Hellopeter has been around for many years, and South Africans still use the online review platform to write about their experiences with business to this day. In fact, every minute, someone posts a review on hellopeter.com. However, with the platform becoming increasingly popular, how is Hellopeter ensuring that reviews are relevant and trustworthy?
Hellopeter vs Hellopeter Business
Hellopeter's purpose is twofold. Whereas before, it was focused on giving consumers a platform to publicly write about their experiences with businesses, it has transitioned into more. Now, businesses also have a way of joining the conversation and managing their online reputation with Hellopeter's ever-evolving software and tools.
Hellopeter for the consumer
The purpose for consumers remains the same. It empowers them by giving them a voice on a respected platform where they can write reviews about recent experiences with businesses, whether good, bad, or average. Just like consumers would write reviews on TripAdvisor after a holiday, they would go to Hellopeter to write about their festive season shopping experiences, for example.
Secondly, consumers can also do their research by reading unbiased reviews from fellow South Africans to ensure they make the best possible decision when spending their hard-earned money. Consumers use Hellopeter every day to make informed decisions, whether it's something small, like choosing a hair salon or big, like deciding on an insurance provider or bank.
Hellopeter for businesses
Hellopeter Business acts as a 'safe space' for businesses from which they can engage with their customers, get valuable performance insights, build social proof, and improve their industry ranking and perception while growing their business.
You can sign up for one of their plans, starting from free for the entry-level plan ideal for smaller businesses to those more suited to bigger companies needing access to more tools to manage their online reputation.
How Hellopeter remains impartial
Hellopeter can be compared to a bridge, with businesses on one side and the customers on the other. Therefore, Hellopeter does not engage in conversations, facilitate dispute resolutions, or offer legal advice. Instead, the platform simply provides a curated space for businesses, their consumers, and potential consumers to connect directly.
"As Hellopeter, we've got a duty to do the best we can to ensure that the content that lives on our platform is truthful and not defamatory. Therefore, we've got a number of automated and manual measures in place to flag these, as it's important to us to retain our reputation as a trusted and credible platform," says Alon Rom, CEO of Hellopeter.
The review cycle
Anyone can write a review on Hellopeter. However, all reviewers must first sign up for a Hellopeter account. Furthermore, only businesses registered and verified on Hellopeter.com can reply to reviews addressed to them, which helps ensure responses are genuine.
For privacy reasons, Hellopeter allows reviewers to use pseudonyms to protect their identities in the public domain. Furthermore, Hellopeter allows private replies, viewable only by the writer and the business in question, so they can communicate directly and share sensitive and identifying information privately.
How Hellopeter deals with negative or defamatory reviews
As with all online platforms, there's a risk of negative or defamatory reviews making their appearance on Hellopeter. To help avoid this, Hellopeter has a function that allows anyone - from reviewers to browsers and businesses - to report a review suspected of being false or defamatory. All you have to do is click on the 'Report/Flag' button found under that specific review.
It will alert the Hellopeter team, whereafter they will contact the reviewer to verify their review. If the review is found to be in breach of their content guidelines, they will remove it from Hellopeter.
On the other hand, if the review is not in breach of the content guidelines, and the reviewer is certain the review is objective and factual, the reviewer may be asked to provide an affidavit confirming their review. Once a review has been removed, they don't count towards a business's Hellopeter metrics and will not affect their TrustIndex, or average star rating.
Why do people report reviews?
Reviews are reported when they contain content in breach of the Hellopeter content guidelines. This usually extends to reviews that fall into one or more of the following categories:
- Part or all of the information in the review is false
- The review is spam or a scam
- It contains defamatory comments
- The review contains strong language
Hellopeter's Relationships with Compliant Service Providers
As an objective entity, Hellopeter does not enter into inappropriate relationships with any service provider, compliant or otherwise. They take this objectivity seriously and will not enter into any agreements or partnerships that may compromise that objectivity or take sides in any dispute.
This serves to maintain the platform as a consumer review platform and to ensure that the image portrayed of a brand or business reflects consumers' sentiment.
So, can you trust Hellopeter reviews?
When you go to a platform that just has positive reviews, it's often too good to be true. Therefore, there's an inherent trust in what you read on Hellopeter.
"As we become more of a balanced platform, having reached a 50/50 split of positive versus negative reviews this year, both businesses and consumers start to trust the platform more every day. Furthermore, businesses are also realising the value it brings to their business, interacting more directly with their customers, and seeing the results of that," says Alon Rom, CEO of Hellopeter.
Start leveraging the power of online reviews today
Hellopeter Business is a powerful tool to get a handle on your online reputation, send review invites, keep an eye on competitor analytics, and build social proof to inspire buyer confidence.
Take a look at their affordable plans starting at free here, and sign up to give it a spin.
