Priory Direct is the UK and Europe’s leading eCommerce supplier of packaging, office, and warehouse products. With over 20 years of experience, this family business started collecting reviews with Trustpilot back in 2013. Since then, Priory Direct’s received more than 2,600 reviews and over 98% positive customer feedback.
In this case study interview article, we spoke with Josh Pitman, Managing Director at Priory Direct, to better understand why the company felt the need to build trust in the first place, how they achieved a 9.6/10 Trustscore, and how they leverage Trustpilot reviews throughout their business today.
Trustpilot: Why did you choose Trustpilot to build trust with customers?
Josh Pitman: Priory Direct exists as we wanted businesses to have what we couldn’t find when we went into eCommerce ourselves; a reliable, trustworthy supplier which you could count on for life.
We began using Trustpilot in 2013 as we were seeking a feedback mechanism to ensure we had good relationships with our existing customers and were getting our service right. We’ve since seen that having an excellent Trustscore with a third party provider is an incredibly powerful route which has helped us increase our new customer acquisition rates and average order values.
Today, our customer base continues to grow and we truly believe that’s thanks to our 9.6/10 score which we’ve achieved from 2,600+ ‘excellent’ reviews.
Trustpilot has given us an invaluable opportunity to start new relationships and has allowed us to show prospects that our existing customers believe we offer a fantastic experience. We collect customer feedback to ensure our customers are pleased with every aspect of their order. This feedback allows us to make informed decisions to identify improvements which make customer experience even better.
We’re immensely proud of our 5-star rating, and we showcase it around our channels to build trust and credibility with new and existing customers. On top of a Trustscore in the header of our website, we also use the live review feed in the footer of every page and product reviews on our product pages to demonstrate to new prospects how happy our existing customers are.
Thanks to our growing reputation, we’re now the supplier of choice for over 21,000 eCommerce companies. Delivering outstanding service, and measuring it by asking for our customers’ feedback, continues to be key to our success.
TP: Are there multiple departments or teams using Trustpilot?
JP: All Priory Direct employees receive the new review emails so everyone can see how we’re performing – we’re an incredibly hard-working team, and it means a lot to us that we’re achieving our goal of being the best in our market.
Our customer service team are the primary users of Trustpilot for maintaining and improving customer satisfaction wherever possible, and to help our sales team identify leads and opportunities to grow existing relationships with satisfied customers.
The logistics and warehouse departments also take each and every piece of feedback on outer packaging and courier issues on board to ensure we improve wherever possible and have suitable solutions in place moving forwards.
Our marketing department uses Trustpilot to identify key areas of customer happiness to drive further traffic there, proactively change online communications or product descriptions to clarify specific details where feedback suggests it’s needed, and to gain insights into our most likely brand advocates for engagement and customer referrals.
The development team have improved the user experience wherever issues have been highlighted, and have used customer feedback and suggestions to deploy new website features which have led to a higher conversion rate.
TP: It sounds like you use reviews across all departments and channels… Have you measured any improvements from using reviews on your website and in your marketing campaigns?
JP: Our fantastic service levels completely set us apart from others in our market. We’ve integrated our Trustpilot reviews with our Google Ads account and have since seen a 14% increase in click-through rate on ads.
Our 5-star ‘Excellent’ rating is shown at the top of every page on our website, product reviews are shown for corresponding products, and the live review feed is also included on all pages.
We share our reviews on social media too: the Trustpilot Facebook integration allows us to easily show to potential customers that our existing customers love doing business with us, and are happy to write about how good their experience has been.
We’ve also all picked our favourite reviews and use them in our personal email signatures, as well as in marketing newsletters, to reinforce the rating we’ve achieved to our customers.
Showcasing our reviews across all channels has helped to reduce consumer hesitation and has boosted confidence and trust in every step of each purchase, as well as throughout our long-term relationships with our customers.
TP: Are there any major customer insights your team has learned and leveraged since using Trustpilot?
JP: We’ve implemented changes of all scales across all departments in response to customer feedback; this open and honest communication with customers has played a pivotal role in improving our systems, website, and service offering. Using Trustpilot has made it significantly easier for us to quickly identify areas of the business which need to be focused on so we can continue to achieve and deliver the outstanding levels of service which we strive for, and our customers expect from Priory Direct.
Using customer feedback we’ve instigated the following:
1 hour delivery windows in our customer emails
Courier tracking details for all consignments
1 click repeat ordering functionality on site and in emails
Automated reorder reminders and stock level alerts
Downloadable customer invoices
More-robust outbound packaging for all orders
2 new couriers for improved service and value on large items and smaller consignments
LiveChat service Monday-to-Friday
Courier and payment preference selection in checkout
Delivery label order comments in checkout for customers
TP: What are the biggest advantages the business has seen from using Trustpilot?
JP: Using Trustpilot has given us a better understanding of our customers, has brought change in virtually every area of our business, and has greatly improved our customer relations both with our most-satisfied long-term customers and the rare few who experience problems too.
Sometimes things do go wrong, we’re only human. We run a fast-paced business, and we rely on third-party couriers a lot of the time. We’ve come to realise that when customers tell us something has gone wrong, it give us a great opportunity to go above and beyond to put things right with them and learn something important about our business in the process.
Realising this has allowed us to proceed without fear of negative feedback and the few instances where we have received less than 5 star reviews have driven some of the best improvements, lessons, and customer relationships we’ve ever had – we even convert most of them to edited 5 star reviews once we help out!
Last but not least, our ‘excellent’ service rating and the increasing number of up-to-date independent reviews we receive through our partnership with Trustpilot has increased credibility and trust with new prospects, which has ultimately played a strong assisting role in our excellent growth over the past 5 years, as we hope it will continue to do into the future.
TP: What are your challenges going forward as a business?
JP: As our market presence grows and our larger competitors become aware of how many of their customers are coming to us because of our market-leading prices, easy ordering features and outstanding-service, our deep pocketed rivals are going to invest heavily in route to market to try and prevent their existing customers from moving their business to us.
We see our social credibility and having a large base of “review equity” and testimonials from our exceedingly happy customers as one of our strongest differentiators and weapons against this – we believe in outstanding service and super-happy-customers and we know that’s all we need to grow - Trustpilot lets us shout about that in an independent, reputable, and trustworthy way.
Trustpilot: We’d like to thank you for your time! It was great to learn how reviews have helped you achieve so much since 2013.
To learn more about Priory Direct, head to their website. If you’d like to find out more about Trustpilot reviews, request a demo below.
