What Are Your Customers Saying About Your Service?

Customers are often scared of making the final decision to buy something.
 
Are they doing the right thing or should they do more research? 

Will they find a better deal somewhere else?

One of the ways you as the business owner can give them more confidence to actually buy from you is to show them what previous buyers think of your product or service. A testimonial from a happy customer will act as a huge reassurance to them.

'People buy from people'

It would seem then that all businesses could be using customer testimonials in all of their marketing material but in truth many do not.

From our experience of working with business owners the simple reason so many don’t use testimonials is because they do not have any to use.

Customers do not tend to just volunteer positive comments; they have to be asked for them. For many businesses this seems to be a sticking point.

So how can a business collect testimonials, how can you ask your customers what they think and feel about your service?

• The most straightforward way is to ask customers to complete a satisfaction survey giving them space to add comments that you can then reproduce in your marketing.


• Invite them to leave comments on your website, social media sites, blogs etc


• Telephone a selected sample of your customers and ask for their comments


• Give customers a feed back form when they buy from you or when the programme of service ends.

Asking for feedback sends out two very crucial messages from your business

• My business is good at what it does I'm not afraid to ask you 'did we get it right?'


• As a customer expecting good service, you will want to tell me if your expectations were met and I will give you every opportunity to do that

Both aspects speak volumes to your customers and provide peace of mind to a prospective buyer.

Some of our clients are reluctant to ask customers whether they were pleased with their service or not just in case the answer is negative.

'Customers would rather just walk away than complain'

Surely it is even more important to know if your customer was not happy, you can then take action to improve, so that future customers will be able to say good things about your business. If customers do have a bad experience they will tell others anyway and nowadays many customers are able to complain using social media. 

There is also a reluctance to bother customers asking them for comments. In our experience satisfied customers are only too happy to be given the opportunity to express their thanks.

Once you have collected your testimonials which can be in any format, on-line, written, video recorded use them in all your marketing material.

The most effective testimonials are specific, saying in detail what was good about the experience and how it made customers feel.

All testimonials are much more credible if you include the customers full name with the testimonial. Nowadays with on-line testimonials it provides a superb way of customers meeting customers. I am able to see actual people talking about how much they loved your product or service. It is a great way to provide peace of mind and that extra confidence needed to make a final buying decsion.