Client reviews can either make or break a company. Glowing reviews can instill a sense of trust and credibility in your company, whereas negative reviews can deter potential clients from ever seeking out your service in the first place.
Obtaining positive reviews from satisfied clients should be an important part of any company’s marketing strategy because these reviews are essentially a source of impartial and unbiased publicity for the company – and they cost you absolutely nothing!
How do companies currently ask for and obtain their client reviews? For the most part, it’s a manual process involving reaching out to clients, asking for them to provide a review, following up with them, and then tracking the reviews as they come in. You may be able to see how this process can become messy and complicated quite quickly.
An easy way to request and manage client reviews is to implement an automated solution that will ease the burden of all these manual tasks and simplify the management process. Your business will no longer have to worry about missing out on the chance to obtain favorable reviews from clients that can be posted to your website and shared across your social media pages!
How difficult would an automated client review request solution be to set up? Well, it’s not very difficult at all if you have the right tools in place!
A great client review request solution is comprised of the following five parts:
1. A Client Database
First off, before you can send automated requests to clients asking them to provide you with a review, your company needs to have a client database in place in which to store your client information. This client database can be set up a couple of different ways depending on the structure of your company.
Your first option is to store all of your clients in a master list that you will send your general review request to all at once. Your second option is to store your clients in separate contact lists segmented by specific products or services you are soliciting reviews for. Each option has its merits and it is up to each company to determine which option would work best for them – or maybe it could be a combination of both!
In your client database, you will need to make sure you are storing all the important information you need for each client, such as their names, their contact information, as well as which products or services they are using. This information will help you down the line when you are setting up your review request notification.
2. A Request for a Review
Now that you have your client database with your clients’ contact information, you need to configure the review request that will be sent to them. While the message itself will be sent to your clients automatically en masse, you will have to do a little work up front to configure the message and determine how best to ask for a good review from them.
One thing your company should consider is adding a little bit of personalization to your messages in order to make them seem less generic and more targeted to each individual client. This personalization can be built into your request message template using merge tags. Merge tags are essentially pieces of placeholder text that will automatically be replaced with each client’s specific information that is pulled from the client database once the message gets sent. This is why it is important to collect and store as much information on your clients in the database as possible. The more information you have, the more personalized your review request messages can be.
Your review request message template should include clear instructions for how clients may submit their reviews. For example, you can include a button or link in your message to a simple submission form that clients can use for submitting their reviews using your desired format.
3. A Review Submission
When a client receives a request from your company to write a review of your services, the easier you make the review submission process for them, the better. An easy review submission process increases the chances clients will actually follow through and provide you with a review (and the more likely it will be a positive one!).
Like we mentioned before, including a link in your review request message to a simple online form is a great way for clients to be able to easily submit a review of your company. This form should only ask for the least amount of information needed for providing a review. This information would generally be the client’s name, the services or products they’re using, and a quick review mechanism such as a rating matrix or a textbox to provide a few comments.
Once a client finishes and submits their review, the automated solution can send a notification to a designated employee to inform them a new review has been submitted.
4. A Review Follow-up
An important part of the client review process is following up with the client after the fact. There may be a couple of reasons for following up: either the client provided a review (positive or negative), or the client did not respond to or engage with the request to provide a review.
In the event you wish to follow up with a client who provided a review, you can set up and have an automated message sent to them thanking them for their time and effort and acknowledging any bad reviews. These messages can again be personalized for each individual reviewer.
Alternatively, you may wish to send reminder messages to clients who have not yet provided a review, giving them a nudge and providing another link to the review form. The reminder message (or messages, depending on your chosen strategy) can be configured to send automatically to clients if they have not engaged with the initial review request after a certain number of days.
5. Removal From the Database
Finally, the last piece of the automated client review request solution is removing the client from the review request list in the client database. You may want to remove clients from this list for one of two reasons: either they have already provided you with a review, or they have consistently not responded to any of your reminder messages and you have decided to halt the outreach process.
The removal process can be done automatically through the automated solution. Whenever a client submits the review form, the solution will automatically remove them from the list once the follow-up message is sent. The solution can also automatically remove the client from the list if they have not opened or responded to a specified number of sent reminder messages. This helps ensure you are not continuing to hound clients who have no interest in providing a review for your company.
Want to Automate the Client Request Review Process?
Have we piqued your interest? Are you now wondering where you might be able to find a solution that can automate the entire review request process?
Look no further!
SimplyCast has developed an automated client request review solution using its suite of interconnected tools that work together to move clients seamlessly through the review process from beginning to end without you having to lift a finger. With its built-in contact database, form builder, and automated workflow tool, SimplyCast can provide you with all the functionality you need to request, collect, and manage client reviews.
To learn more about how you can automate the review request process using our solution, click the button below to request a one-on-one demo from our knowledgeable team!
