It seems logical that every company should aim for a perfect customer review score. After all, if every customer is happy, why wouldn’t that help convince the next customer to buy from you?

The problem, however, is that buyers don’t think like that. Research has found that products with ratings around 4.2 – 4.5 stars often outperform perfect 5-star ratings because they feel more believable.

When perfection creates doubt

When I look at reviews and see nothing but perfect scores, my first reaction usually isn’t that the company must be amazing. It’s that something feels a little off. Were the negative reviews removed? Did only happy customers get asked to leave a review? Is this really what every customer experienced? Did they write all the reviews themselves?

I am convinced I’m not the only one who thinks that way.

The blemishing effect

There is actually a name for this. It’s called the blemishing effect. The idea is that a small, believable flaw often makes the positives around it feel more genuine.

Take a review that says, “Implementation took a bit longer than we expected, but once we were live, the solution was excellent.”

That review actually does a lot of heavy lifting.

It makes the surrounding five-star reviews feel more believable because it doesn’t read like marketing. At the same time, it answers one of the objections a future buyer may already have in the back of their mind.

I’ve even seen companies deliberately source reviews that aren’t perfect because the criticism is about something fairly minor rather than the solution itself. Someone might write that there are a lot of features to learn in the beginning, or that it took a little while to get comfortable with the system. Those aren’t really criticisms of whether the solution works. They’re simply observations about using it.

Most buyers read something like that and think, “I can live with that.”

That’s very different, however, from reading that the software doesn’t work, support never responds, or promises weren’t kept.

Authenticity beats perfection

Trying to remove every imperfect review can therefore have the opposite effect of what you’re trying to achieve. A page full of perfect reviews often creates skepticism. A page with mostly positive reviews and a few genuine criticisms tends to feel more authentic.

That doesn’t mean you should be happy about poor reviews. If customers are genuinely unhappy, you’ve got something you need to fix. But if someone leaves honest feedback about something that wasn’t perfect, don’t be too quick to hide it.

Reply to it. Explain what happened. Show that you listened and, where appropriate, what you changed.

People aren’t just judging the review. They’re also judging how you respond to it.

Ironically, buyers don’t expect perfection. They expect honesty. Sometimes a few small imperfections are exactly what makes the rest of your customer feedback believable. In many cases, they’re what make it trustworthy in the first place.