We make no apology for posting twice about Trustpilot in a week, as the largest European quoted review site, it is important that they face scrutiny. First, here is Grizzly Research's report. A huge amount of work has gone into it; that much is obvious. In this article, we will concentrate on the factual elements, some from the report, but adding some from our own archives.
Fact 1 - history and business model
Trustpilot predates Google reviews. Trustpilot was founded in 2007. Google reviews began in 2010. Why is this important? Imagine you had a business that dominated in any sphere, and then Google came along and basically replicated it, for free? How would you, and more importantly, your investors, react? Some would draw stumps, admit defeat, or, at the very least, change the business model. At HelpHound, originally an open reviews site just like Trustpilot, we did the latter, focusing on providing a safe and compliant route for our clients to attract genuine Google reviews. Trustpilot stuck to its - freemium - business model. Was this the right decision? Read on...
Fact 2 - human nature
This is what many well-known brands that have not engaged with Trustpilot look like on their platform
Anyone involved in the reviews market soon learned one crucial thing: that, left to their own devices, consumers, with a few exceptions, were only going to write negative reviews. An unhappy consumer simply has far more - mostly genuine - motivation. As a result, any passive review mechanism was going to be overwhelmingly populated by critical reviews, even if the business was as near perfect as could be (the business might be perfect, but a percentage of its customers would still be critical, just ask any great business).
This meant finding a way to motivate happy customers to write reviews. The obvious way was to simply email the customer asking them to do so, but, with Google rapidly gaining traction - and free - how to persuade businesses that paying a three-figure sum, monthly, to Trustpilot, was the better option?
'Quarantine' was Trustpilot's initial solution. Give your paying business members the right to challenge any review, which would then be suspended pending the reviewer confirming a) their real identity and b) the facts of the case as stated in their review. Sounds reasonable enough. But businesses soon cottoned on to another aspect of human nature: that few people would be bothered to jump through those two hoops. Result? Far fewer negative reviews published on the Trustpilot listings of paying businesses. The numbers, as identified by Grizzly are startling:
This is just one of many comparisons between paying and non-paying businesses contained in the report
Fact 3 - fake (and/or gibberish) reviews and reviewers
Often all three are combined. The paid for reviewer will set up a fake Trustpilot account and then post fake reviews, often having nothing whatsoever to do with the product or service provided by the company under review. If this was a rare occurrence it might be easily dismissed, but the numbers are significant.
Fact 4 - paid for reviews and pure fraud
Just one of countless advertisements found all over social media. They only exist because gaming Trustpilot is possible. As easy as it is to spot the fake reviewers: they almost always post reviews in far higher numbers than a 'normal' reviewer in any given time frame and the pattern of their reviews, in terms of type of business and geographical location is random at the very least :
Fact 5 - cherry-picking
Until 2016, when the practice was banned by the CMA in the UK and EU regulators, businesses commonly 'hand-picked' customers to write reviews. From 2016 onwards businesses were meant, by law, to open up the review process to all their customers, but old habits die hard. Today, we estimate that well over 9 in 10 businesses actively inviting reviews continue to cherry-pick. The CMA are on the case, but regulatory action to put a stop to this cannot happen soon enough. Any business cherry-picking should be aware that identification of the practice is very straightforward indeed, by comparing customer lists and emails inviting the reviews.
Fact 6 - gating
Gating is the act of pre-qualifying consumer opinions to identify those customers most likely to leave a 5* review. Most of our readers will, at some stage, have received an email or SMS asking them, 'How did we do?' This is the first indicator of potential gating, confirmed when only those responding 'Great/wonderful' are asked to post a review. Again: illegal, but common practice. Again: the CMA are on the case. When a household name receives a significant fine the practice will almost certainly cease overnight. But review sites almost certainly know when this is happening, and they have a regulatory responsibility as well. As with cherry-picking, those involved leave a highly visible paper trail.
Fact 7 - reliance on software/AI
Trustpilot reference this all the time, as do both consumers and businesses. Anecdotal evidence shows that whatever software Trustpilot is using it is ineffective at a) preventing fake/paid-for reviews from being published and b) addressing the complaints of the reviewers who have their reviews deleted or businesses that have prima facie unfair reviews maintained on Trustpilot.
Imagine you run a business and a 1* review pops up on your feed, for a business with a similar name in a different location. You contact Trustpilot to receive an automated email telling you that the review stands. This, and other 'unfair' but commercially very damaging events would appear to happen often.
Fact 8 - playing the volume game
'Big Corporate' has discovered that four out of five stars is enough to support product marketing. We see those advertismenets everywhere, from the back of buses to all over the web: 'Voted 4 out of 5 by our satisfied customers'. The problem here is that phrase 'Voted 4 out of 5' gives the impression that all customers are satisfied (if not exactly ecstatic). The reality? Perhaps 20% - one in five - of their customers have had such a negtive experience they rate the business 1*.
Fact 9 - get the 'customer' to review every contact
Someone calls for an appointment? Send them a text with a link to your business's Trustpilot listing and ask them to 'review their experience'. Result? a 5* review that is added to Trustpilot's algorithm, meaning it has just as much weight as a review from someone that has long-term experience of the business and all its products/services. We put 'customer' in inverted commas because we have seen many occasions when the review has been written by somone who simply called with a very basic enquiry.
Fact 10 - Why not Google?
This is the clincher. And you may already have guessed the answer by now. Why pay for a review platform that, by comparison with Google...
- has far less visibility?
- has far less credibility?
Again, as you might expect, long experience has taught us the answer to that as well. Because we know why businesses join HelpHound: for our moderation and to get a steady volume of genuine reviews to their website and then to Google. As mentioned before, under the CMA regulations - the law in the UK - businesses that invite any customer(s) to write a review must allow all to do so. If those reviews were to be published unmoderated, a significant proportion would contain errors of fact, and some would contain misleading statements. This helps no one - not the business under review, nor the future consumer, and not even the author of the review. A human being, not software, nor AI, however sophisticated, must read every review. And that human being must be competent to form a trusted bridge between the business and their customer.
When someone clicks on this button and writes a review of the business, or responds to an email from the business, the review first goes straight to our moderator, who will check for factual accuracy and potentially misleading statements. One of these will be found in an average of 7 out of 100 reviews. The corrected review is then posted (97 per cent of the time) or the original review stands. This is what keeps the whole process compliant and helpful for both the business and its future customers
Once the moderated review is posted, the reviewer is automatically invited to copy their review to Google. As you can see, most do so.
Look at the first screenshot again: the reviews must be displayed on the business's website along with a mechanism allowing someone to click on a button and write a review, and then the reviewer must be asked to copy their review to Google (the only part of the process that we automate).
Why does all this matter?
It matters because in today's online world, where recommendations from those in the 'real' community are more and more difficult to come by, online reviews have the potential to be a real force for good. But only if they reflect genuine consumer experiences.
This is where reviews of products and reviews of services diverge: if you buy a camera or a washing machine, having read some reviews that fall into the negative categories above, you are a) protected by some pretty robust consumer legislation (simply put: you can send the product back). But a service? Especially a high-value or potentially life-changing service? Think medical, financial or legal. Suppose you chose a paediatrician based on one or more of the illegal activities described above?
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