Collecting customer feedback on a quality review and insights platform is essential for your business, but an increasing number of businesses are using more than one. If you’ve noticed that, you might be wondering if you should be doing that too. The answer isn’t straightforward, since it depends on your industry, goals, and the value you’re aiming to extract from customer feedback.
Why use multiple review platforms?
With each review platform requiring a subscription, working with more than one review platform might seem unnecessary. But there are significant benefits to be gained by using more than one platform in your review collection strategy. The answer as to whether it is right for your business lies in the differences between the platforms.
Not all review platforms are the same
All review platforms collect feedback, but there are crucial differences to understand. The main one is whether they are open to anyone to leave a review, or if they only collect reviews from verified customers. There are pros and cons to both types of platform, which we get much deeper into in this blog, but a quick overview of the differences:
- Verified review platforms: Ensure reviews come from genuine customers who have made a purchase from you
- Open feedback platforms: Allow anyone to leave reviews, even if they’ve never interacted with your business
While open feedback platforms may allow you to collect more reviews, there’s no guarantee that those reviews are from actual customers who have interacted with your business – or that those reviews reflect your business accurately.
Review platform functionality differs
Consider what you want to actually do with the feedback you collect. If you’re a small business or just starting out, simply collecting reviews to share might be your only goal. But if you want to get to know your customers better, the insights contained in their feedback will be important.
To be able to get a clear understanding of the insights contained in your reviews, look for analytics built into the platform. These allow you to dig into customer sentiment, look for trends, and make recommendations about how to make use of insights from feedback. Not all platforms give you the ability to understand those insights, which means you won’t be able to act on them.
Increased visibility
Using multiple platforms amplifies your online presence, allowing you to reach diverse customer segments. For instance, businesses in the travel and hospitality industry might use Feefo alongside TripAdvisor, and local businesses might use Google reviews to help boost their presence on Maps.
By being active across different platforms, businesses can capture attention wherever potential customers are searching.
Increasing SEO benefits
Collecting and displaying reviews can help to improve your search engine rankings. Verified feedback on platforms like Feefo bolsters credibility, contributing to better visibility, ensuring that potential customers find you easily.
Collecting feedback on more than one platform multiplies those benefits – as long as you’re managing them properly.
Diverse feedback for better insights
Collecting feedback from multiple review platforms can provide businesses with a more comprehensive understanding of customer opinions. Different platforms attract varied demographics, offering diverse perspectives that can be invaluable for business growth. In essence, more is more.
By engaging with multiple review platforms, businesses can:
- Gain broader insights: Accessing feedback from both verified and open platforms provides a more rounded view of customer experiences and perceptions.
- Identify demographic trends: Different platforms may attract varied user bases, helping businesses understand how different customer segments perceive their offerings.
- Enhance decision-making: Diverse feedback can highlight strengths and areas for improvement, guiding strategic decisions to better meet customer needs.
When more credibility and trust is required
Displaying genuine customer feedback is part of building trust, encouraging customers to buy from you. But in industries where the stakes are higher, such as when customers are spending more, or investing their savings, more reassurance is better. Dual review recollection strategies help to prove your business is committed to supporting customers, which is vital when customers are making significant investments.
Additionally, even if your business isn’t actively managing reviews on open platforms such as Trustpilot and Google, customers will still leave feedback there. Replying to these reviews demonstrates care and attentiveness, further building trust.
By working with both a verified review platform and an open review platform, you can control how your company is perceived. By responding to reviews on each, you can show customers you’re happy to hear from them wherever they want to leave feedback.
Choosing the right platforms for your business
If more than one customer feedback platform is right for your business, the key is selecting the platforms that are best for your business and your customers.
Align with your industry and audience
Different industries benefit from different review platforms. The choice should reflect where your customers are most likely to engage and what they expect to see. For instance:
- Trustpilot and Feefo: Excellent for regulated industries to enhance credibility and to satisfy compliance with regulatory standards.
- TripAdvisor and Feefo: TripAdvisor is considered essential for hospitality and travel businesses, where customers often rely on peer reviews to make decisions. Feefo can support the business by providing more customer-focused insights at different touchpoints.
- Google and Facebook: Ideal for businesses across most industries that are looking to boost local visibility and interact with a broad audience.
Businesses in some sectors, such as financial services use a combination of Feefo, Trustpilot and Google (and/or other providers) to collect reviews. Regulated industries require extra trust, but why else do they do this?
- Feefo reviews can help meet FCA Consumer Duty requirements as feedback is from genuine customers and is traceable, aligning with regulatory standards.
- Anonymous Trustpilot and Google reviews can’t be followed up with, so don’t satisfy the requirements for Consumer Duty. But these platforms allows consumers to provide feedback if they didn’t purchase a product from the business.
Some businesses might want to collect additional product reviews – such as for products like consumer tech. Syndication allows businesses to share product feedback from our network, so when they source stock that other retailers have already sold, they don’t have to start collecting reviews from scratch. Those syndicated reviews mean their customers are less likely to leave the site for another retailer who has the item. Ebuyer saw the benefit of syndicated reviews immediately when they switched to Feefo; we provided more than 60,000 reviews within 72 hours.
Using more than one review platform means that businesses can access the best functionality from each, as well as proving to their customers that they are trustworthy.
Case studies: Real-world success with multiple platforms
Atom Bank
Atom Bank leverages multiple review platforms, including Feefo and Trustpilot, to build trust and showcase their credibility as a fully app-based bank. By collecting customer feedback through these platforms, they provide prospective customers with diverse and verified perspectives about their services. This approach not only helps demonstrate transparency, but also reinforces their reliability in the absence of physical branches.
Using both platforms allows Atom to meet various needs of the business: Feefo offers detailed, actionable feedback and supports the bank's Net Promoter Score (NPS) measurements, while Trustpilot provides additional reviews for broader social proof. This approach strengthens compliance with Consumer Duty requirements introduced by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), enabling Atom to demonstrate their commitment to customer understanding and satisfaction.
The strategy also impressed auditors, as it reflected Atom's genuine intent to prioritise customers’ needs and showcase trustworthiness through multiple, independent channels.
EE Store
The team at EE Store know the value of customer feedback. Feefo is their primary platform to collect both product and service reviews, and take advantage of syndicated reviews for new products, but they also collect feedback on Trustpilot. They know that customers are more likely to buy when there are multiple trust signals, and that some customers will want to leave feedback where they prefer.
But on a platform where anyone can leave reviews, feedback is less organised, and they encounter feedback about other aspects of EE, such as broadband services. To gain the clearest understanding of their customer experience, they depend on data from Feefo reviews, and look to Trustpilot to help them round out their understanding of customer sentiment. EE also make use of Syndicated reviews from our network - you can read more in our case study with EE Store.
Final thoughts
Using more than one review platform can significantly benefit your business by boosting visibility, building trust, and offering valuable insights into your customers’ experiences. The right mix of platforms depends on your industry and audience, whether that means prioritising Google and Facebook for general businesses, Feefo and Trustpilot for eCommerce and financial services, or TripAdvisor for travel and hospitality.
With the right strategy, reviews can become a vital part of your business, helping you grow and connect with your audience more meaningfully. Take a moment to reflect on your current review strategy. Are you visible where your customers are looking? Are you gaining the insights you need to grow? If not, it might be time to explore new tools or platforms. Solutions like Feefo can help you manage reviews more effectively and uncover insights to drive your business forward.
Start today with a review strategy that works for you. Get in touch to arrange a call with one of our experts.
