The Power of the Testimonial
Making the Most of Your Customers'
Satisfaction
>>
Do
you want to boost your company's credibility?
INCOMPAS is here to help with our
customer testimonial
tips and plan to assist you in creating winning customer
success stories.
>>
Looking for someone else to take care of this
important task?
Check out some of INCOMPAS' recent
testimonial success stories, and
contact us today.
INCOMPAS Communications
T: 604.302.2055
| F: 604.852.6274 | E:
info@incompas.com
| W: www.incompas.com
You have just
completed a major sale for one of your best customers, and they’re not
just satisfied with you, your company, your products and your services
– they’re ecstatic. So pleased they are with your firm that they’re
singing your praises to everyone in their immediate circle, which will
undoubtedly heighten awareness and even bring you new business. But
wait! Before you move on and file the experience as a job well done,
there’s more you can do to spread your hard-earned goodwill around to
a much larger audience, and you must act quickly before that “warm and
fuzzy” feeling cools down. Writing and publicizing an effective
customer testimonial or success story will not only help you sell more
products and services, it will also enhance your reputation and
strengthen your brand awareness and appeal.
Customer
testimonials are perhaps one of the most adaptable marketing tools a
company has in its promotions arsenal. If you write them correctly and
effectively you can post them on your website, turn them into sell
sheets, include them as references when bidding on new projects, and
publish highlights from them in your company’s brochures and other
promotional literature. Another bonus to producing a strong
testimonial is its extended shelf life – words of satisfaction and
praise can last for months, even years.
The trick to
writing an effective customer success story is to tell an engaging
story that will hook your new and potential customers and keep them
reading until the very end. You must answer the all-important question
that’s on the mind of every single one of your customers: “What’s in
it for me?” A good testimonial will not only answer that question in
three-dimensional detail, it will also help your new and potential
customers relate to your existing customers in a much more personal
way through an exchange of shared ideas about your products and
services. Whereas paid advertisements are broadcast to a wider
audience that includes your target customers, testimonials are
personalized stories that speak directly to your customers, enabling
them to visualize the benefits of owning your products or benefiting
from your services through a story told by someone with whom they can
relate and share similar experiences.
INCOMPAS can assist
you in writing and producing your own effective testimonials, or we
can edit your existing customer success stories and offer constructive
feedback on how you can strengthen them to better showcase your
company. To get you started, we’ve developed a step-by-step guide to
assist you in producing a winning testimonial.
Step-by-Step Plan for Stellar Customer Testimonials
1.
Seek Permission. Before you do anything else, request
approval from your customer to develop and publish a testimonial based
on their recent experience with you – as soon as possible after the
deal is final and while the experience remains fresh in everyone’s
mind. Your customer will be far more open to this idea if you explain
to them that their organization will receive additional exposure
through publication and distribution of the testimonial; you can also
assure your customer that they will have ample opportunity to review
the finished article and make whatever changes they feel are necessary
before you post it on your website or otherwise broadcast the article.
2.
Conduct a Professional Interview. Many companies have realized the
advantages of arranging for a separate interview with your customer to
be conducted by someone outside your company. This independent
approach will enable your customer to answer any questions candidly
without feeling unduly pressured to overdo their praise or gloss over
important details. Remember, a good testimonial mirrors real life:
even the best customer experiences include unforeseen challenges that
must be solved in the course of doing business. Your testimonial will
ring much truer if it contains honest comments from your customers
about how you dealt with any problems that arose during the delivery
of your company’s goods and services. The person conducting the
interview must be professional in both appearance and conduct; he or
she must also be familiar with your company and your products and
services, and also with your customer’s business. Your interviewer
should not only pose questions about the quality of the products and
the level of customer service that they enjoyed from your company, he
or she should also ask questions about any problems or glitches that
arose and required resolution. Even if you don’t use these anecdotes
in your finished testimonial, honest feedback from your customer can
only help improve the quality of your products and services in the
future.
3.
Record and Transcribe the Interview. It is essential to capture
your customer’s exact words – not your interpretation of what you
think they intended. Like it or not, we all process incoming
information through our own personal filters, and our own biases from
our past experiences can alter the speaker’s intended meaning.
Besides, few of us know shorthand, and your interviewer will be
spending more time taking notes than really listening to your customer
and responding to their feedback. Keep these transcribed interviews on
file and refer to them often when developing future marketing pieces.
You’ll be surprised at how much you’ll be able to use from a strong
interview. Remember though, every time you quote one of your customers
in a new marketing piece other than the one you first developed after
seeking initial permission, you must once again approach your customer
and ask for permission to quote them, and be prepared to show them how
their anecdote will be used and presented.
4.
Tell an Engaging Story. With every sentence, ask yourself brutal
questions, such as ‘Who cares?’ ‘So What?’ and ‘What’s in it for my
customer?’ If you can’t answer the “who cares” question sufficiently,
then chances are few people will actually care about the experience
you’re sharing and they won’t read your testimonial through to the
end. Also, make sure the story is believable and relatable to your new
and potential customers. Part of what makes a story good is the drama
that unfolds during an experience and seeing how people react to
unforeseen events. Using humour in appropriate places is another
technique to keep your readers/customers engaged. People like to
laugh, especially when they can relate to a funny situation with a
positive resolution. And of course, tell the truth. If you fabricate a
testimonial someone may eventually figure it out and you could risk
losing your company’s hard-earned credibility in the process. Do the
work to create happy customers and then ask them to speak your praises
for you, truthfully and in their own words.
5.
Edit and Proofread Your Work. It’s amazing how much credibility a
company loses by publishing spelling mistakes, sentence fragments or
otherwise poorly written documents. When you are finished writing your
customer success story, ask other people in your organization to
proofread it and provide feedback on content. Ask them pointed
questions, such as whether or not the piece holds their interest, if
it positively answers the “Who Cares?” question, or if it effectively
promotes the benefits of your product or service’s features. Be
prepared to receive constructive criticism; remember, everyone has an
opinion, and you’ll likely get more feedback than you expected.
6.
Highlight the Benefits. Instead of focusing on the features of
your products and services, concentrate on discussing the benefits
that your product or service brings to your customer. Who besides you
really cares if your widget has a new and improved wingding – the real
question is how does that wingding – or the widget for that matter –
improve your customer’s experience? This is a prime opportunity to use
a strong quote product or service endorsement quote from your
interview. Use your customer’s words to explain why your product or
service has helped them save time or money, how it’s helped them
generate higher revenue, or how it has helped them feel better in some
way.
7.
Spread the News. Once you and your customer are happy with your
testimonial, don’t hesitate to post it on your website, print copies
to include in your media kits and with existing sales and marketing
literature, and e-mail the testimonial to as many people as you can
think of. Repackage the testimonial into a press release and
distribute it to local, national and international media (don’t forget
to include your newsworthy “Who Cares?” hook). The more time you take
spreading the happy customer’s story of your company and the more
people who read the testimonial, the more consumer trust you will
generate and the more business you will receive in the end. Remember,
good news travels fast, especially if you’re the one spreading it. Use
excerpts from the testimonial wherever you see an opportunity to give
you additional mileage from the positive endorsement.
8.
Preserve the Praise. Every time you receive an unsolicited
compliment from one of your customers, jot it down, along with a brief
description of the encounter. You will be amazed at how many positive
comments you receive when you take the time to collect them. Aside
from being quite loyal, happy customers are typically generous with
their praise, but most people don’t take the time to write you a
personal letter of thanks or congratulations; they’ll typically
mention their pleasure as an aside during a conversation covering a
different topic. Treat every word of praise that you receive from your
customers as gold. Not only can you use the kudos to help you sell
your products and services more effectively, you will also be giving
yourself and your team a positive morale boost by focusing on and
highlighting the good work that you do.
9.
Vary Your Testimonials. Don’t expect one customer success story to
function as the ultimate word on your company’s quality. Now that
you’ve completed one success story, get started as soon as possible on
another, and focus the topic on a different product or service.
Focused, targeted testimonials are the most effective, so avoid broad,
sweeping comments and instead concentrate on highlighting different
products or services, or even different aspects of the same product or
service. For example, a quote that says, “I appreciated your
exceptional service” really doesn’t compel anyone into any sort of
action, but a quote that says, “Your delivery of 9,000 widgets to our
Houston branch in less than 12 hours was nothing short of amazing”
says that you can deliver products directly to customers when they
need them. Develop as many stories as you can and vary the topics so
that you can address all members of your target audience. You might be
required to solicit positive comments from some customers if you don’t
receive them spontaneously, such as sending them post cards or
feedback request forms soliciting their feedback about certain aspects
of your products or services.
10. Thank
Your Customers. If one of your customers has taken time out of his
or her busy day to comment on the quality of your products and
services, make sure that you share the results of your finished
testimonial and show your appreciation for your customer’s effort
after the testimonial has been produced and distributed.
Testimonial Success Stories
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