Our customer review system is the fastest, easiest, most effective and most affordable system anywhere. No marketing skills required. No customization required.
You could start getting new customer reviews with the system in literally just a few minutes from now.
Rising Star Reviews is the only system of its kind that was designed and built from the ground up to be easy and effective for anyone—even people with no marketing expertise—and affordable enough for even the smallest of local businesses.
Here’s how it works:
Step 1) Enter your customer’s name and email or SMS phone number and click “Send”
Step 2) That’s it. You’re done. The system takes care of the rest.
For businesses with lots of customers, we make it even faster and easier to send review requests to hundreds of customers at a time. Just export your customer info from your POS, CRM, or other customer system and import it into our customer review system in bulk.
But what about initial setup? Doesn’t that take a lot of work and marketing skill?
Not at all.
Our customer review system is designed specifically to help anyone—even business owners with no marketing skills—start getting reviews effectively with no setup required.
When you sign up for a free trial, your account is automatically set up with templates, message sequences, and account settings that have been proven to convert happy customers into positive reviews.
No marketing skills required. No copywriting skills required. No system customization required. Just sign up and you’re ready to start getting reviews.
Of course, if you do have excellent marketing skills, you can customize all of these settings to your heart’s content. But unlike other customer review systems, with our system, customization is an optional bonus, not a requirement.
Having said that, although it’s possible to do zero customization, we recommend you customize your settings as much as you feel comfortable with.
That’s because only you can add that personal touch your customers will appreciate. And they’ll reward you with higher conversion rates and more reviews.
So here’s the approach to customization that we recommend for all of our new members:
Step 1) Sign up for the free trial
Step 2) Send a review request to yourself first
Step 3) Experience what your customers will experience when you start sending them reviews (Click a high rating, click a low rating, leave feedback, play around)
Step 4) Change your settings if you want your customers to have a different experience
Step 5) Start sending review requests to customers
Next, we’ll cover all the ways we’ve made it fast and easy for you… and how to make the most out of the following features:
- Emails & SMS texts that get lots of reviews
- Easy customer experience
- Automated follow-up messages
- Automated “thank you” messages
- Easy customer feedback
- Opt outs
- World-class support
Emails & SMS texts that get lots of reviews
Our review management software automatically creates content for emails and SMS text messages. The default content has been proven to get reviews by many of our past members.
So if you’re not a marketer with copywriting skills, you may just want to use our default emails and SMS text messages.
But if you wish to change the content, we have a few suggestions for how you can make our default content even better by giving it your own personal touch.
Most importantly, make the email and text content personal.
Make it feel like a personal email or text message that was sent from just one person to just one customer. Don’t make it sound like a generic email from the entire company. And don’t make it sound like an “official” email that goes to many customers as a matter of routine.
When your customers feel like they’re receiving an email or text directly from the business owner or manager, they’re far more likely to take action and write a review.
Also, keep your email content short.
When people get emails with a lot of text, they often don’t even read the first sentence. They just archive the email instantly.
But when people see that the email is short, they take the few seconds needed to actually read it.
So “more” is not “better.” When it comes to email content, “less” is “better.”
You can customize content at Dashboard, Customize emails or Customize SMS texts. Just click the Edit button for the email or text you want to edit, and make your content changes.
Easy customer experience
The customer review system automatically creates a customer experience that’s optimized to get as many reviews as possible. We do this by making the experience as easy as possible for customers.
However, the review system also lets you change the customer experience if you wish.
Stars vs. thumbs
Customers can click a star or thumbs up/down to rate your business.
By default, the review system uses the same types of ratings that the review site you’re targeting uses—such as a 5-star rating for Google or Yelp, or a thumbs up/down for Facebook.
If you’re targeting a niche review site that has a 10-star system, you may want to let your customers rate your business using 10 stars instead of 5.
Or you may just want to use a thumbs up/down rating system even if the review site uses stars. Or vice versa.
To do this, just go to your Dashboard, then Manage review pages and click the Edit button for the target review page. Choose between stars vs. thumbs up/down by changing the Override Stars setting. Or change the number of stars you show customers in the Total Stars Possible setting. If you change the number of stars, be sure to also change Min Stars for Review to reflect your preferences, too.
Sending customers to review sites
Once a customer clicks a star or thumb to give your business a private rating, they normally go to a “thank you” web page.
The “thank you” page thanks them for their private rating and then asks them if they will please write a review.
If they click a button to write a review, or if they just wait a while, the page will automatically take them to your target review site (Google, Yelp, Facebook or any other review site) where they can write a public review.
You can change this experience in a number of ways.
You can streamline the experience by removing the “thank you” page altogether, sending them directly to the public review site as soon as they click a star or thumb. To do this, just go to your Dashboard, then Customize review request, then select “Send customers directly to the review page to write a review” and the Save button.
If you want to keep the “thank you” page, you can customize what it says. You can also change how long the review page will wait before automatically taking the customer to the review site. To make these changes, just go to the Dashboard, Customize review request, make any setting changes, and click Save.
Automated follow-up messages
One of the best ways to get more reviews is simply to send follow-up messages.
We have often seen businesses double the number of reviews they get on a regular basis, simply by adding 2 or 3 extra follow-up emails or texts that go to customers who haven’t responded yet.
But it takes a lot of time and effort to send follow-up emails and text messages manually.
So we designed our review system to automate follow-up messages 100%. It literally takes zero minutes of your time to send follow-up messages and double your response rates.
Our customer review system automatically sets up a sequence of follow-up emails for you when you first sign up. So you don’t have to do anything to benefit from this technique.
But of course, you can make changes to the default follow-up emails at any time.
The review system doesn’t currently add follow-up SMS text messages automatically, because some customers can be very sensitive about receiving too many SMS text messages. But you can easily add your own follow-up text messages if you feel they will be well received by your customers.
If you’d like to change how your follow-up emails or text messages work, you can easily do that.
You can change the message content as described above in “Emails & SMS texts that get lots of reviews.”
You can also change how many days to wait before sending the next follow-up message.
If the customer responds by rating your business or opting out before the next follow-up email gets sent, then the system makes sure that the customer doesn’t continue getting follow-up messages.
You can also set each follow-up email to target a different review site. So for example, your first email might send customers to Google, but your second might send them to Yelp and your third to Facebook.
To make any of these changes, just go to the Dashboard, then either Customize emails or Customize SMS texts. Click the Edit button to edit any of the emails or texts. Or if you wish to add a new message to the follow-up sequence, just click Add new email or Add new SMS text message. Likewise, click the Delete button to remove any email or text from the sequence.
Automated “thank you” messages
Sometimes customers are too busy to leave a review. They click your email or text message, give you a private rating, but just don’t have time to write a full review on the review site.
One great way to still get reviews from these busy customers is to send a “thank you” message.
The same goes for asking busy customers to spend the time to give you private feedback instead of a public review.
So the review system includes 2 separate types of “thank you” messages: one for customers you want to ask for a review, and one for customers you want to ask for private feedback.
By default, the review system already includes both types of “thank you” messages. So you don’t need to do anything to help remind your busy customers to write a review.
But if you’d like to change the default “thank you” messages, you can do so easily.
Just go to Dashboard, then Customize emails or Customize SMS texts. Click the Edit button to change a “thank you” message or the Delete button to stop sending it.
Easy customer feedback
Honest customer feedback can sometimes be even more valuable than a 5-star review on Google.
Our review system automatically asks customers for feedback if they click a low star rating.
If that’s how you want the system to work, you don’t need to make any changes.
The review system also includes a default feedback page that has been proven to work well for many of our member businesses.
But if you want to make changes, you can easily change the content on that page. You can change the question you ask customers to answer. You can also change the “thank you” message customers see after leaving feedback.
Change the content on the feedback page by just going to Dashboard, Customize feedback, making the changes and clicking Save.
You can also change which customers you ask for feedback.
Ask every customer for feedback. Or just ask your happiest customers for feedback. Or don’t ask any of your customers for feedback, and only ask them for online reviews. It’s up to you.
You can even customize each review site separately. So if you want feedback from customers who give you a 3-star rating or lower on Google, but you also want feedback from customers who give you a 4-star rating on Yelp, you can do that!
To decide which customers will be asked for feedback based on what private star rating they give your business, go to Dashboard, Manage review pages and click the Edit button for the review site you want to change. Then change the Min Stars for Review setting and click the Save button. If you set Min Stars for Review to 4, that means you’ll only ask customers for feedback if they give you a private rating of 3 stars or less. Customers who give 4 stars or more will get asked for a review and not feedback.
Do you want to ask all customers for a review, regardless of how they rate your business, including the ones you also ask for feedback?
Easy. Just go to the Dashboard, Customize feedback and then select the Review Request option instead of No Review Request. Now, whenever a customer gives feedback, they’ll also get asked to write a review, regardless of what their original star rating was. This is a great feature for staying compliant with the review gating policies of sites like Google and Yelp.
Want to ask every customer for both feedback and a review, regardless of their private star rating?
Just turn on Review Request and set each review site’s Min Stars for Review to 1 more than the Total Stars Possible. For example, if Total Stars Possible is 5, then set Min Stars for Review to 6. Every customer will be asked for feedback, then a review.
Want to ask every customer for only feedback and never ask for a review?
Just turn on No Review Request and set each review site’s Min Stars for Review to 1 more than the Total Stars Possible. For example, if Total Stars Possible is 5, then set Min Stars for Review to 6. Every customer will get asked for feedback, and none will get asked to write a review.
Or maybe you don’t want any feedback at all, just review requests.
In that case, just set Min Stars for Review to 0. Every customer will be asked for a review instead of feedback, regardless of the private rating they choose.
Opt outs
If you reach out to customers to ask for reviews and feedback, you’re required by law to let your customers opt out of receiving any future communications.
If you don’t give them an opt out feature, you may be out of compliance with anti-spam regulations like CAN-SPAM or similar regional regulations.
But it’s a nightmare to manually keep track of which customer has opted out and which hasn’t.
So we designed our review system to handle opt-outs for your effortlessly.
Whenever the review system sends an email, a convenient link is included that lets the customer opt out. As soon as they click the opt out link, they’re automatically opted out of all automatic follow-up emails.
For SMS text messages, customers can easily opt out by sending common opt-out replies such as STOP.
If you later try to send a new review request to a customer who had previously opted out, the review system will first warn you that the customer opted out.
You can still choose to override the opt-out if you have reason to believe that the customer is now interested in receiving messages again. Or you can honor the customer’s original wish not to receive any further review requests.
Either way, the customer review system makes sure you don’t accidentally send a message to a customer who has opted out.
World-class support
As you can see, our customer review system makes it virtually effortless to get lots of online reviews.
But the review system also makes it easy to customize how it works, so you can deliver the best possible customer experience and get the best marketing results for your business.
Yet sometimes you could still use help to get the best possible results.
At Rising Star Reviews, we don’t see ourselves as just another software vendor. We see ourselves as your partner and trusted advisor.
We have many years of experience in digital marketing—especially review marketing—and we love applying that experience to help business owners like you.
That’s why we offer free advisory services for all of our members.
Whether you just need help with a product feature or you want expert advice on how to get better conversion rates, we’d love to help you. Just shoot us an email.
