Table of Contents
- One rule before you dig
- Private sources: praise written to you
- 1. Support desk satisfaction comments (Zendesk, Intercom)
- 2. Shared and internal Slack channels
- 3. Your email inbox
- 4. NPS and survey comments from promoters
- Public sources: praise written about you
- 5. Review sites you already have a profile on (G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, Google)
- 6. App stores and launch sites (Apple App Store, Google Play, Chrome Web Store, Product Hunt, AppSumo)
- 7. Posts on X
- 8. LinkedIn recommendations and posts
- 9. Reddit and Hacker News threads
- 10. YouTube and TikTok
- Keep what you find in one place
- Doing this with Testimonial
- Where people get stuck
- Wrapping up
Image URL
Do not index
Do not index
AI summary
Find existing customer praise in support tickets, Slack, email, surveys, review sites, social media, and video platforms before asking for new testimonials. Search for specific, attributable quotes, record their exact wording and source, and always get permission before publishing. Use imports, a browser extension, Slack integration, or bulk upload to collect and organize quotes; ongoing monitoring can help uncover new public mentions.
Title
How to Find Praise You Already Have
Date
Nov 3, 2026
Description
Find customer praise you already have: where it hides in support desks, Slack, email, NPS, review sites, X, LinkedIn, Reddit and YouTube, and how to get permission to use it.
Status
In progress
Current Column
In the queue
Person
Writer
You open a fresh testimonial page and it is empty. You start drafting an email asking customers for a quote.
Meanwhile, a customer thanked your support team in writing last March. Someone told a shared Slack channel your product saved their launch. A two-year-old G2 review says exactly what your homepage is trying to say.
You don't need to ask for any of those. You need to find them, check who wrote them, and get a yes.
This is the dig list. I picked these ten places for one reason: in each of them, praise already exists in writing, with a name attached, so you can go back to the person. Each item covers where it hides, how to search for it, what you get out of it, and the catch.
If you want the bigger picture first, our guide to business testimonials covers the whole testimonial pipeline from ask to display, and our guide to brand monitoring covers watching for new mentions. This post is the step most people skip: using what you already have before you ask for anything new.
One rule before you dig
Finding praise is not permission to publish it.
Anything from a private channel (a support ticket, an email, a Slack message) was written to you, not to your website visitors. Ask before you use it, and ask how they want to be credited. Public posts are easier, but the author still owns their words, and some sites set their own rules on reuse. The legal side of testimonials covers what to check.
The practical version: dig first, ask second, publish third. Keep a "permission" column from the start so you never have to work out later who said yes.
Private sources: praise written to you
1. Support desk satisfaction comments (Zendesk, Intercom)
Where it hides. If you send a satisfaction survey after a ticket closes, the free-text comment under a good rating is the densest praise you own. The customer wrote it seconds after you fixed their problem.
How to dig. In Zendesk, create a view with the condition Satisfaction | Is | Good with comment (Zendesk's own walkthrough). In Intercom, the Surveyed CSAT report template lists conversation ratings and remarks, and Reports > Dataset export with the Conversation Ratings dataset gives you the remarks as a CSV (Intercom's help).
What it gets you. Praise about your team and your speed, the two things prospects can't judge from a pricing page.
The catch. These comments are often about one agent (something like "[agent name] was amazing"). That's lovely for the agent and weak on a landing page. Look for comments that name the problem you solved, not the person who solved it.
2. Shared and internal Slack channels
Where it hides. Shared channels with customers, and the internal channel where someone pastes "look what this customer said!" Most teams have one. Few go back to it.
How to dig. Slack's search modifiers do the work (Slack's search help). Try
"thank you" in:#customer-acme, from:@customer-name, or search for messages with a reaction: has::tada: finds messages someone reacted to with 🎉. Add during:2025 to walk back a year at a time.What it gets you. Unprompted, casual language. Nobody writes marketing copy in Slack. They write the way they talk, which is exactly what reads as real on a landing page.
The catch. Slack messages are short and full of context only your team understands. Many need a follow-up question before they make sense to a stranger. That follow-up doubles as your permission request.
3. Your email inbox
Where it hides. Replies to onboarding emails, replies to your changelog, and "just wanted to say" emails that got a quick thanks and were archived.
How to dig. Gmail's operators let you search the archive properly (Gmail's operator list). Start with something like
("thank you so much" OR "love" OR "saved us") -from:me older_than:30d, then change the phrases. The quotes match exact wording, OR widens, and the minus sign drops your own sent mail.What it gets you. Longer, specific praise. People who take the time to email usually explain why.
The catch. Expect noise. "Love" matches every newsletter you ever subscribed to. Add
-category:promotions if you use Gmail's categories, and plan on reading results by hand. I'd rather skim 200 emails than run a filter clever enough to miss the best one.4. NPS and survey comments from promoters
Where it hides. The open-text box after someone scores you a 9 or 10. Those comments sit in your survey tool's export, usually unread after the score is reported.
How to dig. Export responses, filter to 9s and 10s, and sort by comment length. The longest comments are where the stories are.
What it gets you. People who have already told you they'd recommend you. Asking them to say it publicly is a small step. If you want that to happen automatically from now on, here is how to turn NPS promoters into testimonials.
The catch. Survey comments answer your question, not theirs. "Easy to use" shows up a lot and persuades nobody. Keep the ones with a before-and-after in them.
Public sources: praise written about you
5. Review sites you already have a profile on (G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, Google)
Where it hides. On your own profile pages, sorted by most recent, so your best reviews from two years ago are buried.
How to dig. Sort by rating, then read the long ones. If you haven't checked which sites list you, the top SaaS review sites is a good checklist.
What it gets you. A star rating next to the words, and often a job title or company size. That combination works on landing pages in a way a bare quote can't.
The catch. Each site has its own rules about reuse. Don't copy and paste a review onto your site without checking the platform's policy and, where it asks, the reviewer's consent.
6. App stores and launch sites (Apple App Store, Google Play, Chrome Web Store, Product Hunt, AppSumo)
Where it hides. If you ever shipped an app, an extension, or a launch, people left comments there and moved on.
How to dig. Read them on the listing, newest and oldest. Product Hunt launch comments are worth a full scroll: early users often say what they were using before.
What it gets you. Praise from people who chose you among alternatives, often with the alternative named.
The catch. App store reviews are often about one version of the product. Check that what they praise still exists before you put it on your homepage.
7. Posts on X
Where it hides. Replies, quote posts, and posts that name you without tagging your handle.
How to dig. Search your product name and your handle separately, sort by Latest, then go back with date filters. Monitoring brand mentions on X walks through the search setup.
What it gets you. Public, timestamped, linkable praise from a real profile. It is the easiest kind for a stranger to verify.
The catch. Posts get deleted and accounts go private. When you republish one, keep the link and the author's name, and turning a tweet into a testimonial covers when to ask first.
8. LinkedIn recommendations and posts
Where it hides. In two places: the recommendations on your founders' and team members' profiles, and posts where customers tagged your company page.
How to dig. Open each team member's profile and read the recommendations section. For posts, search your company name in LinkedIn's search and filter to Posts.
What it gets you. A full name, job title and company on every quote. For B2B, that is the most credible format there is.
The catch. Recommendations of a person are not always praise of the product. A consultant's recommendation from their pre-founder years doesn't belong on your pricing page.
9. Reddit and Hacker News threads
Where it hides. In comments under somebody else's question, written by people who had no reason to be nice.
How to dig. For Reddit, search your name in posts and comments; tracking brand mentions on Reddit covers the search quirks. For Hacker News, hn.algolia.com searches stories and comments by keyword and date.
What it gets you. Credibility. A recommendation inside a skeptical thread does more than one in your own replies.
The catch. Authors are usually pseudonymous. Ask them before you quote them, and ask how they want to be credited. Some will say no, and that is the answer.
10. YouTube and TikTok
Where it hides. Tutorials that use your product, review videos, and comments under your own videos.
How to dig. Search your product name on both platforms, then read the comments under your own uploads. Your channel's comment history is often the easiest win because those people already found you.
What it gets you. Video, which is rare. A customer showing your product on screen does more than any text quote.
The catch. Videos made by creators are content, not testimonials. Ask before you embed, and say so if the creator was paid or sent the product free.
Keep what you find in one place
Before you publish anything, put every find into one sheet with the same columns:
- Source link (or a screenshot for private sources)
- Author name and role
- Date it was written
- Exact words, copied, not paraphrased
- Permission: not asked / asked / yes / no
The "exact words" column matters. It is tempting to tidy a quote into something punchier. Don't. If you want different wording, ask the author to write it.
Doing this with Testimonial
Here is how Testimonial.to handles each of these sources, including where it doesn't help.
Public sources: Import. Open a Space, click Import in the left sidebar, then + Import. The picker groups sources by type and has a Search platforms… box. Choose the platform and paste the post or review URL. For Twitter / X and LinkedIn, you can tick Add to my Wall of Love in the same step and the post goes straight onto your Wall of Love.
For G2, the importer pulls reviews in bulk with your G2 API key, and only fetches reviews whose reviewers gave consent. That is one consent check you don't have to do yourself.
Anything without an importer: the browser extension. On any web page, highlight the text, right-click, and choose Save text. For things that only make sense as an image, like a Slack message or an email, use Take a screenshot, or in the dashboard choose Add a text and then Extract from screenshot. The text gets pulled out of the image so it is searchable.
Slack: the app. In a Space, go to Automation → Slack and click Add to Slack. After that you can save any Slack message as a testimonial with a shortcut or a reaction. The Save as a Testimonial form fills in the message and the author's name and lets you pick the Space. Saved Slack messages count as text testimonials.
Your sheet: Bulk import. On Ultimate and Ultimate +, Options > Bulk import takes a CSV. Download the template, match your columns, and import the whole sheet at once.
Public mentions you haven't found yet: Brand Monitor. Turn on Brand Monitor, add your keywords, and the first scan starts straight away, including an all-time sweep of the web and TikTok. After that it scans every 24 hours. That is the step from digging once to monitoring brand mentions continuously.
The limits, plainly. Brand Monitor watches public sources. It can't see your support desk, your inbox or your private Slack channels, so items 1 to 4 stay a manual dig. LinkedIn changes its page structure often, so the extension may not fill in a name or photo automatically; you can pick them by hand. And none of this asks for permission for you.
On plans: Free includes unlimited X and LinkedIn imports and Google review import up to 20. Starter adds social and review imports. Brand Monitor and Bulk import start on Ultimate, priced per space. See plans and pricing.
Where people get stuck
"I found 300 things and published none." Pick the ten best, ask those ten people this week, and publish whoever says yes. A wall of ten real quotes beats a spreadsheet of 300.
"The best quote is from someone who left." Former customers can still give permission. Be honest about the date if the product has changed since.
"I don't know which ones are good." The good ones name a problem, a result, or a before-and-after. What makes a testimonial good covers the quality bar.
Wrapping up
You now have ten places to dig, a search to run in each, and a sheet to keep the results in. Most teams finish with more usable quotes than they would get from a first round of asking.
Start with the source you check every day anyway, probably your inbox or your support desk, and give it one hour. If a source needs more setup detail than this, the help centre has a step-by-step page for each importer.
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