What’s the Best Online Customer Review System?
How Customer Lobby- My Favourite Online Review Platform -Can Make Your Life Easier
In this business, our team has reviewed a number of different 5 star rating systems.
By far my favourite is Customer Lobby, for getting reviews and broadcasting reviews.
How to Get Reviews
One of the major concerns about online review systems is that as a general rule, someone who is dissatisfied with your service is much more likely to review you without promoting than someone who is satisfied and happy.
It’s a tough thing! It feels like pulling teeth sometimes to get reviews submitted about your products/services, even from life-long, loyal, happy clients.
Note – you should not need to bribe people to fill out a review either. The biggest challenge is simply the lack of time, and special offers rarely change that. It also diminishes the true value of receiving the great reviews you have earned.
Customer Lobby Makes Getting Reviews Easy as Pie 
This is why Customer Lobby has become the review platform of choice for our business, and all of our clients. Here’s how Customer Lobby gets you more reviews:
- They will phone your clients to get review for you!
- This is the biggest differentiator. Your client receives a phone call- something like “this is a quick customer service call on behalf of ABC Company…”- and you end up getting consistent new reviews each month. It only takes a couple of minutes, and your staff didn’t have to keep dialing or using their valuable time in the process!
- There are some companies that are very much against this approach, thinking that this will bother their customers. You might be surprised to hear that with many years of dozens of our clients using this service, we have received only one complaint from a customer.
- Clear icons on your website that encourage visitors to read reviews, and customers to submit reviews.
- Postcards are provided through the program that promote your Customer Lobby presence. Leave them on site, by your cash register, mail with invoices to spread the word.
- Unlimited email invitations can be sent from the system or from you with a convenient link that the recipient needs to follow to submit.If someone has a Google account (gmail address), they can leave their review on your Google Places (Google+ Local) Page too
- As a side note, we discussed this in our social media class yesterday – why don’t we just use the Google Reviews since that helps our Google map page?
- The challenge is that someone must have a gmail account to leave a Google review, and focusing your time and effort to get only Google reviews will mean you lose access to all of the benefits above that are gained through choosing Customer Lobby.
Setting Up & Processing your Review System
- You choose which 3 attributes you will be rated out of 5 stars (ex: professionalism, value, etc).
- If all of those stars are 4’s and 5’s it will publish automatically
- If any star is 3 or below, the review will be pending for 10 days
- You will probably publish it right away yourself or let it go live after 10 days, it’s usually a decent review overall (I can’t find the source right now, but I have read that the average rating of all things online is about 4/5, so don’t be scared!)
- If a competitor, or ex-staff submits a bogus review, the 10 days also gives you time to mediate that through Customer Lobby and have non-client reviews removed
- You also get information in the easy to use secure back end based on 3 private feedback questions to help you improve your business. These wont be viewed by anyone else but you.
Broadcasting the Reviews 
When your review gets published it shows up everywhere!
- Your Website
- Google Searches
- Google+ Local
Note about some other review sites:
There are a lot of them out there.
Some are very industry specific and need to be paid attention to. Unfortunately a lot of them are losing credibility as reliable sources. We’ve heard from many of our clients that some of these companies have only posted bad reviews about them (usually fake) and will only post good ones or remove the false ones if they pay to become a member or pay for their services etc.
My personal opinion (I’m sure shared by others) – is similar to the rule of thumb about social media. It’s worse to have all the social media channels opened and never talk on them. It’s better to take one main channel and engage well with it.
Same thing with review sites – focus on one and build up a lot of reviews in it, broadcast it well – instead of having just a couple of reviews in a number of places.
Have a Question?
Ask me ([email protected]) any other questions about getting 5 star reviews. I'd be happy to answer!
If you want to learn everything there is to know about online reviews and social media, check out our social media training “Smart Social”.
Disclaimer: If you choose to use Customer Lobby, please order it through WSI Milton, you get the same pricing as through them directly, but with our support and we get a small kickback.
