Do you trust online reviews? Does good client feedback give you the confidence to buy? Do negative client comments put you off getting in touch? Or do you just ignore it all!

 

There have been a number of reports in the media lately regarding the reliability of reviews left on some of the most popular platforms. Trustpilot have recently deleted over 2 million fake reviews left in 2020 and the BBC recently reported that fake Amazon reviews are being sold in bulk online. Safe to say this is nothing new. Fake reviews have been an issue since such platforms, including Google Reviews, were created. Fake negative reviews to put us off the competition. Fake positive reviews to push a product. Unfortunately there will always be unscrupulous organisations that get ‘creative’ with this stuff. (Spoiler, we’re not one of them!)

As consumers, we want to know what other people think before we progress with our purchase or enquiry. Be it ebay, Amazon, or any other business, it is more than likely that we will have a quick check through the reviews before doing anything else, i know i do! I’ll make my own judgement, so a bad comment wont necessarily put me off progressing, (some people are just angry) but the reviews are considered in my decision making process, they have value.

 

Working Feedback

 

How we do things

Here at Macbeth we want to know how we’re doing, so we’ve always asked for feedback from our clients. However, it’s only been in recent years that we’ve used a dedicated tool to manage the process. After reviewing the main players in the market including Trustpilot and Feefo, we ended up partnering with a lesser known solution called Working Feedback; a recommendation from a trusted industry contact. Working Feedback offered the functionality, flexibility and cost point that other providers struggled to achieve. The tool allows us to request, capture and present the feedback in real time on our website and social media channels. An option to leave Google Reviews is also available. If you are considering streamlining your process for requesting feedback, we can recommend Working Feedback, who are absolutely not sponsoring this blog post. šŸ˜‰

 

No Cherry Picking

We ask for feedback from every client at least once a year, usually once we have completed a renewal or put a new account on cover. All our reviews are genuine. We don’t cherry pick who we ask and we don’t incentivise individuals to leave positive comments. We respond to every piece of feedback. Working Feedback ensures that we can’t interfere with the comments or scores, not that we would want to! The vast majority of reviews that we have received are 5 stars and, so far, we have a total satisfaction score of 98% based on 300 reviews. Is it ok that we don’t have 100% satisfaction? Certainly i see the 98% and wonder what we could have done to get that last 2%!

Part of opening up to feedback is that you should be prepared to take the good with the bad. A less than good review is an opportunity to learn, to put things right and to show that we (and the reviews) are real!

 

Take a look at what our clients are saying.

 

Too good to be true?

If every review is glowing with 5 stars, i can understand some scepticism as to how genuine the reviews might be. Fortunately most of our comments go along way to demonstrating originality and realness. You only need to read a few to feel confident that they are genuine. Seeing a few 4 star reviews is fine, we can live with that, we live in the real world and not everyone gives full marks, regardless! We’ve had one 3 star review where the main issue was one of timing on a renewal. We communicated with the client, made plans for the following renewal and the relationship remains strong. No one wants a long list of poor reviews, but an endless list of 5 stars and praise may suggest something is up, maybe.

If we stop asking, we stop learning. If we stop learning, we go backwards.

 

So, how are we doing?