In 2012, JT Marino launched a website without a product or a company, just a grainy stock photo of a mattress. He and his co-founder wanted to see how people would respond to their idea for a new kind of mattress buying experience. They made a sale within 15 minutes. That idea and test turned into Tuft & Needle, which became one of the most successful mattress companies in the world, merging with Serta Simmons Bedding in September 2018.
It’s a success story among case studies and go-to-market strategies. By the beginning of 2018, they were making more than $170 million in revenue every year, had more than 130,000 customer reviews, and Consumer Reports had given them the highest overall satisfaction rating in the mattress category. At the time, Tuft & Needle’s review engine was its strongest source for leads. They didn’t have doorbusters, closeouts, or neon signs with endless exclamation points. Instead, they used customer reviews to drive growth in a sleepy yet cutthroat industry.
No matter your business, no one knows if you’re legit when you first set up shop. That’s why social proof is the primary driver of customer success and trust. Consider the metrics: According to the Medill Spiegel Research Center, a product with five reviews has a 270% greater chance of being purchased than a product with no reviews.
Choosing to leverage the power of customer feedback is how a fledgling brand can achieve exponential growth. It’s a customer-led growth strategy (a CLG strategy), as opposed to sales-led growth or product-led growth. Having a lot of positive reviews will help potential new customers discover you and take a risk with what you offer. And if you sell exclusively online, a review is the crucial way your customers can see what your product is like before taking the plunge.
So how can you set up a review engine for your own business, harnessing the power of loyal customers into a business strategy that has a customer-led approach as its cornerstone for sustainable growth? By following Tuft & Needle’s tried-and-tested roadmap, covering how to select the most relevant review site, the importance of being democratic when asking for reviews, and how to use those star-studded comment fields to propel your business forward.
Pick a review site to dominate. Then, dominate it.
Don’t spread yourself thin by adding your company to a ton of review sites. Instead, pick one to two neutral ones where customers would naturally search for you.
Many people know reviews are an important part of a customer journey in the buyer decision process, but the source of those reviews also matters. “People are less likely to trust reviews on your site vs. a third party,” says Marino. That’s why early on, Tuft & Needle directed their customers to talk about them on Amazon, a neutral site. They picked it because so many people already sift through Amazon to check ratings, even if they don’t end up buying there.
The result? After three months, Tuft & Needle rose to the top-rated furniture item in the whole furniture category—all because of the high amount of high-quality reviews that funneled in. Those reviews single-handedly created a new revenue growth stream since people were discovering the mattress on Amazon, and buying the product there too.
It’s also key to keep in mind that the concern over fake reviews has increased since then: 63% of online shoppers were more concerned about them in 2022 than they were five years earlier, revealed a survey of nearly 13,000 people, which also found that 84% are concerned about them on Amazon. But that’s why the quality of the reviews are still important, and why authentic, detailed ones help increase trust rather than raise red flags.
How to ace the review site decision
How do you choose the right review site? When prioritizing, think about where your potential customers are likely to look for you.
If you have a daycare, a Yelp or Google page might be a solid option. If you own a bed and breakfast, TripAdvisor, Yelp, and a Google page might be good matches since out-of-towners visit those sites when searching for hotel rooms. Own multiple locations in different geographic areas? Set up a page for every spot where people can find you.
Depending on what you do, here are some sites to consider:
| Review site | Who it works best for |
| A variety of businesses | |
| Yelp | Local businesses |
| Tripadvisor | Restaurants, hotels, and other businesses in the travel industry |
| Angi | Service-based businesses, such as contractors |
| Thumbtack | Service-based businesses |
| Google Business Profile | All kinds of businesses. Adding your company here can also help boost your search ranking on Google. |
| Amazon | E-commerce businesses |
| Better Business Bureau | All kinds of businesses |
Encourage your customers to write reviews—even if they didn’t have a good experience.
Be proactive when asking for reviews. And don’t shy away from asking for feedback from the people who didn’t have the best time with you. The surprising part about Tuft & Needle’s review library was that many of their customers shelled out five stars even if the mattress didn’t work out. In fact, Marino shared that they urged people to return the mattress if they weren’t a fit—and then, they immediately asked them for a review.
There’s a method to that madness in harnessing customer data and customer engagement. According to Marino, a customer can fall in love with you even if they don’t love what you’re selling. If you get a negative review, don’t freak out. Be customer-facing and respond as best you can by apologizing and drilling into the details that led the customer to that feeling. Offer a solution that’s tied to what they encountered. Once that’s done, ask if they’d be willing to update the review based on their latest experience.
Many Tuft & Needle customers updated their less-than-gushing reviews after dealing with their stellar customer experience team. When you take really good care of your patrons, positive reviews and customer loyalty are going to follow.
How to get more customer reviews
Reviews aren’t a priority for most folks. So if you want to point people to the review text box, you need to reduce as much friction as possible.
- Remind existing customers to review you—and don’t feel bad about it. Many people don’t naturally think about reviewing their shopping experience. A little nudge will direct them to the exact spot where they can pour their hearts out. If you own a furniture store, this could mean following up with an email or text message that directs customers to your Yelp page.
- Ask people to review you once they’ve spent time with your product, so after customer onboarding. If your product takes two weeks to reach its optimal point, like a mattress or sofa that needs to be broken in, then ask customers to review you after those two weeks. Or if people can get the full experience when opening up the product or walking into your restaurant, ask them to review you after that moment. Doing so will help them remember all the tiny details.
- Don’t incentivize them. “If you blow their mind, you don’t have to incentivize them,” says Marino. This one’s controversial, but Tuft & Needle found that offering an incentive doesn’t do much to spur more reviews. In fact, Marino believes it cheapens the quality of reviews since people will have to dig deep for something to write about instead of feeling naturally compelled to share.
- Give them a writing prompt. It can be hard for customers to know precisely what to talk about beyond saying they love or hate something. Beat that writer’s block by encouraging people to describe what happened. Details like the way their car wash attendant got the mountains of crumbs out of their car or the fact that their pineapple slicer never got the slices to look like the picture on the box are all helpful for other consumers to know about.
Get people into review flow by listing out the questions they should try and answer. Add the questions below when asking people to review you:
- How did it go? What was your experience like? Give us specifics.
- What went well?
- What didn’t go well?
- Did the experience/product live up to your expectations?
- Would you buy another one/come again?
- Would you recommend us to a friend?
- Do you have any photos to share? Photos add legitimacy to reviews, and they can also help your team figure out what went right and wrong much quicker.
Follow this technique, and never get the same negative review again.
Reviews come with a freebie: Yes, they can serve as referrals to bring in more leads, but they’re also an invaluable way for you to get customer feedback. Use glowing reviews to identify what’s going well with your business. Suss out insights from the negative ones to see what you could be doing better.
Reviews significantly enhanced Tuft & Needle’s mattress quality and their customer satisfaction rating. Review-generated feedback lowered their return rate and increased their net promoter score (NPS) to 85, which is considered a “world-class” key performance indicator (KPI).
“Your job is not just to ask customers how their experience was, but to fix the problems for future customers, so they never experience that again,” Marino explains. “That’s your job. And that’s the hard part.”
How to process your customer reviews
At Tuft & Needle, each piece of user experience feedback interacted with the entire organization and served as a customer insight. This was part of their voice of the customer (VoC) strategy that turned into an action plan.
When a positive review floated in, Marino’s team celebrated it. They took the top comments about what they were doing well and sent them to the team members who were responsible for those elements. The company also mined reviews to get ideas for advertising copy, using exactly what people were saying they were good at.
But it’s actually the negative reviews that Marino valued most. Here’s his advice for getting as much as possible out of a negative product experience:
- Read the entire review.
- Circle the issues mentioned.
- Translate those issues into actionable to-dos.
- Send the list to all employees that can affect the outcome of that bad review .
At Tuft & Needle, that meant the customer experience team first solved the reviewer’s primary pain point, whether it involved overnighting a new mattress or explaining how to properly remove it from the box.
What came next? The mic drop. They then found ways to improve from every single review, so they never get that kind of review again and improved customer retention rates. For example, the team found that customers who kept the mattress for two weeks or more had a higher chance of keeping it than those who sent it back within that two-week timeframe. So they investigated.
Turns out, the functionality of the mattress foam got to the feel they designed only after several nights of sleeping on it. To resolve the complaint, the team built a special machine to mimic the break-in period, so it would feel just as cushy right off the bat. That step reduced their return rate within two weeks of launching it. “Reviews are a blueprint for what you need to do,” says Marino.
When you focus on customer needs and advocacy, your product improves (perhaps even with new features), you reduce churn, and increase customer acquisition. “Eventually your reviews get better and better, and that leads to more customers, which leads to more reviews,” explains Marino. Your customer lifecycle comes to fruition: “That’s when you turn into a brand people know and recognize.”
Creating a customer review process can have a giant impact when you’re a tiny company with big dreams. When Tuft & Needle was a startup, it was entirely bootstrapped for business growth, yet they were able to use customer reviews to reach $170 million in annual revenue. By following the same review template, you can also set up your company for that kind of customer-centric long-term success. And the best part of turning your best customers into brand advocates? Those positive vibes radiate long after someone makes a purchase.
Editor’s note: This story was first published in January 2018. It was part of a series that shared how successful startups and small businesses solved problems with unique hacks.
