Online Reviews: How to get your customers to write one

Let’s face it, we all want to be liked.  This is true for individuals as well as your business. You’ve worked hard to provide an excellent service to your customers, and it’s a great reassurance when customers sing your praises.

Online reviews are key if you want to attract more customers to your rental, activity, or tour business.  Nowadays, travelers and adventure seekers use online reviews when deciding where to go and what to do.  Beyond a personal endorsement from a friend or family member, an online review is the next best thing.

How do you encourage your customers to write a review without seeming too pushy or violating a rule on the review sites?  It’s a fine line indeed, so let’s share simple ways it can be done tactfully.

Make it easy

Have links to your review sites posted on your website as well as in your storefront or shop.  In addition, after their visit send them a follow up email thanking them for their visit, and add a link to your review site.  If you use an online booking system, many will offer automatic emails that can be set up to send a day or two after their visit.

Get clever

Come up with a creative way to entice a customer to post a review.  A great idea is to give your parting customers a small gift, such as a key chain, water jug, or coaster that includes a note card on it asking them how they liked their experience.  “How’d you like us? We’d love to know.”  Add the link to your Yelp or TripAdvisor page to the note, so they will know where to go.  This simple gesture will likely stand out to your customer enough that they’ll want to share it.  After all, it’s the little things in life that mean the most.

Just ask

At the end of their visit, ask them to write a review.  If they had an awesome time, then this is a easy task for a customer to do.  Asking may feel uncomfortable, but if it’s done in a gracious and humble way, then it will be appreciated.  If you’re sure they’ve had a great time, then say something like, “I would appreciate it if you told your friends and family about us.  In fact, if you go to our page on Yelp, you can write about your experience.”  Give them the link, and say thank you.

In the end, it’s important to recognize that as a small business, good or bad reviews can be the deciding factor for choosing you.   Provide an excellent service, engage your customers, build rapport, and this will naturally bring people to review you.  In addition, respond quickly and appropriately to negative reviews.  Doing so, will show a potential customer that you care and want to make things right if it wasn’t.  That type of business mindset speaks volumes.  Cheers!