site, you can answer any questions and receive instant feedback from customers. This adds value for customers and improves your response times and the customer experience.

Pro-tip: Live Chat can be a good resource for learning about any issues customers may be experiencing.

It’s something most businesses should consider at least trying. It’s really easy to implement and there are lots of different options out there, including Zendesk and LiveChat.

When you’re unavailable or it’s outside of office hours, you can display a message and a short contact form, so they can get in touch.

4. Get social

Social media is everywhere today. The average person has five social media accounts and spends around 1 hour and 40 minutes browsing these networks every day. It’s become common for a customer to open an app and fire off a question to a company in less than a minute.

If you’re a business with a presence on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, then it’s important that you regularly check these and respond to those customers or potential customers getting in touch.

Pro-tip: Engaging with customers directly allows you to communicate directly, build customer relationships and brand loyalty.

You can also search these platforms to research what people are saying about your company or industry trends.

5. Online feedback forms

Customers are constantly thinking of things that you could do better, and you need to tap into that. Having a structured way for customers to get in touch on your site is a vital way for you to get feedback from customers.

The form should be really easy to fill out and easy to find on your site. If it looks like hard work, then you may miss out on minor or major feedback from customers which could improve your overall business or website.

A business that collects reviews and high-quality feedback from its customers and uses it to improve their processes is a business going in the right direction. And online reviews can really boost sales as consumers trust what their peers think.

A final bit of advice: Treat your customers right and offer the best customer experience you can. Your customers are your best marketing tool.

This post is by Chris Dunne, Marketing Executive at FeedbackExpress. FeedbackExpress is a powerful, cloud-based software solution that helps Amazon sellers automate and manage their feedback communication with buyers. The software is proven to help sellers get more positive feedback and product reviews as well as removing any negative and neutral feedback quickly and effectively.