How Customer Reviews Can Benefit Your Business

Whether it’s buying a product or paying for a service, reading reviews from previous customers is now a big part of making a purchase. As a business, having a number of positive online reviews can really benefit your company and earn you new customers.

So it’s time to encourage your customers to review your company online.

How customer reviews can benefit your business

Encouraging your customer to review your company can benefit your business in a number of ways. From building your reputation, becoming more visible online to earning even more customers.

Earn more customers

In the past, word of mouth had been the life blood of many businesses and still remains important. As technology has evolved, however, word of mouth has moved online in the form of reviews and spreads much further than a close circle of family and friends.

Receiving a positive review is essentially free advertising for your business. So by encouraging customers to leave a review of your company online it will be helping you to earn more work in the future.

Build trust

Seeing that a company has a number of online reviews instantly makes them more reputable. Even before reading any of the reviews, simply knowing that other customers have hired customers builds trust. This is a trust that this is a genuine company that has already served a number of customers.

Become more visible online

Nowadays, many customers will begin their search for a product or service online. And more often than not this means heading to a search engine like Google. When a customer in your area is searching for a service you offer online, being high up the rankings will increase your chances of earning a new customer.

While there are countless factors that influence a page’s ranking in a search engine, customer reviews can have a real influence. Not only are search engines looking at what you’re saying about your service but what others are saying too. Customer reviews certainly help with this and receiving a steady stream of them keeps your business relevant in the eyes of search engines.

While online reviews can certainly improve the online presence of your company, there’s much more you can do to increase your visibility online. Take a look at our SEO & Website Guide for Small Companies to find out more.

If you’re looking for a short cut to growing your business by connecting with customers searching online, we can help. At Boiler Guide, we have an experienced team of digital marketers who know all about getting websites to rank well online. By signing up to Boiler Guide, you’ll get a free company listing that’s backed by all the efforts we’ve put into making our website a trusted online presence. That’s in addition to having unlimited access to our qualified boiler sales leads.

Where can customers leave reviews?

For starters, right here on Boiler Guide. As a heating company, when you join Boiler Guide, you’ll get a free company listing. On this listing, you’ll be able to provide key company information, the type of work you carry out and contact details.

As well as all of this, your company will have an overall star rating based on the ratings left by customers when they review your company. Encouraging customers to leave a review will help you to stand out from those companies who don’t have any reviews. Would you rather hire a company with a 5-star rating or no ratings?

With reviews becoming such a huge part of a customer’s decision-making, there are many places to leave a review online, including: Google Trustpilot and Yelp.

Should you reply to customer reviews?

By taking the time to reply to customer reviews – both positive and negative – you’re connecting with customers on a personal level. Most online review services give you the ability to reply to customer reviews and we recommend making use of that feature.

Not only is it important to reply to customer reviews, it’s important to do so in a timely manner. After leaving a review, 53% of customers expect to receive a reply within 7 days (Review Tracker).

How to handle negative reviews

Hopefully you’ll never receive a negative customer review but it could be an opportunity to turn it into a positive. Giving your customers the opportunity to review your company online gives you the ability to reply and make things right. This isn’t something that’s possible if a customer was to share their thoughts by word-of-mouth only.

Replying to a negative review shows that you’re keen to make things right. According to a study, 7 out of 10 customers changed their opinion of a company after they replied to a review. Making sure that you reply to negative reviews promptly is important so it’s a good idea to check for new reviews on a regular basis.

To fully resolve the issue, it can be a good idea to take the conversion offline. For example, you could provide an email address for the reviewer to contact you on. This would be a more direct route of conversation that’s easier to manage than constantly checking back on your reviews.

If a customer has given you a bad review by mistake, after intending to review a different company, you can make a case for it to be removed. After all, you don’t want a potential customer to be put off from hiring your company on the back of a negative review that isn’t about your service.

How to encourage customers to leave reviews online

The simplest thing to do would be to just ask. You’ve finished the job and the customer is over the moon, a great time to ask them to leave a review. Whether you want to ask the question or write down the information they need is completely up to you. Printing out a few cards with details of how to leave a review could act as a reminder to the customer.

Alternatively, you could take a more digital approach. A quick email or text to the customer can contain a link taking them straight to where they need to go to leave a review.

Get more customer reviews with Boiler Guide

To get more online reviews, your customers need a place to leave them. And there’s no simpler way for a customer to review your business than on Boiler Guide.

Signing up to Boiler Guide is completely free and you’ll get a company listing on our homeowner-facing website. Your company listing is where customers can rate and review your business. Not only that but by signing up you’ll also be able to access our qualified sales leads. We have a qualification process in place to ensure that each lead we make available comes from a genuine customer. So buying a lead through Boiler Guide could not only earn you more work but more reviews too.