How to Collect Local Reviews in Person?

[Dreo]

We frequently interact with our clients in person and would like to start collecting reviews on Google, Yelp, etc... Our agents have tablets with them, so we want to give the client an easy way to submit a positive review in person rather than emailing them a link.

I feel like there is a lot of friction here for the client though, plus Google, Yelp, etc will not allow multiple submissions from the same IP.

Any suggestions on how to get around this and give our clients the easiest way to leave a review?

 

[sweepthelegnate]

One idea would be to have biz sized cards made up that mention reviewing you on yelp, etc. On the way out the door have the agent hand them the card and give them the two sentence pitch to review...

This will likely be enough of a prompt for those clients that are semi-active reviewers that you'll pick up additional reviews. And it's not as awkward as handing them a tablet and having them login to a machine that isn't theirs etc....

Then combine that with email follow up asking for reviews....

 

[contract]

- Do you have a smart phone?

- Virtually everyone does.

- Can you go to ABCreviews.com (Simple landing page) > Button Link > G Places.

- See that little write a review link, click that.

- Write a review or hit the 5 stars.

- Done.

The problem 99% of the time, isn't getting reviews from customers. It's getting SALESPEOPLE, those lazy cunts, to get their customers to leave a review. 99% of them NEVER even mention it!

Even the best salespeople will totally ignore reviews. It's rather amazing.

When you walk in an office and see a wall FULL of letters, and customer photos: You know, WITHOUT A SINGLE DOUBT, you are dealing with a high performance salesperson. One who sells 10x more than any other dofus in the building. If a salespersons wall is empty or has one or two photos, they are either brand new, or have been a low performing cunt for the 20 years they've been there.

It also falls on the business owner. They know how important reviews are, but most shrug it off. It's too much effort to get the sales team to start asking their customers. Or they make excuses: Leaving cards with instructions will never work... I feel some are afraid of telling customers where to review in fear their reviews will be terrible lol.

 

[propipper]

To add onto @contract also offer an incentive as well. I used this for a client we had and it worked well. Almost every big store, chain, restaurant and even websites runs a survey and you get x% off if you complete it. I know it's a little more difficult to verify they left a review but it also gives them a reason to come back and shop at your store.

 

[Broland]

Yea having the cards to hand out can work well. But I recommend going for postcard size instead of biz card (the bigger cards make more of an impact and are less easily lost in a pocket, purse, tossed out, etc.) Vistaprint often has good deals for these - sometimes even a free offer with just the cost of shipping.

Take some time to design something nice that includes easy instructions for leaving reviews - the best way is to actually create a page on your website and just have the nicely designed card you hand out direct them to that page. The page you create can be a lander that asks:
Where you happy with your service? Yes or No. If they click Yes it opens a pop-up or directs to another page with easy instructions (including direct links) to leave a review on G+, Yelp, Facebook, etc. (It can be a little bit of work but you can actually find the direct link to leaving a G+ page review.) If they click No have it direct them to a feedback/contact form with "what could we improve about our service". Provide each step of logging in and leaving the review wherever possible - it can be quite surprising how much difficulty many people can have with even the simplest things such as logging in or creating a new account on a website. You can even detail it as far as: Do you have an account on any of these sites? And then provide a step by step process for each site based on having an existing account or how to create a new one if they don't. You can then of course use this review page for email follow-ups too.

A big part of this working well is in the hands of your "agents". If you can, have them give out the card and also give the customer the option to leave a review on their tablet right then. Giving two easy options while also being a bit pushy works well in sales. The same way you would "ask for a sale".

It works best if you put a lot of emphasis on the importance of leaving a good review and how much it will mean to them : "I hope we've been really helpful and you are happy with our service. It would REALLY mean a lot to me and our company if you could take just a couple minutes and leave us a quick review on Google or Yelp. I know it may be a bit of a hassle, but it really does make a difference and would help our business continue to grow if you don't mind taking just a quick minute to post a few nice words about us online. I have the tablet right here if you want to go ahead and do it now while I'm finalizing your order/paperwork/etc... or if you would rather just do it later you can just visit the page on this card here and it will walk you through the process. If you don't want to leave a review at all though we totally understand and we appreciate your business."

 

[propipper]

@Broland So it's okay to have multiple people leave reviews all from the same IP address? Or do you leave the "I have a tablet here where you can leave a review" as a last resort jn case they can't do it from their cell phone?

 

[Broland]

@Broland So it's okay to have multiple people leave reviews all from the same IP address? Or do you leave the "I have a tablet here where you can leave a review" as a last resort jn case they can't do it from their cell phone?

So yea for the most part IP address isn’t the biggest factor in getting reviews approved or to stick. Sites like Google and Yelp have you log in to an account and use a lot of account history factors. Sure if there are 10 new Yelp accounts created from the same IP posting a review for the same business on the same day, many or all of them might get filtered. But there are also loads of places with free wifi like coffee shops, libraries, etc that people sign into their accounts from and sometimes write reviews so algorithms for review filtering don’t strictly base things on just IP - the same way ranking algorithms work, there are always multiple factors.

Something else to consider, you can use LTE on the tablets sometimes if possible and I think this decreases the chances of getting filtered. Not only will that be a different IP than the wifi but I think at least some algorithms are a bit more lenient on mobile devices and perhaps even more so when it’s on the carrier data network as opposed to wifi.

You could also simply ask people if they want to use there own cell phone that is surely in there pocket/purse and just help walk them through the process : “If you don’t mind leaving a review for us and want to just sign in on your cell phone right now I can help you through the process. Or if you prefer I can help you do it on our tablet here.” Basically just ask for what you want, some people will say no and then you just move on.

The main idea is getting a good process in place, some might get filtered and then you can tweak that process where possible if needed. But even if 5/10 per day stick at the start, that’s 5 more good reviews per day than you were getting.

 

[Dreo]

Thanks for all of the responses on this. I think I am going to combine all of them and put this in motion.

Let's say a client leaves a review on our FB page... Am I able to copy that and use their review on my own site, using schema data etc so ratings show up in the SERPs for my site? Or is there a duplicate content issue?

 

[Sin]

Thanks for all of the responses on this. I think I am going to combine all of them and put this in motion.

Let's say a client leaves a review on our FB page... Am I able to copy that and use their review on my own site, using schema data etc so ratings show up in the SERPs for my site? Or is there a duplicate content issue?

As long as you have already a good amount of content in comparison to the reviews on the page you will not get duplicate content problems.