Customer story

How Food Circle Supermarket was able to build trust by upgrading to more invitations and better features

Problem

Because of their unique business model, customers saw their prices and assumed they couldn't trust it.

Solution

Automated review invitations for more customer feedback and array of different ways to show that feedback off.

Result

Stronger brand trust and a replacement of their own brand voice with the voice of their customers.

Food Circle Supermarket is not your average retailer.

Instead of looking to produce more food, they want to try and reduce food waste and the enormous strain it puts on our planet. They do this by selling surplus products from some of the largest snacking brands in the world and help distribute any product that is short dated, overstock, has old branding, or would otherwise be wasted.

Their business model works well because it’s a win for everyone involved. They’re able to sell the surplus products at a heavily discounted rate and ship them right to their door, saving their customers time and money on the products they need. And they’re able to help brands from having to waste surplus products and deal with the logistical headache that comes with disposing of them.

“Our best advice is to make use of the amazing help that the Trustpilot onboarding team provides. Kevin is our contact and has been very helpful since welcoming us to Trustpilot! We have regular calls with him so we can ask any questions we have and identify areas for optimising the great results we're seeing.”

Paul Simpson
Commercial Director

A customer nudge towards customer reviews

Because their prices are often more than 50% less than what the usual price would be, it was hard for them to be seen as trustworthy to new customers. Many of them just assumed there was a catch or that it was a scam. They actually started using Trustpilot’s free platform after a customer reached out to them in 2019 and suggested they get a Trustpilot page — specifically because their prices seemed too good to be true!

By the time they had accumulated around 200 reviews – almost all of which were 5-stars – they realized the impact that positive reviews could have on their brand reputation online. At this point they could clearly see the effect customer reviews had on building trust and they knew that upgrading to a paid plan would get them more review invitations and other helpful features.


The value Food Circle received from upgrading

Once they moved onto a paid plan they quickly started to see value in some of the new features they unlocked. With more invitations, more reviews, and better ways to leverage those reviews, their success with Trustpilot grew.

More review invitations

Getting access to more review invitations was one of the main reasons they upgraded. And within less than a year of upgrading, they went from having around 200 reviews to almost 2,000. For new customers to the Food Circle brand, this means more genuine experiences they can read about to help reassure them that Food Circle Supermarket is a trustworthy brand to spend their money with.

Better ways to showcase their customer feedback

Their new plan also came with better ways to use their reviews throughout their customer journey and highlight the online trust they were working so hard to build. They started by implementing a live carousel of customer reviews right on their homepage, to build trust with any new visitors to their site. And with their industry becoming more and more competitive, any additional trust they could convey was a huge help in giving them a competitive edge.

Since their reviews have been so overwhelmingly positive, they also want to point customers back to their Trustpilot page wherever possible. They started including their rating at the bottom of their emails with a link to direct people to their profile page and point them to all of their positive reviews.

This way – regardless of the email’s call to action– anyone who is on the fence can take a look at the feedback from all of their happy customers and know they’re in good hands.

With some help from Trustpilot’s social media tools, it also became quick and easy to turn customer reviews into an eye-catching social post.

Every brand knows that coming up with unique content for their social channels is extremely challenging. They’re aware that they need to post on a regular basis to keep up a social presence, even though the majority of branded content is something their audience doesn’t actually want to see.

Instead of wasting time trying to reinvent the wheel and post the same repetitive posts about their brand, they’ve unlocked a steady stream of visual content — that their customers are truly interested in — and that helps drive sales.

Integrations to make their teams’ lives easier

For any business, systems that don’t integrate together can create massive headaches for your teams. Food Circle Supermarket uses Shopify, so it was really important that they find a review platform that had an integration with them.

As a result, they’re able to add review carousels and widgets to their site in seconds, so there’s no hassle to make changes or adjustments. It’s quick and easy.

A competitive edge and a meaningful way to interact with their customers

Although they’re a unique business in a relatively new market, their industry is getting competitive very quickly. Their reviews give them a competitive edge because they have such great feedback from their customers and they’re sharing it wherever they can.

It also gives their customers a meaningful way to interact with their brand. When there’s negative feedback, they’re able to take that, resolve it with the customer, and make changes to avoid future customers having the same issues. And for their happy customers, it’s a great way to foster engaging conversations with the people who matter most so they feel heard.

Food Circle’s tips for getting success out of your reviews

Along the way there are a few things that Food Circle Supermarket has learned about how to make the most out of your customer reviews. It’s important to leverage your reviews across as many different marketing channels as possible. Because using the voice of your customers can be so much more effective than your own generic ad copy and messaging, it’s important to maximize results from your reviews by replacing your own voice with the voice of your customer.

The other secret to success with reviews is making the most of the onboarding team and asking as many questions as possible. Because there are a variety of uses and benefits to customer reviews, what works for one company may not work for another.

Getting started with customer reviews

Are you wanting to get started but new to customer reviews? Create a free account and start collecting reviews today.
And if you’re already using our free platform and are eager to see similar results to Food Circle Supermarket, consider an upgrade to our standard plan.