I’ve been using Trustpilot for more than two years in my business. I decided to sign up for a paid subscription after using a free subscription and enjoying the insights it gave me.
The key features of Trustpilot are now indispensable to my company. I’m also confident in the integrity of the business and the team at Trustpilot, so I want to clear up some misunderstandings some people have about Trustpilot.
Do you need to promote your company? Then imagine if you could conveniently get far more customer feedback through Trustpilot reviews and use it to help other ideal prospects find you.
Do you need to leave a review for a company and are not sure of a trustworthy platform to post it to? Trustpilot has a robust system for filtering out fake reviews and protecting real ones. I’ll show you why you should trust Trustpilot and how you can be confident that your feedback will benefit companies and other consumers.
Key Features of Trustpilot for Businesses
I appreciate that Trustpilot creates an independent source of credibility for my business, a place that shows that I care about my customers and they care about my brand. It also gives me excellent customer feedback, which I use to improve my products. If you need to promote your business, you can use Trustpilot in these ways:
Ask for Reviews
Customer reviews can help your business get more visibility on the internet, adding more mentions and pages about your brand and products. To start asking for reviews, you’ll go through a fast setup just once, linking your Trustpilot account with your domain and your e-commerce software, such as Shopify or OpenCart.
Is it dishonest to ask for reviews? Not at all. Customers often have something to say, but don’t realize that there’s a platform to say it on. Trustpilot has simple tools to send them a link where they can leave a review. In just a minute or two, a customer can click the link, write a review, give a star rating, and hit “Post your review now.”
Customers wouldn’t have made their voice heard before, and now they can. It’s a benefit to those who want to express themselves or who need help with a concern—and to future prospects who are researching your brand.
Improve Your Marketing
You can supercharge the marketing you already have: Just add your Trustpilot reviews and star ratings to advertisements and sales copy. I’ve gotten feedback from my customers that they are more interested in an advertisement when it includes customer reviews. They can relate to marketing better when it includes voices from people like themselves.
You can also include your star rating on your paid search advertisements. This can increase the percentage of prospects who click through to your website.
Upgrade Your Web Presence
Add a Trustpilot widget (simple software component) to your website—even on your homepage—that shows current Trustpilot reviews as they are being published. Customers really appreciate that, because it shows that your company is not afraid of feedback.
You can also show your Trustpilot star rating in your search engine listings. In other words, if you have earned a high star rating, it will show up in Google when someone is researching your brand. They’ll be more likely to click on your website if they see more stars.
Post Reviews on Social Media
Great-looking social media posts are simple with Trustpilot. In your dashboard, you can look up a review and simply click which of your social media accounts you want it to be posted to. You can also choose from different styles of images and backgrounds. Then just post it!
I just add one or two customer testimonials to my social media stream per week, and that’s enough. I can also add one if it answers a frequently asked question or speaks to a current event.
Keep Improving with Analytics
I also use Trustpilot’s Analytics tab to improve my business. Their AI finds trends within what customers are saying in reviews. I can see a breakdown of the average amount of stars associated with:
- Product
- Price
- Customer Service
- Delivery
- And More
It also shows the number of reviews that mention each aspect of the business. This tells me what area of my business might require more focus and improvement. I read individual reviews, of course, but it’s good to see this high-level analysis too. It helps me create the best experience I can for the customers I care about.
What Other Business Owners Are Saying
I reached out to other business owners for feedback about how they use Trustpilot and how trustworthy it is. CEO Deborah Sweeney likes the specificity of reviews and how much they help her team improve:
Our company, MyCorporation, has a profile on Trustpilot. This review website is one of our absolute favorites to receive customer feedback from because the reviews are thoughtfully written. Customers will often call out members of our team that do a great job helping and supporting customers with their needs. (We love to share this feedback with the team member that did the great job, too!) We also review feedback that is not as positive and use it to improve upon our services. Our team members will personally write back to customers that have had a difficult experience, apologize for what happened, and share some of the ways that we are working to solve these problems. We see all feedback provided on the site, positive and negative alike, as a chance to make changes and learn to improve the overall customer experience.
Another CEO relates how her team improves both their marketing and products through Trustpilot reviews: I’m Krista Neher, CEO of Boot Camp Digital. We are active clients and users of Trustpilot and have the reviews integrated into our website and featured in our marketing. We’ve found Trustpilot reviews are a powerful way to get feedback from customers and improve our products. We have monthly customer review meetings where we discuss the feedback from customers and changes we need to make. This has helped us prioritize our development efforts and product improvement plans. Asking for feedback initially was a little scary for me. As a business owner, every review matters and I do take it somewhat personally. I was nervous about bad reviews and bad feedback. The reality was that most of our feedback was really positive, which is extremely motivating. The negative feedback for the most part is an excellent opportunity to gain insights and improve. As a result of openly looking at feedback we’ve made many improvements to our training courses that have led to even better reviews over time. We are able to pinpoint areas for improvement and act. If we didn’t ask for feedback we would not be able to use our resources as strategically.
Yet another CEO, Nellie Akalp of CorpNet.com, explains why she is confident in Trustpilot both for her business and for personal purchases: We strive for stellar customer service, and the main way we can keep everyone happy is by listening to feedback and making changes where necessary. Trustpilot helps immensely with that. I personally use Trustpilot for services I’m seeking because I put myself in my customers shoes and every time I want to use a service or deal with a
company with positive feedback from existing clients. From having a business established on Trustpilot, I know that all of the reviews are verified customers which makes it more trustworthy.
Some people on the internet have criticized Trustpilot, claiming they suppress useful reviews. But reading over the feedback above has increased my confidence in Trustpilot yet again.
Why Trustpilot Removes Reviews
Some consumers have been unhappy that their Trustpilot reviews have been removed from the platform. They assume this is a form of censorship or that companies can pay to remove reviews in order to protect their reputation.
But actually, a Trustpilot representative stated recently that a Trustpilot employee would be fired for selling negative review removal. The company is not in that business.
Is Trustpilot a scam? No. They want to foster trust. They will be successful only if customers know that the platform is built to be trustworthy and if companies know that consumers will read Trustpilot reviews for that reason.
Plus, Trustpilot has a process for flagging and removing reviews legitimately. The process is transparent. Any customer can see Trustpilot’s review guidelines:
- Write about your own real experience as a customer that happened within the last year. ● Don’t write biased reviews about a competitor company or your own company. ● Be ready to prove that you’re writing about a real experience—with a receipt or screenshot, as examples.
- Avoid bullying, blackmail, obscenities, hate, and any other behavior that is unkind or illegal.
- Protect personal and private details, such as phone numbers and names. ● If you need to write a negative review, just explain the facts of what happened without trying to hurt or destroy reputations.
- Don’t sell or promote anything.
- Make sure you’re leaving a review on the correct company’s page.
- Make a unique user account, and only post from there.
If a reviewer goes against any of these guidelines, his or her reviews can be flagged, which means they’ll be hidden for a time.
Then, if a company representative then finds that the review is actually okay, it will be shown online again. Some reviewers are frustrated about that, but they can easily get their reviews reinstated.
For example, a simple reason a review might be flagged is that the reviewer placed it under the wrong company name. That reviewer could just edit the review and put it under the correct company name—or show proof of purchase or whatever else is needed.
Some reviewers violate the guidelines repeatedly, and their whole account could then be deleted blocked, along with all their past Trustpilot reviews. And I would say they brought it on themselves. Should Trustpilot put up with people like that and ruin the experience for the rest of us? Of course not.
How Trustpilot Deals with Companies Violating Their Standards
Can companies abuse their ability to flag negative reviews, causing them to be temporarily hidden? Can they force Trustpilot to investigate legitimate reviews? Yes, and there are always bad people in any group. While this is possible, Trustpilot works hard to maintain trust and combat any misuse of the platform. However, Some companies would rather get customers through the door dishonestly than just improve their customer service.
But is Trustpilot a scam because of these abusing companies? No, it’s a platform used by companies and consumers from all over the world. And that means that some unhelpful folks are going to try to use it in ways that unfairly disadvantage themselves.
Trustpilot has systems in place to reduce these abuses. First, every company is told the guidelines they must abide by and warned that they could get kicked off the system if they break them. These guidelines include:
- Company employees and family members can’t write a review of their own business. ● Company employees can’t write reviews of competitors.
- Asking for reviews must be done in an unbiased way.
- Review requests shouldn’t be sent using any kind of incentives or bonuses. ● Companies should engage with negative reviewers before asking Trustpilot to check them out (instead of instantly flagging any negative reviews).
- Companies can’t get a review removed just because they don’t agree with it or because they want more stars.
- Companies cannot pressure or incentivize customers to change their reviews.
Why should you trust Trustpilot? Here’s a major reason: Trustpilot can (and does) write a warning on a company’s profile stating that they have violated standards in the past—if they don’t simply suspend or delete their profile outright. They’re serious about preventing companies from abusing their platform. They call them out for trying to mislead consumers.
How do they know if companies are committing violations? Trustpilot has more than 50 team members checking out reviews. They also use well-refined fraud detection programs. Plus, they receive more than 5,000 alerts per month from community members who watch for fraud.
Do Subscriber Companies Get Extra Trustpilot Reviews?
Around 90% of all companies on Trustpilot use it for free. A relatively small amount of proactive companies pay for a subscription. With that, they get upgrades to the tools I discussed earlier.
Does that mean they’re paying for reviews? No, they just receive more efficient tools. A company could contact all those customers using a pen and paper and drop a postcard in the mail for each one. And if an action could have been taken with pen and paper and is only enhanced with software, that action wasn’t created by the software—it was just made simpler.
But, someone might still ask if it’s dangerous that subscriber companies seem to get more Trustpilot reviews. Are they paying for them? No. First, companies using a free account can still use the Trustpilot system to send review invitations.
Second, I think that paying for a subscription is not the only cause of more reviews. It’s just one example of something that some companies have: motivation.
A motivated company will put its energy and drive into growth. They have goals. They’re going places. So, they interact with their customers more. They decide they want more reviews, so they sign up for a Trustpilot subscription and use technology to make requests efficiently.
Some companies are just go-getters. That means they’re going to get reviews on some platform using some method. But they happen to have seen the value in Trustpilot and decided Trustpilot is the platform they want to grow on.
How Trustpilot Protects Reviewers from Excessive Flagging
People at some companies have tried to abuse Trustpilot. One way they do that is by flagging every negative review for no reason, just to hide those reviews as much as possible. Of course, Trustpilot doesn’t appreciate that tactic, and they’ve developed ways to combat this practice.
By the way, Trustpilot has found that only about 1% of all reviews are flagged by companies. That’s good news for us—that means 99% of reviews are not being hidden.
Trustpilot also displays a graph that reveals how many reviews a company has flagged in the past and, very importantly, how many stars each of those reviews had. In other words, if a company only ever flags 1-star reviews, you’ll see that and can deduce how fair that company is toward reviews.
Also, Trustpilot still displays all the reviews that were flagged and then reinstated later. You can filter reviews by the number of stars given. That means you can see all the 1-star reviews they tried to hide, then form your own opinion of that company.
Can You Put Trust in Trustpilot?
Trustpilot reviews are useful when I’m shopping. I use them as a source of information when I’m starting to research a product or company. I don’t use them as my only source, though. I read articles too. I even call or visit a company to form my own opinion when I can.
As a business owner, I also use Trustpilot reviews to get a great idea of what my customers are saying and feeling. You can, too. And if you get negative reviews from customers, your first thought shouldn’t be, “How do I get rid of this?” Your first thought should be to help the customer. Respond courteously online, and everyone in the future will see that you did your best to help.
Is Trustpilot a scam? Not in any way. They are a company that lets you see lots of opinions from the public. Their strength comes from their openness and the immediacy of showing reviews, which means you’ll also see some biased reviews.
Trustpilot knows their strengths and weaknesses, of course, and has worked for years to train their agents and software to do everything possible to create a trustworthy place for you to read and place reviews. Use it wisely, and contribute to making it a kind and useful place.
