If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell six friends. If you make customers unhappy on the internet, they can each tell 6,000.
Jeff Bezos
Customer feedback in the form of testimonials, reviews, and comments on public forums or social media pages has a huge impact on businesses.
It acts as a guiding lamp that tells brands what they are doing right and which area needs improvement.
It provides actionable insights into the marketing, sales, and customer service activities of a business.
It provides valuable insights into customer preferences. The knowledge gained from customer reviews can help in providing personalized services to customers.
It helps to enhance brand image and build loyalty.
Positive feedback about a brand will help attract new customers. In fact, 79% of customers read reviews before they make a purchase decision.
Solicited and unsolicited feedback
In this era dominated by social media, customers trust user-generated content more than professional advertisements or even expert advice.
With a little planning and strategizing, brands can use user-generated to boost their marketing efforts. Instead of waiting for customers to organically generate content, brands can actually prompt them to provide feedback. This kind of feedback is the solicited feedback. Encouraging customers to generate feedback is a great marketing strategy to engage your customers and boost revenue.
There are different ways to gather feedback from customers– hashtag campaigns, social media posts, customer review requests, surveys, etc. Sending review requests is found to be an effective and cost-efficient method for collecting customer feedback. Review requests can be sent via email or messaging applications to collect reviews from customers.
As important as the manner of collecting is the channel used for collecting feedback. Brands have to reach out through a channel that customers are most comfortable with. In the current scenario, WhatsApp which has more than 2 billion active users would be the ideal choice to reach out to customers.
Why WhatsApp is a great channel for collecting feedback?
WhatsApp has provided businesses with a whole new channel to communicate with their customers. The fact that it can be accessed from any corner of the world on any smartphone, that too for free (only data required), adds to its popularity.
WhatsApp has revolutionized the way brands communicate with their customers. The interactive nature of messages makes WhatsApp a great channel for collecting customer feedback on products. Brands can now engage in one-to-one communication with their customers.
WhatsApp does not have a spam folder. So, the brands can feel assured that the customers have received the messages.
The intuitive interface of WhatsApp can be handled by everyone easily. Because sending photos and videos over WhatsApp is fun and hassle-free, more customers are sure to send photo and video reviews.
Gift coupons can be sent to the customers, through WhatsApp itself, as an incentive for submitting reviews.
The unhappy customers can be directed to customer support for providing resolutions instantly.
Separate review requests can be sent for collecting star ratings, text reviews, and photo/video reviews. Separate follow-up messages for each of these will encourage more buyers to leave reviews.
Best practices for collecting feedback through WhatsApp
Personalize review requests
Review requests sent through WhatsApp can be personalized by inserting variables for the customer’s name, product name, product ID, etc.
Use a friendly tone that matches your brand voice
Make sure that your word choice and tone match with that used in other communication from your side. Consistency is important in the language and tone that you use to communicate.
Tell the customers how important the reviews are
A brief mention of how important the reviews are for your brand will encourage buyers to submit reviews.
Provide incentives
Reward your customers for submitting reviews. By telling them they will get a gift coupon on sending the reviews, you can get more people to respond positively.
Time the requests appropriately
Review requests should be timed to reach the customers before the excitement of using the products wears off.
Send at least two follow-up messages for the requests
People are often willing to provide reviews but tend to be forgetful. A reminder at the right time would prompt them to leave a review.
A tool that uses WhatsApp as a channel for sending review requests
Reviewbit is a unique Shopify review application that lets you send automated review requests through WhatsApp. With Reviewbit, you can send personalized review requests in 11 different languages. It can be timed to be sent after purchase, fulfillment, or delivery. You can send separate requests and collect photo and video reviews along with the text reviews, at no additional cost. Reviewbit also lets you set discount codes to be sent to happy customers upon submitting the reviews. To pacify the unhappy ones, you can connect them to the customer support team instantly. All the reviews collected can be displayed on your homepage/product page/collection page effortlessly with the eye-catching display widgets from Reviewbit.
To wrap it up
Keep listening to feedback, both positive or negative, to feel the pulse of your customers and to keep up with your competitors. Collect solicited feedback from your customers in the form of star ratings, text reviews, photo reviews and video reviews by sending automated personalized requests.
With Reviewbit, y you can now send product review requests through WhatsApp. Multi-media capability of WhatsApp allows you to collect photos and videos and show your potential customers all your products in actual use. Add this amazing app to your store today!