Hi Ryan, yes yes I do appreciate you taking the time to highlight some concerns.
1) Yes, ideally our brand would be "trusted". But as of now I don't think it necessarily requires our brand to be well-known. I'd like to think that a "These reviews managed and verified by <link>PlusPanda</link>" would be sufficient enough as a research tool for concerned customers to be able to click on and read a short description of our program policy.
2) I agree in that a service like this entails that the customer actually commit and put in effort, in order for it to actually do its job. It's not something you necessarily set and forget. So if your business is poor, this isn't any type of remedy in and of itself. I am taking your point to be that relative to feedback, pluspanda suffers from self-selection bias. But actually the whole secret-sauce of customer reviews is actually mainly for marketing purposes, which are two fold:
1. Customers always believe 3rd party opinions over 1st party opinions. So even if they are less likely to believe in the full-validity of reviews on your site, they'd still likely believe them more than they would any first-party marketing copy on the site. And as stated by others, at worst, your reviews wouldn't be so much as "reviews" but "testimonials" (i.e. they are all praise) which tons of sites successfully employ.
2. Customer Relationship Management via email marketing.
Simply put, everyone that bothers enough to leave a review, has a stake in your business, and you should be communicating with them, thanking them, giving them loyalty rewards, rectifying poor experiences, and encouraging repeat-business, and word-of-mouth etc. So customer reviews is really just a way to manage an effective email marketing campaign. It's a "platform".
This is the angle from which I am basing my value proposition. Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks again for your time.
I think the "self-selection" comment was referring to the businesses, not the customers. An analogy is those "customer forums" that many companies setup, thinking, "Customers can support themselves!" but then realize that it's more about "Customers can learn how crap our company is!" and they take it down. So, crappy businesses won't want your service.
But even a well-run business will be cautious about letting some random internet stranger post comments to their homepage. You need to make sure that comments aren't from competitors, people don't post multiple times and most importantly: That the company can respond to criticisms.
1) Yes, ideally our brand would be "trusted". But as of now I don't think it necessarily requires our brand to be well-known. I'd like to think that a "These reviews managed and verified by <link>PlusPanda</link>" would be sufficient enough as a research tool for concerned customers to be able to click on and read a short description of our program policy.
2) I agree in that a service like this entails that the customer actually commit and put in effort, in order for it to actually do its job. It's not something you necessarily set and forget. So if your business is poor, this isn't any type of remedy in and of itself. I am taking your point to be that relative to feedback, pluspanda suffers from self-selection bias. But actually the whole secret-sauce of customer reviews is actually mainly for marketing purposes, which are two fold:
1. Customers always believe 3rd party opinions over 1st party opinions. So even if they are less likely to believe in the full-validity of reviews on your site, they'd still likely believe them more than they would any first-party marketing copy on the site. And as stated by others, at worst, your reviews wouldn't be so much as "reviews" but "testimonials" (i.e. they are all praise) which tons of sites successfully employ.
2. Customer Relationship Management via email marketing. Simply put, everyone that bothers enough to leave a review, has a stake in your business, and you should be communicating with them, thanking them, giving them loyalty rewards, rectifying poor experiences, and encouraging repeat-business, and word-of-mouth etc. So customer reviews is really just a way to manage an effective email marketing campaign. It's a "platform".
This is the angle from which I am basing my value proposition. Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks again for your time.