Testimonials From Customers Who Got a Discount

The offer behind the quote

A discount on the next visit for anyone who writes a few lines. An entry in a draw for a gift card. A free treatment for a customer willing to be quoted on the website.

These are common, well-meant ways to collect testimonials, and the words they produce are often perfectly genuine.

The problem is what the reader does not know. A testimonial on a website reads as a customer's unprompted opinion, and a reward changes that.

The fix is rarely to stop asking. It is to say plainly what was given, and to reward honesty rather than praise.

Rewards that count as a connection

• A discount on a later visit or order.
• A gift card or a free product.
• An entry in a prize draw.
• A free service given in return for the words.
• A relationship: staff, family, friends or suppliers.

The last carries no reward at all, which is why owners forget it. A glowing review from the owner's sister has a connection readers would want to know about.

Why readers care

Testimonials persuade because they are assumed to be independent: people with nothing to gain, describing what happened to them.

A reward tilts that. People who have just been given something tend to write warmly, and those with a poor experience rarely bother to claim the discount.

The result can be a page of real quotes that still gives a misleading picture, which is the part the rules care about.

And a reader who finds one undisclosed reward tends to doubt the whole page, honest quotes included.

What the rules expect, in general

Federal competition law prohibits representations that are false or misleading in promoting a business, and it looks at the general impression, not only the literal words.

A testimonial the business puts in its advertising or on its website is part of what the business says. If a reward behind it is hidden, the impression that it was spontaneous can mislead.

The advertising industry's own code takes a similar line: a testimonial should reflect the genuine, current opinion of someone who actually used the product or service.

None of this is legal advice; it describes the rules in general terms. A specific promotion, particularly a contest, is worth a lawyer's look before it starts.

When an incentive is acceptable

Rewarding feedback is reasonable. Rewarding praise is not.

Offer the same reward to every customer, whatever they say, and make that clear when you ask. Never choose which comments earn it, and never edit the words to change their meaning.

Disclose the reward wherever the words are used: the website, a brochure, a post quoting them.

Prize draws bring rules of their own in Canada, such as published contest rules and, usually, a skill-testing question. That is one more reason to keep any incentive simple.

How to disclose it on the site

Put the disclosure beside each testimonial, in the same size of type, in plain words.

Something like: received a discount on a later visit in return for honest feedback. It takes one line, and it reads as the honest note it is.

A footnote at the bottom of the page, or a sentence on a separate policy page, does not do the job. Readers meet the quote, not the policy.

Older quotes nobody can trace

Many testimonials pages hold quotes gathered long ago, by a former employee, under arrangements nobody now remembers.

If you cannot say whether a reward was involved, or whether the customer agreed to be quoted, the safest course is to retire the quote and gather a new one properly.

Six recent testimonials with honest notes beside them are worth more than twenty of uncertain origin.

A worked example

A day spa in a converted house near a town centre offered fifteen dollars off the next treatment to clients who wrote a few lines about their visit.

The best comments went onto the website's testimonials page, with first names and treatments. Nothing on the page mentioned the discount.

At the front desk's suggestion, some clients also posted their comments as reviews on the spa's Google listing, and claimed the same discount.

Then a review appeared from a client's friend, asking publicly how many of the spa's reviews had been paid for. The quotes were genuine; the connection had simply never been mentioned.

The owner made three changes. Each testimonial now carries a line noting the discount. Feedback is collected on a card at the desk, with the same discount whatever it says.

And the front desk no longer links any reward to Google reviews. The owner replied to the review, explaining exactly that.

The discount itself was never the problem. Leaving it unmentioned made eleven honest quotes look like something they were not, and tying it to Google reviews broke Google's rules.

Review sites have their own rules

Testimonials on your own site are yours to manage. Reviews on other sites are not.

Google's rules for reviews on its listings do not allow businesses to offer anything in exchange for a review, and some review sites object to businesses asking at all.

Reviews that break those rules can be removed, and the business has no say in it.

So keep incentives, if you use them at all, for feedback collected directly. Ask for public reviews with nothing attached.

The counter-case

Most testimonials need no disclosure at all.

A thank-you email or card a customer sent unprompted, quoted with their permission, has no connection to declare. A loyalty discount every customer receives anyway is not a reward for the words.

And a business that has never offered anything in return for feedback has nothing to change, beyond keeping it that way.

Where a reward was given, though, say so beside the words, and reward honesty rather than praise.

The testimonials page

1. List every testimonial on the site.
2. Note which came with a reward.
3. Add a plain disclosure beside each of those.
4. Offer the same reward whatever the feedback says.
5. Stop rewarding reviews on Google and other sites.
6. Remove quotes you cannot trace.
7. Ask a lawyer before running any contest.

Step three takes an afternoon and settles most of the question. A reader told about the discount can weigh the words fairly, and nothing on the page depends on them not knowing.

Answering the reviews customers have already written is covered in reviews left over the holidays.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.