In an age where a single review can influence thousands, digital reputation is more important than ever. Whether you're a startup or a global brand, what people say about you online can build trust - or break it.
But it’s not just customers who are paying attention. Jobseekers also rely on online reviews and ratings to assess potential employers. A strong digital reputation helps businesses attract top talent, reduce hiring costs, and reflect a positive workplace culture. On the flip side, negative feedback can deter skilled candidates and damage internal morale. Your reputation isn’t just a marketing asset; it’s a business essential.
To better understand how businesses can navigate this landscape, we spoke with Edward Bolton, Enterprise Customer Success Manager at Trustpilot, the world’s largest independent platform for customer feedback, about why digital reputation is so important and what companies can do to manage it effectively.
Q: Why is digital reputation so important for businesses in today’s climate?
A: We’re living in a time of significant change, where how people find, evaluate, and act on information is shifting faster than ever. In this environment, trust has moved from being a nice-to-have to an absolute necessity. Our vision to be the universal symbol of trust has never been more relevant - or more urgent.
But there’s a challenge that can’t be ignored: the ‘trust gap’. While 90% of business leaders believe their customers trust them, only around 30% of customers actually do. It’s not enough for businesses to recognise that trust drives performance; they also need to act on the core drivers that build it: authenticity, consistency, transparency, accountability, and customer-focused innovation.
In a world where online content is easily created and not always verified, consumers are increasingly cautious. They want to know that what they’re seeing is genuine. That’s why independent social proof - like verified reviews and ratings - has become so powerful. It allows people to hear directly from others, at scale, helping them make confident, informed decisions. And for businesses, it’s a crucial step toward bridging the trust gap and standing out in a crowded market.
Q: How has the role of online reviews evolved in recent years, and what trends are you seeing?
A: We’re seeing a continued increase in the importance of online reviews for consumers, as part of the decision journey for product purchases and service selection. Through a survey we conducted in partnership with London Research last year, we found that 89% of UK consumers say that star ratings and reviews influence their choice of products and services. We’re also seeing the impact of the reviewer community growing on Trustpilot. For example, last year alone 22 million consumers wrote their first ever review, roughly 13% higher than the year before. With the cost of products and services generally rising, it’s not surprising that we’re seeing people pay more attention to who they spend their money with, and what other people are saying about these businesses from their experience.
We’ve also seen recently, a rising focus from regulators across the world on the importance of online trust, with new legislation and guidance released. In the UK for example, the government passed the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCCA), which includes provisions on fake reviews. It aims to enhance transparency and trust in online reviews, ensuring consumers can make informed decisions based on authentic feedback. We engaged the UK government on this legislation over several years, meeting with ministers and officials, providing extensive input to ensure the law was as effective as possible.
Q: Can responding to reviews - both positive and negative - actually improve a business’s reputation?
A: Responding to reviews goes a long way, and it demonstrates both publicly (and to the customer who took the time to write the review), that customer feedback is important, and shows customer centricity.
While replying to reviews doesn't directly improve a business’ score on Trustpilot, we believe that doing so can present a better reputation of the business for potential customers to see, by seeing how they engage with what people are saying.
Q: What are best practices for responding to negative reviews on Trustpilot?
A: We encourage businesses to take the time to respond and communicate with both happy and unhappy customers, and to view it as an important part of managing feedback. Engaging with your reviewers shows that you care - and our advice is to address their points, ask for more information, or just say thanks.
It’s worth trying to establish what’s happened and why that might have triggered their review, take note of what is being said, then respond professionally. When you show that your business listens and responds well to feedback, you create a sense of trust.
Q: How can businesses differentiate between constructive feedback and emotionally charged reviews, and what’s the best way to respond to each?
A: We are an open platform, which means everyone can leave a review of any business, assuming it’s based on genuine experience and meets our guidelines. The benefit is that consumers have the freedom to share their experiences with businesses at any time, resulting in a broad and holistic range of feedback across any point in a consumer’s journey.
It’s important to remember that every review reflects a customer's unique experience. And that they have gone to the length of providing their own direct feedback, which will vary from person to person on how they choose to express this. We encourage businesses to take some time in managing reviews by looking to identify what might have happened with a particular customer, and to engage with them to acknowledge their comments and see if they can resolve any issues raised within a review (which can be done through Trustpilot).
Q: How can businesses spot fake reviews and how should they handle them?
A: We define fake reviews as reviews which don’t reflect genuine service or buying experiences with a business. They’re often written in an attempt to mislead or manipulate what other consumers think about that business, either positively or negatively.
As an open platform that customers trust, we strive to find the balance between this open approach and protecting our content, and so do some of the heavy lifting here on behalf of our platform users. To safeguard our platform as much as possible, every review posted goes through our fraud detection software. In 2024, we removed around 4.5 million fake reviews from our platform, of which 90% were automatically detected by our fake review detection models. We also have a dedicated content integrity team who manually investigate reviews that are flagged by both our consumer and business users in line with our guidelines, as part of our commitment to tackle the challenge of fake reviews - through our technology, community and people.
Q: With the rise of AI, how can organisations reassure customers that their reviews are genuine?
A: The increasing use of AI, and the ability for content to be created easily (that may not be genuine or authentic) poses a challenge for consumers to know what is trustworthy and true, and what isn’t. This can then impact perceptions on whether a review is real, authentic, which in turn can impact someone’s confidence in a brand and make it really difficult to rebuild that trust.
As part of our commitment to this, all reviews submitted to Trustpilot are assessed by our automated detection systems against millions of data points to search for fake reviews, and they’re checked for compliance against our policies and guidelines. If our systems identify suspicious characteristics in the review, or it breaches our guidelines, it doesn’t appear on our platform.
We also provide businesses using our platform with the tools to drive genuine feedback and collect 'verified' reviews on their public Trustpilot profile from automated review invitations, to enhance the credibility of these reviews and the businesses’ trustworthiness.
Q: How can businesses encourage more customers to leave reviews without appearing pushy?
A: We recommend asking for open, unbiased feedback from all customers following a service or product interaction. What we see working really well, is when businesses have a proactive approach to gathering feedback through our platform across a range of touchpoints - rather than relying on customers going to your Trustpilot profile off their own efforts.
To give an example, an approach for a retailer that sells both online and offline, could be automatically inviting customers to give feedback shortly after a purchase, after a customer has spoken with customer service, or activated a warranty on a product etc.
We don’t allow any incentivising for reviews, or cherry picking only the happiest customers to seek feedback from but encourage businesses to lean in to asking all of their customers about their experience using an automated review request, to embrace a wide range of feedback opportunities.
Q: What kind of impact can a poor Trustpilot score have on a business’s bottom line?
A: We’re seeing Trustpilot becoming more and more relevant each year for consumers, forming a big part of their decision-making process on a business that they’re considering for a product or service.
The research with London Research last year found that more than four-in-five (82%) UK consumers agree that a good Trustpilot score makes them more likely to trust a brand, and a similar percentage (83%) agree that a good Trustpilot score makes them more likely to buy from a brand.
On the flipside, they also found that more than half of UK consumers (56%) say they wouldn’t buy from a brand that had a poor Trustpilot score (0, 1 or 2 stars) - which can directly impact a business’ marketing and sales efforts, if a potential customer does not have trust in that brand.
A positive presence on Trustpilot, however, can add huge value to a business’ bottom line. Forrester Consulting conducted a commissioned study on behalf of Trustpilot last year, which found that organisations that deployed Trustpilot received a 401% return on investment - by using our platform solutions to build brand trust, and drive customer acquisition at scale.
Q: What are the most effective ways for businesses to improve their Trustpilot score?
A: Businesses who take a proactive approach to asking for feedback from their customers through our platform’s invitation methods, typically see more success on driving their TrustScore and review volume than businesses who have a more passive approach, and who don’t lean into this.
In fact, we see that businesses collecting reviews via an automatic request results in a 15% higher average TrustScore, and 105% more reviews than for those businesses who don’t. This is since businesses who ask for feedback routinely, are able to tap into that silent majority of customers who are likely happy with the products or services they are receiving, but aren’t going out of their way to provide this positive feedback, without being asked. On the other hand, we generally see a trend of when a customer feels they’ve had a bad experience and have been let down, they will go to the effort of leaving this feedback on a business’ Trustpilot profile organically.
If you are looking for a talented professional to join your team, or seeking a new opportunity yourself, get in touch with a specialist recruiter today.
