One of the challenges small business owners have is collecting positive customer reviews in an online format. There are three main reasons for this:
- Customers often give a majority of their feedback verbally at the offline place of business spontaneously.
- Customers will often completely forget to leave a review online once they leave the business and go back home.
- Customer may find it a bother to submit an online review especially if it is not part of their normal internet activity and see it as extra work.
So how can a business owner collect more online reviews from satisfied customers?
One of the most effective ways to capture customer reviews is when they are at your place of business using a feedback form. It offers various advantages:
- You have your customers complete attention when they are your place of business
- Your customers have a few minutes to spare to fill out the form
- You can personally persuade them to fill out the form leverage your social skills and friendship
- You can address any customer complaints and problems offline before your aggrieved customer decides to go online to vent their problems, thereby nipping negative online reviews in the bud.
Tips on How to structure your feedback form
- A feedback form should be simple and easy to fill and not feel like a challenging multiple-choice question test.
- Just because it’s a form doesn’t mean it should on an A4 paper. Small post-card sized forms with your logo are more customer friendly since the use of color and graphics makes the card look attractive
- The form should have a clear rating system that anyone can understand. For example questions should have simple “Yes or No” options or “Great, OK, Not Great”. If have an ambiguous rating system of 0-10, that may not give you accurate results because everyone has their own personal meaning of what a 7 or a 4 rating means.
- The form should also have a section where the customer can write in their own words their experience. This is important so that your reviews can have a personal touch to them.
- Have them fill their name and contact details such an email address, location or phone number
- Include a statement asking them for their permission to use their feedback as part of your online customer reviews on your website. This is important as you definitely want their legal permission to quote them on your official website.
Examples of questions to include on a feedback form
- Did you enjoy your dental visit/lunch/hotel stay with us?
- Would you come back again for another visit?
- How would you rate our staff/your therapist?
- How would you rate our facilities/cleanliness of our rooms?
- What was the Best part of your visit today?
- What was the Worst part of your visit today?
- If you were to refer your best friend to our business, what would you tell them about us?
Once you have collected these manual feedback forms, you can use the best reviews on your website under the client testimonial section.
