Each review that is submitted on the Gartner Peer Insights web site goes through our rigorous moderation and validation process. The purpose of the validation and moderation process is to 1) validate reviewers’ identity, 2) check for potential conflicts of interest, and 3) ensure reviews meet Peer Insights standards for quality.
1. Validate Reviewers’ Identity
We independently verify the reviewer’s identity and employment. For that, we evaluate whether the reviewer’s name, company and work email are consistent based on information provided. In addition, we perform a web search to cross reference online profiles of the reviewer (LinkedIn, Zoominfo, etc.) and their company. An ideal Peer Insights reviewer is involved in the evaluation, purchase, implementation, support, or usage of the solution.
2. Check for Potential Conflicts of Interest
We do not publish reviews from anyone employed by the vendor, employed by a competitor of the vendor, or employed by an organization with an exclusive relationship with the product being reviewed (this includes exclusive partners, value-added resellers, system integrators and consultants - see blog post for more information).
3. Ensure reviews meet Peer Insights standards for quality
Reviews are assessed based on a set of unique criteria to determine whether or not a review meets Peer Insights standards for context, quality, and relevance. A great review typically has the following characteristics:
Provide comments for mandatory questions (not all questions are mandatory)
Comments to explain the corresponding ratings (for a highly positive or highly negative rated review, there should be supporting comments to substantiate the rating)
Implementation of the product being reviewed must be completed
Ratings are logically consistent (the overall ratings are in line with the averages of the sub-ratings)
Demonstration of experience with the respective product
If we find a discrepancy on any of the above three conditions, we send a rejection email to reviewer’s email address provided. Reviewers are given the opportunity to amend their review and submit for further consideration. If a reviewer believes a decision has been made incorrectly, they may respond with further explanation as needed.
Rejection Reasons and Additional Information
Awaiting reviewer response
What does it mean?
Our Review Moderation team is waiting for the reviewer to respond to a request for additional details in order to fully process their review. If the reviewer fails to respond within 5 business days, the review will be rejected.
How to fix this moving forward?
If your customers reach out to you asking for assistance in regards to an email from our team about their review, we encourage you to have them reach out to our Support Team directly by emailing peerinsights@gartner.com or by clicking on the Contact Support button in the Your Reviews section of their profile.
Content
What does it mean?
We have specific content standards so that reviews published on Peer Insights are helpful to our end-user community during their buying journey. Reviewers need to adjust the qualitative feedback provided in their review to meet these standards.
How to fix this moving forward?
Make sure you set your customers up for success by sharing our Content Guidelines with them when you invite them to review your product. Reviews are robust and generally take 10 to 15 minutes to complete. Reviews must highlight specific user experiences related to the product being reviewed or its specific features. We do not approve reviews that contain generic comments or focus solely on the vendor.
Credentials
What does it mean?
Our team could not verify the identity of the reviewer, there were inconsistencies in the information provided by the reviewer, the reviewer did not submit their review with their company email address or the reviewer’s company is not considered an enterprise or product usage is not at an enterprise level.
How to fix this moving forward?
Let your customers know that it is a requirement for them to use their company email address when creating their reviewer profile and that they need to make sure they verify their email address when prompted. Make sure you are only inviting customers to review your product or service who are eligible to submit a review on Gartner Peer Insights. In order to post a review on Peer Insights, the reviewer must meet the requirements outlined in Section 1.4.1 Verifying Reviewers on GPI within Community Guidelines.
Conflict of Interest
What does it mean?
In order to post a review on Gartner Peer Insights, one of the requirements for reviewer eligibility is that they not have a conflict of interest with the product being reviewed. At this time, Gartner does not publish reviews from anyone employed by the vendor, employed by a competitor of the vendor, or employed by an organization with an exclusive relationship with the product being reviewed (exclusive partner, reseller, value-added reseller, system integrator, MSP*, consultant, etc.).
How to fix this moving forward?
Ensure all reviews are from end-user customers. If the Gartner Peer Insights team can identify that there is a conflict of interest between the organization being reviewed and the organization of the reviewer, regardless of role, we will not approve the review.
Understanding the Reviewer Experience
A review was rejected, what do we do now?
We have a comprehensive moderation process which can result in reviews not being approved and published. If this is the case please see your options for moving forward.
Vendors:
Peer Insights is an anonymous reviews platform. Peer Insights cannot share specific information regarding the reviewer with the vendor.
Ensure that you are providing your reviewers with necessary information for Peer Insights. For example, you may want to inform reviewers beforehand that they must use company emails and provide a quality review.
Reviewers:
Reviewers have the opportunity to go into their profile and see the status of their review. A review cannot be edited while In Moderation.
If a reviewer has a concern regarding their review, please have them email peerinsights@gartner.com for assistance.
Determining which reviews are approved and published on the site is at the discretion of Peer Insights.
For more information and general questions about Peer Insights, see Peer Insights FAQs
*Peer Insights recognizes that MSP’s have very deep product knowledge that may be insightful for the enterprise IT decision makers, and often times the reviews we get from MSP’s are very high quality. As such, we have updated the survey question to more clearly ask for the relationship of the reviewer with the vendor. We will be developing the platform to be able to display the MSP reviews as clearly separate from the direct customers’ reviews, and not include them in average overall ratings on in research documents like the Gartner Peer Insights Voice of the Customer. Until then, we will remove reviews from MSP’s from the Peer Insights site.