Brands can become transparent, timely, and more accurate with their customer reviews -- and simultaneously weed out fraudulent ones – and enhance engagement and experience levels, according to Mindshare Technologies founder and CEO John Sperry.
On Nov. 12 Mindshare Technologies launched OpenTell, which can help brands use their existing Voice of Customer data to boost their online reputations. OpenTell removes the pain points that often accompany open review websites where anyone can post feedback, whether or not they have visited the location.
Sperry told Loyalty 360 that OpenTell offers brands:
Authenticity – Every review on OpenTell originates from actual paying customers. Only customers with a validation code from their receipt are invited to leave feedback. This approach virtually eliminates spam and fraudulent reviews from influencing public perception.
Timeliness – OpenTell continuously generates a high volume of reviews (about 30-50 responses per month per location) to ensure available reviews reflect recent brand experiences and are continually fresh and relevant. A study conducted by Mindshare found that nearly half of locations (46%) on review sites had no new reviews during a 17-month period. Reviews can also be shared through social media channels.
Accuracy – Because feedback is always based on a statistically significant sample size, reviews on OpenTell offer a comprehensive and accurate representation of the customer experience at each location. In the same study, Mindshare found that most customers (more than 80%) have a positive experience with the brands they frequent.
Sperry said customer review sites like Yelp, and Google Reviews are plagued with fraudulent and outdated reviews.
“It’s frustrating because clients we represent get raked over the coals in reviews and don’t have a way to go through and get the real message out,” Sperry said. “We have 300 million customer reviews in our database. We’ve got the data. The solution is to make it public.”
Sperry said his company conducted extensive research into customer reviews and found that the data found was “just the tails, the far end of both sides that was missing the meat. It was either extremely positive or extremely negative and not representative of the customer experience you’re most likely to have. We allow people to go through and also post phone reviews and web reviews.”
Sperry said having certified customer reviews is incredibly helpful to brands and other potential customers.
“The volume (of customer reviews) we have is so crazy compared to what everyone else does out there,” Sperry said. “We’ll collect more reviews this year than Yelp has in the past 10 years. We only show the last six months of data because it truly represents current customer ratings. Yelp does a 10-year average. I can tell you with a high degree of confidence that this is the average experience you’ll have today. It’s a great predictor of what your experience will be today.”
Sperry said his company is waiving the actual fee for clients now “as we go through and build critical mass. Our goal is to get our clients represented properly in the industry. To move to the next level, everything is going transparent and you have to be in front of this and not in the back.”
Sperry said the goal is to have 40 brands signed up for OpenTell by the end of the first quarter with 50,000 unique impressions every day.
“The volume then starts to make an impression,” he said. “We can tie that into social data. We don’t propose to think we’re a destination right now. We want our clients to be represented accurately.”