New laws designed to clamp down on fake reviews has been welcomed by a customer service expert.

The government has announced new rulings to be better protect people from fake reviews and ‘subscription traps’. 

Proposals include making it illegal to pay someone to write or host fake reviews.

A competition watchdog will get new powers to fine firms up to 10 per cent of their global turnover for bad business practices.

Shaun Cremins (pictured), CX director of Sutton Coldfield customer experience consultancy, insight6 said: “This is a welcome change - consumers should be able to put their trust completely in third party reviews.

“It’s a sad realisation that some businesses opt to buy fake reviews rather than invest in improving their customer experience and generate genuine positive reviews.

“Businesses shouldn’t be afraid of some negative feedback. Managed correctly, it offers an opportunity to learn and improve, resulting in an improved customer experience and new genuine positive feedback.”

Mr Cremins said firms must have better processes in place to monitor feedback – while offering customers an outlet to vent frustrations.

He added: “Genuine customer insight is priceless in the pursuit of five-star reviews.

“As a customer experience specialist, when working with businesses who have had some negative feedback, I often find that it is a very simple fix.

“The first step to positive reviews is becoming aware of issues and giving your customers the outlet to vent their frustrations.

“Many have no process in place to request or monitor feedback, and that’s when people head to the internet.

“Once a feedback process is established, we can help implement new strategies to improve the whole customer experience – this could include ironing out a glitch in the customer journey, or upskilling staff.”

With more than 600 clients, insight6 is one of largest customer experience consultancies in the UK.

Supported by a network of 25 CX specialists across the UK, insight6 provides solutions to monitor, investigate and improve the end-to-end customer experience of a business.

To find out more about CX and how you could improve your customer reviews organically, contact Shaun Cremins on shaun.cremins@insight6.com or 07599 293836.