High Quality Testimonials: The Best Questions to Ask

High quality testimonials are a valuable tool to have at your disposal. A good testimonial has the power to inspire trust in your brand and bring your customers back for more again and again. Bringing customers back can be incredibly important as maintaining customers is typically a better use of resources than trying to draw in all new customers regularly. 

Drawing in new customers is still an important aspect of a business, and a testimonial can also draw new customers in. Most potential customers will spend time researching your company before making a purchase, including spending time with your testimonials. These potential customers trust regular people and past customers over marketing material. Strong testimonials can help highlight your business strengths and provide potential customers with trust in your company. 

Since testimonials are such a powerful tool, it’s important for your company to be able to create testimonials that reflect the strengths of your business. Your company is already doing great work—the key is being able to get your testimonials to show that for your customers and potential customers. Getting a high quality testimonial can be tricky—but ultimately worth it. To get a testimonial, you’ll need to ask customers the right questions, so you can ensure that the right information is being extracted from the testimonials. 

But what are the best questions to ask for a testimonial? We’ll walk you through the best testimonial questions and how to get started creating great testimonials for your company.  

How to Ask Customers for Testimonials

How do you ask customers to give a testimonial? After all, you can’t ask the right questions if you aren’t in a place where you have customers to give testimonials. The first step will be to find the customers that may be willing to give a testimonial and that will provide valuable information for your testimonials. The best place to begin looking is to examine your positive reviews for those who seem particularly enthusiastic about your product and that had a meaningful experience with your company. 

Once you’ve selected viable customers to talk to, you need to ask them to create meaningful testimonials for you. Here are four ways to ask customers for testimonials: 

• Email request. You can email happy customers in a large email and see who would be willing, or you could individually invite customers to create a testimonial with your team. Email is a great way to reach customers who might not live geographically close to your locations or a great way to reach larger groups of customers to ask for testimonials. 
• Text request. Include a request for a testimonial in your text messages. Texting has proven to be the most responsive way to reach our to customers for a testimonial. We've seen companies make the request even more successfully when it's received at a most convenient time, when the product is of most benefit to the customers.
• QR Code. Include a QR code in your packaging or at your location where your customer will be sitting or opening your product.
• Face-to-face request. Sometimes it’s beneficial to ask customers if they’d be willing to answer testimonial questions in person. While you’re limited to asking geographically close customers, you can add a personal touch that can be valuable when asking testimonial questions. 

Once a customer agrees, you can move forward with asking them testimonial questions to create your testimonials. For more information about how to ask for a testimonial, see this article.

Questions to Ask for a Testimonial 

When you create a testimonial, you will be discussing a customer’s experience with your product and brand. Asking valuable questions will help the customer better express their experience, and it will help create a much more compelling testimonial as the end result. These are some of the best questions to ask for a video testimonial: 

What was your problem before you bought/joined our product?

Giving the customer a chance to outline the problem is key to setting up a great testimonial. The problem they had shaped a lot of their experience with the product, so it is a valuable insight potential customers viewing a testimonial would like. Outlining the problem can help other customers see how a product might meet their needs. It also helps testimonial readers and viewers see just how much your product helped when they can see what the original problem was. 

What was your experience like using our product/service/business?

Since you are discussing an experience with your customers, you can go ahead and simply ask them about their experience. What was it like? How do they describe working with your company? You can get valuable feedback here as well as strong descriptions for potential customers in the future. 

What is the main benefit? What result have you seen from our product?

After the customers have described the problem and their experience using the product, it’s a good time to ask what the main benefits or results are. What have they seen from using the product? What is the main benefit they’ve seen? You might get answers you haven’t considered that could draw customers to the product. You may target specific benefits in marketing material, but customers could highlight ones you’ve never considered and provide another aspect to the product for other customers. 

When did you discover our product?

When a customer tells you about when and how they discovered your product, it’s both valuable insight and key to showing other customers that this is a genuine testimonial. Some companies will give people products in exchange for a testimonial, and that can be valuable, but it doesn’t provide the same level of instilled trust a genuine testimonial would provide. This question allows you to highlight that it’s genuine and not paid. 

What made our product or service stand out from other options? What made our product better?

This question provides you with valuable information from customers about what does stand out. But more importantly, it creates a genuine company comparison. When actual customers are comparing competitors, it will instill more trust and interest in the product and brand. Plus the customers may come up with interesting ways of looking at your product that you haven’t considered before. 

What surprised you the most about our product?

The customers giving testimonials came into the experience with your product with very similar knowledge as other customers. But after using the product, they now have new experiences potential customers haven’t thought about—that could also be persuasive reasons to try your product. Testimonials can show potential customers new things about the product they didn’t know and hadn’t considered. 

What would you tell someone who’s considering our product?

This question gives customers the opportunity to speak directly with potential product customers. They can tell the customers about their experience and what they wish they had known about the product in a way that’s completely genuine and will help instill trust and interest. 

Would you recommend this product to others and why/why not?

It’s one thing to use a product and another thing to recommend it. Allowing customers the chance to go a step further and go through with recommending the product. In addition, giving customers a chance to include “why not” allows for authenticity and transparency, which can be beneficial on its own. 

How is your life now that you have used the product/service? 

Customers should have the opportunity to show very clearly how a product or service has affected their lives. This question can help show changes, as well as the impact of your product or service. 

Is there anything else you would like to add?

As with interviews of most kinds, it’s always good practice to include a chance for customers to say anything else they would like to. It gives a great space to include interesting information you didn’t even know to ask about and can lead to incredible customer discussion and insight. But even if it doesn’t, most customers appreciate the opportunity to have a space to say anything they would like to add. 

How VideoPeel Can Help

Now that you are prepared with the right questions, you need a way to actually capture the testimonials for future customers to see. Video testimonials are a great way for customers to talk and answer questions (with a great opportunity to visually include the product). Here at VideoPeel, we want to help your company create excellent video testimonials. 

From the initial process of asking customers to the moment you publish the testimonials, VideoPeel is designed to be there every step of the way. We can help you capture testimonials and have a way to publish them to be viewed. With your great questions, you can begin making great testimonials today with VideoPeel. Try VideoPeel for free today.