Use Customer Service Testimonials to Increase Your Customer Base

Growing a business often proves difficult for most entrepreneurs. The effort and expenses involved in traditional marketing methods sometimes proves to be too much for them – and their limited budgets.

If you are a small business owner facing financial and other constraints, there are still effective ways to grow your customer base, thereby improving your profit potential. Some of these techniques are not widely used, so they are often overlooked.

One of the easiest ways to help your small business grow on a limited marketing budget is to take advantage of customer testimonials. Other than direct customer referrals, this is one of the best ways to remove the doubts of prospective customers and put their minds at ease. Customer testimonials serve to break down buying resistance on the part of new customers, in addition to increasing the loyalty of the customers who provided the testimonial.

Testimonials are powerful tools - but most small businesses fail to use them. It is important for you to include customer testimonials in every marketing activity, from display ads to sales letters and radio spots. You can even make brochures and business cards more effective by including customer testimonials. It you do not have any customer testimonials now, you should start collecting them right away.

Here are a few tips that will help you get testimonials from your existing customers:

• Make a system for collecting testimonials. For example, design a fill-in-the-blanks form that will include the customer’s full name and address. Be sure that you get their permission to publish the testimonial in writing.
• Once a customer buys a product from your business, ask for a testimonial immediately. The benefits of this an approach is twofold; first, the customer will have a fresh memory of the details of your service when they give you the testimonial and second, when the customer takes a stand in favor of your product or service, the chances of them asking for a refund or product replacement is greatly reduced.

• Make sure that the testimonial is specific: for example, if you sell a product, have the customer say something like this: ‘My sister actually had this product at her house, and being curious, I tried it out. I was so impressed with the quality that I just had to have one for myself’.

  If you sell a service, ask the customer if they can jot down how quickly and easily it solved a problem that they had.

• When customers provide testimonials, ask them to describe the problem they were experiencing before you rendered the service to rectify it. This description of a problem helps prospective customers to identify with the person providing the testimonial.
• Keep a digital camera handy, and ask the customer for their picture to use with the testimonial. Using customer pictures and last names will greatly increase the believability and effectiveness of the testimonial.

Make sure to thank customers who have agreed to give you testimonials. They are probably your best and most loyal customers - and should be treated accordingly.

By using testimonials, you not only grow your customer base but also build loyalty among your existing ones.