On Words and Business

Have you ever gone through the exercise of asking customers for testimonials? They’re a critical element of marketing and P.R. and can add credibility to any content you produce. There really is nothing quite like the words of a customer to tell your story. But how do you get them?

1. Ask. Most satisfied customers are happy to help. It’s best to let them know up front that you ask for testimonials, but ask even if you haven’t let them know about it ahead of time.
2. Set expectations. When you do ask, make sure they understand what you are using the testimonial for. That helps them craft a response. If you need testimonials to highlight strengths of your product, information on how much they appreciate your customer support isn’t going to help. If you are collecting testimonials to be used in many different areas, let them know so they can talk about a wider range of their experiences.
3. Get specifics. Ask for details about specific business goals your product or service helped with–things like page views, number of customers signed on, revenue increases, expense decreases, etc.
4. Offer help. It can be difficult to write a testimonial, even for customers who truly appreciate that value you provide. The challenges are primarily finding the time to write one and knowing what to say. You can make it easier by sending a list of questions to answer or use as inspiration, then writing a draft from their answers for them to approve. Or you can gather comments made throughout the process of working with them and create a draft testimonial for their approval from that material.