How to Collect Customer Testimonials for Your Business or Brand

Customer testimonials are considered one of the most powerful and important types of content among marketers, business owners, brands, and even among consumers. Many consumers, 72%, won’t even take action until they have seen a customer testimonial or review first. Likewise, 88% of consumers state that testimonials directly influence their purchase decisions. So it’s really hard to overlook the value and benefits that come along with customer testimonials, but figuring out how to collect customer testimonials for your business or brand can be particularly challenging.

Make the Process Simple for Customers

Most importantly, you don’t want to land yourself in the SPAM folder or on your customer’s radar as someone that is being pushy or who is requesting customer reviews in an unacceptable manner. The last thing you want is for your customers to feel uncomfortable with the way you ask them for their help and you definitely don’t want them to feel put off by your request. As such, before you even consider trying to figure out how to collect customer testimonials for your business, you need to take steps to ensure the process is easy for the customer to handle. 

Consider the following:

• Make sure that you make the entire process of collecting customer testimonials take 10 minutes or less for your customer. DO not leave the burden of time on them!
• Be sure to make the process simple for the customer. Ideally they should be able to easily click a link to share their video from their phone. Make is seamless and simple.
• Make sure you have a way to thank your customer for their time. Maybe you provide them a gift? Perhaps you offer them a discount? You must provide something for them.
• Make sure that you are honest about where, and how, you intend to use their review. This should be in writing, signed by your customer in the form of a release.
• Provide your customers with an outline or a few questions that you would like them to answer in their testimonial. Don’t overload them.

Once you’ve got your details in place, you can begin to plan the process of how you will collect customer testimonials for your customers or clients.

Consider How You Will Reach Out to Customers with Your “Ask”

The various ways that you decide to reach out to your customers to ask them if they would be willing to provide you with a customer testimonial should be planned based on the target customer that you wish to acquire reviews or testimonials from. For instance, you’ll want to decide whether you’ll going to try to collect customer testimonials from social media, email, your website, or elsewhere. Consider the following:

• Reach out to your customers via email. This allows you to reach a targeted list.
• Ask on your social media platforms if you wish to achieve testimonials from those who follow your pages.
• Request customer testimonials on your website, via your blog, or a call-to-action in your sidebar, homepage, or on individual product or service pages.

Interviews & Case Studies

Another way that you can focus on how to collect customer testimonials for your business is to request interviews with your customers or to create case studies that include customer interviews to provide a direct correlation between your customer and your case study. If you’re going to request customer testimonials in this manner, you’ll want to:

• Find a customer that you know will be good on camera. They must not be shy.
• Make sure that your customer fits the target prospect so that you can interview someone that your prospective audience will resonate with.
• Be honest about why you are interviewing the customer for the case study.
• Make sure that the customer has facts, figures, or specifics that go along with your case study or the story you’re trying to tell.

Just like any other request for customer testimonials, if you’re requesting a customer interview you need to have a release form and you should have a plan in place for how you will compensate your customer for their time, be it with a gift or some other “Thank you.”

More Ways to Collect Customer Testimonials

You’ve considered social media, email, interviews and case studies, but there are other ways that you can collect customer testimonials from your audience, too. For example, you might put out an open call to any customer that comes to your website by using an interstitial or pop-up ad that asks and only shows to those who are consider confirmed customers. You could also sending a QR code that makes leaving customer testimonials easy for customers. Incorporate the QR into the package or welcome email when you get a new customer.

Include a link to provide customer testimonials on the checkout process or in an automated process a set time after a customer purchases from your business. You can even turn to customers that have left reviews on other social platforms or sites and ask them if they would send a testimonial to your directly.

There are endless ways that you can learn how to collect customer testimonials for your business if you just focus on where your customers are and provide a means of nicely asking them for their help. For more on customer testimonials, give Beverly Boy Productions a call!