If you’re struggling to find ways to get customer reviews online, you’re not alone. There are plenty of good businesses that offer excellent service but still lack product and customer reviews. Unfortunately for them, this lack of online customer feedback could be hurting their search rankings, making it even less likely that potential customers will find their services on the web.

5 Ways to Get Reviews Online

Here are five tried-and-true ways to get more reviews from your customers:

1. Ask! The single most effective way to get more reviews from customers is to ask for them. And, while the best time to ask for a review is right after your customer has had a positive experience, it certainly doesn’t hurt to ask whenever you have contact with a customer.

   Businesses that know how to get reviews know that the best thing to do is to set up a customer feedback system that involves following up each customer contact with the opportunity to leave feedback. For instance, if a customer buys your product or service there’s an opportunity to include a note that says, “Did your experience with us meet your expectations? We hope so, and we’d love to hear about it. Please visit Yelp or Google+ to leave a review and let us know how we did.” Then, make it easy for folks to follow through by including links to your online review web pages and profiles.

2. Tell your customers how to leave reviews for you. Just because you know how to leave an online review for a business doesn’t necessarily mean that your customers do. In fact, depending on your demographic, your customers may not even know that leaving feedback online is an option!

   If you want to get more reviews online, tell your customers what they need to do and give them direct links to the review websites. If you make leaving feedback easy and they’ve had a great experience with your service, they’re more likely to leave feedback online (which will encourage other people to do the same).

3. Respond to feedback. Responding to customer reviews is critical to getting more customer reviews online. Everyone wants to feel heard, and responding to online reviews lets your customers know that you’re taking the time to listen and hear what they have to say. And, if you get a negative review, respond publicly and privately. This shows the world that you care and want to “make it right,” and it shows the individual that you really mean it.

4. Consider using a 3rd-party customer feedback tool or service to get more reviews from customers. There are a number of 3rd-party customer feedback tools and services available that can help make it easier to request testimonials, get customers to leave reviews online, encourage customers to share their positive experiences, and monitor public review websites. In fact, just as important as getting those reviews is having some system for monitoring them so that you can take timely action should you get a bad one.

5. Have a complete online business profile listed with as many directories as possible. By having your small business listed online with all of the relevant business directories, you’ll give customers the ability to find you—both for buying your goods or services, and for leaving feedback once they’ve done business with you. The big online review sites (such as Google, Bing, Yahoo! and Yelp) are great places to start, and don’t forget professional social media sites like LinkedIn (especially if you provide B2B or professional consulting services).

If you’re eager to find new ways to get more reviews online from customers, or if you need a customer feedback service that will help you get reviews, respond to customer feedback, and monitor your online customer reviews, contact us or visit our website. We can help you build a Milwaukee internet marketing strategy that will help.