Month: December 2023

A company’s success depends on how customers are treated. Word of mouth by satisfied customers plays a pivotal role in creating a good vibe for product or service by recommending the product/service to friends and family, and possibly become a permanent customer. A great customer support is required to convert this thought in reality.

Customer support is the base on which customers trust and loyalty is built, hence it is mandatory that company is focused on improving customer experience by incorporating features like live chat. Another eye opening fact is that over 60% of shoppers prefer using chat process for repeat orders. Following reasons will show the impact that live chat can have on upgrading customer support services:-

1. IMMEDIATE RESPONSE

In today’s fast-paced world, where time is equated with money, people do not like to waste time waiting in IVR, instead prefer getting immediate response.

The most important characteristic of live chat is that it eliminates waiting time, listening to long and sometimes confusing IVR menus and instead they can directly speak to a live agent and can get their request processed.

2. CUSTOMER CENTRIC

Customer may have queries during placing order or after placing order or post receiving order. If they aren’t sure about the purchase and they have no one to turn to for clarification of their doubts, they can easily drop the order and settle for competitor.

However, chat makes the process more convenient as they can turn to a live agent for any potential difficulties or questions.

This saves them from trouble of searching for frequently asked questions, to get response for their queries.

 

3. ELIMINATION OF RESPONSE TIME

Statistics show that average wait time on social media is 10 hours and an email response takes longer than 12 hours. Usually people don’t even try to reach out to support service because of unnecessary wait time that’s involved in getting a customer response.

Live chat is a solution to stop loosing potential customers.

 

4. COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

Competition is an inevitable part in business world. It doesn’t matter whether it is a small scale entrepreneur, medium level or large level entrepreneur, they all give their best to stand out in business world of cut throat competition.

Real-time customer service can be a new way to stand out in crowd. The fact that a business provides live chat service, makes it more customer centric and attractive for customers.

 

5. CONVERSION RATE

Customer support agent can easily act as seller, who motivates/coaxes customer by sharing features of other available products/services.

Amanda Willis, head of the marketing department at The Word Point shared how live chat can also benefit marketing strategy: “Live chat software provides you with all the data and analytics about visitors’ patterns and behaviour. The collected information can then be analysed and used to improve further marketing efforts.” Live chat can easily be integrated with Google Analytics to make analysis of data more effective.

6. ADAPTABLE

Customer issues do not necessarily get resolved by using FAQ’s and IVR’s and resolving any issue via email takes too much time, which is not available in today’s world, that is why live chat is most preferred option. Live chat adapts to customer’s issues, queries, and interests on real time basis.

Best way to make the most out of live chat is to train the agents to be competent to answer any type of questions. The customers will love the fact that they won’t be passed around multiple support channels.

 

7. EASY ACCESSIBILITY

Chat is preferred by international companies and it is very cost effective in global world.  There will be no need to set up customer support offices in various capitals and big cities. Chat feature enables the agents to interact with customers no matter where they are.

Simple access to internet and a few clicks on the website is all that is required to establish customer interaction.

 8. Negation of Need for Multilingual Support Agents

A simple tool such as Google Translator allows agents to interact with customers in multiple languages. There are several software that make agents job a lot easier.

9. COST-EFFECTIVE

There is no need for spending money on equipment for phone support if chat feature is used by any call centre. A skilled chat support agent can interact with up to three customers simultaneously while the call centre operator can only help one customer at the time.

 10. Customer Engagement

Human beings are social beings and offering robotic and generic answers will not be sufficient to build trust and faith in customers.

Nearly 73% of consumers claim that friendly customer support makes them fall in love with a company, whereas 52% have made more than one purchase from a company after they’ve experienced positive initial customer service experience.

Chat gives a human touch to customer support mixed with fast response, increased engagement, and a cost-effective approach that chat offers, your business will stand out among the competitors.

The most memorable thing a customer remembers is the direct interaction between customer and customer service executive. Customer service team is the real face of the company and customer’s experiences depend on the skill and quality of the support they receive.

A strong company will always have great customer relationships. But a smart company will always be defining & modifying concept of good customer service. Good customer service depends on carefully listening and attending to customer’s needs and expectations. We need to be on constant lookout for opportunities to improve customer service, else the relationship between customer & company will hit a plateau & eventually flat line.

Below are few customer service methods to identify ways to provide excellent customer service:

1. Strengthening customer service skills (soft skills)

It is very important to make sure that customer service team has the right skills for managing customer’s needs. No amount of CRM software can compensate for shortcomings in this area.

• Empathy, patience and consistency: Some customers will be irate. Others will be full of questions. And others will just be chatty. You must know how to handle all of them and provide the same level of service efficiently every time.
• Adaptability: Every customer is different, and some may even seem to change week-to-week. One should be able to handle surprises, sense the customer’s mood and adapt accordingly. It is a continuous learning process.
• Clear communication: Ensure you convey to customers exactly what you mean. Use positive language, stay cheerful and never end a conversation without confirming that the customer is satisfied with resolution.
• Work ethic: Customers appreciate a rep who will see their problem through to its resolution. At the same time, you must have good time management skills and not spend too much time handling one customer while others are waiting. Right balance is required for same.
• Knowledge: Customers rely on executive’s knowledge of product. They should be skilled enough to respond to queries and know where to turn if the questions become too detailed or technical to answer. But they shouldn’t be afraid to say “I don’t know” either. Customer will appreciate the honesty and efforts to find the right answer.
• Thick skin: The customer’s always right… right? The ability to accept blame or negative feedback is crucial. Whether team works directly with customers or looking for feedback on social media, they’ve got to keep the customer’s happiness in mind.
• Run customer feedback survey through CRM program, at the point of sale, or at time of sending invoice is a great way to gauze team’s skills and identify opportunities of learning areas.

2. Measure every touch point

In addition to making sure the right soft skills are used, one needs to ensure to have full view of customer’s experience, else it might result in lapses in customer service that can really hurt business deeply.

3. Improve customer interaction

• It’s a wonderful thing if staff is equipped with necessary skill set, but they still need to relate to customers.
• Identifying common grounds–like shared interests. Having this understanding results in overcoming conflict situation and it endears customers to your representative (in turn to the company).
• Practice active listening. Clarify and paraphrase what the customers say to eliminate any scope of misunderstanding. Empathize by using statements like, “That must have upset you” or “I can see why you feel slighted.”
• Admit mistakes. This builds trust and restores confidence and allows to control the situation, re-focus the customer’s attention and resolve the issue.
• Follow-up after resolution. Send an email or feedback survey to let the customer know that you care & ends up delighting customer.

4. Enhance customer service strategy

• Practice proactive customer service by using good soft skills. Few of them are listed below:
• Rapport building. Customers want to feel that they have access to real people, not chat bots and FAQs. Offer more than just automated email responses by taking full advantage of social media (such as Facebook, Twitter etc.) and write responses when your customers post on company’s page. Post photos and bios on website. This shows that there are real people working on their behalf.
• Be available. Part of the personal touch is making sure your customers can reach you. For example if your business is primarily online, meet in person occasionally with local customers and offer video calls (such as Skype) for those farther away. Work early and late as per requirement, especially if customers are based in different time zones. Even providing customers with physical address helps build their trust and reminds them that company exists off the internet as well.
• Meeting customer expectations. Consider assigning representatives to specific customers so they can build a relationship. Offer VIP treatment for best customers to let them know they are appreciated and valued.
• Organise meet & greet. Customers feel more valued if they are treated as important members of a community. Bring customers together in webinars, interactive websites, social media, trade shows and conventions. And while customer’s come to these forums to learn from you, you can learn more from them.

5. Satisfied Employees

Satisfied employees result in great customer experience as they are more engaged & considerate to the pain of the person on other end of communications line. Use anonymous suggestion box or an employee engagement survey to see what makes your employees happy.

Find out how customer service team feels about work environment and compensation, career growth opportunities, training and their peers and help their stay in company more conducive & comfortable.

6. Customer service feedback

No matter how proactive you are, you’ll never be able to get in front of every customer issue. To make sure you learn about the good, the bad, and the ugly experience your customers have, create an easily accessible way for customers to give feedback via phone or email survey sent directly from your CRM tool, or a form on the “Contact Us” page of your website. It also helps keep unhappy customers from voicing their displeasure on highly visible places like your social media pages. Feedback is very important to provide customer satisfaction.

Make effort to get closer both to customers and employees. Not only will you discover touchpoints and skills that need improvement, but your customers will see that are dedicated to providing top-notch, proactive customer service.

Outbound call center services involves group of agents that make outgoing calls to the potential customers. It uses the latest technology for making calls, mainly a predictive dialer. These predictive dialers help to make a large number of calls in short span so outbound calling companies rely on it for better performance.

BPO call center follows several strategies to ensure that outbound calls bring successful results.

Key Performance Indicators

Every business requires a pre identified goal. By creating ambitions, the business gets a push towards delivering outstanding performance.  The key performance indicators (KPIs) help to understand if the outbound calls were appropriate for the business or not.

Checking all KPIs is not possible and is a waste of time, so companies need to utilize the following strategies to check if outbound calls are success or not:

Average call handling time: The time that an agent spends on calling a prospective customer and the hold and transfer period decides whether the outbound agent handled the call successfully or not. Spending huge time on call is indicator of lack in process knowledge.

Conversion rate: This means how fast an agent closes the sale. Checking the conversion rate highlights how better an outbound agent is performing.

First call closure: A high percentage of first call closure displays that the outbound calling agents are selling the business services efficiently.

Occupancy rate: Occupancy rate displays that the agents might have had trouble finishing their after-call responsibilities.

Call center scripts: BPO call center scripts are very advantageous as they help to store information & amend possible mistakes, and deliver enriched results to the customers. A good script helps the call center agents deliver perfect answers to the customers connected through outbound calling.

 

Checklist for outbound process:

•    Capturing customer attention: It is essential to capture customer’s attention in the product. Work on strategies to make the customers feel interested by talking about their requirements and the way service is helpful to them. If the customer feels that hearing you is a waste of time, there would not be any delay in call disconnection.

•    Avoid fake commitments: It is important for the agents to avoid making fake promises just to woo the customers. It can result in poor reputation of company as they fail to meet the commitments.

•    Rigorous follow-up: Outbound call is successful when services are sold to prospect. Do not allow any delay in the follow-ups.

•    Value Time: Agents should always probe whether it is the right time to talk before discussing the reason for call.

Sales Incentives: In order to avoid staff attrition, plan incentives for the team, train new employees and help them learn more. When the employees feel they are valued, they will work with full motivation & bring excellent results to customer satisfaction and to outbound calling services.

Outsourcing customer support is the usual way to run business to enhance productivity, efficiency, and to boost revenue.

By outsourcing to experienced agents business gains customer loyalty with enriched services round the clock. An experienced agent knows the appropriate ways to influence the customers positively and it results in enhancement of business brand image with higher possibilities of attaining success. Processes run smoothly for both the customers and the business and this approach brings better performance.

Now a days people prefer managing core functions in-house and outsource the non-core functions like customer support, payroll services, HR functionalities, etc. If a business is service-oriented, it knows the importance of inbound and outbound call support.

Call center outsourcing has gained attention over time as it offers various advantages and helps small businesses grow and is being taken seriously by all service-oriented companies.

Positive customer experience:

Word-of-mouth advertising is not enough and customers need a positive response on every query/complaint as soon as possible. Both inbound and outbound call center services can be outsourced. The ultimate goal is customer satisfaction and an outsourced experienced partner can help the business in achieving it better.

An in-efficient call center may land the business into trouble. Therefore, it is preferable to outsource to an experienced partner so that business processes run smoothly. Professionals need to represent the business positively before the customers to enhance their experience.

Call volumes management:

Companies whether small or big, face loss in business services at the time when the call volume suddenly increases, due to not having multiple agents to handle all the calls.

Well, this is where outsourcing helps:

Outsourced agents have the experience of handling multiple calls without hampering customer satisfaction. This is why they help to avoid call abandonment at the time of high call volumes along with abolishing high hold times that result in dissatisfied customers.

Outsourced partner makes the business service available to the audience 24X7, which enhances outputs, boosting customer experience and resulting in a higher customer retention rate.

In-house expertise can be multi utilized:

By hiring an external partner, customer support is no more an issue for business. In-house agents become free to focus on business strategies for overall development as an external partner looks after the call handling processes efficiently.

Attrition & training management:

Outsourced partner manages entire hiring and training tasks making the business free to focus on other necessary functions. Hiring and training takes a lot of time and money and thus, outsourcing saves expenses for the business.

Increase in business outreach:

Outsourced partner has agents who have worked for other companies offering similar services and thus they can help the business to reach new customers. Most companies cannot offer the same service, as they do not run a 24-hour operation.

These are the reasons why most of the companies prefer outsourcing as they find handing over the services to an external partner better and more efficient.

Businesses these days are dependent on lead generation to advertise their service before the customers to get more business and survive in bullish market.

Lead generation service is a continuous effort to attract and convert the target audience’s mind towards the business offering. It is an act of positively compelling the customer to buy the business services. It will boost brand image and result in good sales for the business. Lead generation helps in improving the ROI, as an organization has to pay only for the leads generated and thus the lead generation process has become a successful cost-effective option for companies.

Identify correct data:

Lead generation succeeds when it gets to the correct target audience amid the correct time, which requires the correct use of data. Authentic data helps in reaching out to the necessary target audience within the requested time and with a correct approach.

Getting More Sale Leads

Quality:

Always identify qualified and productive leads. Doing proper research is mandatory & then identifying & aligning correct data is the right way forward.

Competitive Analysis:

It is important to research about the business competitors in order to identify & plan strategically for success. This helps in identifying the areas to highlight in lead and in ways to make oneself more appealing in gaining customer attention.

Outsourcing lead generation service:

Social media channels

Lead generation via social media is very effective as it reaches the audience in minimum time and that too without much hard work. Identify potential target audience and disseminate lead generated accordingly. By using different social channels to warm up leads, it is essential to look after effective sharing of content to the audience, building a loyal following and engaging in eye-catchy and influencing dialogue. All these factors strategically help to warm up leads generated.

Automated email marketing

Emails can be a cost-effective way to earn for the business. Email lead generation can excel by sending the required/significant offers with in-depth information through email to the customer. Email surveys can be sent to the target audience to get an idea over the requirements. This helps in generating leads and ads as per the customer interest.

Lead tracking:

It is important to have a track able channel to check leads. Example: Google Analytics can help to analyse the website traffic and get a view on the audience behaviour, which will in turn help business grow.

Generating leads productively is the need of the hour for every business today. Every business requires a lead generation strategy and looks for a team to take care of the leads generated, to ensure that business succeeds and sustains in today’s cut throat market.

Outbound calling is direct line of communication with the customer and ensures that company’s objectives are met authentically. It has become more efficient with Cloud Telephony. It has resulted in emergence of several OB calling strategies to save time and resources. A lot of businesses, prefer to use inbound calling method to accelerate their performance.

Outbound Call vs Inbound Call

Inbound call is the one which comes in from an external source and is exact opposite of an outbound call. Customers place a call to ask about a product/service or to simply know the status of their association with the company. A lot of businesses find outbound calling to be a better option while many others consider inbound calls to be more profitable. For best results fair mixture of inbound-outbound calls is preferable. Both calling strategies are complementary. It facilitates business to business (B2B) and business to customer (B2C) contact and gives a platform on whose basis a long-term relationship can be forged.

Way to Succeed in Outbound Calling

An efficient outbound calling strategy needs to be devised to ensure that calling campaign is successful. They are as follows:

• Defining Goals: Goals of an outbound calling needs to be defined in detail. What is the objective of campaign? Is it to boost sales, conduct surveys, market products or is it to simply undertake outbound calling for lead generation? Who is target audience? Is it going to be B2B (business-to-business) or B2C (business-to-consumer) interaction?

If it is going to be B2B then are the agents aware of what is B2B outbound calling? If it is B2C, what is the exact profile of the consumers one is aiming to connect with? With a pre-defined strategy, further processes can be effectively planned and executed.

• Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s): Key performance indicators is an important tool to measure the success or failure of a calling strategy. These indicator may include pointers like occupancy rate, hit rate and calls per agent, conversion rate and average call handling time, call quality analysis & abandoned calls.
• Training: Associates are the first point of contact for a customer and they make or break customer’s impression & ensures long-term customer association. So it must be ensured that the agents are well trained to be patient, adaptable, quick, attentive and responsive with the required information. Incentives can be provided to motivate agents to ensure they put their abilities to the best use.

Soft skills to ensure effective call:-

• Attentiveness: Agent must ensure to grab the client’s attention, because if the interest of the customer doesn’t pique, he/she would simply hang up. Personalization mixed with empathy, followed by offering a product/service that can resolve their issue or help make their life better.
• Confidence: Confidence is the key that can help an agent gain customer’s trust. Agent must research product extensively and how it relates to customer in a beneficial manner prior to making an actual call. It is both an instant confidence booster and a trust gainer.
• Offering Value: While speaking to a potential customer, finding about their requirements in advance helps in making the conversation worthwhile both for consumer and seller.
• Value Time: Before launching into the sales pitch, always ask the customer if it is a good time to speak with them and if consumer gives negative revert then schedule a call as per consumer’s convenience. Valuing customer’s time is a great way to build good connections.
• Active Listening: Listening is the most important part of good communication. It is essential to listen properly as it would help avoid presumptive questions and would encourage meaningful conversations and fruitful results.
• Avoid False Commitment: Agents often tend to make unrealistic commitments in flow of conversation. And if a promise is made and not kept, then the customer’s trust is lost forever. So agent should be doubly sure before committing anything to customer.
• Rigorous Follow Up: End the call with a specific time to follow up. Avoid settling for a “sometime next week”. Instead, ask the customer for a fixed time. This helps in ending the conversation on a good note and keep the prospect interested. It also displays professionalism.

A consistent tracking and measuring of performance through call quality analysis and CRM software is a must.

Latest Technology: A constant evaluation and upgradation of the technical tools being employed go a long way in bolstering the effectiveness of an outbound calling strategy.

A business must make sure that the software it deploys rightly represents their dialling requirements. Care should be taken to see that it integrates seamlessly with CRM so that the data obtained can be safely stored.

All of the above pointers ensure that outbound calling results in business achieving its targets and good growth for business.

In order to deliver successful BPO services, we need to understand the trends of BPO industry and incorporate them into their business processes. Technologies like artificial intelligence, chat bot and data analytics are making impact in BPO industry and their position will become stronger in current year.

1) Artificial Intelligence(AI)

AI industry will reach $50 billion in 2020 and is working as the new driving force of BPO services.  Predictive analytics finds it’s roots in AI and it helps in collecting and analyzing data and predict trends, patterns and correlations to create intelligent software that learns from its data. Chatbots and call routing also uses artificial intelligence extensively.

Bots offer a range of advantages over human agents: they answer queries almost instantaneously and can handle multiple customers, 24*7 support. Virtual assistants handle simple routine queries, whereas agents manage more complex issues.

With use of artificial intelligence algorithms task has now been simplified and call is immediately directed to the right department/agent.

2) Advanced Analytics

Advanced analytics are being used to boost key performance metrics and streamline the customer journey and convert it in customer delight. AI supported advanced analytical softwares are being used to analyze heaps of customer data and offer support agents more background on every query that they handle.

Businesses now a days use multiple channels to connect with customers, advanced analytics use this data for predicting customer behavior. It is also being used to gauge agent productivity.

3) Multi Channel Communication 

Multi-channel communication creates a seamless, consistent customer experience across multiple communication channels: chat, telephone, email or social media. Agents across all channels have access to customer’s earlier conversations. As a result, customers don’t need to explain their background to agents multiple times. It results in efficient follow-up and speedy resolution of issues.

4) Social Media

Social media platforms are immensely popular among customers as customers prefer posting their issues/feedback on social media. Social media allows for two-way communication. Incase customer has an unfavourable experience, then they do share it with a wider audience. Natural language processing (NLP) is used to analyze customer conversations and respond queries efficiently.

5) Cloud Facilitation

Cloud solutions allow organizations to add multiple touchpoints to their workflows and deliver a consistent experience across the entire spectrum. Cloud models offer a range of collaboration tools that allow agents to work remotely and access real-time analytics. BPO industry is employing more hybrid cloud solutions in the near future.

IVR or interactive voice response is one of the best technologies that helps in running customer service efficiently. It becomes a customer’s choice if customer wants to connect with a call centre employee or wants to look up information himself by following IVR. Further customer’s also get routed to right person with suitable skill set and that in turn not only helps customer get immediate resolution but also results in completion of calls more quickly. Below mentioned are ways IVR can provide great customer service in your organisation.

Immediate call routing

IVR allows customer to bypass non required menu options and allows them to either verbally share their response or enter response using keypad so that they are routed quickly to the correct associate with specified skill set to handle customer query.

Visual Interactive Voice Response

Visual IVR allows customers to tap their way through menus. With visual IVR, customers can quickly get into an agent queue, and such systems also support speech recognition and text-to-speech in various languages.

Time Saving

IVR system is a timesaver for both agents and customers. The system may help customers self-serve in case of simple requests. This means that customer won’t have to wait in line to speak with an agent for getting a quick resolution. Agents may be aligned with customers with difficult requests. Hence more employees will be free to take these calls when IVR steps in to handle the easier tasks.

Brand Accessibility

In case of non-availability of agents in off hours, IVR can greatly increase hours of availability. Few requests may easily get resolution through self-service and in off hours IVR system is ideal as it helps not only resolve easy queries but also record customer responses.

Customer Feedback

Customer feedback should always be recorded immediately following a call. Though customers might not feel comfortable giving feedback directly to the agent and sending a survey on another channel is not the most efficient way to earn their participation. After a service interaction has been completed on the voice channel, then customer can be provided with the option of answering a brief survey powered by an IVR system. This ensures customers can express their honest opinions easily on the very same channel of contact.

IVR is a mandatory tool for driving great customer service on the voice channel. It is perfect for meeting customer requirements.

Healthcare sector is now opting for call center services to be launched with the aim to create awareness among the masses with information to prevent and to avoid exposure of infection carriers.

Call center eliminates the need to wait in queue by setting-up appointments over the phone call. It alerts the masses with possible scene of causality with the help of artificial intelligence driven devices linked to wearable and related accessories. It can guide the patients over the set of precautions and preventions to be taken in case of epidemic outbreak.

March 2020 has resulted in global emergency with World Health Organization (WHO) declaring Coronavirus aka Covid-19 as ‘Pandemic’ on 11 March 2020. Each nation is giving its best in managing & providing healthcare services to the growing number of infections and deaths. Self-preventive measures are the best way to contain this pandemic. Government Officials world over have launched the coronavirus helpline numbers to make general public aware about the whole matter and related queries.

Call center executives are working closely with healthcare department to enlighten the common man with the right information instead of trusting rumors. Countries like China, Scotland are successfully connecting with residents to solve the list of flooded queries about symptoms and general enquirers related to the disease.

Indian government has started a helpline service at the central level, to answer general queries and confusion regarding the COVID-19.

If you suspect symptoms of coronavirus are there in your body, you can further communicate the health advisories in the matters by making the call on the following numbers.

Coronavirus/COVID-19 Helpline Number
S.NO	State/UT	Coronavirus Helpline Number
1	Andhra Pradesh	0866-2410978
2	Arunachal Pradesh	9436055743
3	Assam	6913347770
4	Bihar	104
5	Chhattisgarh	077122-35091
6	Goa	104
7	Gujarat	104
8	Haryana	8558893911
9	Himachal Pradesh	104
10	Jharkhand	104
11	Karnataka	104
12	Kerala	0471-2552056
13	Madhya Pradesh	0755-2527177
14	Maharashtra	020-26127394
15	Manipur	3852411668
16	Meghalaya	108
17	Mizoram	102
18	Nagaland	7005539653
19	Odisha	9439994859
20	Punjab	104
21	Rajasthan	0141-2225624
22	Sikkim	104
23	Tamil Nadu	044-29510500
24	Telangana	104
25	Tripura	0381-2315879
26	Uttarakhand	104
27	Uttar Pradesh	18001805145
28	West Bengal	3323412600
29	Andaman and Nicobar Islands	03192-232102
30	Chandigarh	9779558282
31	Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu	104
32	Delhi	011-22307145
33	Jammu	01912520982
	Kashmir	01942440283
34	Ladakh	01982256462
35	Lakshadweep	104
36	Puducherry	104

Telecom companies in India are raising the sense of awareness by Replacing the Standard Ringtone of the person with Coronavirus Awareness Caller Tune starting with the note of coughing person.

Healthcare call center services are giving their best attempt to aware the common man having limited resources to start with self-preventive measures.

So take precautions & stay safe.

One bad comment or review by a customer can easily cancel out 10 good ones. And then, a company must spend time re-building its reputation.

Customers post reviews everywhere, especially on social media and on review sites. It is the responsibility of a business to know anytime a comment or review is written and to access those immediately with rapid responses. Letting any negative comment hang out there without a response tells consumers that the business doesn’t care. Fortunately, there are monitoring tools that will provide alerts, so no business should ever have to be unaware of any mentions.

But the ultimate goal is to be proactive and get as many positive reviews as possible. That is how a great reputation is built. With that in mind, here are nine strategies to get those great reviews.

1. Ask for them

Ask your customers if they have a good experience with you and any purchases they have made. If they have, ask them if they would write a review and give them a link to a review site where you would like it posted.

2. Make it Easy

Provide a survey for your customers. You can even have that survey published on review sites and provide a link for them to go there and complete it. And as you construct that survey, consider including some open-ended questions which will cause your customers to think a bit before checking on the offered responses.

3. Ask for Photos/Videos

Customers may be happier than you think to send you photos or videos using your product or service. Post those on your site, your social media pages, etc. It’s a bit of “publicity” for them, and they are likely to share those with their friends too. More reputation building.

4. Respond Immediately

Great customer service has become the backbone of business success. Consumers will not stand for poor service, no matter what their question, issue, or even comment may be. Steve Bradley, Director of Customer Service for the writing service , has this to say: “Like any business, we rely heavily on repeat customers and referrals from those customers to others. When we receive an alert that our company has been mentioned anywhere, we access it immediately. If a comment has been positive, we thank the customer and offer a small discount on their next purchase. If it has been negative, we publicly resolve the issue and offer a discount as well.”

5. Speaking of Incentives

Customers are not inclined to provide positive reviews. They tend to make comments when they are dissatisfied. To reverse this a bit, plan to provide an incentive for your customers to leave positive comments on review sites or your social media channels. Discounts usually work well, and the cost will be well worth it if a business can get a great review that can be published in several places.

6. Try to Get Specific Rather than General reviews

Positive reviews that just generally state, “I had a great experience” or “I really like the ______ I purchased” are too general. Your goal is to get customers to be more specific. This is why photos and videos often work well.

As you fashion surveys, make your questions as specific as possible. Just a “star” rating is too general as well. However, if a star rating is included in your review strategy, as a conclusion to other survey questions, then you want a 4 or 5. Consumers tend not to do business with a company that comes in less than 4.

Asking open-ended questions as well as details about fast shipping, good customer support service, etc. should also be included in any survey. If you are having difficulty fashioning good survey questions, it is best to contract that out, using reputable writing services that have professional copywriting departments, like Trust My Paper or Grab My Essay, or through freelance writers that you can find on sites such as Upwork or Freelancer.com.

7. Recent is Better

Don’t sit back on your laurels just because you have a number of positive reviews. The older they get, the less they are trusted. Getting good reviews is a never-ending task. Old reviews become “stale,” and they won’t be read.

8. Authenticity Really Matters

Today’s consumer is not a trusting soul. When he reads a “testimonial” on your website or on a review site that only contains a customer’s first name, followed by a glowing review, they are suspicious. This is why photos and videos can be so effective, especially when shared on social media. Check out ModCloth’s Facebook or Instagram pages. They are filled with actual customers wearing the items they purchased and providing very personal comments about where and when they wore those pieces. This is what authenticity is all about – real customers sharing their stories.

Never fall into the “trap” of paying for fake customer reviews. They will all sound the same and are easily recognized.

9. Timing has Impact

When a customer has just had a great experience with your business, they are feeling all “warm and fuzzy” about you. Now is the time to ask for that review. They are more likely to provide one while their happiness is fresh in their minds.