If you are a business owner, you know that reviews can significantly impact your business. Did you know 91% of consumers that are between the age of 19 and 34 will trust reviews? Consumers are more likely to make use of your business if you have at least 40 reviews from your customers that have already made use of your services. Do you have a substantial review presence? If not, are you ready to get serious and start building one for your business? 

Before you think that you will have to beg for reviews, the good news is that 68% of customers who are asked for reviews will gladly leave a review. 

Not sure how to ask them? Let us have a look.

Ask your customers for a review in person.

If you have a business where your clients can come in and purchase an item, one of the best ways for you to get reviews is to ask them in person. Always remember to ask for reviews in a way that will not make your customers feel forced to leave a review. 

Tip: Your cashiers/sales personnel can ask the client if they have found what they were looking for. If the customer responds positively, they will most likely leave a review for you if you asked them. However, it is not a good idea to ask your customers for a review as soon as they said something positive. Ask a few follow-up questions. As you end your conversation, you can tell your customer that you really value feedback from your customers and ask them if they would mind leaving an online review for you. Whether it is Google or Facebook, the choice will be yours. 

Send out an e-mail asking for reviews.

If your business is more of an online store or does not interact with many customers face-to-face, sending out an e-mail to your customers and asking for reviews might be the better option.

Tip: Segment your list and send out your e-mail accordingly. This will help you to get reviews over a few weeks instead of all at once. This will ensure that Google or Yelp will not ding you because of the sudden flood of reviews.

You can ask for reviews on a Thank You page.

If your business has an online store where your customers can purchase your products, you may want to use your Thank You page to ask them for reviews.

Always remember that a first-time customer will not be able to review the products they have just ordered. However, they can review their online experience on your website. This will also help you because they can offer your customer service insights if they have interacted with you. 

It is essential to ask for reviews, especially for those who will be purchasing for their second or third time. They will most likely leave you a review. If you do not have a Thank You page, do not worry, another way is to ask for a review on a confirmation page or a confirmation email that will be sent out to your customers once they purchased items from your website.

Ask for a review in a text message. 

Today text messaging has become a prevalent form of marketing that allows you to use this method to ask for reviews.

Interesting fact: Text messages have an open rate of almost 100%

If you currently already send out text messages to your customers for purchases, they have done, you can send a follow-up text message asking them to leave a review for you. 

Remember, because it is a text message, it should be short and sweet.

Try something like: We hope you are happy with your purchase. Please leave us a review on Google and let us know how we did.

Asking for Reviews on a Receipt or Card

Let us face it; not everyone is comfortable with the idea of asking for reviews whether you have a store where your customers come in to or if they purchase items online.

An option that would suit you better would be to ask for a review on the purchase slip. You can program your receipts to include a short message at the bottom, asking your customers to write reviews. If you are the owner of a restaurant, you can also ask your waiters to give the customers comment cards, now this is not the same as a review, but you can use your comment cards on your website under testimonials. 

Use your social media platforms to ask for reviews.

Since many people use Facebook today, Facebook reviews have become especially important for businesses. With Facebook, you have the option to either ask for reviews in a Facebook post or by using a chatbot in Facebook Messenger.

If you want to use a chatbot, you need to consider setting up a survey directly within the chatbot for you to collect reviews to post on your site. Alternatively, you can simply ask people to leave a review elsewhere.

One final note about reviews. This may sound very odd to you, but customers will most likely make use of a business that also has some negative reviews. Let us face it; it is not realistic for a company to get a 5-star review every single time. When you do get a negative review, always make sure that you respond to that review and always try your best to make the customer happy.