Instead of producing even more food, the company is committed to fighting food waste and the serious impact it has on the planet. The brand is actually responsible for reselling the surplus products of some of the world’s largest snack manufacturers, distributing snacks that have a short expiration date, are overpriced, belong to an old brand, or would otherwise go to waste.
Food Circle Supermarket’s excellent business model is a win-win. In fact, customers save time and money by purchasing deeply discounted surplus products from the company, which are shipped directly to their homes. Snack companies, in turn, easily avoid food waste and the laborious process of disposing of products.
Since the prices of snacks resold by Food Circle Supermarket often fall below 50% of the average, looking trustworthy in the eyes of customers was not easy for the company. In fact, many users had the impression that it was a scam. So the company started using Trustpilot’s free program after a customer suggested they create a business profile on the platform in 2019 – precisely because the prices seemed too good to be true!
After collecting around 200 reviews – almost all 5 stars – the company noted the impact positive reviews can have on an online brand’s reputation. Just because customer reviews are fundamental to building trust, the company has switched to a paid plan to collect even more and make the most of all available features.
Once it switched to Trustpilot’s paid plan, the company was able to test the effectiveness of some of the new features it had access to: thanks to the ability to send more invitations, receive more reviews and use them better, its success increased.
Being able to send out more review invitations was one of the main reasons the brand decided to upgrade. And indeed, within a year, the reviews received went from 200 to 2000. This also represented an advantage for new customers of Food Circle Supermarket, who were able to read many more testimonials guaranteeing the brand’s credibility.
The new plan signed also allowed the company to discover new ways to take advantage of reviews in the customer shopping journey and thus demonstrate the trust it has already earned with so much effort. First, the company implemented a live TrustBox Carousel with customer reviews on the home page of its website to attract the attention of new visitors. Given the increasing competition in the industry, the brand needed as much trust as possible from its customers.
Since the reviews gathered were overwhelmingly positive, the brand wanted to bring customers to the Trustpilot business profile page as well. So they started including their rating at the bottom of their emails, along with a link that redirects users to the brand’s profile page showing them all the positive reviews.
That way, regardless of the call to action in the email, anyone with doubts about the company can take a look at the reviews left by satisfied customers and personally verify the brand’s credibility.
Plus, with the help of Trustpilot’s social media tools, turning customer reviews into engaging posts has become quick and easy.
Businesses know that creating unique content for social media channels is extremely difficult as they need to post on a regular basis to maintain a strong online presence, even though most of their branded content may not be of much interest to their audience.
Instead of wasting time trying to reuse the same content, the brand started creating a continuous and regular stream of visual content based on the words of its own customers – and, for that reason, really interesting to its audience – that really helps to sales increase.
For any business, working with systems that are not integrated with each other can be a tedious and unproductive task. Since Food Circle Supermarket uses Shopify, it was crucial for the brand to find a review platform that had proper integration.
Thanks to Trustpilot, the company can add a Carousel widget with collected reviews to their website in seconds, without having to make any changes or adjustments.
Although a one-of-a-kind business in a relatively new field, the Food Circle supermarket industry is becoming increasingly competitive. The numerous reviews the brand receives gives the company a certain edge, especially since it is committed to sharing the great feedback customers leave across all its channels.
Additionally, collecting reviews is a great way to get customers to interact with the brand. When receiving negative feedback, the company takes it into account, talks to the customer about it and makes sure to take the necessary steps to prevent similar problems from happening again in the future. As for positive reviews, they serve the brand to start interesting conversations with customers and make them feel heard.
Over time, there are a few things Food Circle Supermarket has learned about how to get the most out of customer reviews. For example, he knows it’s important to display the reviews he receives on as many marketing channels as possible. Since it’s much more effective to let your customer reviews speak for themselves than to create generic ad copy and marketing messages, replacing your voice with that of your buyers is essential to maximizing the results of your review.
The other secret to success with reviews is to let the service’s activation team guide you and ask as many questions as possible. Given the wide variety of uses and benefits of customer reviews, in reality, what may work for one company may not be very effective for another.
“The best advice we can give is to rely on Trustpilot’s excellent service enablement team. Our contact is Kevin, who has helped us a lot since we started using the platform! We have regular calls with him to ask him questions and to understand how to further improve the excellent results we are already achieving.”
Paul Simpson
Commercial Manager at Food Circle Supermarket
Would you like to get started but have never had to deal with customer reviews? Create a free profile and start collecting reviews today.
And if you’re already using our platform for free and want to get similar results to Food Circle Supermarket, consider upgrading to the Standard Plan.