The Road to #1 Rank

As our company started creating bigger impact in the market, we were looking for ways to focus that energy in proper directions. It was the time our Marketing efforts were kicking off, and we needed more ways to point small businesses toward our product. We had no formal process for gathering customer reviews, no dedicated team, and no automation in place. But the need planted the seed for what would become a years-long journey, transforming our product into the best-rated in its category on G2, a leading review site, and many others.

Starting with NPS Scores

To focus on NPS 10s first made sense. These were the customers who had already signaled their loyalty, and they seemed like the natural group to target. From 2016 to 2019, the approach was entirely manual. I combed at night through our NPS data as I always did, but this time I also identified a few promoters, and reached out with personalized messages asking for their honest feedback. Early on, I realized that segmentation was key. A new customer excited about onboarding needed a different message than a long-term client who had just renewed. By tailoring the outreach to specific customer experiences, the response rates began to improve.

The results were promising, but the volume of promoters quickly became overwhelming. Even focusing exclusively on NPS 10s, it was too much for one person to source at night, especially while refining messaging and testing outreach strategies. It was clear that to sustain and grow the effort, we needed more hands.

Scaling with a Team

In 2019, we formed a small team of three internal members to focus on improving customer experience throughout the organization, and they started combing NPS scores and other signals. They were a natural fit to drive this initiative further alongside their main responsibility. For positive scores, their first task was to standardize and expand the process I had started. With the team in place, we could fully focus on operationalizing the workflow:

1. Identifying potential reviewers by processing NPS promoters & positive CSATs consistently.
2. Segmenting the population to align with experiences they have.
3. Peronalizing asks in the outreach to increase effectiveness and refine our approach.

Having a team allowed us to process a much higher volume of clients while maintaining the quality of outreach. Once the team became comfortable with the system, we began exploring ways to make the system more versatile. Catching at-risk clients from day one too — but that’s another story. Here, it also led to expanding support for multiple review sites.

Supporting Multiple Review Sites

Although the primary goal was always to increase our visibility (but also be #1) on our main review site, expanding the system to support multiple review sites and marketplaces was a natural next step. Starting with 3 in 2016, by 2020 the system could engage customers across multiple review sites, allowing us to generate reviews on platforms relevant to different audiences.

This expansion wasn’t about diverting focus — the first site remained our priority, where we aimed to collect the highest volume of reviews and achieve the best results. However, our products complexity and flexibility made it possible to also target a broader audience without losing momentum on our primary goal.

We started optimizing the wording we used, and how we referred to our product when asking for reviews; knowing that customers are likely to use the same language we use when describing our product. This worked so well that it allowed us to start ranking quite high in other categories as well, reaching top 5 spots in around 15 categories at one time. This included some pretty hard categories to rank in as well — for a while, we held the 2 spot on the “CRM for SMB” list, just under the CRM company. Further, in their marketplace, we ranked higher than the automation solution they own.

Automating and Optimizing

Once the team had established a scalable system, we introduced automation to handle repetitive tasks. This included tasks like classifying feedback, identifying reviewers, drafting outreach templates, and logging responses. Automation wasn’t about removing the human touch — it was about freeing up the team to focus on refining messaging, identifying new opportunities, and improving success rates.

We implemented the system that continued the conversation after a customer left the review. The result: we got even more reviews, valuable feedback, new partners, and new clients. Later, this system became a direct source of data and built out relationships with our clients for a number of projects and initiatives; we found the candidates for our Customer Advisory Board, Study Halls and other events, product surveys, to name a few.

The automation made it possible to handle larger volumes of outreach efficiently while maintaining the quality and personalization that had been critical to the system’s success. The result was a review generation process that could scale with the business and adapt to new opportunities.

Achieving Rank #1

By 2021, the results of our focused effort became clear: we officially became the #1 ranked product in our category on our main review site. This achievement was the culmination of years of iteration, teamwork, and dedication to the process.

Over the next year, the system continued to generate results. By 2022, we had collected over 10,000 honest, organically sourced reviews, with an average rating of 4.6. These reviews weren’t just a metric — they were a testament to the trust and value we had built with our customers. Even more important, they were deeply rooted in our true customer experiences.

The system’s success extended beyond the first review site. While the focus on the main platform drove our #1 rank, the system’s ability to support multiple review sites added significant value, giving us visibility across platforms and audiences.

Lessons Learned

This process reinforced several key principles that shaped our approach:

1. Start small, but stay consistent. The initial manual effort may have been small-scale, but it laid the foundation for everything that followed.
2. Segment and personalize. Understanding the customer and tailoring the outreach were non-negotiable for success.
3. Scale through teamwork. Building a dedicated team allowed us to handle the volume and expand our capabilities.
4. Standardize, optimize, automate. This progression enabled us to scale without losing the human touch.
5. Focus on the primary goal. While the system became versatile, the focus on achieving rank #1 on the main review site remained constant.

From a Simple Ask to a Badge of Honor

What began as a simple question in 2016, “Can we get more reviews on this site?”, became a journey that transformed our product and our organization. By focusing on segmentation, connecting signals across tools, and building a system grounded in standardization, we achieved a milestone few can claim: the best-rated product in our category.

The title of “best rated” wasn’t achieved through shortcuts or overgeneralization. It was the result of continuous improvement, experimentation, and a commitment to doing the work with our customers by our side. And that’s the story how we scaled while increasing the number of customers we reach.