One of the traits of a successful person is being open to improvement. They put their ego aside and accept advice from others because their main goal is to win. If you’ve found yourself in a bit of a funk lately (or just want to minimise your chances of sliding into a funk), then it’s possible you could be making one of these five mistakes. FeedbackExpress wants you to be as successful as you can, so it’s time to take a deep, honest look at yourself and see if you’re guilty of the following — and what you need to do to remedy things.
1. You Don’t Wait for the Product to Arrive Before Asking for a Review
If you request a product review before the product has even arrived, you’ll be met with a metaphorical blank face, at best. The consumer only has a product listing to go with and will have absolutely nothing to say about an item they can’t even hold in their hand. And at worst, they might think the item is shipping slower than promised, which puts them in a negative mindset about your services as a seller.
Give yourself a bit of a buffer and schedule a product review request for a couple of weeks after you’re sure they’ll have received it. This also gives them enough time to start using the product and get an adequate sense of what it’s all about.
2. You Don’t Give the Buyer Enough Time to Use a Product Before Asking for a Review
Avoiding the previous mistake and waiting enough time after the shipping date is a good idea — except when you’ve just sold a seasonal item. If your buyer has bought a set of skis in July, then asking for a product review a few weeks later won’t work. Luckily, you have a couple different options here.
The first is to set an alarm for the item and send out a review request for when you’re sure they’ll have used it, like emailing about the skis in January.
The second is to focus on getting a good seller review by asking the buyer to write about their experiences with your ordering process, customer support, shipping time and anything else service-related. A good review is always better than no review.
3. You Forget the Buyer Has Already Given You a Review and You Ask Them for a Review
Sometimes, you’ll run into that rare buyer who writes up a (good) review right away, unsolicited. This type of buyer is awesome and you should do everything you can to hold onto them. But one way you can quickly sour them on your store is to not notice they’ve already written a product review and then ask them for one. This makes them feel unnoticed and ignored and like they’re just another number to you — baaad idea.
Whatever kind of system you have to come up with that tracks and tags buyers who have made reviews, come up with it.
4. You Ask for Reviews Every. Single.Time
First off, let us clarify between asking for reviews every single time, and asking for reviews every. Single. Time. The former has to do with making sure no potential reviews go by the wayside, and includes things like sending out emails on schedule and doing your best to urge a forgetful customer into leaving a brief writeup.
The latter, on the other hand, has to do with items that don’t need a review every time they’re bought, like those purchased frequently on a regular basis. Things like personal care products or grocery items or anything else purchased in a subscription-like manner. It’s important to focus on the buyer continuing to purchase from you over the long run, and not treating each purchase like a standalone event. Absolutely ask for a product review, but only for the first and/or second purchase. Anything else is overkill.
5. You Don’t Automate Your Reviews
Let’s say you’ve gotten married and it’s now time to sit down and write the thank you notes. Even if you had hundreds of guests, writing up all those little letters is still a manageable task. Now imagine you get married every week for the next year. Still think writing those thank you notes is doable?
Not automating your reviews is like getting married every week and doing the thank you notes by hand. Sure, it’s technically possible, but it takes way too much time and effort and it’s much easier to get software to do it for you. But lest you think the emails you send out will be too cold and impersonal, good automation will let you write up a template that you can use over and over again and tweak to fit the conditions.
