It’s common knowledge that testimonials are important for any business, and it’s because they provide three major benefits:

• Increased online conversions
• Improved SEO performance
• Establishes social proof

However, it’s not enough to just talk about these benefits, which is why we’re adding some real-world examples to give you an idea of how testimonials can have a positive impact on customers.

Testimonials Increase Conversions

When implemented correctly, testimonials can convince a customer to make a purchase. A study from Northwestern University showed that putting relevant reviews with a product increased conversions dramatically. Showing at least five reviews increased the purchase likelihood by almost a factor of 4x.

The study also revealed that the first 5-10 reviews determined if the customer made a purchase, which makes it even more crucial that you make testimonials a major centerpiece when someone makes a purchase decision.

Take a look at the example below, which highlights reviews of a carpet cleaning business. At a glance, these reviews offer proof that the company’s service is trustworthy, but a closer look reveals that the reviews touch on a specific aspect of the customer experience: the professionalism and friendliness of every technician who visits each customer’s home.

In other words, the reviews specifically targeted potential customers that were curious or had concerns about a stranger visiting their home and cleaning their carpet. Reviewers said that the technicians were “extremely polite and professional,” “quick and thorough,” and had a “very professional and informative service.”

One reviewer even mentioned the technician by name:

“Mike was proficient and courteous, [and] did an excellent job. I was very pleased with the results and speed of service.”

By visiting a website, customers already show interest in the product or service offered and showing reviews with specific details about the customer experience can be the final push needed to make a purchase. Testimonials need to show not just praise, but specific details as well.

Testimonials Improve SEO Performance

The text of a testimonial can help drive conversions, but testimonials can also include ratings, which can actually improve your SEO performance.

The main link between SEO performance and reviews is review schema markup code. Implementing these specific lines of code on first-party reviews (reviews written and submitted on the business’s website) helps search engines like Google easily find reviews on a website.

Garner enough first-party reviews and ratings, and you’ll soon see your search engine results page (SERP) entry come with an overall star rating and the total number of first-party reviews on the site.

For example, the image above shows a SERP entry for a blog post on how to boost a business’s online presence. People who read the article had the option to rate it at the bottom of the page.

These ratings are marked with review schema. Google then saw the review data and added it to the SERP entry.

Having review data, like a rating and the number of votes, on a SERP entry can make it stand out from other material on the results page, which makes it more attractive to customers.

However, the work doesn’t stop there. You need to encourage customers to leave reviews on the website on a regular basis. A steady flow of reviews shows Google that new content is frequently added to the site, which can increase its SERP ranking and further drive traffic.

Adding review schema markup and implementing first-party reviews on a website can be tricky at times, especially if you have little to no experience with coding. Fortunately, there are some great review widgets that can automate the process and make it easy to post reviews.

Testimonials Establish Social Proof

More than anything else, testimonials are effective forms of social proof. It’s your way of saying, “Don’t just take our word for it. Check out the experiences of other customers.”

Customers want to hear from other people to get a genuine idea of the business before they make a decision. Testimonials are a great tool to use in this scenario because you’re selecting specific reviews that will convince someone to convert.

Just like the carpet cleaning reviews, the testimonials below for multiple auto dealerships were not randomly selected by the company. They were picked to show future customers that the interaction with the sales team wouldn’t be intimidating. Reviewers used terms like  “professional,” “top-notch,” “informative,” and “great personality” to describe the salespeople that they met.

Testimonials establish trust for potential buyers. They show that real people actually tried the product or service and they had a great experience with it. In a way, it’s free marketing so make sure it’s somewhere where everyone can see it.

Get More Testimonials

The easiest way to get testimonials is by asking customers for reviews. However, it’s not enough to just find the best reviews and post them on a website.

You also need to respond to reviews and strive to improve the experience for future customers. Only through constant engagement and overall business improvement based on customer feedback can you get more reviews, and more importantly, amazing testimonials from both recurring and new customers.

Customer feedback systems and software products are quickly becoming a must-have for organizations of all sizes and across all industries.

And for good reason: if you’re hoping to deliver customer experiences that delight in ways that make a positive impact on the bottom line, you must be able to effectively manage customer feedback.

Defining customer feedback

Using a traditional definition, customer feedback is any information that comes directly from your company’s customers. This information can convey these customers’ thoughts, feelings, satisfaction levels, or opinions about your product, service, or brand.

Technology has expanded the ways in which feedback is generated, captured, and collected. Now, customers can share their feedback using various platforms and channels, such as:

• Online reviews and ratings

• Social media comments

• Customer satisfaction surveys

• Emails and phone calls

• Comment cards

• Focus group discussions

• Customer interviews and roundtables

• Usability tests

Customer Feedback System

A customer feedback system — which these days usually takes the form of a software product or application — helps business organizations manage what customers are saying on multiple feedback platforms and channels, as well as gain valuable data-driven insights essential to improving overall customer experience.

Customer feedback software can also helps organizations, from the C-suite to frontline employees, understand their customers better and therefore more easily measure (and improve) customer satisfaction and loyalty.

What a customer feedback system does

While products vary, there are several key features that can be found in most of today’s customer feedback software applications or systems.

Social media listening and feedback monitoring and response. Customers often share their feedback even if the business hasn’t asked for it.

That’s why a number of customer feedback systems make the ability to monitor online reviews, social media comments, star ratings, and other forms of third-party feedback a key functional component. Some systems also provide its business customers the ability to respond to internal and external feedback.  

Text analytics and sentiment analysis. Beyond data collection, customer feedback software can also offer analysis of feedback data through the use of sentiment analysis and text analytics. It can bring customer feedback to life by finding hidden trends and patterns from unstructured data and textual information.

Customer surveys and feedback collection. A number of customer feedback systems are designed to help companies capture customer feedback through survey creation and distribution.

Some offer the ability to sync survey requests with a business customer’s CRM (customer relationship management) application, so that new customers are automatically and immediately contacted for the survey.

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is one of the most common survey methodologies utilized by customer feedback systems, but there is a growing number of systems that offer alternative methodologies, such as capturing feedback through the use of emojis, thumb ratings, and star ratings.

Voice of Customer program. A Voice of the Customer (VoC) program helps your business reap the benefits of listening to, acting on, and responding to what customers are saying about your brand, product, service, or business location.

Often applied as a market research technique by firms looking to achieve a better and more complete understanding of the customer, VoC can also help companies measure and understand the experiences that they deliver to customers.

Review requests and review generation. With online reviews and ratings exerting a huge influence on consumer behavior, a number of customer feedback software products offer review generation features.  

This allows businesses to engage with and reach out to their biggest advocates and brand promoters, so that they can generate more 5-star reviews and improve their presence and visibility on online review sites and across the Web.

Multi-platform feedback system. A growing number of systems that are designed to capture feedback are also banking on their ability to survey customers using multiple platforms: email, social media, SMS, unique landing pages, or point-of-sale and point-of-care devices (in-store kiosks, for example).

Customer Feedback Software: Key Characteristics

As your organization looks to invest in a customer feedback system or application, consider the following qualities and characteristics:

Comprehensive: Customer feedback systems vary in terms of their offering. Some are designed exclusively or mainly for customer feedback surveys or customer satisfaction surveys, while others focus on feedback monitoring or social media listening.

The best and most valuable systems are versatile and scalable, helping organizations manage, capture, and connect multiple types of customer feedback and data across all possible touchpoints, platforms, and channels.

Timely: In today’s digital landscape, customer feedback moves fast and in real time. Your customer feedback system should therefore be able to deliver the data that you need, and alert you of any high-impact customer experience issues, in the timeliest possible manner.

Engaging. Customer feedback systems should empower your entire organization. From marketing and customer support to product development and leadership, everyone has a stake in your business’ customer experience, which means that the system you choose should unite everyone around the goal of understanding customers better.

Insights-driven. Customer feedback systems should be judged not only by the amount of data they collect, but also by the kind of insights they can generate about your customers.

While the selling point of some systems will be flashy dashboards and colorful data reporting and robust data collection technology, the one you choose should help your business understand customer feedback and, from it, gather truly actionable insights.

By making a strategic investment in the right customer feedback system and tapping into data provided directly by your customers, you can deliver greater experiences and successfully set yourself apart from the competition.