November 2021
Learn
Maximizing Customer Reviews
Part 10: Loyalty Management Systems: Leveraging Customer Reviews as Testimonials
What better way to promote your company than to have your customers do it for you, in their own words?
Customer testimonials are a foolproof marketing tool to keep in your toolbox. Once you start regularly collecting online reviews from your customers, you will have a bevy of customer testimonials to use in your marketing.
First off, what exactly is a customer testimonial? A customer testimonial is a review posted about your business, which customers give approval for you to use as public endorsements.
Step one – collect customer comments (see Section ‘Gathering Online Reviews’). Step two – share them!
A review becomes a testimonial when your business uses your customer’s words from a review (with permission) somewhere other than where it was written. A positive review on Google is just that – a positive review. When you reuse those words somewhere else it elevates them from a customer review to a customer testimonial. Your business can share these testimonials wherever your potential customers might see them in order to build trust in your brand.
Examples of where to share testimonials:
- Your website
- Your social media pages
- Your email signature
- Your print materials – brochures, rack cards, even on the back of your business card!
- In proposals provided to prospects
- Signs, posters, or banners at your physical store or in waiting areas
- Traditional advertisements: Radio, TV, magazines, newspapers, bus wraps, etc.
Photo by Le Buzz on Unsplash
Collecting customer reviews is just the beginning. Elevating customer reviews to customer testimonials is where the magic really happens and the true value of your efforts collecting reviews comes to fruition.
Photo by Nick Adams on Unsplash
If there’s anything that is consistent about the online customer review landscape, it is that change is inevitable. Today, online reviews and customer testimonials are a factor of technology, and technology evolves every single day. Today, people are spending less time on desktop computers and more time on mobile devices. As the digital divide between rich and poor closes, more people will have access to the Internet and technology than ever before. Combined with more people working remotely, purchasing and shopping behaviors are bound to be affected.
Customer satisfaction trends are just that – trends. All indicators point to customer reviews and testimonials continuing to be a key part of purchasing behavior for the foreseeable future. Implementing a customer review management software is undoubtedly helpful in soliciting, monitoring, and responding to online customer reviews.
We can have no idea how the long-term shopping landscape will change over the coming years, so it is important to stay on top of trends specific to your industry. The best course of action is to remain adaptable and keep listening to your customers.
Employing a reliable customer review system is just as critical today as having a reliable financial accounting system. Whether you choose to employ an automated customer feedback and review system, or implement a do-it-yourself approach, make certain your business has an ongoing process to engage your customers for feedback and online reviews.
Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
“If you watch the pennies, the dollars take care of themselves.” As the saying goes, not only applies to expenses and revenue, but also to the cost of maintaining data hygiene. In their 1992 book, “Making Quality Work: A Leadership Guide for the Results-Driven Manager”, George Labovitz and YuSang Chang identified the 1-10-100 Rule to make business owners aware of the low cost of data cleanliness that can explode exponentially if ignored.
The rule describes tiers of cost related to prevention, correction, and failure represented by the figurative set $1, $10, and $100 as a warning to how costs can balloon out of control.
$1: Preventative
Keeping your data clean when you first collect it is very low cost. For example, at the point of sale, correctly entering a customer’s first and last name, address, email, etc. is very easy to get right in seconds.
$10: Corrective
If the preventative steps were ignored, when it comes time to use the collected data in some way, i.e., mailings, surveys, or data transfer from one system to another, the data is unreliable. No automated system can fix the bad data, and an organization must spend resources in time and money to have a team of people correct it by hand. Productivity takes a hit while data is de-duped, customer information is broken into the correct fields, and otherwise cleaned.
$100: Failure
If prevention and correction are ignored, data becomes unusable and its cost is measured in lost sales. At this point, your customer information is wrong, duplicated across multiple spreadsheets or databases, and can’t be used for marketing, customer feedback, or soliciting online reviews. At this stage, the business owner wishes they had spent the dollar.
The Harvard Business Review reported a 2016 IBM study that found poor data quality costs US businesses $3.1 trillion per year. This is the cost of missed opportunities, time and manpower cleaning data, and trying to get systems talking to each other.
Providing clean data to LoyaltyLoop allows you to get the most out of LoyaltyLoop’s analytical tools. We can use variable data to address your customers by first name when asking them to provide feedback, use fields to populate information in your testimonials, or simply present the correct information back to you when you receive a Poor Survey Alert so you can quickly contact the customer.
And LoyaltyLoop is just one service you use. Poor data hygiene can prevent you from reaching your customers when you market products and/or services, or if you send a monthly newsletter. Repeat customers remain uninformed and may seek out a competitor for a product you just announced simply because you were unable to reach them!
Keep your data clean and protect your future self from lost revenue and regret.
Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash
Tip
Fresh Testimonials: Made Daily!
Photo by Rai Vidanes on Unsplash
There are three undisputable great things when they’re fresh: Coffee, cookies, and testimonials. Keeping your testimonials fresh publicizes your happy, growing customer base, and gains the trust of people who find your webpage.
The most important reason to keep your testimonials up-to-date is to show that you are actively engaging and satisfying the needs of customers on a regular basis. This instills trust in potential customers who are looking for your services. We’ve previously discussed the many ways to use your testimonials, but simply updating the testimonials on your website, advertises a continuous stream of satisfied customers.
These potential customers are looking for a reason to trust you to do the work they need. If they visit your page and the last testimonial is a year old, they can’t be sure you are consistently keeping your customers happy.
Luckily LoyaltyLoop makes it easy to keep your testimonials up-to-date with your Testimonial Publisher, and by receiving the Weekly Summary Digest, you can remember to keep the testimonials flowing.
LoyaltyLoop’s Weekly Summary Digest is an email that gives you a summary email of survey results. It breaks down, among other details, your responses for the week and how many opportunities and testimonials you’ve collected. Use this summary email to remind you to log into LoyaltyLoop and take specific actions, like publishing your testimonials.
You’re not sure if you’re getting the Weekly Digest? Log into LoyaltyLoop and click on Alerts & Notifications in your LoyaltyLoop settings. Make sure you’re set to receive the emails. If you’re not, click on the Modify icon to add your email.
From now on updating testimonials is a simple 2 step process: 1. On every Monday, when you receive the digest email, simply click on the testimonials box in the email and it will take you straight to your Testimonial Publisher page in LoyaltyLoop. 2. Check boxes next to testimonials you wish to publish, and click on the Publish button.
Keeping your testimonials fresh takes a couple of minutes and leaves you more time for cookies and coffee!
Tip
Upgrade Your Survey to the Mobile-friendly Theme!
It's FREE!
Is your current survey using our classic theme? Update to our new, sleek, mobile-friendly modern theme!
Here you can see an example of the mobile-friendly theme. Our mobile survey theme is designed to appeal and be of ease to mobile users, as well as desktop/laptop users. Questions and answers adapt dynamically to smaller screens, and buttons are larger and easier to read; better for mobile navigation and touchscreen selections.
Check to see if your survey is mobile-friendly. To view your survey, click your username, Settings, then Survey Preview. If your survey has small buttons, chances are you're still on the traditional theme. It’s time to upgrade. More and more people are using mobile devices to read your emails and take your survey. Upgrade to make their experience better.
For desktop users, the mobile-friendly theme also looks and works great. The survey has a more modern user interface, and selected answers have stronger and clearer graphical elements to indicate selection. See the image of a sample survey below. We believe you’ll agree it is a step above the classic theme, and you’ll want to upgrade right away. There is no cost to upgrade, all it takes is an email to our support team or give us a call at 888-552-LOOP (5667) option 3.
