The starting point for this article is important; online reviews can make or break a business. So let's first define that starting point. It is easiest done by listing all a business's objectives when moving from passive to active review management ('passive' being just as it says, waiting for reviews to appear on whatever platform and then - perhaps - reacting to them).
Objectives with active review management
1. To encourage customers to post their opinions where they will be seen by the most potential customers
2. To ensure that those opinions reflect the reality of the business as closely as possible
3. To ensure the absolute minimum of factually inaccurate or potentially misleading reviews are written, anywhere
4. To comply with the law, in whatever jurisdiction(s) the business trades
By now, some will be thinking, 'Can we add the following?':
5. Prevent negative reviews from appearing anywhere
And finally...7. To have a solution that serves both business and consumer in the long term
So now let's see the difference between Trustpilot and HelpHound, taking each point above in turn...
1. Visibility
Trustpilot
Trustpilot is a strange animal when it comes to visibility. Most - all? - businesses want their reviews to be seen by the most potential customers, but for searches on a specific business - 'ABC estate agents' or a generic class of business '[best] estate agent [near me], the two most popular searches on Google, Trustpilot rarely features, and Google invariably does.
A review site that doesn't feature in most searches? How does that help either businesses or consumers? Our client, by the way, is the business leading both map and local search, and the only one showing the rating from its own reviews - not Google's - in organic search.
In addition, if a consumer searching for a type of business in their area were to visit Trustpilot and search, often the results are unhelpful in the extreme. Here is a search for 'accountant in Exeter' (Google lists over seventy)...
HelpHound
Our objective, on behalf of all our clients, is to have them show as they deserve in the important searches. Here is an example of one in the crucial generic, or 'map' search ['business type'] in ['location']...
The overwhelming majority of those 570 Google reviews of Winkworth in Kingsbury have been subject to HelpHound's moderation, which is specifically designed to eliminate, as far as is possible, factually inaccurate or potentially misleading reviews or review content before publication. Long-term statistics prove that this is effective in over 97 per cent of cases.
...and in organic search...
This is perhaps the most important screenshot in this article: hosting your own reviews - those 761 reviews indicated by the red arrow, gathered with and moderated by HelpHound - gives a really great SEO boost and provides wonderful social proof. It also enables the business to feed moderated reviews onwards to Google, with a significant proportion of the 761 reviews you see here finding their way to Google (almost all the 570 shown in the previous screenshot). Our client would be the first to confirm that their score would be at least a couple of points lower in each location in the absence of HelpHound's moderation. And we know just how much our clients value the 5 gold stars highlighting their businesses in competitive searches. How? Because occasionally Google turn them off by mistake, and when they do, our clients invariably call us within minutes!
2. Opinions reflect reality
Trustpilot
The most recent review of Trustpilot, on Trustpilot. 14 per cent of all reviews on its own platform rate Trustpilot at one star. That's nearly 60,000 1* reviews. Many are similar in tone and content to the one above.
So many Trustpilot reviews contain little or no information that is helpful to a prospective customer. We have pondered this long and hard, and the only conclusion we can come to is that Trustpilot's paying business members use push text to invite reviews; we know that this reduces word count and quality dramatically from when we conducted a live test for a client some years ago
Even the most cursory of web searches reveals that Trustpilot receives considerable criticism for aspects of its operation that hinder genuine opinions from being posted. One can see the logic of a system that seeks to verify reviews and reviewers, after all, inaccurate negative reviews unfairly harm businesses, but Trustpilot's mechanism manifestly works against consumers (especially those reluctant to divulge their true identity to the business under review**) and, importantly, in almost certain contravention of the UK CMA's regulations (see below). Again and again, even on their own platform, we see consumers complaining that their reviews are not published.
**At first, this - insisting the customer use their real identity - looks like a good idea; only experience proves that such a strategy drives reviewers, especially those intent on posting a negative review, however misguided, straight to a place where their review will be accepted under a pseudonym. And that place? Invariably Google.
It also has an unintended but highly negative consequence for Trustpilot's paying business customers: suppose you are motivated to write a negative review of a business (and, believe us, there is no more motivated reviewer than one that wants to write a negative review!), but you are prevented from doing so by the platform, in this case, Trustpilot? A win for the business, some might think. But in reality, quite the opposite: these days, most consumers know that they can write whatever review they like on Google, so a significant proportion of those prevented from writing their honestly held opinion on Trustpilot will go on to do exactly that, where it will be far more visible (as well as, we suggest, credible).
HelpHound
Reviews written on a HelpHound client's website. Detailed and therefore helpful.
And copied to Google...
Every review written through HelpHound is moderated; read by a human being, not machine-read or read by AI. This ensures that no misleading or factually inaccurate reviews are published. Unless the reviewer decides. And that last phrase is key: it keeps the decision firmly in the hands of the consumer - and therefore compliant with CMA regulations. This does not mean that reviewers publish reviews that contain factual inaccuracies or misleading statements, far from it. Just read any HelpHound reviews and you will notice three things: that the English used is well above average for the web (our moderators correct spelling and grammar); that they are more detailed than the average (the way we suggest our clients invite reviews leads to that) and, if critical, they are far more constructive than most negative reviews on other platforms.
3. Minimising factually inaccurate or misleading reviews
Trustpilot
Quantity over quality. For years, the stock markets valued review platforms on the basis of the number of reviews they hosted. So those platforms targeted volume. But consumers have wearied of reading valueless reviews such as those shown above, written by messrs Patil, Butler and King and their ilk. This may go some way to explaining the poor performance of quoted review sites' shares recently...
HelpHound
Moderation. Again. It is the only way. Consistently accurate reviews serve everyone: the company, its customers and its future customers. We are proud that, however far back you go, you will find all our clients' reviews have the following in common...
- they are overwhelmingly accurate in their depiction of the standard of service the reviewer received from our client's business
- they are longer and more detailed than the average online review, and thus more helpful for future customers
- they contain few errors - either grammatical or spelling
4. Compliance
Trustpilot
There's far more to compliance than simply complying with the CMA regulations. The reason the regulations are there in the first place is to protect consumers, but they are also there so that businesses that don't flout them can mobilise online reviews to drive their businesses.
There are currently far too many businesses - some large nationals and multinationals - who would appear to have bought Trustpilot on the basis that they would be able to challenge - successfully - negative reviews.
Why, one might well ask, does this company, like so many, reference its Trustpilot score in its advertising? Perhaps a look at Google will provide the answer?
This is a case where a compliant solution - inviting all one's customers to write a review to the most visible site on the entire planet would have been the best advice. But then Google won't allow businesses to 'flag' reviews...
It is easy to see what has happened - sixteen out of nineteen reviewers (all writers of negative reviews) 'didn't respond to Trustpilot's request to resolve the breach of Trustpilot's guidelines'. That sounds very official, doesn't it? In practice, what has happened is that the business has asked Trustpilot to ask the reviewer to provide documentary evidence to support their review. And the reviewer has declined to do so.
This is where Trustpilot comes very close to breaching the CMA regulations, by denying the consumer the right to have their genuinely held opinion published 'unless they provide documentary evidence'. Think of the situation the reviewer is in: they wish to post a critical review of their financial adviser or their medical practitioner, are they likely to want to have their personal details divulged to a third party for onward transmission to the business under review?
Bear with us now. Read this recent review of Trustpilot on Trustpilot:
If this were an outlier, we might take little notice. But look at all of these...
...and then consider the fact that they were all written in the last week. And not a single one has elicited a response from Trustpilot.
HelpHound
We have consistently maintained that the only way to engage with reviews and comply with the CMA regulations is to have those reviews moderated. Any system that demonstrably deflects negative reviews simply because of their rating must, by definition, be against the spirit, if not the substance, of the law.
Everything we do complies with the CMA's regulations, and not just because we want to comply with them, but because we believe that compliance adds massively to the credibility of our review management service and online reviews in general.
5. and 6. Preventing reviews from appearing anywhere, and especially on Google
Trustpilot
Somewhat bizarrely, focusing on Trustpilot has enabled many businesses to deflect negative reviews away from Google. But that is to use reviews for an entirely wrong purpose. Reviews exist to help consumers choose the right business - sometimes a business that can have a life-changing impact (think medical, legal, financial and similar). They don't exist for businesses to manipulate them, and, as a direct result, those who rely on them. The first question any business should be asking itself is 'Why are we not concentrating on looking great on Google?' and there is only one answer to that question, which is 'We should be doing exactly that.' Why pay a review site when Google reviews are more visible, more credible and, added to those two clinchers, free?
HelpHound
By now, we are all agreed that having a great score and a great review presence overall on Google is the number one aim of any review management strategy. So how does HelpHound prevent negative reviews from appearing anywhere, especially on Google? By enabling the business to invite all of its customers to write a review on the business's own website and then to Google (the latter is by automatic invitation by HelpHound). And then moderating them fairly and professionally. Look at this business...
A score of 4.9 from 571 reviews is impressive in its own right. But we all know estate agents. How come they have just seven 1* reviews? With all the misunderstandings that can arise, whether buying or selling, letting or renting (and we all know moving house is one of the most stressful experiences one can have). The answer becomes apparent when we read the business's responses to the least flattering reviews: in a tiny minority of cases, they put their hands up and simply apologise, but in most instances the reviewer would have benefited from moderation; there has been a completely understandable misunderstanding that would have been resolved if the reviewer had taken the opportunity to write their review through HelpHound rather than direct to Google, as the overwhelming majority have been encouraged to do by this client. A considerable bonus of this system is the fact that it also, in the majority of cases, prevents an irrevocable split between the business and its customer.
7. Long-term success
Naturally enough, when businesses first embark on active review management, they focus on 'putting their house in order' as soon as they feasibly can. But the wrong short-term choice(s) can severely impact - even put off - long-term success.
Trustpilot
The central issue with Trustpilot is exactly the same as inviting customers to write reviews directly to Google: it is impossible to eliminate inaccurate and potentially misleading reviews 'after the fact'; once that kind of review has been posted, it will, with vanishingly few exceptions, remain on the site. Even if the business can answer whatever criticism the reviewer has made, however erroneously, the review's score will remain to impact the business's overall score. In addition, there are severe compliance implications, because businesses or their staff will often succumb the - illegal - temptation to cherry-pick happy customers to invite to write reviews*. Besides opening the business up to regulatory action, such activity is very easy for competitors to identify and mobilise.
HelpHound
Moderation - again. There are two reasons why all our clients' businesses are so accurately reflected in their reviews - on their own websites and on Google. The first is that they are invariably great businesses (badly run businesses tend to adopt one of two approaches to online reviews: they either bury their heads in the sand and ignore reviews or they cheat - we use that word advisedly - to look good).
Surely a business in this sector must understand that potential and existing clients would appreciate a more proactive approach to Google reviews? Even a response to this review, which Google considers the 'most relevant', must surely be better than silence?
And finally...
At HelpHound, we make no bones about being a commercial entity. Still, we fervently believe the best way to drive our business is by being completely honest and transparent in what we, and our clients, do regarding our and their reviews. Great review management not only reflects well on the business concerned, but it also imposes discipline on each and every member of management and staff as well. We know of no client of ours that is not more efficient and effective as a direct result of adopting professional review management.
If you are still thinking, 'Why not simply substitute Google for Trustpilot?' then ask an additional question, such as 'Why did we not do that before?' The answer to that question would almost certainly be along the lines of 'If we had done that, then we would inevitably get the kind of inaccurate/misleading/plain unfair reviews that HelpHound's moderation is specifically designed to enable our customers and us to manage between us before any kind of review is posted.'
Further Reading
- CMA to use AI to identify businesses flouting their rules regarding reviews
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