How to Get Customer Reviews

Customer reviews and testimonials of your work are very important, especially for a small business, and positive reviews can help establish credibility and trust with prospective customers.

How Do I Get My Customers to Leave Reviews?

Simple... Just ask! If customers are happy with your work, they will generally be willing to provide you with a review. Make sure to request the review as soon as possible, ideally in person, after the work has been completed, while it's fresh in your customer's mind. Otherwise, you can send your customer a text, email, or follow-up call after the job is complete, and request the review in that follow-up.

If you don't get a review within 2-3 weeks, it's okay to follow up with a gentle reminder. You could also provide an incentive for a review, such as a $20 gift certificate, especially if you don't already have a lot of reviews on your website or Facebook page. But keep in mind that offering an incentive only if the customer leaves a positive review is unethical and might also be illegal!

Where Do I Show Customer Reviews?

The best place for customers to leave reviews is on your Google My Business listing. Yelp is also a good one, but only if you already have an existing account that's unclaimed (which you should claim); otherwise, steer clear of Yelp due to their shady practices. Your company Facebook page is also a good place for reviews. These three sites show star ratings in your Google search results, which is great if you have 5 stars, but not so good if you have 3 stars or less.

The downside to allowing customers to leave reviews on listings websites is that you cannot delete the review. If the review is not positive, in some cases all you can do is reply to it. This is why pre-screening customers before you send them a link to the review site is important. The upside is that you can copy these reviews to a Reviews page on your website.

If you have a Facebook page, customers can leave recommendations on the page. The person leaving the recommendation must have a Facebook account in order to post on the page. You can ask the customer to "like" your Facebook page while they're on it (the more "likes" your Facebook page has, the better). The down side to allowing recommendations on your Facebook page is that unhappy customers can "not recommend" your company. However, Facebook allows you to hide ALL recommendations as well as prohibit recommendations completely, so if you get too many "not recommended"'s, you at least have an out (although if you get a lot of "not recommended"'s, the better course of action is to find out what you can do to improve your services).

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