Online Customer Reviews
In a recent Forbes article about customer reviews, “Six Simple Ways To Get Customers To Review Your Business Online”, author Nellie AKalp provides six tips for obtaining customer reviews for your business. AKalp outlines the benefits of customer reviews as well as why customer reviews matter. She quotes Zendesk survey findings that 90% of participants claim that positive online reviews influence the buying decision and a similar percentage (86%) are influenced by negative reviews. Increasing rave reviews is a large component to offsetting negative reviews.
Providing Customers Incentives to Review Your Business
Some of the tips for increasing reviews include offering incentives (for any review, not just a positive review), and adding business profiles to review websites. Providing easy access to review websites is another method for increasing the number of customer reviews. Easy access can be provided via a link or an email request, but one method not discussed in the article is how to increase reviews by customers while they are in-store.
Make Reviews a Part of Your Process
Each customer that walks into a store has the potential to be a reviewer of the product or service being offered. Providing these customers with an easily accessible and difficult to miss method for providing feedback can catch customers while their experience is top of mind, as well as provide sales personnel with instant feedback about their interaction. This provides additional incentive to store personnel to provide an outstanding customer experience. Number six in the Forbes list, “Make reviews a part of your work process” suggests incentivizing employees for each review.
In Store Kiosks Locked Down to Review Sites
How can stores provide customers with an easy method of authoring a review, as well as instantly incentivize employees for completed reviews? The answer; in store kiosks locked down to review sites. Configure an attract screen that links off to each review site and restrict access to only those review sites you want to impact. Restaurants, grocery stores, clothing stores, home repair stores, doctors, dentists, banks, and more. . . these brick and mortar retailers can benefit from online reviews given by in store customers.
Investing in kiosks is one such way to increase customer reviews. Expanding on the Forbes article, you can use kiosks to “Ask your customers” (number 2) and “Make it easy to leave reviews” (number 3). To tie this in with number 4’s “Incent but don’t buy reviews” you can provide customers with a coupon if they submit a review (any review, good or bad).
How do you gain customer reviews? Can a kiosk help to improve your customer review process?
