Partner Article

The Importance of Customer Reviews

An Internet Revolution in Customer Service

The success of two of the biggest businesses in the world, owe their success, in part at least, to the innovation of online customer reviews.

For both ebay and Amazon, customer feedback & reviews were, and still are a pivotal and fundamental element of their business. In the case of ebay, it allowed the system, and the process of buying and selling, in theory, to be self-reliant and almost automatic.

Buyers could leave feedback about sellers, and vice versa; giving each individual involved in any transactions a ‘reputation’ of sorts, that could be viewed immediately by other ebay users. Customer reviews were also at the core of Amazon’s business model, allowing people to leave review products completely independently (in theory anyway), gave customers confidence to make purchases online. “Word of mouth” if you like, was taken to the next level.

Reviews - As Good as a Friend’s Recommendation

Research suggests that 88% of people trust an online review, as much as they trust a friend’s recommendation.

For businesses therefore, it is crucial that they accumulate as many positive reviews as possible. The basis of this, starts with providing great customer experiences. Gathering positive feedback can be a very slow process however, and can be catalysed by asking for feedback whenever possible, and displaying your Google Business page link and FaceBook page in all communications.

Search Engine Results

Customer reviews are now even visible on the results pages when somebody searches for a company, product or service on Google. Special ‘schema’ code is required in order to display these results. Signing up to a company such as TrustPilot; is arguably the best way to collect reviews that customers will trust as independent. Car dealers to pump and valve suppliers are amongst the many small businesses to sign up to TrustPilot. However there are lesser known companies that can provide customer reviews such as Revoo, which may be able to provide a similar service for a lower cost.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Drew Griffiths .