Where to get customer reviews on your company? The most popular platforms with company ratings and product reviews

So far, we’ve tried to encourage you to take care of online reviews, not just monitoring them, but actively acquiring them. Now that you know very well how important it is for your business to collect reviews online, we will try to suggest where to do it. If you are wondering what portals to bet on in terms of collecting reviews, then this article is for you. We assure you, the choice is huge.

How to use the reviews of your customers?

As a reminder – positive reviews are nothing more than references issued by consumers, which work like a lure for potential customers. Negative reviews, on the other hand, provide an opportunity to learn and develop. They allow you to see exactly at what stage the company does not meet its customers’ needs, and then eliminate mistakes and improve the product. 

It is natural that keeping track of all the opinions about the company on the Internet can be a bit overwhelming. Therefore, we should create a “forum” for customers to exchange views about our products or services online. This will allow us to see the reviews, and more importantly to manage them. However, before we decide where to collect reviews about our company, we must understand the purpose of these activities. Let’s also not forget that it is primarily the profile and area of our business that determine where best to collect reviews.

Where to collect customer reviews about the company? You cannot be missing here

There are many ways to collect customer reviews about the company, its products and services. You need to be aware that customers will search for your business in several different places, from Google Maps, through social networks, to industry websites. The first and primary source for getting reviews is your Google My Business profile. It allows customers to find and rate your business from the search engine, which has a positive impact on local SEO. Your presence on Google Maps is also crucial to your credibility, improves the customer experience, and influences better visibility for your business. 

Customers are increasingly interacting with brands through social media channels, of which Facebook remains the most popular. No matter what target audience you want to reach, be sure to find them on FB. The times when consumers used this site only for socializing are gone. Your current and potential customers are sharing opinions on purchases and reviewing recommendations from their friends every day. That’s why it’s important to have an official company profile that allows you to have a dialogue with your brand users. 

Take into account the fact that customers will find a place to exchange opinions about your business anyway, hence it is worth enabling them to do so on your company fan page. This is the space where it will be easiest for you to react and moderate discussions. Regardless of this, you should also monitor mentions with regard to your company within the whole platform – various tools for protecting company’s image on the Internet can help you here. Finally, a little reminder – currently Facebook reviews are a referral system where customers can comment on your service or product using brand-specific phrases.

Profiles on industry portals

If you run a business in the tourism or hospitality industry, your customers will definitely check your presence on portals such as Booking or TripAdvisor. Research results clearly show that more than half of the customers will not make a reservation until they read a review. Similar trends can be observed in restaurants or tourist attractions.

Why are guest reviews crucial for your business? Firstly, positive recommendations translate directly into an increase in the number of guests in restaurants and the number of reservations in hotels. It is important to remember that if you do not collect opinions and do not share them with potential customers, you will fall behind your competition. Your sales will suffer as well. Secondly, review insight is a way to learn about your guests’ expectations and a chance to better meet their needs. In fact, reviews are a reflection of your company’s image in the customer’s eyes, which is why you should use them to develop and improve your offer.

How, then, can a hotel or restaurants acquire more positive reviews? TripAdvisor offers a free tool that will take care of this task for you. Use Express Reviews to quickly send personalized emails that encourage your guests to leave a review. The tool also allows you to track the effectiveness of all your campaigns by providing you with statistics on the number of messages sent, read, and reviews posted. In addition to getting public recommendations that are visible on your property’s website, you can also collect confidential reviews on TripAdvisor. You will gain this information through a custom survey that measures guest satisfaction. 

No doubt you have seen a sticker of the mentioned portal on your hotel door or restaurant window. This is another brilliant idea to increase the number of new reviews and show your guests that their opinions matter. Stickers are distributed free of charge, you just need to apply on the website and the badge will reach you after a few weeks. It is worth mentioning that the largest travel platform in the world, in addition to the indicated categories, allows reviews of tourist attractions.

As far as Booking is concerned, guests currently rate their overall impressions of the stay at a given accommodation. Optionally, they can review the hotel for other elements such as value for money, location or staff. In addition, the platform offers helpful analytics tools to monitor how reviews change over time and what areas of the business, such as cleanliness, comfort, amenities, need improvement. 

Therefore, both platforms enable you to listen and communicate with your customers, improve service levels, and maintain consumer loyalty. Finally, don’t forget that the areas where customers are most likely to read reviews are the hotel and restaurant industry. Other portals in this category include Agoda and Hotels.com.

Review portals

Returning to our home backyard, we also do not lack platforms facilitating communication between consumers and companies, i.e. portals with reviews. Opineo is one of the first Polish review portals, which facilitates making purchase decisions based on the recommendations of Internet users. The company collects opinions only of those customers who actually made purchases in the online store, thus it can guarantee the reliability of reviews. Anyway, consumers evaluate not only the stores, but also the purchased product and even the delivery service.

As each review is subject to verification of its source and consumer credibility, you can be sure that the reviews are not generated by unfair competition. Cooperating with the service you will also gain access to the panel, where you will lead the communication with customers, having a constant insight into their comments. The advantage of being on the platform is consistent building of your business image.

Another system of recommendations for on-line stores is the work of Ceneo developers. It functions on the basis of online surveys which are sent only to those customers who have actually used the services of a given seller. It is supposed to guarantee a reliable image of stores and, on the other hand, to protect a company against false accusations.

Ceneo offers the membership in the Polish programme Zaufane Opinie (Trusted Opinions) – it is a distinction granted to those online stores which enjoy the best reviews among consumers. Special marking next to your brand will surely be an element of building trust among potential customers and will give you a chance to improve your store’s position in the comparison engine. Registration in the service is free and the only thing you have to do is to integrate your store’s offer with the comparison engine. From the customers’ perspective, Ceneo is used to search for products available in e-shops, compare their prices but it also enables to make purchases directly on the platform. 

Other price comparison services, such as Skąpiec or Nokaut, function in a similar way.

Auction and advertisement services

The Allegro website went a step further and, apart from rating specific products, made it possible to review the sellers. Hence, product reviews concern only specific items, while in the case of sellers a system of recommendations is used. Additionally, several stages of the transaction are evaluated, such as compliance with the description, customer service and shipping cost. 

However, auction portals do not end with Allegro. It is worth diversifying your activities to conduct multi-channel sales. Besides, these services have a number of advantages, among which the most important are the ease of starting sales, and the possibility to reach a wide audience. It is worth paying more attention to such platforms as Empik Marketplace, and foreign shopping portals, such as e-Bay and Amazon. What all these options have in common is a system of ratings and recommendations, issued by people who have used the offer. Finally, it is worth adding that the high share of commercial agents in online sales is an undeniable fact in our country, and this trend should not change in the coming years.

In conclusion, reviews from your customers can be obtained from a variety of sources, depending on the industry in which you operate. These are mainly: Google Maps Business profile, official brand profile in social media, review portals or auction services. These are just some of many communication channels with current and potential customers that will give you insight into the opinions about your services or offered products. Now that you know where to gather positive reviews, don’t hesitate and make sure you are visible wherever your customers may be looking for you.