“Reviews make your business real.”

We can learn a lot through reviews & feedback regardless of where they’re being offered — feedback loops are a fundamental component of building sustainable business systems.

Among those systems I spoke of in my “Systems Delta” post is the Post-Service/Support System.

And one the ways you can measure the success of that system is with reviews.

To me, reviews are a way to “close out – or continue – the story”, so to speak, of your customer’s journey interacting with your business.

But actually getting customers to leave reviews can be incredibly difficult.

A Rule of Thumb With Reviews

1. Your best/favorite customers/clients (your “champions”) – the ones you absolutely delight with your services/products

2. Your most dissatisfied customers/clients

I’ve been watching reviews come in for my clients for over a decade now, and this really hasn’t changed much, to this day.

The Absolute Best Ways To (Continuously) Earn Reviews

1. Keep delighting your customers (new and old)

Using the reviews you have (new and old), keep doing more of what’s being mentioned in good reviews, and smooth out areas from bad reviews (more on that below).

Using the rule of thumb above, delighted customers are one of the groups of customers/clients you’ll hear from the most — and can be the easiest to get reviews from.

2. Learn from any bad reviews to improve up operations/service/products

No one likes bad reviews – they can be especially painful for small businesses for many reasons.

But, there’s always something that can be learned from those reviews — often there’s an operational/service issue that might need some attention or an expectation that may have been missed.

Whatever the reason, it’s important not to take it personally (not easy to do as a small business owner, understandably) — use it as leverage to smooth out a system or to provide training to managers or employees.

3. Keep Asking For Them

Folks get busy, life gets busy.

When a customer doesn’t offer a review after the first ask, don’t be afraid to ask again.

Many customers don’t intentionally forget to leave a review, so some short/quick reminders won’t hurt from time to time.

How frequently you ask is up to you ( this can take some time to figure out ) as you don’t want to overdo it – and annoy them.

Find your request rhythm and adjust over time if you’re not getting as many as you’d like.

4. Make It Easy For Them

Use your review links for different platforms, QR codes and any other quick way for them to leave a review.

Online review platforms try very hard to verify legit reviews, so sometimes they’ll need an account on that platform.

While that can be a pain, it also makes those reviews more valuable – reviews that can be verified are more useful – and add more integrity to the review process.

“Reviews make your business real.”

I’ll repeat this again here as I wrap up — your small business exists to solve your customer/clients’ specific problems.

Real people with real problems.

And if you can solve their problem in an amazing way and delight them, it’s ultimately the very best way to ensure you get a consistent stream of reviews (and valuable feedback) data for your small business.