We have all seen it. Something you buy or sign up for is swiftly followed up with a survey or request to write a review. Interestingly, some companies offer to ‘incentivise’ customers who write reviews. Additionally, some platforms offer further rewards to write multiple reviews. So, is it ethical to incentivise customer reviews?
Why do companies incentivise customer reviews?
The answer seems obvious. By incentivising customers to write reviews, more customers are likely to put in the effort to do so. And that is precisely what we want. But is it that clear cut?
In the early days of a business or following a product launch, most companies want to build reviews quickly. We already know that more than 4 out of 5 people look to and trust peer reviews when buying. This creates an impetus to ‘buy’ customer reviews as part of a review incentive scheme or advocacy programme.
Read on to find out the pros and cons of this approach.
What makes a good customer review?
Ideally, customer reviews should be useful and relevant. That is customer reviews that answer questions directly relevant to potential or existing users. Not sure if something is compatible? Maybe another customer has the same query and discovered the answer. Concerned if you are making the right choice? Perhaps some peer reviews will help you choose.
Ultimately, we all like to think that customer reviews are genuine. In a perfect world, every customer review is written to communicate your joy or anger with a product or service. Alternatively, you may be motivated to help fellow buyers make the right choice, for better or worse.
The crucial word here is ‘authenticity’. How many times have we heard about fake reviews on platforms like Amazon and eBay. There are so many reviews that these are hard to police.
Is it ethical to incentivise customer reviews?
It’s a maybe from us. Research suggests that on balance, people who are incentivised write more positive reviews. This is common sense as financial incentives can be a powerful motivator. We are all subconsciously aware that these practices exist but how many of us consciously question such reviews?
We often talk about bias. In the context of reviews, bias is defined as “the act of allowing personal opinions to influence your judgment in an unfair way”. This interpretation suggests that the monetary incentive is influencing judgement of a product or service in an unfair way. In summary, the message is that people write more positive reviews and are potentially influenced to ‘mislead’ others.
Ultimately, this is a question for the organisation. Do you want to run the risk of users finding out that your reviews are fake or biased based on incentives?
True advocacy from fair reviews
Now we all know that not everyone plays fair. Where one business encourages open, honest and freely-given opinions, another is ‘buying’ positive goodwill. So, is playing fair all it’s cracked up to be? That depends on your business and your competition.
If your product is amazing, your behaviour exemplary and you deliver a superior customer experience, advocacy is easy. Reviews are easy to achieve and the comments are genuine and positive. Furthermore, a token review incentive is low-risk as long, as you encourage authenticity, because the foundation is solid.
If your product is average and you deliver sub-optimal CX, advocacy is tough. How many customers are willing to shout about you if you don’t make them happy? The answer is very few without a decent incentive. But, here lies the rub. You have a double-edged sword where advocacy makes sense but also carries high-risk. What if other customers disagree with the reviews? What if prospects sense that they are being misled? How about a rogue customer who exposes your scheme?
How do I obtain ethical customer reviews?
It all comes down to common sense. Here are our 5 top tips for ethical customer reviews:
- Identify areas for improvement in CX and CSAT.
- Get the basics right then ask customers for honest feedback.
- Focus on the issues that are holding you back from achieving amazing advocacy.
- Measure how much you are improving by over a period of time.
- Design an incentive programme that encourages authentic reviews.
The bottom line is that it generally seems to pay to incentivise customer reviews. Those reviews will contain more positive language and hide some of the negatives (bias). However, it requires a careful evaluation of where you are today and the context in which it operates. A bad product with few reviews, a poor experience or a recent faux pas will come out in public eventually.
Going beyond reviews to create ethical customer advocacy
Think Beyond offers a range of services to research, plan, change and enable your approach. We are passionate about customer advocacy done right. Our philosophy is one borne of ethics and integrity. It’s in our DNA. We also pride ourselves on our research and neuroscience skills to support superior CX. This in turns increases CSAT and then advocacy. In conclusion, we support advocacy from the ground up.
If you would like to chat to someone about ethical customer reviews, call now on 01565 632206.
Alternatively, ask for a call back by emailing sales@think-beyond.co.uk or adding a few details in our handy form.
Finally, why not check out our recent podcast interview about CX and how to create happy customers.