Noticed this on Charles Tywhitt's website the other day: "independent user feedback from Feefo.com".
Feefo is doing very much what I described in this post. Gathering customer feedback on behalf of a supplier, aggregating it, and then providing reports/tools for the supplier to use on their own website. They are currently focussed on suppliers of products (like shirts) rather than services (like fixing taps), but the concept is the same.
At the moment, though, they have very few suppliers signed up, and of course getting critical mass of suppliers is as important as getting critical mass of feedback.
I do, though, really like the way that, once you have submitted feedback, they ask you to offer feedback on **any other company you have ever used**. So you could offer an opinion on your local butcher, or on you cable TV company. Feefo then (presumably) find some contact details for that company and tell them "hey, Bruce Greig says your company is great / mediocre / sucks. To get more useful feedback like this, you should consider signing up to Feefo". Great example of word-of-mouth marketing.
I struggle to find enough time to really get my head around what we ourselves want to do here. Certainly something. Question is exactly what, and with whom. We are talking to one other player in this space, who is working hard to provide really good solution to this problem, and we will back them (with time and effort, not money) and see how it pans out. I think.
Showing posts with label user review websites. Show all posts
Showing posts with label user review websites. Show all posts
Tuesday, 1 May 2007
Thursday, 19 April 2007
User review websites (again)
Bumped into a university friend on the train into London this morning, who mentioned that he had met the previous evening with a university friend of his who happened to be an investor in ratedtradesmen.com, so we chatted a bit about why these sorts of sites don't seem to work, when really they should.
His view (just to be clear: my friend's view, not the investor in ratedtradesmen.com) was very clear: people want a personal recommendation, and no website is really going to be able to credibly provide that. A single person saying "here, look at my kitchen, it was installed by so-and-so, you should get him to install your kitchen" is just always going to be a gazillion times more powerful than a hundred ratings on a website which you kind of trust but can't be completely sure that their information is accurate.
Take this site for example: problemsolved.co.uk. Look carefully at the star ratings. Few listings have any reviews, but some listed companies have 5 stars and some have 3, but there is apparently no user data behind this. They tell me they are looking at "the stars issue", but in the meantime they lose credibility. If the stars are not meaningful now (maybe they are meaningful, but it is not obvious what drives 3 vs 5 stars) can a user be sure they will be meaningful "later"?
OR, he (friend on train) said, you need a strong brand. A brand is a reputation. And, really, I think that is the crux of this. Insurance-backed guarantees, OFT-approved codes of practice, user review websites, cowboy-busting directories, etc. etc. are all barking up the wrong tree. Companies (like ours) just need to focus on building a strong reputation and the cowboys will fall by the wayside.
By chance, Jonathan Schwartz (whose blog I try to read because he is probably the most senior business person in the world with a regular blog, but I confess I usually have no idea what he is talking about, all too technical), has this to say today about brands.
His view (just to be clear: my friend's view, not the investor in ratedtradesmen.com) was very clear: people want a personal recommendation, and no website is really going to be able to credibly provide that. A single person saying "here, look at my kitchen, it was installed by so-and-so, you should get him to install your kitchen" is just always going to be a gazillion times more powerful than a hundred ratings on a website which you kind of trust but can't be completely sure that their information is accurate.
Take this site for example: problemsolved.co.uk. Look carefully at the star ratings. Few listings have any reviews, but some listed companies have 5 stars and some have 3, but there is apparently no user data behind this. They tell me they are looking at "the stars issue", but in the meantime they lose credibility. If the stars are not meaningful now (maybe they are meaningful, but it is not obvious what drives 3 vs 5 stars) can a user be sure they will be meaningful "later"?
OR, he (friend on train) said, you need a strong brand. A brand is a reputation. And, really, I think that is the crux of this. Insurance-backed guarantees, OFT-approved codes of practice, user review websites, cowboy-busting directories, etc. etc. are all barking up the wrong tree. Companies (like ours) just need to focus on building a strong reputation and the cowboys will fall by the wayside.
By chance, Jonathan Schwartz (whose blog I try to read because he is probably the most senior business person in the world with a regular blog, but I confess I usually have no idea what he is talking about, all too technical), has this to say today about brands.
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