The secret to growing your business is… using the correct tense

When it comes to optimising reviews of your business, does it make a difference whether your customer said they ‘loved’ your product, or they ‘love’ your product? That you ‘had excellent service’, or ‘have excellent service’? 

I’ve shared before about how to deal with negative online reviews. We can prevent negative reviews from snowballing by making sure the first review we receive is a positive one, and take comfort knowing that, thanks to the ‘Blemishing Effect’, a small bit of bad news can actually bolster your customer’s commitment to the purchase!

But what about reviews in general? What makes one review more persuasive than another?

In-tense reviews

According to research by Packard, Berger and Boghrati (2023), whether past or present tense is used can change how reader’s regard the review and your product.

In short, if someone says they ‘loved your product’ it is less effective at influencing others than if they say they ‘love your product’. A statement using the past tense, it turns out, is perceived as one’s person’s view at a particular moment in time. Sure, the product might have been good for them back then, but what about now? 

In contrast, a review using the present tense seems to signal the quality of the product will continue into the future. If I ‘love’ a book it means I continue to feel positively towards it, whereas if I ‘loved’ that book, I may have subsequently changed my mind.

The other benefit of a present tense review is that it broadens its applicability. A past tense statement like ‘they had excellent service’ implies it was the subjective judgment of the reviewer, and therefore subject to their expectations and their experience. 

Saying ‘they have excellent service’ is perceived as being a statement endorsing the business’ ability to provide this standard to everyone. This means readers feel more comfortable relying on the review.

Great, so now we know that present tense is best, how on earth do we get them to use it?

Encouraging present tense

The challenge is how to influence reviewers to convey their opinion using present rather than tense? If you can edit them ethically, and with the reviewer’s permission, that’s ideal.

Beyond that, we need to rely on influencing them through the tone of our conversations, websites, Apps, invoices and emails. In other words, use present tense yourself so you signal that is the way we communicate together.

More directly, if you are requesting a review from your customer, make sure you phrase questions using present tense. For example, ‘How do you like our service?’ rather than ‘How did you like your service?’

Tense matters to more than reviews

The use of tense doesn’t just impact how persuasive reviews are. As author Jonah Berger writes in his book Magic Words, imagine discussing a job applicant. Someone who ‘seems a good fit’ is more likely to engage consensus than ‘seemed a good fit’, and we’re better off presenting results from a project as what we ‘find’ rather than ‘found’.

Time and again, behavioural research like this shows us that optimising our businesses means focussing on small but significant tweaks such as getting tense right. You don’t always need to manufacture more products or discount your services to gain and retain your customers.