Now and then, companies around the globe spend a lot of money on advertisements and branding. While this may be necessary to create some awareness, it may not achieve as much success as positive reviews from consumers will do. That’s because of the apparent reason that customers trust reviews more than whatever you say your company is. Over time, many customers have noticed a disparity between a company’s self-description and its reality. As such, rather than fall for smoothly articulated marketing jargon, they’d rather see what a real, unbiased, and perhaps a relative of theirs who has bought your products has to say about it.
No one expects any business outfit to describe itself in unprintable words, and customers want to ensure that they get the best values for their money. Reading reviews, therefore, exposes them to many inadequacies that a company may have, which they would not want them to know. Of course, reviews not only reveal inadequacies; it also exposes the good side of a company to the world. What that suggests is that if you manage to make your customers believe in you and like your products, you may not have to spend much in the future for advertisements.
In Finland, as with most other countries, consumers are beginning to take reviews seriously more than before. Many get first-hand customer experience from Suomiarvostelut, an online review platform where customers read and write reviews of different companies in Finland. As such, someone who has just patronised your company can get to that website and tell everyone else how shopping with you feels. Imagine if you have a large chunk of positive feedback! There is hardly any limit to how much customers can troop in because of this.
The question now remains how you can ensure your customers have a good perception of your company so that they would be willing to drop positive feedback. Among other things you can do, you need to ensure that you don’t compromise on quality. The most significant setback to positive reviews is when you fail to meet customers’ expectations in terms of quality. No one would recommend you that way.
After you have ensured that your quality is not compromised, you need active customer service to follow up. Most reviews are solicited. Unless you have a mechanism in place to persuade and encourage your customers to give feedback, they may not. So, you must be present online and on many social media platforms to make reviews easier to give. You can also set up a link on your company’s website for customers to give feedback. The point here is that it should be easy for them.
And beyond the official sales and purchase between you and your customers, you can send them messages on their birthdays and other special general festivities like the New Year or Christmas. By doing this, you create some levels of familiarity between you and them, and this will ensure that even if they have a complaint against your product or service at any time, they would prefer to discuss it with you rather than writing a damaging review.