Managing your product's reputation: responding to reviews, handling fakes, and building trust.
Start with the pillar guide: Managing Your Reputation
A public review reply and a private support thread do different jobs. What belongs in each, a channel decision for six common complaint types, and how to close the loop publicly without pressuring the reviewer.
The FTC Consumer Review Rule (16 CFR Part 465) has been in force since October 2024, with civil penalties up to $53,088 per violation. Here is what each section bans, how it maps to launch-day asks, gift cards, review gating and testimonial pages, and a practical compliance audit.
Trustpilot, G2, Capterra, and Google all have a flag button, and all four refuse to referee whether a review is true. Here is what each one accepts, whether the review stays online while they look, how long it takes, and the FTC rule that makes aggressive disputing a legal risk.
Search "reputation management" and you get agencies selling monitoring retainers. For a software product the job breaks into four layers with very different price tags, from a $0 structured-data fix to G2 at $299/mo in year one. Here is what each layer costs and what it actually repairs.
Millions of fake reviews are removed by major platforms every year, and buyers have noticed. How the open-review model broke, what it costs honest businesses, and why verification is the structural fix.
Prospects read your replies to bad reviews more carefully than the reviews themselves. A response framework, five copy-paste templates for common situations, and the mistakes that make things worse.
