In today’s digital age, customer reviews have become a determining factor in a business’s success or failure. As more consumers turn to online reviews as a significant influence in their purchasing decisions, businesses must recognize the power that these testimonials hold. Customers typically look for a local business that boasts recent reviews and maintains an average rating of at least four stars. Falling short of these expectations often results in potential customers opting for competitor businesses that have cultivated better reviews. Therefore, actively encouraging satisfied customers to leave positive reviews and strategically addressing negative feedback is essential. Engaging with reviews not only enhances your online reputation but also builds trust and credibility with potential clients, ultimately leading to increased customer retention and sales growth.

Customer reviews are vital because they function as digital word-of-mouth and directly influence purchasing decisions. In a highly competitive market, many consumers rely on online feedback to assess the quality and reliability of a business. A product or service with numerous positive reviews and a solid star rating can significantly boost consumer confidence, encouraging new customers to engage with the business.

Moreover, customer reviews offer businesses valuable insights into their customer service and product quality. By continuously generating positive reviews and effectively managing negative ones, businesses can demonstrate their commitment to customer satisfaction and continuous improvement. Engaging with customers through reviews can enhance overall credibility and foster long-term relationships, creating a loyal customer base and attracting new clients. Thus, strategically managing customer reviews is not only a method for enhancing brand reputation but also a critical strategy for driving business growth.

For local businesses, maintaining a steady stream of recent reviews is essential. Studies show that 73% of consumers consider reviews written more than three months ago to be irrelevant. Customers are keen to see feedback that accurately reflects the current state of a business, including its services, products, and customer experience. Fresh reviews provide potential customers with up-to-date insights into how a business operates today, helping them make informed decisions. This continuous generation of reviews not only enhances a business’s online visibility and credibility but also signals its commitment to customer satisfaction and quality service.

Customer Voice provides several effective options:

• Email (Customer Reviews Express and Customer Reviews Pro)
• SMS (Pro only)
• Review Generation Widget (Express and Pro)
• Email Signature Widget (Express and Pro)
• Mobile Kiosk (Pro only)

These methods cater to different needs, ensuring businesses can effectively gather feedback by utilizing the right tools for their audience.

With Customer Reviews Express, you can focus on collecting reviews primarily from Google and Facebook. These platforms are ideal for reaching a broad audience, ensuring your business gains visibility and credibility through widely recognized review sites.

For the Customer Reviews Pro version, you can request reviews on any site that is currently monitored for reviews. Beyond the major platforms like Facebook and Google, this version allows you to target additional sites that are specific to your business’s industry or niche. This flexibility enables you to enhance your online reputation on various platforms where your customers are most active.

The daily limit for SMS requests is set at 150 due to mobile service provider standards. This limit is in place to help prevent numbers from being flagged as spam. By adhering to this limit, you can maintain the integrity of your messaging practices and ensure that your communications are successfully delivered without being marked as spam by service providers. This standard is crucial for businesses or individuals who send large volumes of SMS messages, as it helps to preserve the trustworthiness of your phone number and prevent disruptions in message delivery.

A dropped SMS request can be due to several reasons. Click on the tooltip next to the status to see a possible reason why the request was not able to send. Most likely it’s due to:

• The phone number is a landline and is unable to receive text messages.
• The number has blocked receiving messages from unknown numbers.
• The phone associated with this number is turned off or unavailable.
• The number you’re trying to send to may no longer exist.
• And occasionally an SMS message will not be delivered due to being flagged by the mobile carrier or an unknown error. This can happen because of spam filtering by the service provider. In this case you can wait a moment and try to send the message again.

For SEO, priority is given to good customer experience on mobile devices. Consumers will use mobile devices to find desired goods or services and will generally begin these searches with a category or brand search. For example, a brand search is “Joe’s Pizza in Denver” and a category search is “Pizza in Denver”. (Note: On a mobile device the “in Denver” often does not need to be explicit.) In the case of a category search, the user has intent to purchase something in a category but has not decided or does not care about the brand. In these searches, the user’s intent is generally heavily skewed toward proximity and location. So search engines generally deliver the closest locations and it is therefore important that location information is crawlable, is displayed on each page, and is in meta-data and keywords.

Absolutely! You have full control over editing both email and SMS messages. Our user-friendly editor allows you to customize colors, add images, include buttons, and modify text to suit your needs. This flexibility ensures that your review requests align perfectly with your brand and communication style.

Yes. With Customer Reviews Pro, you can bulk send review request messages (email or SMS).

Your SMS allotment automatically replenishes each month. If you find yourself needing to send more SMS messages and have exhausted your current credits, you can purchase an additional add-on in the required amount to meet your needs. This ensures that you can continue to reach your audience without interruption.

The phone number used for SMS communication can vary depending on the order of use:

• If your client has already sent SMS review requests using Customer Reviews Pro before sending their first message through the Inbox in the Business App Center, the phone number will be the same for both services.
• Conversely, if your client begins using the Inbox in the Business App Center before sending any SMS review requests through Customer Reviews Pro, the phone numbers will be different for each service.

If a customer submits a positive review, they will be encouraged to copy that review and share it on other prominent review sites, such as Google and Facebook.

To customize which sites are displayed, follow these steps:

1. Launch Customer Reviews > Settings > Preferred Review Sites.
   • Here, you will see the review sites. Customers with active Reputation Management will have their review site URLs automatically pulled from the Primary Listings tab.
2. Select or deselect the box to the left of your preferred sites. You can also manually enter the review URL for other listed sites.

Please Note:

• Customers with Reputation Management Pro will have more options for Preferred Review Sites.
• You cannot select or add sources where the review URL is missing.
• If you select a site where the business information is inaccurate, it will not appear as a suggestion on My Listing until it is corrected.

Create a Custom Email Review Request Template

1.  Go to Customer Voice > Templates > Add New Template
2. Enter a name for the new template
3. Choose which template you would like to add
   • New Preferred Review Sites Template
   • New My Listing template
   • New Blank Template
4. Choose a pre-populated template and edit it with the directions listed above
5. Or choose a ‘blank template‘ and insert any variables, images, or text to customize the review request.