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Do you want to differentiate your product on TrustRadius and create a customer-sourced narrative around your unique selling propositions?  


Customized review questions allow you to get even more out of your TrustRadius review content. By working with our research team to craft 2-3 custom questions to add to your review flow, you can collect review content on the topics that will have the most impact for your business.



Other review sites use a standard, open-ended questioning model: “Do you like this product?” That standard questioning model is great for a product narrative that reinforces a static Go To Market (GTM) narrative. TrustRadius reviews gather this information, but also offer the flexibility to support your changing GTM with changing review questions.


Best Practices


The best way to approach your custom questions is to think about what you are saying in your own marketing messaging and sales cycles. What are you talking about with prospects that is not supported by the reviews you are getting on TrustRadius or other sites? That’s what your custom questions should focus on. This will allow you to support every piece of your GTM strategy with social proof.


   

Buyers spend time on these sites to learn about products that are always changing. Your website and marketing materials reflect this, and so should your social proof. Custom review questions can help buyers see that your product has the features they need for their unique use case.


Common challenges that custom questions content from TrustRadius solves


Let the TrustRadius Research team help guide your custom questions to maximize the value of your content. Common topics addressed by custom questions include, but are not limited to:


  • Highlight advantage over existing / new competitor

  • Support a change in market position (up or down?)

  • Content on specific use-case (on the record)

  • Cross-sell/upsell within customer base

  • Drive adoption of a new feature or product

  • Target a specific vertical or use case

  • Gathering both quantitative and qualitative data on common differentiators such as usability, customer support, ease of integration and implementation

  • Improve pipeline efficiency (increase close rates with better objection handling)

  • Boost SEO (content for important search terms)


Can you relate to any of these currently? How can TrustRadius assist with any ongoing or future business challenges, and if you could wave a magic wand, what would your customers be saying about these changes to help deliver trust to buyers? Discuss this with your Implementation Specialist and CSM.

 

 Custom Questions Recommendations 

  • Neutral and Non-Leading

  • Short and To-the-Point

  • Clearly Stated

    • Framing Statement

    • Question Prompt

  • Probe Specific Topic Deeper

    • Address common buyer objections

    • Validate key marketing claims

  • Consider Context

  • Avoid Repeating Topics


Custom Questions in a Review Refresh


Your product does not stop changing after your first review campaign, and neither should your review feedback. TrustRadius offers Review Refresh campaigns that go back to existing reviewers to ask for additional feedback. 


When your product and strategy undergo GTM changes, TR doesn’t just sit there and let the existing reviews expire and become irrelevant. We help you push your users to revisit their review and REFRESH their record of experience, leaving you with even more fresh GTM content from the people who had left reviews in the past. 


This is a great opportunity for additional custom questions that gather more depth on product strengths or differentiators. Do you outperform your competition in customer support? We’ve got a set of review questions to help you highlight that. Is there a feature or module that only a subset of your reviewers use? Do you want to drive adoption of that feature? Creating a refresh section with questions about this feature or module can get you rich, in-depth content you can use as social proof for upsells or driving adoption.  And you don’t have to add questions that are irrelevant to some users to the first-time review, which could increase abandonment rates.


Creating a customized review section with our research team takes a bit of time. The process is most successful when customers have run a few review campaigns and are familiar with the review content they’ve generated so far, and what types of content they’d like to see from the refresh campaign.


Use Case Examples


BlueJeans Use Case:

BlueJeans wanted to use custom questions to highlight differentiation on the superior audio quality in its Meetings product compared to competitors. TrustRadius custom questioning model provides targeted, specific channels of opportunities for your customers to elaborate on their experience while you guide the narrative. Notice in the BlueJeans review example below, the question aligns to elicit a direct response from the customer.  

  


The reviews sourced from this TrustRadius verified user for BlueJeans derived concise feedback driven by the organization to highlight their superior audio quality, this shows the true benefit of the TrustRadius product.



The unique TrustRadius custom questioning model sculpts the narrative and removes the ability for the customer to rant, or give random feedback about the organization or product. Click the brand for more BlueJeans Use Case



Rubrik Use Case:

TrustRadius is the only review platform that asks about “Alternatives Considered”. The language of the question can be fine tuned to prompt specific competitors or to elicit a more tailored response about the “why” for switching etc. This distinctive TrustRadius custom question extracts the competitors your customers are comparing you against. The Rubrik image is an example of the “Alternatives Considered” question, as the reviewing customer views it in the TrustRadius review process.



This image is an example of what the review looks like to the public on TrustRadius for the Rubrik client, as you can see the competitor is listed specifically with an immediate syndicated response from the customer on how and why Rubrik is better than the competitor.



Veeam Use Case:

This particular TrustRadius custom question extracted upsell opportunities for our Veeam Backup & Replication client. This image is an example of a syndicated question for “Future Workloads”, as the reviewing customer views it in the TrustRadius review process.


Veeam wanted to identify upsell opportunities within their customer base. We asked reviewers which workloads they don’t use but could utilize in their environments.



This is an example of what the review looks like to the public on TrustRadius for the Veeam client, as you can see the multi select menu syndicated into a response from the customer. Click the brand for more Veeam Backup &   Replication Use Case 



 


SolarWinds Use Case:

SolarWinds wanted proof points to show that customers using multiple products in their portfolio were getting more value. The TrustRadius custom question was designed to ask reviewers to share their full SolarWinds portfolio and to describe the value they were getting. 


This particular TrustRadius custom question generated information for SolarWinds on what products their customers are pairing with their product. The image shown is how the reviewing customer will view it in the TrustRadius review process.



This is an example of what the review looks like to the public on TrustRadius for the SolarWinds client, as you can see the multi-textbox area was  syndicated into a response from the customer. Click the brand for more SolarWinds Use Case 






Common FAQs


What should I do if these don’t seem like the right questions to ask my customers?

Did we get something wrong? If so, tell us! We’ll be happy to set up a call for you with one of our research analysts so we can go over your priorities. We can review the custom questions we’ve designed so far and approach them from a different angle if needed. Please respond to this email and let the researcher know you would like to set up a call if this is the case.


The questions look great, what should I do if I’m totally happy with the custom questions?

Let us know! We need you to approve the custom questions before we can publish them on our website and launch a review campaign.

 

Where did these questions come from?

The custom questions reflect your answers to the custom questions form along with our own review question best practices. They can be entirely new or pulled from our library of optional questions. If the researcher chooses one of the optional questions, they will tailor it to your product.


Can I make changes to the standard review questions or remove them?

No, the standard review questions are designed to eliminate review response bias and provide buyers with a helpful point of comparison across products. They are the same for all products across our website and cannot be changed or removed.


How many custom review questions can I have?

There is room for us to create up to 3 custom questions per product. We aim to ask 10-11 total review questions per product, including both custom and standard questions. Going over this limit increases the likelihood that your customers might not finish writing their reviews.


In the ROI question, can we say “what positive impact...” instead of “what positive or negative impact…”?

While we can’t only include the word “positive” in this phrase (as it would lead to biased review responses), we can remove the phrase “positive or negative” entirely. The first part of the question would then read “What impact (i.e. Return on Investment or ROI)....”. If you would like to make this change, please let the researcher know via email.


What’s the purpose of setting up custom questions?

Our goal is to prompt the most relevant reviewer feedback and collect high-quality, descriptive review quotes. Custom questions help us highlight your products key differentiators, value proposition(s), and overall strengths.