(hint: it wasn’t just marketing advice or website help)
In learning how to analyze customer feedback, it’s easy to think of it as just the glowing testimonials we collect for our websites, but those aren’t the only places where clients reveal how they truly feel about our work. Sometimes, the most revealing insights aren’t the ones that were carefully crafted as a review, but the offhand remarks, the thank-you messages, or the unprompted stories clients share.
Those nice feedback-filled emails sitting in your inbox, survey responses stored away, or heartfelt messages in the DMs? They’re not just pretty paragraphs to eventually post on your Stories or put up on your website. They’re extremely handy navigation tools - breadcrumbs leading you to a description of your work and details of your impact that may surprise even you.
I know... asking for reviews feels like fishing for compliments, and reading the ones you do get back feels awkward (sort of like the grown-up business version of a report card) but if you can sit with this for a minute, you’ll be able to see what I mean about the breadcrumbs.
I’ve noticed something really interesting in working closely with hundreds of solo entrepreneurs. More often than not, the business owners who struggle the most with identifying what makes them special or unique - why someone should book with them rather than another service provider - are actually the ones sitting on the most powerful stories. They just haven’t reworked their rave reviews (aka the testimonials their clients have sent) into Positioning Signals - specific details that prove their distinct impact to:
others >>> bringing about new eyes on their offers and new clients in their services,
and themselves >>> leading to a relief from imposter syndrome.
Positioning Signals are the words, themes, and emotions that consistently appear when you analyze your customer feedback - and they reveal what truly sets your business apart.
This’ll all make more sense after I tell you about a client named Calaïse I worked with last year-an occupational therapist who felt completely stuck when it came to describing her work.
She came to me frustrated, saying, “I know I help people, but I don’t know how to put it into words without sounding like every other OT.” She had spent hours tweaking the copy on her website and social media, but everything felt either too clinical or too vague.
We started by looking at the emails and testimonials she had received from past clients-the words they used to describe what had changed for them after working with her. At first, she skimmed through them quickly, brushing off phrases like “You made me feel like I wasn’t broken” and “I finally have hope that my body can work with me, not against me.”
When we looked closer, a pattern started to emerge. Her clients weren’t just talking about improved mobility or pain relief. They were talking about trust - trust in their own bodies, trust in their ability to heal, trust in the process. That was her Positioning Signal.
She wasn’t just another OT helping people move better. She was helping them rewrite their relationships with their bodies and build trust that hadn’t been there for a long time.
Once we uncovered that, everything changed for Calaïse…
She didn’t feel awkward in saying things like “the best OT in Vermont” because she didn’t need to. Now that she knew she was the best OT for people struggling with a lack of trust in their bodies and their healing, it completely changed how she talked about her work and was able to lean into the words her clients had already given her throughout her marketing and messaging.
What had previously felt like a repetitive client load of familiar injuries and symptoms now felt like a whole new purpose. The through-line of trust was a very different reason to come to the clinic each morning - a powerful sense of motivation that had eluded her before was now her new normal.
Surfacing the concept of trust in her client conversations helped her relate to her clients in a brand new way. Because that desire was spoken aloud instead of being an undercurrent of her work, everything started to feel more aligned for her clients, and self-trust could be built sooner in their healing journey.
We’ll come back to Calaïse‘s story in a bit, but for now, I’d like you to try something with me. Think of it as a way to find patterns in your feedback - and an opportunity to bust out your most colourful highlighters.
The Review Rainbow - An Exercise to Help You Learn How To Analyze Customer Feedback
If you’ve ever looked at a stack of reviews and thought, Okay, great… but what do I actually do with this?, you’re not alone. Most solo business owners see testimonials as something to copy-paste onto a website, but they’re actually layered with insights about your work.
The Review Rainbow is a process I’ve developed to help you extract those hidden insights - sorting through your feedback in a structured way to identify recurring themes, unexpected strengths, and the language your clients naturally use to describe your impact.
In my full Review Rainbow process, we categorize feedback into seven key themes - but for now, here’s a quick way to get started with just three of them:
1. Grab 3-5 testimonials, survey responses, emails, or comments.
If in your selection process you find some feedback feels mixed or unclear, set that review aside and select another for your small sample. Not every review will reveal a Positioning Signal or contain nothing but glowing feedback, and that’s okay.
The longer the reviews, the easier it may be to notice patterns, but on the other hand, some of your shorter testimonials may be your most impactful ones. You know your feedback best - so trust yourself as you pull a small sample of testimonials. If at some point during the exercise you decide you want to switch, you can always make your sample size larger and highlight a lil longer.
Got your 3-5 reviews chosen? Let’s continue.
2. Use three highlighter colours (or digital equivalents) to mark different aspects of the feedback:
One color for specific phrases clients use to describe their experience (words that feel distinct or different from how you usually talk about your work).
Another for unexpected themes that show up (things people mention that aren’t what you thought they were hiring you for).
A third for emotional cues (anything that speaks to a feeling like relief, confidence, ease, or a personal transformation).
3. Step back and scan for patterns. What words or ideas repeat? What surprises you? Use the questions from the next section to explore these insights further.
Understanding how you can organize the client feedback you analyze makes it easier to spot patterns and refine your messaging with more intention. That means that if you resist the urge to skip step 2 and actually highlight 👀 it’ll be so much easier to spot patterns, promise!
If you’ve ever felt like client feedback is a scattered puzzle - bits and pieces of praise, constructive notes, and unexpected observations - it can help to categorize them. Try grouping what clients share into broader themes: practical outcomes (like time saved, clarity gained, or tangible results), emotional impact (like feeling more confident, supported, or seen), and experiential insights (like what they loved about working with you).
My Journey in Analyzing My Customer Feedback
Personally, when I first went through this process, one word loomed large across all of my feedback: decisions. Once I noticed it, I saw it everywhere…
Working with Chantelle is an incredible experience! I initially reached out to her for website help but received so much more than that. As I struggled to make decisions, Chantelle helped me come to see building and growing my business as a series of intentional acts designed to create and nurture a living thing. All of the decisions that had seemed momentous and impossible became opportunities to explore what could be and I now see my work as a living and growing thing to be nurtured and directed and redirected if necessary, aligned with my life and integrity and as much a part of my creativity as the jewellery I design and make. And none of this is overwhelming; it is actually exciting! I am not afraid of mistakes anymore. Every difficulty is a learning opportunity and a chance to build something better and more beautiful and sustaining in my relationship with my clients, my work and my life. Her guidance was impeccable - never heavy-handed or difficult to understand. The decisions were mine, but she gave me a far better framework from which to make them and plenty of new tools to work through things when I got stuck. Much of this felt totally organic to working with her, rather than pro forma, and I feel tremendously empowered and energized by the experience. I could not recommend working with her more highly, in any facet you might want to engage on.
“
There are several great tools in here. I think the biggest take away for me is I now have this very concrete and cohesive document I am building that can reign in my ideas into something simple and actionable. I can then teach the process to my managers and give them tools to make decisions/present their ideas in a way that feels aligned and organized. “
Aligned Action: The Workshop surpassed my expectations in information quality, overall experience and breakthroughs. While every facet was packed with eye-opening information, exercises and 'take home work' to push my business forward, Chantelle delivered each lesson in a digestible way leaving me feeling inspired to enact change. On top of walking away with confidence that I can run my business in a way that is true to me, one of the most valuable takeaways are the tools I now have to make informed and intuitive decisions.
I have confidence that these tangible exercises and tips will aid in a lifetime of decision making as my business continues to evolve.
“
It was clear, FINALLY, how and why I’m different from other business coaches and mentors - my focus on aligned decision-making.
Not in 5 years of business was I able to uncover this in an online course or worksheet. I truly couldn’t see my entire purpose for myself before I noticed the word 'decision' popping off the page after I analyzed my customer feedback.
Getting all of my testimonials together in one place and analyzing my feedback created a complete transformation in my business. I can’t tell you how relieved I felt upon discovering this word and realizing what it meant for my business - the feeling of clarity was truly priceless.
Now that you’ve started looking at your reviews with highlighter in hand, you’re close to a breakthrough of your own. These questions will help you to go deeper and get more from client words…
Questions to Help You Analyze Your Customer Feedback and Find Your Own Positioning Signals
Ask yourself:
1. What ideas keep showing up across these different reviews that aren’t typical for my niche?
Ex: Clients repeatedly mentioning how they felt emotionally supported during the lactation journey, even though I focus on practical feeding techniques. Or, people sharing how their confidence in making design choices has grown, even though my service is about social media.
2. Are there any lines that give me a little something of a spark? Which words make me feel seen and/or a little vulnerable?
Ex: A client saying, “This was the first time I didn’t feel like I had to apologize for my body,” when I thought I was just providing posture support. Or, a client mentioning that she felt spoken to “as a person” when she came in for her postpartum massages, whereas everyone else in the postpartum world was speaking to her “as a mother”.
3. Which review hints at a client experience that felt unusually special for your client?
Ex: A customer who bought a DIY sewing pattern kit but later wrote, “This project made me realize I’m actually creative,” when I assumed they just wanted a cost-effective solution.
Even if you only have time to highlight a single testimonial today, start there. The patterns will reveal themselves over time the more you work with them. This Review Rainbow mini-exercise of scanning for patterns, questioning, and excavating can help you see your work in a brand new way.
Inside the workshop, we’ll take this process deeper-mapping out your Positioning Signals, uncovering the strongest themes in your feedback, and turning them into compelling messaging that helps your ideal clients recognize what makes your business different.
If you’re starting to suspect you do have some Positioning Signals now that you've analyzed your customer testimonials, what should you do with these insights?
My suggestion, and what I ask workshop attendees and clients to do, is this:
1. Create a Social Proof tab in your Business Binder™.
Go through your reviews and highlight according to the exercise above, making note of the words and phrases that have the most emotional resonance. Keep a running list of highlighted phrases inside your Business Binder (a physical notebook, a digital doc, or whatever system works best for you to store insights and decisions about your business) that you can refer to.
2. Look for the invisible thread that connects them.
What’s the throughline in what people are saying? Is there a pattern emerging about how people feel when working with you, beyond the tactical results? Do the words clients use to describe you differ from how you’ve been describing yourself?
These small details - especially the ones that surprise you - are often the real Positioning Signals, the ones that set you apart in ways a perfect tagline never could.
Another way to deepen your understanding is to compare feedback over time or across different types of clients. Have the themes in your testimonials shifted as you’ve refined your offers? Do newer clients highlight different aspects of your work than earlier ones? Are certain insights more common in one service than another? These comparisons can offer clarity on what’s evolving in your business-and what’s been true about your impact all along.
3. Let these insights shape how you talk about your work.
Instead of defaulting to how you think you should describe what you do, start incorporating the language that your clients naturally use. Trust that their words are showing you something worth paying attention to.
Using your clients' words doesn’t mean you’re copying, or that you’re abandoning your own voice - it means bridging the gap between how you see your work and how your best clients experience it.
When you stop trying so hard to stand out and start listening to what’s already been said, you’ll notice something shift. The way you articulate your work will start to feel truer. The right clients will feel this comfortable, lived-in feeling of authenticity, too.
The insights you’ve discovered through your feedback are powerful.
If you’re ready to dive deeper into this process and uncover the full potential of your testimonials, I’d love for you to join me in the upcoming Review Rainbow workshop on April 9, 2025. Together, we’ll walk through how to extract the themes, the threads, and the hidden gems that will help you not only feel your unique value fully but also market yourself in a way that leads with newfound confidence and clarity.
You’ve already done the hard work of gathering this feedback - now, let’s turn it into something that truly speaks to your ideal clients and illuminates a clearer sense of your purpose and possibilities.
