When you are looking for a place to do business with or a product to buy, what is the first thing that you look at? Many look at the online feedback, reviews and testimonials. Not only are these helpful for the customer, but they can also be helpful for the company as well! It can tell them many things about their staff or product that they may not have known otherwise and it can help them to improve quality in product and service. No company or product is perfect after all.
So how can you provide the best feedback if you are truly interested in sharing your experiences with a business or a product? There are some simple things to keep in mind so that you leave the most thoughtful and useful review that you can. If you do, other readers will get more out of it and if something was not quite right, it will be easier for the business to fix the issue.
Useful Feedback
The best thing that a reviewer can do is to provide useful feedback. How many times have you gone to a review and have seen a message saying “this product sucks” or “this person was rude to me”? Messages like these populate reviews all over the Internet. The problem with these reviews is that you get nothing out of it. The reviewer could have been using the product wrong or failing to follow instructions – so the product didn’t work, for all you know. The reviewer could just be a troll too. There are people out there who do this for a variety of reasons and none of them are good.
A good review, whether it is positive or negative, will provide enough detail about the product or business with factors that made the experience positive or negative. This should be friendly and courteous and it can also offer views on how the company is doing or how they can improve.
Be Specific
The more specific a review is the better. It helps the readers following you see it from your point of view. Keep it relevant though; in most cases, what you ate for lunch or that you have a pet parakeet are irrelevant to the review. The more specific you are about something, the easier it will be for others to understand what was going on. If you had a problem with the product, this kind of detail can help the company or allow them to assist if you happened to be using the product the wrong way.
While it is a good idea to include as much relevant detail as possible, it is best to leave out any personal information. Don’t include links to specific competitor’s websites or contact information of anyone in the company that you dealt with, especially if it is not available publicly. If you want to praise or complain about someone in particular writing directly to the company is still the best option.
Be Civil
We have all dealt with angry individuals at some point. It is hard to deal with them. The saying goes that the loud individual is always right. Of course no one wants to have a bad experience with a company or a product but it will happen and at the same time no one wants to read a review full of cursing.
The best thing to do is to leave a calm and civil review explaining what took place from your point of view and leave future readers to come to their own conclusions. Do not post defamatory or accusatory statements. Since negative reviews tend to be read more a civil and detailed negative review will provide more for everyone involved than simply saying the company sucks. It also gives the company a starting point for where they can improve.
Update If Needed and If Possible
It is possible that situations can change. You may find out that you were using the product the wrong way or you could find out that there was a good reason that the person you were dealing with wasn’t quite up to par. Hypothetically, if that person just found out that one of their parents went to the hospital it is understandable that they would be distracted and most people are understanding about that. You may not have known that at the time when you wrote your review and that person may have been trying their best to soldier on.
Maybe you have also been contacted by the company and they have offered amends making things right or maybe they explained what you were doing wrong and now you know how to use their product, which will help that company in the future to provide better instructions. When it comes to a review that is also important information and the kind of information that people want to know. People tend to do business with responsive companies more.
Proofread Your Review
No one wants to be the grammar police and if you use a than rather than a then most people won’t complain (some may not even notice) but poor grammar or wording can make your review unintelligible, which helps no one. It may make complete sense in your head but what you wrote may not make sense to others. Once you hit post there may be no way to edit it and your review will be available for the world to see.
This period can also give you a cool down period too. For some people expressing yourself this way can be a great stress reliever. Not everyone needs to punch a wall to get it out of their system. Too much is done in haste to begin with nowadays, take a moment to reread your review. Maybe you’ve forgotten a relevant detail and this will give you a chance to add it in or maybe a moment of introspection will give you better insight.
And the Most Important…
Whatever you do, make sure you are writing the review for the appropriate product or company. If you leave a review for the wrong product people will simply disregard it. If you leave a review for the wrong company that company will have grounds to have it removed making your review irrelevant. There are many companies of similar names out there and even different branches of companies that could be independently owned and operated. Getting the right one is very important. If that company sees you talking about an employee named Bob but they do not have anyone by that name working there they are going to wonder what is going on and disregard your review.
As a reviewer you wield the ultimate bit of power. The information that you provide can sway other potential customers to use or not to use a product. With great power comes great responsibility. Providing a proper and well written review will greatly aid other consumers and the company you did business with. If they have a good product they want to know, if that product needs to be improved they want to know and if their product is terrible they should know it as well. Just think though if people could review you, you would want them to leave constructive reviews wouldn’t you?