If you want to collect high-quality testimonials that drive up your brand and online presence, asking the right questions is really important! The quality of your testimonials will depend on how you frame the question and how you set the context.

Why testimonials are so important for your business? 

In today's competitive landscape with rising customer acquisition costs, relying solely on acquiring new customers is not a sustainable growth strategy. The real potential for business growth lies in nurturing existing customers.

Customer referrals are crucial in gaining trust. While word-of-mouth recommendations are valuable, customer reviews and testimonials hold even more weight in a customer's decision-making process. 

Testimonials are powerful influencers, whether written, visual, or video testimonials. They showcase the positive experiences of satisfied customers and can attract new leads effectively. Moreover, they can also improve SEO, and social-proof your brand. 

By asking the right questions, testimonials can tell compelling stories that serve as persuasive sales pitches to potential customers.

Why do testimonial questions matter?

Getting the right questions to collect testimonials can make a huge difference in how helpful they are for your business's marketing. You want your customers to sound genuine, interesting, and relatable when sharing their experiences.

But if you just let them talk without any guidance, it could lead to some problems:

1. Customers might feel overwhelmed and unsure about what to say, which could mean fewer responses.
2. They might end up sharing too much or talking about things that aren't really relevant to your business, making the testimonials less useful for marketing.

To avoid these issues, it's super important to think carefully about the questions you ask. 

Best testimonial questions to ask your customers for quality testimonials

While asking these questions, just remember that you have to get a narrative out of the customer. Any good story should have a beginning (the problem), a middle (the solution and the trial), and a happy ending in our case.

Start by asking about their initial situation or problem, then delve into how your product/service helped them overcome it. Finally, ask them to share the outcome or results they experienced. This narrative structure will make the testimonial more engaging and relatable to other potential customers.

Just keep in mind that you have to address all the problems you're solving on your testimonial page. 

Part 1: The Problem (Questions to ask to understand the customer's background)

The purpose of these questions is to get an answer that tells a story about the problem you're solving with your products or services. See it from the point of view of a customer. Suppose you're a man looking for a shampoo that doesn't dry your hair, nourishes it, and helps you get rid of the itchiness and dandruff. 

Now, if you read the following testimonial on the product's website, would you not be immediately convinced? Eventually, and most importantly, we will have to solve the customer's problem. 

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What challenges were you aiming to address by using our product or service?

How would you describe your situation or experience prior to using our product or service?

Part 2: The Struggle

Great testimonials narrate not just the problem but also the struggles, because that's what makes the story more relatable. Your client testimonials are incomplete without struggles.  

What other products/services did you try before discovering ours? (What other ways did you try to solve that problem?)

Did anything help in between?

What was the problem with other solutions/products or services?

Where did you initially look when beginning your search?

Part 3: The Discovery

High-quality testimonials must show what you've created as a blessing in the customer's journey, like a knight in shining armor. Potential client(s) or customer(s) will buy into the narrative if the journey is similar to theirs. 

How did you come across our product or service?

What distinguished our product or service from alternatives in your opinion?

What made you buy our product/service?

Part 4: The Solution

Here you must understand how your product/service solved their problem. Go as deep as possible! 

How was your experience using our service/product? Did it solve your problem?

How would you describe your situation after discovering and using our product or service?

Check out the following review of cat litter by a brand called Pet Pattern. Notice how the customer describes their experience after buying the product. The customer also compares the product to another product they tried.

Part 5: Endorsement

This is where your old customers talk to your potential customers and "sell" them your product. 

Would you recommend us or our product(s)/service(s) to others? If yes, then what would be the top reasons for doing so?

What advice would you offer to someone contemplating engaging with our business?

Part 6: Feedback

This section serves primarily to add a human touch to the testimonials, enhancing their relatability for the company's audience. By incorporating customer feedback as testimonials, you'll not only appeal to the ideal customers but also naturally deter those whose needs may not align with your solution.  

Is there any aspect you think we could have improved or done differently?

How much would you rate us out of 5?

How likely are you, on a scale of one to ten, to recommend our product or service to others?

Other questions to help your narrative

Describe our product/service in one word!

Is there any surprising incentive you got that you weren't expecting?

Do you have any favorite parts about what we do/make?

Check out how the following video testimonial consists of the answer to all the above questions in just 30 seconds.

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You can also read our collection of the best testimonial examples here. 

Tips for asking your customers for testimonials 

 Here are some tips to get the best out of your customer testimonials:

• Give your customers the questions beforehand, so they have time to think about their answers.
• Keep the questions simple and open-ended so they can share their real thoughts and experiences.
• Ensure the questions focus on your product or service, so the feedback is relevant to your marketing.
• Keep things easy to understand and avoid asking complicated or confusing questions.
• Always say thanks for their time and feedback. It's a nice touch that could encourage them to help again in the future.

You can read more tips on how to ask your client or customer for testimonials here and how to collect video testimonials here. 

Conclusion

To sum up, how you pick the appropriate questions for testimonials greatly matters to your overall brand image and online presence. The more you nail them down, the better testimonials you will foster. 

Such questions are twofold, both driving the elicitation of sincere and recurrent stories from your clientele and being an essential factor towards buyer conversion.

Customer acquisition costs are growing increasingly competitive in today's business environment, and business leaders cannot ignore the power of incorporating customer accounts into testimonials.

Lastly, we at Testimonial Donut, offer a platform where you can easily collect and manage testimonials for your business. Our user-friendly interface and templates will make this process quite easy for you. So, do give it a try as it costs nothing. 

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