As an English speaker, you might have heard of customer review websites such as Trip Advisor, Trustpilot, BBB (Better Business Bureau), Yellowpages and Manta. These customer review websites have a pretty simple logic:
1) Customers make their experiences with different businesses public by writing reviews on them.
2) Positive reviews attract more business. Negative reviews obviously have the opposite effect.
Trip Advisor is used to some extent here in Brazil in the contex of specific industries, but when Brazilians have a real quarrel with a company, they usually write a review on Reclame Aqui (Portuguese for “Complain Here”). It has proved to be a major tool for customers here as Reclame Aqui became a major source of valuable pre-purchase knowledge (“I want to buy this new gadget, let’s see its manufacturer’s record on Reclame Aqui”).
This review website has become so powerful that users who post negative reviews often get calls from the related companies’ customer service departments in a bid to solve the issues raised in the said reviews. This has actually happened to me more than once. Last time was about a negative review I wrote on a shower I had bought. It was presenting several problems, which I wrote about. My complaint was quickly answered via email and I was given a new shower. And a few days later, a representative from the shower’s manufacturer called me to ask if everything had been solved properly.
So Reclame Aqui has become a major tool for customers who not so long ago were stuck trying to talk to large companies who often would not care much about one person’s complaint. Now that such complaints are easily made public, companies, small or large, must pay heed to them or face a potential drop on sales.
However, there are companies that do not care much about their reputation on Reclame Aqui for different reasons. On the screenshot below, you can see two important columns with reviewed company logos: Empresas que mais resolveram (Companies that solved most [quarrels]) and Piores Empresas (Worst Companies)
As you can see, Instagram is rated as the top worst company and that’s simply because Instagram does not answer to all the complaints “filed”. Other companies with quite bad reputations are three of Brazil’s main telecoms: Vivo, Claro and TIM. And Uber is not bothering to answer any of the negative reviews about them…
If your company is doing business in Brazil, it is definitely a good idea to keep an eye on this portal as, today, it is ranked 12 on Alexa for Brazil.
And if you need help with this and other tasks related to doing business in Brazil, feel free to contact us.