The wide majority of people searching for information on a specific store/location will definitely check the reviews left by other users. Furthermore, those reviews can be checked at all times and by everyone. In this article we will give you more information about how and why community managers should encourage users to leave reviews.

Discover Why and how you should collect reviews for you local point of sale

Why collect your customer’s feedback?

This will help you on multiple levels :

• You’ll be able to measure the satisfaction rate of your clients.
• You will get insights on the ‘pain points’ of a certain store through less positive reviews.
  Afterwards you can discuss how you can solve those issues with the store manager.

This will also help your customers :

• They will find your stores more easily as your store will rank higher in the search results.
• They will notice and appreciate the time and effort you put in listening and responding to their feedback.

How can you encourage consumers to leave reviews on your stores? 

This can be done in an active way. For an an active approach you’ll directly go to your in-store customers and ask them to leave a review/ to share their in-store experience.

You can also be more passive and encourage your clients to share their experience in a more subtle way, through a display at the entrance and exit of your store for example.

1/ Create local pages for you Store on every relevant channel so that your customers can easily leave reviews. You should always consider the most popular channels that are relevant for your brand (Google, Facebook, Tripadvisor,..).

2/ If you want to approach your clients after their store visit you can also sent an email in which you kindly ask your client to share his experience. The email could also contain your newsletter for example. Here are the different steps to take to create a link for your Google My Business.

3/ Give away incentives to your customers: you can reward your clients with a small discount for leaving a review behind for example. You could also make a little contest, where the first ten clients who share their store experience receive a little something.

Notice: Your incentive shouldn’t influence your customer too much. Honest reviews are the most valuable ones.

4/ Explain to your store managers why its so important to collect more (positive) reviews. You can definitely start by sharing those 3 fundamentals:

• Proactively go to your in-store clients and ask them kindly to leave a review.
• Put up a nice display at the entrance/Exit of the store to remind and encourage customers to leave a review on your page.
• You can also encourage your customers by putting a message on your shopping ticket or even give away flyers in the store.

5/ Check your reviews on a regular basis and be quick to respond, no matter if the review is positive or negative.

These days you can easily find tools to manage your reviews, but you should opt for a tool that provides the following features : 

A tool that also shows your stores on different platforms like Google my Business and Facebook Places.
A tool that provides the ability to check and respond to each review.
A tool that gives you insights on your overall performance: the average satisfaction for your whole distribution network and an individual satisfaction rate per store as well.

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