This page is part of a global project to create a better online reviews system. If you want to know more or give your feedback, write at [email protected] and we’ll grab a beer ;)
As explained in “Why do we leave online reviews”, many people may not have a reason to leave a review. But even if they do, some customers may feel uncomfortable doing so due to their personalities. I’m one of those people.
A personal experience: Last summer, I left my suit at a dry cleaning service and needed it cleaned for a wedding happening two days later. The owner was very nice and offered to clean it faster than usual. I was really grateful and wanted to leave a 5-star review, but... it didn’t feel natural. I didn’t know why at the time. After some reflection, I realized I was uneasy with the idea of having “power” over them. Whether positive or negative, the fact that my review could impact their business revenue disturbed me.
Many online reviews start with the phrase “I never leave online reviews but…”. People feel the need to justify why they are leaving a review because it carries social significance. This implies that most of the time, they choose not to leave one, even when they could.
A study suggests that on platforms like eBay, where buyers and sellers review each other, buyers might avoid criticizing sellers for poor performance due to concerns about their own reputation and fear of retaliation (we’ll cover this specific issue in “Trustability: Fear of Retaliation”). So, altruism and social behaviors can both motivate and inhibit people from leaving online reviews.
This explains the power of “catalysts” mentioned in the “Why do we leave online reviews” section. In the example above, the experience was probably not extraordinary enough for me to leave a review (cf. “Extreme Opinions”), and the owner didn’t ask for one, among other reasons.
Some people also consider writing a review hypocritical: if you wouldn’t say it directly to someone, why write it online (even if it’s positive feedback)?
This sentiment is even stronger when asked to review the performance of an individual rather than a whole business (e.g., a customer service agent). Reviewers might fear that negative feedback could have a concrete impact on the agent, such as a salary decrease. Judging people is different from judging a product because emotions are involved.
Leaving a review should be more casual and we need to lower the commitment- people should not feel like they have the power to impact too much the business or the individual collaborator’s reputation. For it to be true, leaving a 1-star and seeing the average rating going down should probably be impossible, right? It’s all about what the external readers will see at the end.
- Peer-to-peer reviews. A platform on which you only see reviews from friends partly solves it. If someone leaves a review for their connections only and not the entire planet, they don’t feel like they’re participating in destroying the business reputation. It can work in some industries like culture (movies, books… IMDb for example offers people to give and get recommendations from friends) or restaurants (Mapstr is a social platform on which users recommend restaurants to peers).
- A system relying only on positive recommendations. If their power is only positive, people would probably be more likely to leave a review online. Without the “power to cause damage” on the reputation, these people would probably feel more at ease with the system. No recommendation may represent a bad experience (just like no review may be a bad review), but I feel like people would be ok with such a system. IMDb and Mapstr mentioned above are mostly based on positive recommendations. The “clapping” system on medium is another example of purely positive recommendations.
- Private comments are a way for reviewers to remain honest with the business owners, while still providing information to the public. It removes part of the “hypocrisy”, at the heart of many reviewers’ blocker.
An Empirical Investigation of Third-Party Seller Rating Systems in E-Commerce: The Case of buySAFE, Clemson, 2007