4 Easy Steps to get Customer Reviews

I have been working to to get customer reviews for clients for 7 years now. I have made a lot of mistakes along the way. I recall bringing my video camera to an author’s presentation where they spoke for an hour. There was about 40 in the room. Afterwards I waited and took note of who spoke to the author, some people bought books. I asked 4 people if they wanted to do a video review and say what they had learned. I got 4 no’s. The whole experience made me think about this video where the only word the cat knows is no.

I was invited to a party at a client’s house. I knew there would be a good chance her customer’s would be there. There was also her products to sample. This would be a good chance to get some good small business reviews. I brought my still and video camera and was ready to take down some testimonials. There was a lot of transactions and there was some great bakery items given away from my client. I waited about an hour and asked if this rather attractive woman in her early 30’s would give me a couple of sentences about my client’s bakery item’s. She gave me a good testimonial about how her pizzelles reminded her of the italian pizzelle’s her mom used to give her as a child. I than asked for a photo and she hesitated, brushed her hair and said okay. If I would asked for a video she may have said no. Meaning that anyone is not ready for a live video at a moments notice, but everyone can either take a picture or has a picture in Facebook or from the past that I could use. Somebody else gave me another good testimonial and I was able to get a Facebook picture. Even if it wan not current, it does not matter. What matters are the words.

I asked 4 people for a testimonial and got 3. The one that did not give me a testimonial I later found out she had abdominal surgery where she could not eat sweets, so it was not my clients fault. This may be the case of others in the past where I had tried to get a testimonial, it was because of them, not my client.

So after doing this 7 years, here are the 4 easy steps to get a good testimonial.

1. Find someone other than yourself to get a testimonial. Have them bring a camera. You will be to busy talking about your products and services.

2. Have a party and have some food. You may want to add a whimsical caterer or bakery like Ventito Bakery, that will help put your customers in a good mood.

3. Ask if you could have someone say a couple sentences about your service or product. Ask if you can take their picture. If they say not now, ask them for something on face book or if they could email you a picture. If they say no, ask someone else.

4. If you cannot get your customer to a party, print a sheet with q r codes that link to Google, Yahoo, Superpages and Yelp review pages on the internet like this image. You can get reviews on the internet which others will see and buy your products and services.