Customer reviews are essential for a company’s brand awareness and credibility — seventy-two percent of customers say they won’t take action until they read a review first. While customer reviews are valuable for any business, they weigh heavily on industries with a saturated market like those in the home services, personal services, and consumer goods industries. A good customer experience helps these businesses stand out from their many competitors.
Business texting allows companies to ask for more reviews because it is a communication channel that nurtures personal relationships. It’s easier to tap into text conversations to ask for a review than to email a generic review request or spend all day calling customers. Companies can direct customers to review sites by adding links to their texts, and links in texts have an eight times higher click-through rate than any other marketing channel.
Focus on service first
Let’s start by covering the etiquette of asking for a review. Before asking for a customer review, you may want to use texting throughout your customer journey to keep a check on how your customer is enjoying your product or service.
Ultimately, your customer service takes precedence over everything else. You can’t give bad service and expect a positive review. How you treat a customer will determine whether or not they have a favorable impression of your business. Investing in ways to provide stand-out service or going the extra mile for a customer will give them more reason to rave about you. The takeaway here is to focus on providing quality customer service first before worrying about asking for reviews.
Top places to ask for a review
Some of the most common review sites that consumers frequent are Google Business Profiles, Yelp, and Facebook for Businesses — all of which are beneficial to personal and home services because they’re geo-specific and come from verified users. Companies should flesh out their profiles and keep them active, so customers know that their accounts are up-to-date. Consumer goods businesses might want to have a review section on their websites that they direct customers to since online retailers often cater to a larger geographic audience.
Here are some industry-specific review sites to look into:
Home services
- Angie’s List
- Home Advisor
- Houzz
- Amazon Home Services
- Porch
- Thumbtack
Real estate
- Zillow
- Trulia
- Movoto
- Realtor.com
Ecommerce
- Trustpilot
- Bazaarvoice
- Yotpo
- Feefo
Travel and leisure
- Trip Advisor
- Expedia
- Bookings
Software
- G2 Reviews
- Gartner
Legal
- Lawyers.com
- Avvo
3 ways to ask for a customer review using business texting
Once you know a customer is happy with your product or service, and you know where you want them to leave the review, you can use business SMS to ask for one. Timing is crucial when asking customers to leave a review because you want to ask in moments when your product or service is fresh in a customer’s mind. Asking a customer to leave a review right after they share a good experience will not only increase the likelihood that they’ll leave a review, but it’ll also increase the chances that the review will be a positive one. Here are some ways to indicate that a customer is ready to leave a review and tips on how to ask them to leave one.
After a purchase or service
One way to know if your customers enjoyed your product or service is to ask them directly. Pretty simple, right? Texting allows you to interact with customers in a more casual environment, and it has a 98 percent open rate, so you can rest assured that your message is seen. Texts also have a 45 percent response rate, fostering a two-way conversation to connect with your customers on a deeper level.
On the other hand, if a customer reaches out to you first and tells you they had a great experience, you can ask them on the spot for a review. By advertising your texting number or by using it to set up the initial service, you’re allowing customers to contact you, too. Text threads are also stored for you to reference in the future.
If a customer is a regular
Sometimes, it’s best to ask repeat customers to leave a review because they’ve had time to establish a better relationship with your business. They’ve likely already been texting your business to schedule a service or speak to support, so you have an established relationship that you can easily tap into.
If you’re a home or personal service company that has serviced the same customer multiple times and know they are happy with your service, you can reach out to them via text and ask for a review. Long-time customers will be able to give better reviews because they can credit your company’s consistency to let others know you are committed to providing exemplary service for the long run.
After a survey
Another way to gauge a customer’s experience is to send them a short survey via text. Survey data can help your company pinpoint common customer concerns, so you can better understand what parts of your business need improvement. If your company uses customer satisfaction surveys, you can automate a response to any positive survey reply to ask those customers to leave a review for you.
Textline customers use the Automation feature to send out an automated text to their customers. As a reminder, you want to make sure customers have opted-in to receive texts from your business before sending them anything.
The bottom line
At the core of any business is a solid relationship and reputation with its customers. While we’re focusing on reviews, we want to highlight the importance of providing excellent customer service first and foremost. Once you know your customers are satisfied with your product or service, it’s easier to use text to tap them on the shoulder to ask for a review.
