How to Ask Customers for Reviews

Customer reviews are feedback or opinions provided by customers about their experiences with a product or service. They are a powerful way to attract new buyers and build trust with your brand. Taking this customer feedback is a key part of your customer service strategy. After all, reviews are honest responses from real-life customers.

Our research shows that 86% of service pros believe customer expectations are higher than ever, making customer reviews crucial for understanding and meeting those expectations. Positive reviews can enhance your credibility and positively influence potential customers' decisions. Even negative reviews offer valuable insights into customer concerns, helping you improve and achieve your customer service goals. Whether your business is an online store, a software company, or a field service operation, customer reviews are indispensable.

Getting customers to leave reviews can be challenging. The good news? With the right approach, you can encourage more reviews without coming across as pushy or intrusive. Read on to discover our top tips and tricks for collecting feedback, and learn how customer service software can help make the process easier.

• Importance of customer reviews for your business
• Types of customer reviews & feedback
• Where do people leave reviews?
• Tips for using good customer reviews effectively
• Streamline customer reviews with Service Cloud

Customer reviews can shape your business’s reputation and create opportunities for long-term revenue growth. Here are a few reasons why reviews are so important.

• Build trust and boost credibility: When prospective buyers see positive feedback from real customers, they’re more likely to trust your business. Customer reviews act as social proof, reassuring potential customers that your products or services are reliable and worth their investment.
• Influence purchase decisions: Many consumers read reviews before making a purchase, and a high rating can impact their final choice. This is especially true for expensive purchases, such as a car. A steady stream of positive feedback can persuade hesitant buyers.
• Improve SEO and online visibility: Search engines like Google prioritize businesses with frequent, high-quality reviews. Reviews contribute to local SEO rankings and make it easier for potential customers to find your business during the search process.
• Enhance customer loyalty and engagement: Encouraging reviews shows customers that you value their opinions, which can strengthen relationships and build loyalty. Engaged customers who feel heard are more likely to return and recommend your business to others. Customer support software like Service Cloud can automate and personalize these requests, making the process seamless and more effective.
• Gain valuable business insights: Customer reviews give direct insights into your strengths and areas for improvement, helping you refine your products and services to improve overall customer service experience. Service Cloud’s analytics feature can help you understand customer sentiment and trends by analyzing their reviews.

There are a lot of ways to get feedback from your customers to help you adjust the customer experience and improve your business — from surveys to publicly posted Google reviews. There are three general types of customer reviews you might encounter:

• Public reviews: These appear on platforms such as Google, Amazon, or Facebook and are widely accessible by potential customers.
• Private feedback: This type of review is only visible to your business, such as a customer satisfaction survey or direct email.
• Industry-specific platforms: For businesses in specialized industries, you might prioritize reviews on niche platforms, such as G2 — a go-to site for software reviews on solutions like Salesforce Service Cloud and Salesforce Field Service.

Each type of feedback has its own value. Public reviews help potential consumers make informed decisions by seeing what others have experienced, while industry platforms assist B2B companies in finding the right providers or partners. Private feedback, on the other hand, is incredibly useful for gathering specific insights that can lead to meaningful improvements in the customer experience.

There are lots of different ways customers can give you feedback. Sometimes you’ll get quantitative feedback with numbers, ratings, and scores, such as your G2 star score. You might also get qualitative data from comments or reviews that help give context to the numbers.

Customers have plenty of options when it comes to leaving reviews, and where they choose to post depends on your business type and industry. To help keep track of all of the feedback you’re getting indirectly and directly, qualitatively and quantitatively, you’ll want a customer feedback management tool. This helps you stay on top of valuable feedback, no matter where it comes from, and can also help you identify which venues get the most traffic.

Many customers leave reviews directly on search engines. These reviews can help your website ‌rank higher and drive more organic traffic to your business. Two places your customers might review your company include:

• Google Reviews: The most influential review platform, as Google reviews appear in search results and Google Maps.
• Bing Places: Less common than Google, but still relevant for businesses looking to expand their search presence.

Social media platforms serve as informal review spaces where customers share their experiences in a digital word-of-mouth way. These social reviews can be found on:

• Facebook: While businesses have Facebook Pages, which can be directly reviewed, the site also serves as a platform for indirect commentary and feedback for many B2C companies.
• Instagram: While this platform doesn’t have a formal review section, users often leave reviews in comments or testimonials in posts.
• YouTube: Some customers will do video reviews about their experiences with a company. For example, unboxing videos where people react to a product delivery are particularly popular reviews on YouTube.
• LinkedIn: For B2B companies, you’ll find LinkedIn is the main social media platform where customers will leave informal reviews on your company.

For product-based and service-based businesses, reviews on relevant platforms influence buyer decisions:

• Amazon: A must for ecommerce brands, as product reviews heavily impact sales.
• AppExchange: For businesses in the Salesforce ecosystem, reviews help validate third-party apps.
• G2 and Capterra: B2B software buyers rely on these platforms to compare and evaluate solutions.

Industry-specific review sites cater to specialized businesses, providing targeted visibility:

• Yelp: Popular for restaurants, local businesses, and service providers.
• TripAdvisor: Ideal for travel, hospitality, and tourism businesses.
• Angi (formerly Angie’s List): Focuses on home services, contractors, and other field service providers.

Research organizations often review companies and products, especially in the tech space. Their in-depth reports provide valuable and unbiased feedback. Some have online forums, which are excellent for gathering candid, informal feedback from prospects and customers. These resources are particularly useful for B2B companies, as they primarily appeal to technical buyers. Let’s look at two research organizations:

• Gartner: This research and advisory firm provides insights, advice, and tools to help businesses make faster, smarter decisions and achieve better outcomes. The Gartner Peer Community is a digital platform where verified technology leaders can connect, engage in discussions, and share knowledge with their peers, free from commercial bias, helping companies gather valuable, unbiased customer insights.
• Forrester Research: Forrester is a global firm that provides insights and guidance to business and technology leaders, focusing on customer-centric growth. The Forrester Wave is a research report and visual tool that evaluates and ranks vendors, helping leaders make informed decisions.

Sourcing reviews can help you get more feedback on your company and products. If you want to get more reviews on one of these sites (or your own), there are a few ways to ask your customers for feedback:

• Email requests: Send a follow-up email after a positive interaction. Make it easy for the customer, sending them a link to your preferred review platform. AI agents built in Agentforce can automate the process of sending follow-up messages to customers after an interaction, politely requesting their feedback at the right time.
• In-app prompts: For digital businesses, requesting reviews within an app or website is an effective strategy. Consider triggering requests at key moments, such as after completing a purchase, resolving an issue, or achieving success with your product. AI agents can help automate these requests, ensuring they are timely and relevant, which can boost response rates and improve customer engagement.
• Loyalty incentives: Never buy reviews, as it undermines trust and fairness. Instead, incentivize honest feedback with loyalty points or discounts, and use {product.service} to automate tracking, send personalized offers, and keep loyal customers engaged. Encourage satisfied customers to leave formal reviews by running social media campaigns with hashtags and contests.

When you do get positive customer reviews, don’t let them go to waste. Instead, take advantage of them with these best practices:

• Showcase reviews on your website: Make the most of glowing customer feedback by integrating it into your digital presence and promotional materials. Add testimonials to landing pages to create instant trust with visitors, and consider integrating reviews into case studies.
• Share reviews on social media: Social proof, where people are influenced by the experiences and actions of others, is a powerful marketing tool. Consider creating graphics or short videos to showcase your standout reviews.
• Respond to reviews quickly: Engaging with both positive and negative reviews shows that you value customer feedback and can help build a positive brand image. Use AI customer service agents to handle the workload and personalize responses within the guidelines your business has set.
• Incorporate reviews into sales and advertising: Good reviews build trust and confidence in buyers, influencing them to make a purchase. Consider featuring them in targeted ads or on a testimonial page.
• Use reviews to improve products and services: Customer feedback isn’t just about marketing — it’s also a valuable source of business insights. Use customer feedback management in Service Cloud to keep track of all of your reviews and analyze common themes in reviews to identify strengths and areas for improvement.
• Encourage customer case studies: Some of the most powerful reviews — especially for B2B businesses — are case studies that go in-depth into a customer’s experience with your product. Consider asking customers with positive experiences to share their stories through a case study.

From time to time, even the best businesses receive negative reviews. The key is to manage them professionally and turn them into opportunities for growth. The Serviceblazer Community on Slack is an excellent place to learn how to respond to negative reviews, as well as other valuable customer service tips.

Here are a few tips for handling a bad review:

• Acknowledge the review: A quick and empathetic response can prevent further damage and show potential customers that you care. Use generative AI to craft a personalized response, but make sure a human reviews it for accuracy. Most importantly, thank the reviewer for their feedback to acknowledge their experience.
• Apologize for mistakes: Errors happen, so take responsibility. Make it clear that you are aware of the issue and are committed to resolving it.
• Take the conversation offline: Offer to discuss the issue via phone to better understand their experience. Provide direct contact information, so they can reach the right person quickly. Trailhead, Salesforce’s free online learning platform, is a great resource to learn valuable soft skills such as active listening, communication, and building rapport.
• Demonstrate improvements: Showing that you take feedback seriously can turn a negative experience into a positive one. Implement changes based on recurring issues and publicly share improvements. This may even encourage the customer to update their review if they're satisfied with the resolution

Streamlining customer reviews with Service Cloud can significantly boost your customer service process. Service Cloud provides robust tools to efficiently collect, manage, and analyze customer feedback, making it easier to identify trends and address issues promptly. By integrating customer reviews into your service workflow automation, you can ensure that all feedback is systematically gathered, acknowledged, analyzed, and acted upon. This not only helps in resolving individual issues but also drives broader improvements to your products, services, and overall customer service experience.

After all, our research shows that 65% of customers expect companies to adapt to their changing needs and preferences. Effective customer feedback management is essential for transforming customer reviews into informed business decisions.