The right way to ask customers for Google reviews

Google reviews are a real guarantee for more customers and therefore more sales. Those who are well and highly rated strengthen the trust of customers and ensure that you get a better ranking on Google and are also more likely to be noticed by potential customers. The SEO boost alone is a benefit that should make you aware of the importance of Google reviews for your company.

Statistics clearly show that customers are willing to rate companies on Google, but the process of asking is complicated and difficult, even if it may seem simple at first glance. In this article you will find a lot of helpful information about:

• Why you should ask customers for a Google review
• How to ask customers for reviews
• How to simplify the path to direct evaluation

Why should you ask customers for a Google review?

It’s no longer a secret that customers nowadays primarily use Google to search for the shops that are right for them. In the beginning there were more searches that focused on online results, but the importance of local searches has grown rapidly – i.e. the search for local offers and shops. Accordingly, your customers are also looking online for shops that offer what you offer. For this purpose, Google offers extra local search results with addresses and, above all, the associated ratings – so to speak, digital word-of-mouth propaganda. The ratings for your company are displayed right next to your Google Business entry and are visible to everyone and also a factor in how high up you are displayed, i.e. how quickly customers find your profile. For this reason, positive reviews are of immense importance for your success.

However, there is a catch with the visible Google reviews: Negative Google reviews are also displayed there and negative reviews, in contrast to positive reviews, are left by customers more quickly and voluntarily, since customers often choose the way of review, to “take a breath”.
Precisely because of the last-mentioned reason, it is of particular importance to encourage customers to give good Google reviews.

Why do customers tend to give negative reviews

We make a brief digression here. What is good usually corresponds to what one expected to get. If something is bad, it does not meet our expectations. It can quickly happen that a customer does not find your service particularly outstanding. The resulting emotion is extremely strong and unlike “My expectations have been met and everything is fine”, this emotion has to go somewhere.
Since this emotion is very similar to an attack on the personal, the everyday psyche tries “retaliation” – mostly in the form of a negative rating on Google.

It is human that positive experiences are not communicated voluntarily in this way. Finally, there is nothing to complain about and everything is fine.

Is Google an important platform for my business in terms of reviews?

To put it briefly: Yes! Strictly speaking, Google is THE platform for customer feedback. There are numerous platforms that come up with reviews (Jameda, TripAdvisor, etc.) and these are definitely important, but Google is the place where every search usually begins, even before the aforementioned portals are visited. For this reason, we advise every company to increase their own reputation via Google, regardless of whether they are real estate agents, dealers, restaurateurs, doctors or even industrial companies.

This will get you more reviews on Google

A simple way to get more reviews on Google is to ask.

It sounds really easy to say, but the question is the way to the goal. But it depends on the how. Anyone who “bombards” a customer when entering the store with the question is unlikely to receive a rating.
Accordingly, the time, place and type should be well chosen, but the customer should also be selected. Anyone who asks an “obviously” dissatisfied customer for a Google review should not be surprised if the result is not positive.

The type of request should also be considered. The customer will hardly do it between door and hinge and just as little before the actual sale / conclusion.

Here we summarize the criteria for the question again

• Pick the right customers
• Be friendly and accommodating
• question at the right time

What options are there to ask customers for Google reviews

There are many possibilities, but most of them fail because of a simple problem, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

The first option is to ask the question directly on site in direct contact.
Ask satisfied customers for a rating, most likely nobody will give you a funny look, but say: “Yes, I’ll do that”.

Another option is to text or email existing customers to remind them to give you a good review if they’re happy. Use the note that these ratings are important to you and will help you and other customers to take advantage of your good service.

However, with these questions and possibilities, most companies encounter the following problem after the request has been made: NOTHING happens.

Why customers don’t review you on Google

It may be hard for many that there are no reviews, although all customers are satisfied. First we can reassure you: It has nothing to do with you!

Customers simply forget it or it is too complicated for the customers.

You can ask your convinced customers a hundred times and it may be that they forget, because the rating on a digital medium like Google is very abstract, more precisely not tangible.
In a nutshell, it’s “out of sight, out of mind”.

The second reason for this can be that your customers just can’t rate you because it’s too difficult. This may seem strange, but your customers have to first search you on Google, then they have to actually view your profile, then they have to find the “Reviews” tab and click the button to write a Google review and that’s quite a lot of steps .

What you can do to ask your customers for Google reviews in a targeted manner

As we’ve seen before, once you break it down, a Google review like this is pretty complicated.

We thought so too and developed special products for this purpose that make it easy for you to receive reviews. We have developed individual cards, business cards, stickers and stands for Sich and many other companies that ask your customers to rate them on Google with a call-to-action and all contain their own QR code that leads your customers directly to your rating form , without searching or the like.

This eliminates the difficulties in rating, the rating is immediately tangible (you can touch the products after all) and all your customers have to do is hold the smartphone camera over the QR code.

We create these Google Review QR Codes for you and take care of everything from development and production to shipping to your door.

Admittedly, that was a lot of self-promotion at the end, but it works very well and we have a lot of satisfied customers who use our products and grow with them. If you have any questions about our products, please ask us, we look forward to answering your questions.

You can find the “Review us on Google” products here->