As alluring as your company’s marketing efforts may be, you need favorable customer reviews to establish your brand’s reputation and generate more revenue in an already competitive digital marketplace. Less-favorable reviews are not the end of the world and can give a fair and transparent representation of your business and reinforce trust – but too many negative reviews can be devastating.
95% of Consumers Read Online Reviews Before Buying
What was the last important purchase you made? Now think about your decision-making process. There’s a fair chance you encountered a positive online review supporting your decision to buy. As kids, we are rightfully taught not to trust strangers – yet in adulthood, we absolutely trust the opinions of strangers when it comes to our purchasing decisions – even as much as we trust personal recommendations from friends.
It’s a simple fact of modern life. Customers trust online reviews.
Did you know that you can legitimately and positively influence your own customer reviews? We’ll get back to that in a bit, but for now, let’s look at some more surprising stats about consumers and online reviews.
10 Mind-Blowing Online Reviews Statistics
Here’s a list of 10 insightful stats to further reinforce the significance of online reviews in your customer’s buying journey.
- 9 out of 10 consumers read online reviews before buying (Trustpilot)
- 80% of shoppers use their smartphone to check reviews outside stores (OuterBox)
- 92% of B2B buyers are more likely to do business with you after reading a trusted review (G2 and Heinz Marketing)
- 83% of customers trust recent online reviews more than older ones (Podium)
- 58% of consumers are willing to spend more on brands with great reviews (BrandRated)
- 93% of shoppers won’t buy from businesses with less than 3 stars. 54% of shoppers won’t buy from businesses with less than 4 stars (Brightlocal)
- Customers are 50% more motivated by online reviews than by special offers (Bizrate Insights)
- Customers are 21% more likely to leave a poor review after a negative experience (ReviewTrackers)
- Google removed 55 million fake reviews in 2020 and 75 million in 2019 (Nearmedia)
- 94% of consumers avoid businesses that have been badly reviewed online (Forbes)
Great Ways to Improve Online Ratings and Reviews
It’s clear that online ratings and reviews play a significant role in shaping a company’s reputation – attracting more leads, more sales, consumer trust, and better search engine rankings.
So what can companies like yours do right now to stimulate more positive reviews and higher ratings?
Focus on Google Reviews and your Google Score
To no surprise, Google is the reigning champion of online review platforms – containing 73% of all customer reviews online – with a rating scale of one star (poor) to five stars (excellent). Anytime a customer searches for your company, one of the first things they will see is Google reviews.
Don’t forget other popular review sites such as Trustpilot, eKomi, and Trusted Stores (depending on your company’s location).
Reach out to happy customers and ask for a review
An excellent method to quickly generate customer reviews is by running an NPS survey:
- Capture customers’ NPS score at a particular point in the customer journey – on your site, via email, or both
- Create a segment for Promoters (customers who score 9 or 10 out of 10)
- Send a link by email and ask Promoters to leave an online review
This way, you enable customers with an already favorable opinion of your brand to leave a positive testimonial in a few clicks. Many companies use CX platforms like zenloop to accomplish just that.
How Companies Use zenloop to Improve Their Online Reputation
While most customer experience solutions help gather customer feedback, a CX Action Management platform like zenloop goes several steps further by understanding customers’ thoughts and needs and transforming them into relevant actions and innovations.
One such action is using NPS surveys to generate positive customer ratings on Google and other review sites.
Many companies are already using zenloop to great success, seeing dramatic increases in the quality and quantity of their online ratings and reviews. Below are several customer-centric brands that have made real progress in improving their customer experience operations.
Finanzchef24
Germany’s most prominent digital insurance broker, Finanzchef24, saw incredible results within weeks of starting its online retention campaign. Guiding satisfied customers and potential brand advocates toward online review platforms was clearly a success for this InsurTech company, and the impact was massive.
✓ NPS survey integrated at the “after-purchase” touchpoint
✓ 7000 customers responded to the NPS survey
✓ Customers with high NPS scores (promoters) invited to give a review
✓ Google Rating quickly grew 12% from 4.1 to 4.6
✓ The number of Google Reviews increased by 200%
Online Ratings: eKomi 4.7 (98% positive), Google 4.6 (84% positive)
- CX Case Study: Finanzchef24 x zenloop
- Banking and Finance CX Guide: Anchoring CX to the Heart of Strategy
die kartenmacherei
Online greeting card company die kartenmacherei take a transparent approach to attract new customers by sending all NPS survey respondents (no matter the score) to submit a public review.
✓ NPS survey via website and email at “checkout” and “after-delivery” checkpoints
✓ Over 200,000 customers responded to the NPS survey
✓ 6% of customers gave online reviews (mostly positive)
✓ 5000 detractors (low NPS) were identified and contacted within 24 hours
Online Ratings: Trustpilot 4.7 (90% positive), eKomi 4.9 (96% positive), Google 4.6 (88% positive)
- CX Case Study: How die kartenmacherei Automates Customer Experience
- Free Guide: NPS Playbook for E-Commerce Companies
Otto Wilde
Family-run grill brand Otto Wilde translates the delight and confidence that customers share immediately after purchasing their grill or interacting with customer support into positive public reviews on evaluation platforms.
✓ NPS survey added to customer service and after-purchase touchpoints
✓ 2,825 customers responded to the NPS survey, with promoters asked to leave a review
✓ Within 12 months, increased customer service NPS from 39 to 65 points
✓ Identified detractors and initiate appropriate win-back measures
Online Ratings: Trusted Shops 4.6 (88% positive), Google 4.4 (85% positive)
- Otto Wilde Case Study: NPS® for Customer Centricity and Transparent Feedback
- Free Guide: CX Success Factors in E-Commerce
Related:
Final Thoughts
Customers who give a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 7 – 10 have a 24% higher Customer Lifetime Value and are more likely to leave a positive review online – and in the case of Internetstores, a 62% higher repurchase rate.
By using NPS and zenloop to drive reviews, you can make it effortless for customers to share their experiences online — while isolating and recovering unsatisfied customers for follow-up win-back measures before they spread negative word of mouth.
And remember many customers, especially those with good experiences with your brand, don’t even think about giving your company a review.
So give your customers a gentle nudge, and ask. If you don’t ask, you’ll never know.
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