It’s official; you can’t trust online reviews. A recent Which? report condemns them and you can’t get more immutable than them. Rather ironically, people believe the headlines rather than reading through the copy and understanding what the actual conclusions were. 

For email marketing generally, reviews of service are infrequent. On the other hand, if your performance doesn’t come up to the expectations, however unreasonable, of your customers, you will see the criticisms appear on social media almost overnight. Suggesting that they are criticising you for something you can’t control is a waste of time. In fact, it can make the matter worse. The only bright side is that your competitors are also being criticised unfairly.

Most people, at least most people who have been caught out in the past, tend to go more by the overall rating than by individual comments. If there are thousands of positive reviews, from three stars to five, and the negatives are few and far between, most people will tend to take the overall rating at face value. Don’t we all?

There are those companies that seem all but overwhelmed by customers saying positive things about how quick they were to resolve problems, that the item was well packaged, delivered when promised, and the van driver was smiling all the time. You should emulate them.

Generate reviews. Ask your customers direct questions: ‘Have you asked us everything you wanted to?’, ‘Did our delivery service conform to your expectations?’, ‘As a valued customer, I wonder if you would complete a short questionnaire in order to improve our service.’ Customers who have been dealt with politely and expeditiously (that should be all of them) are often willing to say nice things.

‘We will be grateful if you would share your experiences with others,’ puts a little pressure on your customers. Tell them that reviews help you improve products, reassure new customers and enable you to provide the best possible service. Make them feel important, because they are, and not only to you. Despite the Which? reports of fraud in generating reviews, around 95% of people read them and the vast majority trust them.