Reference Success | Boulder Logic

Customer quotes are one of the staples of customer evidence.  But how do you go about getting customers to provide testimonial quotes or reviews for your product or service?  Here are a few tips to get started securing powerful customer quotes to accelerate your business.

1. Ask.
Sounds simple, but this step is often overlooked. Sales people may not want to “bother” existing customers. However asking for customer quotes or testimonials can be a way to build stronger relationships with them. They may be flattered, and happy customers often love to talk about their experiences. Better relationships may lead to up-sell opportunities, product development and improved customer satisfaction.

2. Provide an alternate path for constructive feedback.
Make sure it is easy, simple and fast for customers to provide the review. Provide a link to the area on the site where they can write the review.  Don’t be afraid to give them guidance on what you are looking for. Provide examples or an outline that they can adapt to their own experiences. Make it clear where they should enter basic information such as name, title, company, rating, and comments. Obviously you would like them to attach their name and company to the review, but it is OK if they’d like to remain anonymous or only weigh in with part of your requested review. An anonymous review is better than no review and over time your customer may change his/her mind as they see others participating publicly. If they have constructive feedback, give them an alternate path to provide that information rather than letting it go into a public review. You want to be sure to capture and address specific comments or concerns, so as to direct them to the appropriate person, email or site.

3. Get a few easy ones under your belt first.
Nobody likes to be first, so when starting out ask a couple of your most trusted and friendly customers. They may be more tolerant of a process that has not yet been tested and can help you work out the kinks in a risk-free environment. Don’t begin with your largest customer or the one with the biggest brand name. Once you have gone through the process a few times with “easy-going” customers, you can then confidently move on to bigger or more strategically important ones.

4. Do your homework before plowing ahead.
Now that you have practiced on a few friendly customers you are ready to begin asking others.  But before you get too ambitious, make sure you do your homework. Sending out an impersonal email blast to all your customers asking for quotable comments is a mistake. Instead, take a targeted approach. Review who your most active users are, who has participated in private or public forums with your company, and who has expressed satisfaction recently. In many cases it will make sense to reach out to the specific sales person who sold the product or talk to the customer service representative who has a good relationship with the customer.  It will be much easier to get a review if you leverage existing relationships. Also remember that a constant flow of good comments is better than a whole bunch at one time and then nothing for a while, so pace yourself.

5. Integrate requests with an existing campaign.
It makes sense to check with Marketing, Billing and other departments to see what kinds of communications campaigns are going out to customers. For example, if there is a newsletter going out to all your current customers, you may want to evaluate the opportunity to include a simple message requesting quotes by encouraging happy customers to share their experiences. 

One of the nice things about quotes is that they require a relatively low effort of investment from your customers. If they aren’t part of your customer reference program today, go make it happen!