When you review a company on Trustpilot, your first thought is probably how your review will influence the buying decisions of other consumers like you.
You might have even been influenced by another company’s reviews yourself, choosing to order from this company because of their rating on Trustpilot. One thing you might not always consider, however, is what companies themselves do with your reviews. Behind every review is a story, and when you put thousands of reviews together, a company can begin to understand how they can improve their business operations and improve their customer experience.
At Trustpilot, we deal with the companies and people who interact with, analyze and respond to the thousands of reviews posted on our platform each day. So when you leave a review on Trustpilot, what do companies do with it, and how does it impact their decisions?
Learning from negative customer feedback
It may only take thirty seconds of your time to share a star rating and a few lines of text about your latest purchase or experience on Trustpilot. But the company receiving the review may spend much more time analyzing your experience so they can learn about their customers and help them to understand their business a little bit better.
Most companies have a person or team who receives a notification when every single review is published on Trustpilot. This enables them to quickly respond if there are any serious issues which need to be dealt with, or to simply thank reviewers for their time. A number of companies will even have their Managing Director or CEO receiving email notifications from Trustpilot, so that they can get a snapshot of their customer satisfaction. For many businesses, Trustpilot might be their main channel for getting feedback, so it’s important that these reviews are seen and responded to as quickly as possible.
Communicating with you
If you’ve ever posted a negative review on Trustpilot, you might find that the company uses this as a prompt to reach out to you directly through Trustpilot, or outside of the platform using the email and reference number associated with your experience. If you have a bad experience and don’t tell the company about it, they can't rectify the issue and learn from it.
Analyzing multiple reviews to understand specific consumer challenges
Trustpilot provides businesses with a variety of tools to help them analyze their performance. A company’s TrustScore helps them to get an overview of customer satisfaction across all of their Service and Location reviews, whilst Review Insights is a machine-learning and artificial intelligence tool which allows companies to measure the sentiment of their reviews across a broad range of topics such as Customer Service, Delivery or Returns Policy.
Staysure, a travel insurance company catering to travelers aged 50+, is one company who uses this feature to help identify any pain points in their customer experience. Notably, they identified that consumers were regularly complaining about a discount on their site being misleading and untransparent. Armed with this info, they made changes to their website banners and terms and conditions to clarify how the discount could be used, resulting in more clarity and satisfaction from their customers.
Learning from experiences in different locations
Businesses with physical stores can also collect and analyze reviews by location, and monitor the performance of each one to see which ones might need additional support, or which ones consistently deliver excellent service. To learn more about location reviews, you can see our article here.
It’s not just about the bad reviews
The many positive reviews on Trustpilot can help businesses celebrate success. Positive reviews let a company know what activities they should continue and possibly how to expand the features or services their customers love. Positive reviews also provide much needed validation for other consumers who may have reservations about engaging with a new or unfamiliar business.
Atom Bank displays their reviews on screens around the office in order to celebrate some of the 3,000+ 4 or 5-star experiences they have delivered, and to encourage their staff members to continue going the extra mile to provide a great experience to their users.
Companies also use reviews to reward standout individuals and reinforce positive behavior within their customer service teams. When individual employees get positive “shout-outs” in a review, travel company Trailfinders ensures all feedback is passed on to the individual, and recognition is provided.
When you leave a review on Trustpilot, remember to be as clear as possible about what you liked and didn’t like about the service or product you received so that companies can better understand what they do well, and where they have need to improve. Your reviews matter not just to other shoppers, but to the businesses you are reviewing. For many of these companies, the reviews you leave are a key source of information, with directors and executives reading each and every one and strategic business decisions being made on the back of them. This can ultimately lead to better experiences for everyone.
Trustpilot is a review platform that is open to all. The companies and profile pages referenced in this article are provided for informational purposes only and are not recommended, endorsed by, or representative of the views of Trustpilot. The Trustpilot companies linked in this post are expected to abide by Trustpilot’s Guidelines, but have not been reviewed for compliance.
