Customer testimonials vs online reviews
According to the most recent study published by the Search Engine Land, 79% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. For full article please click here . There are numerous other studies to support these findings. It is understandable that this day and age, when all the business is done on the internet or over the phone, it is hard to evaluate the quality of the service or product you are going to receive. Savvy customers visit at least two different review sites and, on average, read up to 6 (six) reviews for the business. That’s why for business, such as ours, customer reviews are essential to growing business.
What we (like many other companies) have found is that, although our customers enjoyed the service AFA chauffeurs provided, very few customers did go online to post a review. Just to give you an idea:
- In 2013, AFA limo scheduled 1,399 trips:
o Only 25 customers left reviews on online sites
- In 2014 (as of 7/12/14), AFA limo scheduled 959 trips
o Only 15 customers left reviews on online sites
Two main reasons why customers do not post reviews are: it takes time and it requires setting up a username & password. Personally, I certainly can relate to that since I cannot remember last time I left a review for a service I received. Professionally, I am sad that very few people did leave reviews.
The thing is that customers do tell chauffeurs: “thank you, we had a great time!” Keeping that in mind, we have created a feedback card that customers, if they want to, can fill out at the end of the service. To share all the comments we have received, we have set up a testimonials page on our website. ALL testimonials are 100% authentic. All we do is take a photo of the feedback card or PrintScreen the received email and post it. For customer’s privacy, we do distort the last name, phone number & email address.
So please take a moment to read through some of the testimonials of happy customers!!! Testimonials