Article • 9 min read
11 examples of customer testimonials to build credibility
With these customer testimonial examples, learn how to source, create, share, and use effective pages for the greatest brand impact.
By Patrick Grieve
Last updated February 5, 2025
According to BigCommerce data, 72 percent of customers agree that positive reviews and customer testimonials directly impact how much they trust a company. While potential customers look for things like competitive pricing, features, and more, customer testimonials are often the most powerful factor in convincing leads to become customers.
Much like word-of-mouth marketing from someone the customer knows, a glowing customer testimonial tells the potential consumer that others have found the product helpful. Testimonials are a goldmine where real-world customer experiences (CX) shine, showcasing everything from product and service quality to service impact.
In this article, we define customer testimonials, examine why they matter, explore the common types, and learn how to source effective customer testimonials.
More in this guide:
What is a customer testimonial?
A customer testimonial is an endorsement of a business’s product or service provided by a satisfied customer. Companies often ask for relevant testimonials from happy or long-term clients, then present their recommendations as featured quotes, articles, videos, podcasts, and more.
While anyone can contribute a customer review on a product page or social media, testimonials are carefully curated to showcase only positive customer stories.
Why are customer testimonials important?
![The five benefits of customer testimonials, including enhanced loyalty and trust and validated claims.](https://d1eipm3vz40hy0.cloudfront.net/images/AMER/customer-testimonial-benefits-optimized.png)
Customer testimonials are important because most buyers don’t want to simply “take your word for it.” Prospective customers want real-life examples of satisfied buyers, so testimonials elevate the Voice of the Customer (VoC) and provide social proof, reassuring customers that a product or service will work as advertised.
When well-presented and designed, one of the greatest benefits of customer testimonials is how they prove a product’s scalability and show off large-scale implementations. Testimonials often highlight a company’s biggest, most recognizable clients to establish credibility and capacity to provide enterprise-level solutions.
What’s more, testimonials are excellent at representing brand values, customer focus, and product and service capabilities, whether you’re a customer-focused startup or an enterprise company.
11 types of customer testimonials and examples
There are several ways to present and organize customer testimonials. Whether you’re writing a blog post or shooting a video, the goal is always to highlight your brand’s value to a customer in a way that’s engaging, digestible, and to the point.
1. Quote testimonials
Quote testimonials are short, impactful statements from satisfied customers highlighting a company’s key benefits, features, or experiences. Because these statements of social proof are short and sweet, they typically appear on:
Websites
Marketing materials
Sales collateral
Quote testimonials are excellent at capturing a customer’s authentic voice and beliefs in just a few words, offering potential buyers a genuine perspective on the value of a product.
Quote testimonial example: Petal
Petal places customer quotes on a review-specific website page to give interested leads a real-time look into product capabilities, uses, and customer satisfaction. Customers can also use #paywithPetal to easily submit quotes to be featured on this page.
2. Social media testimonials
Social media customer testimonials are featured directly on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and more. These testimonials often feature customer recommendations, praise, or reviews and are highly public endorsements.
This type of testimonial is prized for its shareability, offering potential customers immediate insights into a brand’s reputation and growing customer loyalty across social sites.
Social media testimonial example: Spotify
With Spotify Wrapped one of the most anticipated drops every December, Spotify knows how to leverage social media testimonials. Users frequently share their experiences and stats across various platforms—using Spotify-created templates explicitly made for social media sites—serving as powerful, personalized testimonials that showcase the platform’s customer obsession.
3. Customer testimonial pages
Customer testimonial pages are dedicated hubs on a company’s website for storing and sharing various customer success stories and endorsements. These pages are often organized by industry, use case, or customer segment and provide comprehensive views into a company’s products and services.
Testimonial page example: Zendesk
The Zendesk customer testimonials page lets visitors filter stories by industry, use case, and location. There are hundreds of testimonials to peruse, with dozens of filters for sorting them. Buyers can also scroll through thumbnails that link to full-length customer testimonial articles featuring name brands..
4. Consumer review testimonials
A customer review testimonial is posted on third-party platforms like Trustpilot, G2, and Capterra. These testimonials are usually detailed, including information about:
Pricing and free trials
Specific features
Use cases
Customer service
Benefits and challenges
These should be transparent and viewed as unbiased because they typically come from a wide range of users.
Review testimonial example: Zoom
By managing its customer review testimonials on third-party review platforms like G2, Zoom experiences the benefits of this type of testimonial. Users consistently leave detailed reviews praising the platform’s ease of use, reliability, and robust features, demonstrating Zoom’s versatility and widespread appeal.
5. Influencer testimonials
Influencer testimonials, or authority testimonials, showcase industry leaders, celebrities, or social media personalities endorsing a product or service to their followers. These testimonials leverage the influencer’s credibility and reach to build customer trust and brand interest with new and emerging audiences.
Plus, when brand advocates share genuine experiences, they capitalize on their self-built authority and credibility, encouraging leads to make purchasing decisions quickly (but with confidence) based on recommendations that feel personal and authentic.
Influencer testimonial example: Stio
Stio uses brand ambassadors and their real-life stories to promote their products while advocating for their brand and a specific lifestyle. Each ambassador page uses a series of FAQs and imagery to show Stio’s products in use. Ambassadors use social media and other sites to advertise and speak about their experiences.
6. Case study testimonials
Case study testimonials are in-depth, narrative-driven accounts about specific customers and complex problems. These testimonials are comprehensive and typically include:
Background information
Challenges faced
Solutions implemented
Measurable results
For example, this Lush case study shows how the brand achieved a 369 percent ROI with a payback period of less than a year with Zendesk.
Influencer testimonial example: Stio
For Lumen, a telecommunications company delivering dedicated internet access, customer case stories are the name of the game. Its customer testimonials page is filled with industry-specific studies of the brand’s success, including a Minnesota Vikings case study boasting high-quality results and state-of-the-art solutions.
7. Customer testimonial videos
Customer testimonial videos are dynamic, visual narratives that literally put a face to your customer base. Although they can be more time-intensive to produce, they combine verbal storytelling with emotional visual cues and highlight customer experiences, challenges, and success stories on camera.
Customer testimonial videos also allow potential customers to see genuine human emotions and connect more deeply with customer reviews.
Video testimonial example: Dropbox
Dropbox testimonials are compelling videos that feature customers explaining in their own words how the brand’s product and tools have solved their collaboration and file-sharing challenges, complete with screen recordings and personal anecdotes.
8. Interview testimonials
Interview testimonials use a conversational format to dive into customer stories. These longer-form testimonials often appear in blog posts, podcasts, or video series, providing a comprehensive look at the buyer’s journey with the brand. Interview testimonials can use customer success interview questions and other Q&A tools to guide conversations about product or service challenges and successes.
Interview testimonial example: Delighted
Delighted creates customer profiles showcasing successful customer stories but sets them up as Q&A articles instead of regular blog posts or videos. These interviews go beyond simple product praise, delving into how the brand’s tools support customer goals across industries.
9. Blog post testimonials
Instead of just featuring a few flattering quotes, consider turning particularly rich customer stories into full blog posts. Narrative-driven customer testimonial articles paint a clearer picture of a company’s relationship with a client, creating space for more details and takeaways. Plus, they offer valuable insights while simultaneously serving as powerful marketing content.
Article testimonial example: Slack
Slack uses in-depth articles to showcase specific goals and product use cases, especially those that yield a high ROI. For example, Slack’s Verizon customer story discusses the product’s ease of use, deployability, and efficiency by highlighting Slack Connect and Workflow Builder.
10. Customer testimonial podcasts
Customer testimonial podcasts are audio testimonials where customers discuss their brand experience with a company representative. Podcasts tend to be longer than quick video clips or short blog posts, so podcast testimonials must be a subtler component of a larger, captivating story.
These testimonials can be long-form customer experience podcasts or shorter-form audio clips for social media, but they must allow for deep, nuanced conversations about a brand’s capabilities.
Podcast testimonial example: 37signals
37signals, the parent company of the project management platform Basecamp, creates and distributes a podcast called REWORK. While not exclusively about customer stories, the podcast often features entrepreneurs and businesses sharing their experiences with 37signal’s management tool—and their interpretation of the company’s signals or organizational ideas—serving as powerful testimonials.
11. Press review testimonials
Press review testimonials are professional evaluations and endorsements of a product or service published in reputable media outlets, industry publications, or by well-known tech reviewers. Due to their perceived objectivity and reviewer expertise, these testimonials can carry credible, third-party assessments of a product’s value.
Media testimonial example: Apple
Apple consistently leverages press review testimonials for its products. When publications like WIRED, TechCrunch, or The Verge publish reviews of new Apple products or features, these become powerful testimonials that influence consumer perception and purchasing decisions.
How to source customer testimonials
Whether you want to showcase customer satisfaction, product capabilities and features, or another type of story, consider the following methods for sourcing testimonials.
Automatically request customer feedback
Automating the collection of customer feedback can help teams systemically gather testimonial sources and stories. Implementing these requests at key customer touchpoints—like after a purchase or at specific intervals of product usage—enables companies to consistently capture real-time insights.
Teams can set up automated triggers through customer relationship management (CRM) software or specialized feedback tools that send timely, personalized requests. Companies can then implement customer feedback analysis to analyze these responses.
Send out customer surveys
Customer surveys are structured to solicit feedback that can later be used in customer testimonials. Different types of surveys help teams gather testimonial-worthy content, including:
- General surveys: Broad surveys to gather CX insights.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys: Specific surveys to identify enthusiastic brand advocates.
- Customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys: Specific surveys to pinpoint moments of exceptional service or product performance.
Craft your surveys so they measure your intended metrics—including CSAT scores and NPS scores—while inviting customers to share stories that can be developed into compelling testimonials.
Customer survey question examples:
Open-ended customer survey questions should encourage detailed, narrative-style responses. Consider using questions like:
Please describe a specific challenge you were able to overcome using [Product Name/Service Name].
Can you describe when our customer support team went above and beyond for you?
Thinking back on your journey with [Product Name/Service Name], what unexpected benefits have you discovered that you didn’t anticipate?
Reach out to loyal, long-term customers
Long-term consumers exhibit customer loyalty for a reason: They believe in your product or service because of their previous positive experiences. Whether you met their needs or their changing customer expectations (or both), these customers have seen your company through multiple iterations, making their testimonials particularly credible and nuanced.
Use personalized acknowledgments highlighting the milestones you’ve achieved to request testimonials from long-term customers. Loyalty programs can also encourage buyers to share their thoughts and experiences, encouraging them to speak candidly about your sustained value and transformation.
By treating these customers as true partners rather than just sources of testimonials, you’ll collect more authentic and powerful stories while strengthening customer engagement and loyalty.
Best practices for customer testimonial page design
![An example of a customer testimonial page with three testimonials, images, and quotes.](https://d1eipm3vz40hy0.cloudfront.net/images/AMER/customer-testimonial-page-design-optimized.jpg)
Creating impactful and compelling customer testimonial pages is nearly as important as your type of testimonial. Consider these best practices to create aesthetic pages that draw potential buyers in.
- Highlight features and use cases: Use subsections to highlight your product or service’s specific features or use cases. Also, consider organizing your testimonials by industry, tool, or solution.
- Align with your goals: Match the testimonials you use and feature to your business’s goals. For example, if you want to attract enterprise clients, prioritize testimonials from large corporations that speak to scalability, security, and complex problem-solving.
- Stick to brand colors and typography: Prioritize visual consistency by using your brand’s color palette and typography to design testimonial cards, quote blocks, and customer images.
- Use high-quality images: Request and use professional, high-resolution brand photos that look authentic and approachable. Avoid stock photography and overly staged images.
- Be specific: Choose testimonials providing concrete details about how a product or service solved a problem. Share exact metrics and measurable evidence of your brand’s value.
Not every customer testimonial page will be the same, but they should be cohesive with a brand’s overall design. Consider featuring multiple forms of media—images, videos, audio clips, and more—to reach a larger audience, and update your testimonials regularly to showcase your continuing success.
Frequently asked questions
Harness the power of customer testimonials
Instead of relying only on generic quotes or sales slogans to market your products and services, turn to authentic customer testimonials to cut through the marketing clutter. Capturing the written, spoken, and visual moments that demonstrate your company’s real-world impact allows you to connect with potential customers on a human level. However, these narratives require you to provide exceptional service for even the most complex interactions.
To ensure top-notch service and support, invest in customer service software to transform potential leads into satisfied customers—and irreplaceable true stories.