Frequently Asked Questions

Coupon/Flyer/Thank You/Redirect

How many coupons and flyers can I create?
Unlimited
How many coupons and flyers can I create? Does everyone get a coupon or flyer with a request to share it?
Yes. The system sends a coupon/flyer as soon as your customer responds to your review request. Happy customers are much more likely to recommend your business to their friends immediately after they write a 5-star review.

The system also sends a coupon/flyer with a request to share it to your customers who give you less than a five star rating and to those who do not respond to your review request after a set number of days.

What makes the coupon/flyer so effective?
Our coupons and flyers takes advantage of a psychological principle known as social proof. When a customer gives your business a 5-star rating, their coupon/flyer is created on the fly with a message in the coupon that reads “Thank you customer name for giving business name a five star rating.”

This is a powerful form of social proof when read by the friends of your customer. If your customer gives you less than a five star rating or does not respond to your review request, your customer will receive a coupon or flyer that reads, “Thank you customer name for your business.”

Referrals

How does the system generate referrals for me and my sales people?
As soon as your customer responds to your review request they’ll receive an email with your coupon or flyer along with a message that encourages them to share it with their friends via email, social networks and their mobile phone. The coupon/flyer is traceable, easily shareable and includes a photo of you or a salesperson with a message that reads, “Please ask for me when you call or visit.”

Reviews

Can customers leave both a review and a testimonial?
Yes. Your customer can leave both a review and a testimonial but there is a caveat. The review websites do not allow you to use an identical or similar review on any other website. Therefore the comments made by your customer in their review must be significantly different from what they write in their testimonial.
Can I send review requests to my customers in bulk?
No. You cannot send review requests in bulk using our system, and you don’t want to. The search engines and review websites consider a surge of reviews as untrustworthy and they can and will remove those reviews from their site.

Additionally, very few customers will write a review if they have not verbally agreed to do so first. And it may cause your customers to think that you’re spamming them.

The key to getting reviews to acquire them consistently over time. The safest way to do that is to personally ask your customer for permission to review your business first, and then send them a review request.

This will also dramatically increase the percentage of responses you receive from your customers from below 2% to as high as 85%.

It makes that big of a difference. The other thing you’ll notice if you send review requests in bulk without getting permission first, is that the majority of customers will give you less than 5-stars.

If you attempt to send review requests in bulk, your system will be automatically turned off before it damages your reputation with your customers.

Can you guarantee that I will not get bad reviews on the Internet?
Absolutely Not. The system cannot stop someone from writing a bad review on the Internet if that’s what they want to do? No system can stop an unhappy customer from writing a bad review on the internet.
Can we offer our customers a reward for writing a review?
Absolutely Not. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) strictly prohibits the practice of offering compensation in return for a review or a testimonial. All of the search engines and review websites have the same policy.

Here’s what you can do:
You can send your customer a coupon, as long as you do not make it contingent upon them writing a review. If you choose to use the coupon feature, the system will send your customers a coupon whether they write a review or not.

An even better idea:
Reward your staff for asking your customers to review you. You can do that without breaking any rules!*

*Please check the Terms of Service for individual review sites. These change frequently. Ditto on the FTC rulings.

How will I know when a customer responds to my review request?
As soon as your customer submits their testimonial or clicks on one of the review website links, the system sends you an email showing you how they responded. You can also cc this email to the employee who served them.
Is it more important to get reviews or testimonials?
Both are important. Search engines and review websites are the first place customers go to research your business. This should be the primary place you ask your customers to review your business.

You also want testimonials that you can share on social networks and on your own website to build your visibility and credibility.

What does the system do to get reviews that I cannot do on my own?
A personalized review request is automatically sent after you input the customer’s name, text or text and email address into the system. It only takes about 15 seconds to send a review request. You don’t have to copy, edit and email a review request every time you make a request.

You can even tailor each review request you send to each customer if you choose to do so.

The system presents your customer with a list of links leading directly to your review sites. Not only that, it gives them an opportunity to leave a testimonial if they don’t want to set up a username and password in order to leave a review on the Internet.

Customers who do not respond after 3 days automatically receive a review reminder email. This carefully crafted message is currently generating an additional 100% reviews. That’s right, 100% more reviews. You could copy our follow-up email and send it to your customers too, but you would have to check the review sites every few day to see if a review has been posted for every customer before sending the reminder. This is very, very time consuming.

The system also sends each of your customers a coupon or flyer with a request to share it with their family and friends. Take a look at the coupon/flyer feature and you’ll discover that it’s much more time efficient and effective than anything you could do on your own.

And finally, you’ll have access to our review consultants and a script based on thousands of review requests. This alone has shown to increase the number of reviews by as much as 500%. Actually the number is closer to 4,000%, but that sounds too unrealistic.

What is the difference between a review and a testimonial?
Reviews
A review is what a customer writes about your business on a search engine or a review website. These sites require that your customers set up personal accounts with a username and password before leaving their review. Reviews cannot be shared once posted on these sites.

Testimonials
A testimonial is a comment your customer writes about your business that is not posted on one of these websites. Testimonials can include identifiable information and they can be shared. We created the system to allow your customers to leave an optional testimonial because many people are not comfortable creating an account with a review site in order to leave a review. So, rather than do nothing, this group of customers has the option of leaving you a testimonial.

What review sites can I send my customers to?
You select the search engines and review websites where you want your customers to review your business. Sites like Google, Citysearch, Merchantcircle and some specialty review websites are a good place to start. You’ll need to check the Terms  Of Service for each site.

You don’t want your customers to review your business on only one review website. You want 5-star reviews everywhere your customers look for the products and services you offer.

SEO

How does the system improve my ranking in the search engines and review websites?
Unlimited

Miscellaneous

 

Is my customer list safe with you?
Our software platform and data infrastructure are kept up-to-date with the latest security patches. We protect our network with an enterprise-class firewall and regular backups. Your data is safe and secure with us and we will not sell it to anyone.
What are some creative ways people are using the system?
A child care facility is using the system as an Ambassador Program.
An Ambassador program is where businesses pay or compensate their customers for generating sales through referrals rather than hiring salespeople. If you want to set-up and run an Ambassador program it can expensive. The Five Star Review System provides that capability automatically.

A resort condominium uses the system to generate 5-star reviews on the Internet that are linked to specific rooms (condo owners).
Instead of having a photo of a salesperson show up on the coupon or flyer, the room number and a view from the balcony shows up with text that reads, “Please ask for (Suite 201) when you call or visit.” The condo owners love this.

An automobile repair owner uses the system to gather the names and email addresses of his customers so that he can send them emails in the future about special deals.
He just loads the customer contact information into his email marketing program when he’s ready to offer a deal and hits “Send.” It’s the easiest and quickest way to get his customers to agree to receive email from him.

A bed and breakfast owner uses the system to post his customer testimonials automatically on his website.
His prospects get to read testimonials that are less than a week old.

An appliance repair company uses the system to improve the quality of service provided by their technicians.
When the owner notices that one of his technicians is getting a lot of positive feedback, he shares that information with the other technicians. When he sees a negative comment, he shares that with his technicians too. He is improving the quality of his service every day.

A mortgage company is using the system to post customer testimonials to their very popular Facebook page.
They find that posting testimonials is one of the most valuable pieces of content they can share with their followers.

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