Is your business losing out because of fake reviews?

Online reviews are highly influential, impacting purchasing decisions for over 93% of consumers.

But with 2.2 million fake or harmful reviews posted to TrustPilot in 2020 alone, it’s a significant issue for businesses and individual consumers alike.

Here we explore why fake reviews pose such a danger to businesses, what’s being proposed to protect companies and how standards can help.

What harm do fake reviews do to businesses?

Far from being an issue that just affects consumer confidence, false reviews skew the marketplace, giving some businesses an unfair advantage while disadvantaging others. With £23 billion annual consumer expenditure being influenced by customer reviews, the potential reputational and financial damage to business is significant.

The threat is serious enough for the UK government to propose making it illegal to post fake online reviews. There is also a Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) review into the issue, which could penalise companies that have not done enough to tackle the problem. The CMA review is looking at Google and Amazon, in particular.

Fake reviews may represent unfair commercial practice under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, but this can be challenging to enforce. Even where procedures exist to have a fake review taken down, this can be time-consuming to achieve. In the meantime, the review will often continue to cause reputational and financial harm.

Proposals for change

The government’s proposals include:

• Giving powers to regulators to address misuse of online reviews
• Penalties for companies that trick customers into spending more than they intended
• Penalties for concealing the fact that a company has paid for its product to be featured prominently on a trading website

How businesses can protect against harmful reviews

For smaller businesses, it can be hard to know how much resource to devote to managing online reviews. A systematic approach can help to ensure any time is effective and you understand how to measure whether you are being effective.

The first step is to develop a review management strategy. This means thinking through the issue seriously and understanding the impact reviews can have on your business. Some companies are clearly more reliant on online trading than others.

If there are common issues that are raised in customer reviews, take these into account in your general approach to customer service, so you can correct any problems and prevent further negative reviews. Always respond promptly, courteously and factually to negative reviews. This shows you are listening and enables you to put any counterpoints that give a fuller picture. You should also understand the procedures for removing fake reviews from the main sites you use so you can act quickly if you see one.

How standards can help

Using BS ISO 20488 can help you to develop a comprehensive approach to managing reviews. The standard offers the guiding principles and requirements for the collection, moderation and publication of online consumer reviews.

BS ISO 20488 is aimed at review websites as well as the companies being reviewed.
It can be used by suppliers who manage their own reviews, contracted third parties and independent third-party sites.

Reflecting international best practice throughout the process, from collection to moderation and to publication, the standard helps companies boost consumer confidence in online reviews, protect suppliers from mischief and improve the quality of products and services provided.

It covers topics such as verification of reviews and establishing criteria for removing fake reviews. There are recommendations to help increase consumer trust in online consumer reviews and increase the protection of suppliers from exploitation.

There are also suggestions for improving the purchase decisions of consumers and the quality of products and services provided by organisations.

Using BSI ISO 20488 can help to increase consumer trust in businesses, while helping to protect against the financial and reputational damage posed by fake reviews.

Find BS ISO 202488 here

Find out more about how to establish and maintain trust in the digital sphere