We cannot overstate the importance of building and maintaining your online brand reputation, as it really can make or break your business. Studies have shown that 93% of all consumers read online reviews prior to placing an order for a product or service. Additionally, more than 80% of those same consumers consider online reviews just as trustworthy as receiving personal recommendations! If you think about it, you’re highly likely to do the same when making your own online purchases. 

It’s completely understandable, as it’s only human for us to want certainty when making any decisions. We also want help from others in making those decisions and solving the problem of uncertainty. This is why we’ve seen an exponential rise in the number of people using various AI systems to answer for them (e.g. ChatGPT, Gemini, etc.). 

That’s why it’s so important to gain as many customer reviews as possible, and more importantly, verified customer reviews for our business. That’s why Trustpilot is seen as the most trustworthy platform for maintaining high overall review ratings and your business reputation.

 

5 ways to maintain your positive Trustpilot score

Along with Google Business and Yelp, Trustpilot is one of the most trusted and commonly-used review platforms available to businesses and consumers. It is estimated that approximately 1 million reviews are posted about businesses across 23 countries worldwide every month! That’s why your current and potential customers are more-than-likely to search for your business’ Trustpilot rating there before making that all-important purchase decision, and why it’s subsequently important to maintain a high Trustpilot rating.

 

  1. Understanding your Trustpilot score
    To understand how to maintain your high Trustpilot score you first need to understand how your score is calculated.
    There are several factors which Trustpilot takes into account when calculating your score:

      • Review date – As time marches on, reviews carry less and less weight.
      • Review frequency – As a result of the first point, you need to ensure you are encouraging more frequent reviews to maintain score stability.
      • Bayesian average – Every new Trustpilot business account receives 7 reviews of 3.5 stars automatically. This is to ensure that every new business with few ratings receives a balanced score. These original 7 reviews eventually become less impactful as you acquire new reviews.
  2. Compliance with Trustpilot’s policies
    To ensure the legitimacy and fairness of the platform is maintained, Trustpilot has built-in fraud detection software to automatically delete fake reviews, and it has strict policies on how customers can be invited to leave feedback. Some examples of these policies include:

      • Customers should not be rewarded with gift cards, discounts, or other incentives for providing reviews.
      • The language should remain neutral and not encourage anyone to leave positive feedback specifically.
      • All customers should be invited to review regardless of whether or not you feel that specific customers could leave a negative review.

     

  3. Just ask!
    Ask and you shall receive; you should always ask for feedback from customers whether they’ve had a positive or negative experience. Of course, timing is key to maximising the impact of any feedback requests, so here’s two pieces of advice:

    • Ask when engagement is at its highest – This is usually straight after the customer has received their order/service from you, and this can be asked for online or in-person if you have a business premises.
    • Send a reminder a week later – You may wish to allow customers some time to try-out their goods/service before asking them for a review, as this gives them a chance to fully try-out the product. Send them a friendly reminder a week after receiving their product/service with a link to your Trustpilot page.
  4. But think about how you ask…
    Understandably, you want to make sure that the manner in which you ask for a review is polite, but you also want to ensure that it highlights the benefits of providing a review. Below are three tips to help you with this:

    • Keep it simple – you don’t need anything complicated. Simply give them a prompt such as “Let us know how we did today”, with a link directly to your Trustpilot page. Alternatively, you can provide a QR code for this if you sell physical products.
    • Highlight the value it brings – We all feel good about helping others, so why not emphasise the fact that it helps your business to thrive and helps other people to make an informed decision?
    • Emphasise that how quick it is – It only takes a minute or two to write a review, so you should highlight this fact when asking for reviews 
  5. Responding to negative reviews
    It’s never nice receiving negative reviews, but you should always view these as a “challenge” to see if you can overturn that review by assisting the customer and improving your business. It reflects much better on your business if you’re showing to other customers that you care about resolving any issues or concerns that someone might have.

 

Here’s some pointers on how to deal with negative reviews:

  • Be personal with your interactions, as copying and pasting responses is very obvious and can just escalate a customer’s dissatisfaction.
  • Be open and honest. Even if you’ve made a mistake or there’s an issue with your online systems, acknowledge it and apologise if necessary.
  • Offer further discussions, as you may need further information (e.g. customer details, order info, etc.) to be able to fully investigate the issue effectively. Offer to call/email them directly to begin this dialogue.
  • If the situation warrants it, make a goodwill offer. If the customer has been inconvenienced or feels aggrieved, then anything from a gift card to a discount, or bonus points to freebies can make a customer feel valued and encourage further purchases.
  • RESOLVE THE ISSUE! If you’ve identified a fault on your website or a pain point in the customer journey, resolve it as soon as possible. That way, you prevent further negative reviews on the same issue, and you can respond to that same customer to let them know you’ve taken their feedback seriously and resolved their complaint. 

Some final thoughts…

Whilst we can provide you with all the tools and tips available to getting good ratings on Trustpilot, these will only work if the product and service you provide are of a high standard. Customers need to actually have a positive experience with your business and product to warrant them even thinking of providing a 5-star review for you. So make sure you’ve made your products and services ironclad from a quality perspective. However, as strong as you make your product and services, you also need to remember that no matter how good they are, you will always receive the occasional negative review. Things go wrong from time-to-time, so deal with it in a positive manner and you could easily overturn that 1-star review into a 5-star review!