8 Ways To Wow Your Customers and Get 5 Star Ratings

If you haven't started "wowing" your customers, now is the time to do so. What that means is going above and beyond of what is expected from your customers. Highly satisfied customers can have a positive impact on your business as reviews or social proof. 

In a study of how customer reviews affect the opinion of a business, 73% answered positive reviews make them trust a business more and 50% answered negative reviews make them question the quality of a business (Source: Statistia). 

Now do you see the effects of what reviews can have on your business? And those are not the only effects it has. Awesome reviews are a reflection of an awesome service. When you provide excellent service, your customers will come back. 

You've probably heard this countless times: 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers. And they are the ones that just keep buying your products.

For the remainder of this article, I will share with you exactly how we get 5 star ratings on our Facebook page that has helped us increase our ecommerce website conversion rate.

Choose a review platform

Before you can start collecting reviews, you will need to decide on the platform to store reviews and for people to read them as well. We currently use the review section on our Facebook page. The reason we chose this platform is because the reviews cannot be deleted and people know that. That's why it is a reliable source for reviews.

There are also other advantages such as Facebook being a social platform and also the first point of contact if you are running Facebook Adverts targeting cold audiences. The ratings also shows if your Facebook page shows up on search engine results.

Additional resources: How to set up Facebook Page reviews

I know many online sellers just like to screenshot testimonials like WhatsApp conversations and publish it on their Facebook Page or Instagram. This is one way to do it but it's not very effective since you have to publish it as a post (works great on product pages). Another reason to not do this is because it's not very reliable. You can easily fake a conversation using apps like WhatsFake.

5 star service starts before the sale

Yes, you heard that right. Customer service doesn't just start after the sale. It starts even before they purchase from you. We make sure we are providing great pre-sale service by focusing on these 3 areas:

Responsiveness: Always attend to enquiries as fast as you possibly can. We use Tawk.to free live chat app on our site and we monitor "First Response Time". On-site live chat is the channel that needs to be most responsive because there can't be any obstacles stopping them to the end goal, which is the transaction. And there is no way to get in touch unless they left their contact info.

Consultation: Stop being a sales person and start becoming a consultant. Consultants are experts in their fields and people trust consultants. At Your Scent Station we try our best to educate and recommend perfumes based on their preference, personality, and the occasion. This means we have to keep updating our "knowledge base".

Ok, I know what you're thinking. The reason you started an E-commerce website is to avoid all of this right? At start, I recommend doing the hard way first so you can start finding common problems that visitors are facing or common behaviors. Once you have an idea, you can put up an FAQ page or on product descriptions. You can even set up triggers using live chat like Tawk.to where you prompt up a chat on certain pages you know people always have questions.   

Emotion/empathy: This is the ability to understand the feelings of another. This is definitely the biggest driver in our business right now. We treat our products as gifts. Every order is a gift whether it's them buying it for themselves or for others. If they are happy then we are happy. And we get frustrated if we're not able to provide them with what they want. When there is emotion involved, you never want to disappoint.

Small surprises

This relates back to the previous point but the surprise happens as they're opening the package. What can you do to make your customers smile? From our conversations with customers, we find the true story behind the purchase. 

Sometimes, they make a purchase without chatting with us but we notice the billing address and shipping address are different. In this case we would contact them from the billing info they provided, and ask them whether it is a gift and for what occasion. Without telling them, we would just make a surprise and wrap it with gift-wrap and include a special message. 

For customers that make a big purchase, we would provide free gifts in the package. We usually don't provide discounts up front and this is why. Customers appreciate it more than discounts and they convert to become repeat customers. 

The Last Mile

We did a great job up to the sale. Now we just have to complete the process and get the ordered items to customers without any hiccups. Lots of things can go wrong here. Let's start with order processing.

Customers already had some doubts when making the purchase. Don't make them wonder anymore by giving them all of the information they need. Are they informed of the expected delivery time? Did they get order confirmation email?

Expected delivery time is displayed on the product pages for us. And we use EasyStore's built in order management so they will automatically get order & payment confirmation emails. All orders are recorded and inventory is also updated automatically. The order management system allows us to process orders much faster. 

Related: How we grew our business with less effort and headaches

We also use the EasyStore + EasyParcel integration. Customers will automatically get an email with the tracking number and tracking link after we have fulfilled the order. Don't wait until they ask you.

After the parcel has been handed off to 3rd party courier, there isn't much you can do except pray that it will arrive in one piece and without delays. You can still "wow" your customers by using alternatives to next-day delivery.

Try same-day delivery. Imagine how happy your customers will be if they ordered today, and receive their items on the same day. You can also use a delivery service where your customers can collect their parcel at a selected retail partner (e.g. Speedmart or Mynews) near by. This prevents failed delivery attempts if your customers are not home. It's also more cost effective (Find out more about Pgeon).

The Ask

If you provide great service all the way to the last mile, your customers will be delighted and you should ask them for a review immediately. We do this by placing a small card inside the packaging thanking them for the purchase and asking for a review. The card also include a link to our Facebook page where they can write a review.

Some delighted customers contact us through WhatsApp after they receive the item and we straight away ask them to review on our Facebook page. If you can have a dedicated "follow up" team, it would be even better. They can reach out to those that received their items and ask them for feedback and review. 

Got some reviews, now what?

Continue getting more reviews. We made it our mission to collect as many 5 star ratings as possible. It's the North Star of our business (pun inteded). Because when we focus on that, everything else seems to take place. 

It's people's natural behavior to read reviews before they make a purchase. One way we drive traffic is by using Facebook Adverts and some of them visit our Facebook page first to see some social proof. From there they can click the shop now button which brings them to the website. Now they can shop with confidence.

You can also run marketing campaigns to boast (read: show off) your ratings. We do a FB ads retargeting campaign that uses a quote from our reviews. You can also do copywriting like this "5/5 customer satisfaction.." in your ads. Customer testimonials are also a part of our welcome email sequence.

Conclusion

Reviews aren't just something "nice to have". They play a huge role in your business. You're missing out if you don't have a standard procedure to get reviews and acting on those feedbacks. It can make a difference in your conversion rates and the quality of service you provide to potential customers and existing customers. 

About the author

Amirul is a former digital marketer at EasyStore that now runs his own Ecommerce business. He also provide digital marketing services and training for small business owners. Get in touch with him at amirulmokhtar1@gmail.com.