How to drive reviews with your CSMs

Did you know your CSMs could be your secret sauce to high quality review generation efforts?

CSMs are the piece of your organization’s puzzle that are talking day-in and day-out to your customers. Of all the people at your company, they have the deepest relationships.

So why not have them help you drive reviews?

For some companies, this is an easy-win for review sourcing. They can weave it into their next call or email or even add it as a CTA in their customer success software.

One way we’ve seen success by looking at reviews coming in on the backend are contests. A customer who recently implemented this approach saw 20% of their reviews come in through this outlet in one month.

Companies decide that they want their CSMs to ask for reviews, and winners of these review generation efforts win something from the company.

What you need to do before starting this campaign: 

1. Figure out how long you want the campaign to last. We recommend at least one month so that all monthly conversations have their time. If you have more time though, use it. Make sure to account for upcoming holidays, events, and even awards.
2. Reach out to your CSM at TrustRadius or fill out a new ticket here. You’ll want to get individual campaign links for each CSM. You can either send a list of names to us, use a spreadsheet to give us names or coordinating numbers for each person. This is also a good time to share the deadlines for the campaign and ask to run reports and data on a specific date. Things you need to mention:
3. Review Link CSM Breakdown
4. Length of Campaign
5. Incentive Amount
6. Date You Want Report Ran
7. Have a game plan. Figure out what kind of contest this is. Is this for a free PTO day? Are you giving a physical gift? Do the top 5 winners get a dinner out on the company?
8. Share it with your team with excitement!

Email invitation option for a CSM: 

Of course, the more personalized the ask is, the better the results. However, sometimes it’s wonderful to give your CSMs a template to plug-and-play. Some will just copy and paste (which is great!) and some will want to give it their own style (which is also great!). Below is an example of an email a CSM can use to send to their customers.

Hi {first name},

{Insert personal note here}

I always appreciate your feedback and insights on using {product name}, and I was wondering if you’d be interested in leaving a review on TrustRadius? 

Link to Review

This allows others to understand the software if they’re looking at new options for their company, as well as helps us better understand how to serve you better.

Typically, these take about 10-15 minutes to complete, so I would also love to offer you a $XX gift card for your time. Once your review is published, TrustRadius sends you a gift card via email the following Tuesday.

If there’s anything else I can help you with, please let me know! I see we have a call scheduled on {insert date}, but if anything pops up ahead of time, you know where to reach me.

{sign off}

While this style may not be the best option for a huge influx of reviews (look to sending in a customer list or general DIY campaign for this), it is an amazing option for getting high quality, in-depth reviews.