How Mobicred Took Control of Its Reputation in a Category Built on Complaints

The Challenge: In Lending, Complaints Are the Default

Mobicred is South Africa's first and largest online credit platform, a revolving credit facility that lets people shop across thousands of online stores and pay it back in manageable instalments. Financial services, more than any other industry, runs on trust. When you're handling people's money and credit, your reputation is the whole proposition.

But lending carries a problem most categories do not. It generates complaints by default. Credit decisions disappoint people, repayment is stressful, and because the product directly affects what customers can and can't buy, the emotion runs high however well the business actually operates. Left alone, those frustrated voices dominate. Mobicred's Hellopeter profile was filling with exactly that friction, giving prospects who came to check an inaccurate, lopsided snapshot. At one point the rating had sunk to a 1.4 star, quietly costing the business customers in an industry where standing is everything.

A second force compounds it. The people most likely to praise a lender, the ones whose credit came through and whose shopping went smoothly, rarely think to write a review about it. So without active intervention a lending page skews to the unhappy minority, no matter how many customers are actually well served. The silence of the satisfied is as much the problem as the volume of the frustrated.

The Solution: Manage It, Don't Hide From It

Most lenders let the negativity sit, treating a low rating as the unavoidable cost of the category. Mobicred made the opposite choice: it decided its reputation was something to work, deliberately and continuously.

Partnering with its Hellopeter Customer Success team, Mobicred rebuilt how it collected and handled feedback. It fixed the timing, asking for a review right after each interaction, while the experience was still top of mind. It made leaving feedback effortless by collecting reviews over WhatsApp, the channel customers already use every day. It committed to replying to every review, the glowing ones and the difficult ones alike, so customers and prospects could see a business that shows up. It built an internal reward system so agents were recognised for service that earned praise. And it turned its best verified reviews into social proof across its channels, so the positive experiences were seen, not just the frustrations.