Devon Blog

Author: devon

  • What is the connectchief, scan & connect (SNC) code

    At connectchief, we build software tools that enable small businesses to thrive. See this post on the various reasons on why we’re building connectchief.

    Through our conversations with many successful business owners, we have found that customers have a very interesting behavior. Customers tend to go back to businesses where they feel heard. Even if they didn’t have a great experience with a business at first, they feel comfortable giving that business a second or third chance if they felt the business heard them and is taking steps to do better the next time.

    Our scan & connect (SNC) system enables any business to engage its customers. Through its scan & connect (SNC) code, businesses can –

    1. Provide surprise discount coupons and / or promotions to visiting customers
    2. Ask for (one click / super quick ) feedback from customers on the service, facilities or other relevant items for the business
    3. Ask customers to provide online reviews for the business
    4. Share announcements with customers
    5. Let visitors know about open positions that the business is hiring for
    6. Poll customers or simply provide a way for customers to directly communicate with management
    7. Even send out instant flash sales & promotions to customers that follow the business

    Businesses can chose which of the above functions to expose using its scan & connect code. The ultimate goal is to provide a single tool using which customers and businesses can engage and build a strong relationship for their mutual benefit.

  • What are the best practices to follow when writing a review for a business or product

    Your reviews matter to both – other shoppers and to the businesses you are reviewing. Reviews provide an opportunity for businesses and customers to build a relationship with one another. And an natural guide for new customers who may be looking to determine if a service or product will meet their needs.

    When you post a review on trustENGINE (or anywhere for that matter), your review should be as clear as possible about what you liked and did not like about the service or product you received from the specific business.

    By doing so businesses understand what they do well and where they need to do better. Most businesses views reviews are a key source of information for creating better experiences for everyone. Here are some best practices to follow –

    + Reviews should be short and clear

    Be specific about what and how you write about the product. Limiting your feedback content to your specific experience is very important. Where possible (always give the business a way to identify your interaction through either a transaction ID, receipt number or other means). Being clear and effective in your reviews gives others the opportunity to understand and take decisions to buy and also builds trust between the business and buyer. If you are a frequent user of the business, you may go back to provide feedback more than once as long as every review is backed by a specific verifiable interaction or event.

    + Be courteous, polite and friendly

    When you encounter an issue, providing feedback is the best way to help the business remediate the problem. It is the quickest and easiest way to ensure others know of your experience and openly allow the business to respond and address the situation.

    Its important to be polite when writing reviews even if your experience was negative. The intent is for transparent communication and how the business owner conducts themselves (whether they care or not) will become evident through how they respond to your reviews. Transparency improves relationships and offers fertile ground to build trust. Patience and mutual respect are best ways to solve even the most difficult situations easily.

    + Write only if you have had a verifiable interaction

    Giving genuine reviews is very important. Therefore it is necessary, only give your feedback when you have had a direct experience. Do not write just because someone has shared their experience with you. Every negative review, can affect the overall rating of a business. To ensure that fake reviews do not hamper the reputation of a genuine business, at trustENGINE we encourage verified transaction reviews. The goal is always to ensure full transparency from each side – reviewer & the business both.

    + Finally, read through your review once before posting so you know it reflects what you feel

    Before you post your reviews, proofread and thoroughly check to ensure it says what you are meaning to say. Always follow the community guidelines. Reviews can be flagged or even removed for policy violations. However, trustENGINE will always take an unbiased position and shall never hide or remove a review simply based on request from a business owner.

  • How you can grow your business faster with connectchief

    1. Why we’re building connectchief…
    2. How you can grow your business faster with connectchief

    Every business owner knows they need to innovate and grow their business. What isn’t clear is how to methodically go about doing just that…

    Growth comes from recognizing the need for change, effectively adapting to shifts in your environment, having strong customer insights and finally turning this information into better customer experience and service.

    Connectchief helps businesses to better engage with its target customers, improving the effectiveness of their marketing, and enables them to find new ways communicate their value propositions.

    The digital revolution has unleashed rapid and significant changes in how business is done today. A businesses ability to engage customers, understand their changing needs and to keep up with them determines its success and growth rates.

    The connectchief team deeply understands how technology can play a significant role for your business to grow. We’re been rapidly innovating and responding with creative ideas to help small businesses build a competitive edge. With connectchief every small business can –

    + Collaborate with other businesses to promote each other

    Any business can get started with connectchief for free. Once registered, identify and invite other businesses nearby to collaborate with you. Each business can promote coupons & offers form its partner businesses to its own customers. Referred customers are more likely to do business with you over those who were attracted simply through a discount or a one-off advertisement. Referrals can cost almost 10x less than traditional advertisements when it comes to finding new customers.

    + Engage with your customers

    At connectchief, your business receives a personalized QR code which is powered by our platform. We chose QR codes so you do not have to many any investments in buying equipment or other technology to grow your business. A simple QR code puts the power of the entire connectchief platform behind your business. Place that QR code (we call it our Scan & Connect system) within your premises to present customers with promotions, solicit their feedback, showcase your reviews, get customer reviews, make announcements and so much more. Better engagement translates into improved loyalty and more business.

    + Create promotions, discount coupons and vouchers for customers and business partners.

    Through connectchief, every business can also utilize our promoEngine to generate coupons & promotions that can be distributed to visiting customers on your website, in-store or even be distributed via other businesses that collaborate with you (your business ofcourse has to reciprocate with promoting those businesses as well).

    Businesses that use innovative ways to find new customers & to retain existing ones tend to grow faster. Those that continuously learn from customers to provide better service and products discover paths to greater profits and lasting loyalty.

    At connectchief, we’re committed to helping you power up your business with innovative, cost-effective and technology-powered approaches that have been afforded only to big businesses until now.

    Find your path to growth – register for free on connectchief

  • Why we are building promoENGINE?

    1. Why we’re building connectchief…
    2. Every business should build its ecosystem for growth
    3. Why did we create trustENGINE?
    4. Why we are building promoENGINE?
    5. Why are we building flexxWORK?
    6. Why we’re building loyaltyENGINE?

    We’re building connectchief to bring the power of technology to small business. See our previous post here.

    In interviewing over a 1000 small to medium sized businesses we learnt that while all businesses want more customers, not everyone understands how to promote themselves.

    In fact, very few business owners were clear on the concept of marketing. Even fewer were able to make a distinction between advertising, branding and promotions. This gave us a clear signal that small businesses can use our assistance and our technology. Our goal with promoENGINE is to help you – the small business owner – to get your message to your target customers at a lower cost.

    promoENGINE brings together a few key concepts – collaboration, connection, promotion & advertising. And it leverages the power of software technology to amplify how small businesses work together to promote themselves.

    Marketing encompasses all the activities a business undertakes to get the message out (about its products or services) to its target customers (with the intent of completing a buy or sell transaction ie. a sale)

    Marketing includes –

    • pricing related activities like discounts or sales or coupons,
    • promotion activities like advertising, publicity or sales promotions,
    • determining the place where to do these activities (online, offline, target customers etc)
    • and figuring out what to market (specific product or service or attribute(s) of product or service)

    At connectchief, we are bringing to you technology that can enable your business to promote your products or services by using the right incentives (discounts/coupons) at places where belive our software and technology can generate a greater return for your investment.

    promoENGINE is a software tool by connectchief that enables small businesses to promote their products and/or services to their target customer audience in method that is more efficient in terms of the overall investment required in time, effort and cost as compared to approaches mostl commonly used by small businesses today.

    Continue to read more about promoENGINE

  • trustENGINE ratings – How do these work?

    trustENGINE’s mission is to disseminate real reviews from real customers with 100% transparency. Our goal is to help genuine businesses get discovered by customers.

    See why we created trustENGINE?

    Like any reviews & ratings platform trustENGINE allows consumers to rate products, services & businesses on the basis of their real experiences and genuine interactions.

    The trustENGINE ratings are a composite star rating that each business scores as a result of the reviews consumers provide to the business. However there are a few nuances –

    1. Not only does trustENGINE provide an overall 1-5 star rating for the business bassed on all its reviews but we also provide a overall star rating based on all the reviews that are based on ‘verified transactions’ with the business. A verified transaction based rating provides greater confidence in the consumer feedback as those are all based on verified experiences with the business.
    2. trustENGINE ratings are weighted in favor of the more recent reviews received by the business. We call this the ‘recency effect’. Because the most recent reviews received by the business are a reflection the experiences recently delivered, the trustENGINE rating is an indicator of ‘what experience you might want to expect’ if you are to patronize the business.
    3. We have a belief that every business aims to do the best it can to serve its customers. On trustENGINE, every business starts off with a 4-star rating and has an opportunity to build its ratings up based on consumer feedback. Until a business has received 25 ratings, we consider that businesses overall trustENGINE rating as ‘yet to be stabilized’. Once 25 ratings have been received, the ‘recency effect’ ensures that the most recent ratings bear greater influence on the overall rating and tend to keep the ratings fresh & relevant at all times.

  • Why did we create trustENGINE?

    1. Why we’re building connectchief…
    2. Every business should build its ecosystem for growth
    3. Why did we create trustENGINE?
    4. Why we are building promoENGINE?
    5. Why are we building flexxWORK?
    6. Why we’re building loyaltyENGINE?

    trustENGINE is an online review platform built by connectchief.

    Our vision with trustENGINE is to provide a neutral ground for customers & businesses to interact where customers can provide genuine feedback on thier overall service experiences with that business.

    Why businesses asked us to build trustENGINE?

    + Reduce fake reviews

    User reviews are a great way for consumers to discover good products, services and businesses. However, the democratic voice that reviews give to users is often exploited by those entering fake reviews. This creates a problem for businesses and users alike. Like in any democracy, you cannot eliminate bad actors but one can surely nullify their effect by having all citizens participate. By having all consumers provide a review, good or bad, the effect of fake reviews can be nullified. trustENGINE provides an unbiased platform for providing and collecting reviews. Our software engines are continuously tuned to flag and capture fake reviews. See more about fake reviews and how you can work with us to reduce fake reviews

    + Help proliferate the truth

    By getting reviews for any business or product in one place, one can provide a true representation of users’s feedback about the product or service

    + Accelerate the opportunity to receive feedback & improve

    User reviews are a great way for small businesses to know what’s working and what the business needs to work on to improve its products and services. trustENGINE has built-in data analytic and reporting tools that empower business owners to prioritize their focus on topics that can help them achieve the highest improvements in customer satisfaction and the best returns for the businesses improvement efforts.

    + A single venue for consumers to interact with the business

    There are quite a few social media platforms on the internet, each designed with the motive to build online social interactions. Most those platforms (Facebook by Meta, Twitter, Instagram, Google offer opportunities for consumers to tag a business and put a message. Because their central focus is on social engagement, these platforms do not focus on addressing the consumers & businesses needs to bring a unified view about the business. As entrepreneurs, we ourselves have faced challenges with fake and uncontrolled reviews, a lack of mediation & moderation controls, reviews being scattered across the internet and very limited analytics to help the business owner distill incoming feedback so they can focus on improving where they need to based on consumer feedback.

    + Promote reviews from verified transactions

    Business owners who were fed up with fake reviews preferred if there is a platform where the user can verify their transaction id at the time of entering reviews. This is a great way to build confidence in the overall reviews and ratings for a business. The larger the quantify of verified transaction reviews, the higher the confidence that the reviews reflect reality.

    + Build trust through transparency

    The goal of our platform is to build trust through transparency. Verified transaction reviews is a great way to ensure that real transactions are mapped to incoming reviews. We further enhanced trustENGINE with engines built in to flag and capture reviews that may be added by business owners to promote their self-interest. In addition, to ensure tranparency both consumers & business owners are required to comply with the trustENGINE guidelines to ensure fair, unbiased and transparent information being provided through reviews on the platform.

    What are the key things trustENGINE brings to the table?

    1. A platform that is open to everyone and focuses exclusively on collecting, managing and showcasing consumer feedback about a business
    2. Consumers can provide feedback on any business – at no cost to them or the business.
    3. A transparent scoring methodology where verified reviewers and verified transactions carry greater weight
    4. Artificially intelligent engines that capture and suppress reviews (with full transparency) that seem ingenuine. Our software is designed to fight fake reviews.
    5. trustENGINE puts transparency and open access to information first. Even if a business has a paid account on trustENGINE, they have no control over which reviews must be deleted.

  • How can businesses curb fake reviews

    Fake reviews are a huge problem for businesses.

    However, how can one stop fake reviews from popping up and misguiding our end users. Fake reviews come from many sources – jealous competitors, disgruntled customers or employees or anyone who may have any reason to benefit from your business not doing well. Fake reviews can misinform customers if not handled properly. However, the right attitude and approach to handling fake reviews can make your business shine out better than it would otherwise.

    We all want our customers to be reading the real reviews about our business, its products & services. And we need to know that fake reviews can be reduced but not avoided completely. So its best to remind all genuine users to provide a review, whether good or bad. Because reviews will help us do better and get our business do better over time. See our post here on why its important to get customers to write reviews about you.

    In our experience – there are a few simple steps that every business must take to curb the fake reviews about your services.

    1. Respond to every review

    When you respond to every review, your customers know you genuinely care. Your response needs to focus on the issue not the reviewer and never come across as defensive. Your goal with reviews needs to be to genuinely listen and learn

    2. Follow a good review moderation practice

    Reviews that seem suspect should be dug into. Ask for more context, information that can help you connect the feedback to a real interaction. Always operate from the premise that the review is not fake and make an earnest attempt to help the customer (thats why every business exists, to serve the customers). Requesting for information on things like the name of the person who the customer interacted with, items that were on the order, approximate date and time of the transaction etc can help you demonstrate to the community how genuinely you are interested in supporting customers as a business. With trustENGINE paid plans our team can help with guided mediations (in certain conditions). Our team on an ongoing basis can even flag reviews, reviewers or businesses that appear to be borderline fake / suspect.

    3. Promote reviews from verified transactions

    Try to tie every one of your reviews to a transaction or an interaction between the customer and your business. This practice of connecting most reviews to a valid interaction is ‘worth its weight in gold’. Verified transaction reviews = actual reflection of interactions with the business. trustENGINE can split business ratings to show your rating from verified transactions vs non-verified transactions. Non-verified transaction ratings carry a lower weight towards your overall rating.

    4. Know that you can reduce but cannot eliminate fake reviews

    Its hard to eliminate fake reviews, so its all the more important to ask all your genuine customers to review their interaction with your business. A best practice is to issue an invoice for every transaction. Each invoice must bear a unique interaction number (invoice number, transaction number, order number or other transaction ID that is relevant to your business) and a message to each user to share a review. trustENGINE is built not just to support online businesses but also brick-and-mortar storefronts. Using trustENGINE + connectchief tools you can encourage your users to provide a review or rate their visit experience from within the storefront itself. Reviews captured from within the storefront also carry information on the location where the review was provided (we capture location but do not display it) and further increase the likelihood of that review being tagged as genuine.

    5. Take an unbiased position when hosting your reviews

    In general, reviews that are self-hosted on your own website are not received well by customers. Customers find it to be less trustworthy when a business has full control over which reviews to display vs not on its website. As the saying goes, you can’t trust the fox to guard the henhouse (meaning Don’t assign a job to someone who will then be in a position to exploit it for his own ends.)

    Reviews are best hosted with a third party platform that has proper processes in place to ensure that reviews are unbiased, cannot be tampered with while there exists an opportunity for the business to make amends and improvements when negative feedback is received. The ultimate goal for a open for everyone reviews platform is to build trust through transparency.

  • What are the various types of advertising

    Advertising is a component of marketing. The goal of advertising is to inform the customer of your message.

    Your goal as an advertiser is to put that ad up on the right platform – one that is cost effective & results-effective, where you have the highest probability of reaching your target audience.

    Ads can be broadly classified based on the type of message they contain –

    1. Trial Ad – An ad where the business is reaching out to customers asking them to try the product or services offered by the business
    2. A continuity ad – Also called a “buy more” ad, An ad where the business is reminding customers to do more transactions (continue their relationship) with the business
    3. Brand switch ad – An ad where you are inviting customers to switch to you.
    4. Invite back ad – Ad ad where you are inviting old customers who switched away to switch back to you.

  • Did you know? “Customer reviews are SEO magnets”

    This is follow up to our previous post on “Why is it important to ask your users for a review“

    Search engines are great ways to get customers to discover your business – whether you do business online or offline. Most small businesses with offline / in-store presences tend not to pay as much attention to asking their customers for reviews. Or if they do, they fail to manage the review collection, management & learning from feedback process.

    Customer reviews & feedback are one of the clearest ways to know what you are doing well and where we need to do better as a business. And user reviews & ratings are simply awesome when it comes to SEO for your business.

    • Reviews come from your customers – the reviews contain the kind of keywords that describe your business to them. More importantly, because customers write naturally and write about what they feel, they end up using language that’s similar to what people will search for when those people looking for your product, service or business. Simply put, reviews can improve your websites ranking for those search terms.
    • Reviews contain awesome snippets of text – that can help search engines use text for click-throughs to your website from search pages.
    • Customer Reviews & ratings are regularly updated – Search engines love regularly updated content. These reviews provide exactly the kind of content that search engines are looking for and because they are regularly updated, relevant and unique these help your SEO
    • Customer reviews are the social proof that your first-time consumers need – when they are trying to decide on either purchasing a product, a service or even visiting a business establishment.

    Almost everyone (unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock) today, relies on online searches to find businesses. So even if you do not conduct business online, you as a business owner need to focus your energies on collecting reviews from all your customers. These reviews are amazing tools to get search engines to present your business to customers as a relevant search result.

  • Why is it important to ask your users for a review

    In this technology driven age of online commerce, we all understand the benefit of product or business reviews. Regardless of whether your business is online or offline, you must focus on getting reviews.

    As a buyer –

    • By reading other customer’s review(s), I can make a more informed decision about the product or business
    • We can discover if people similar to us are happy with the product or business
    • Reviews can help us build confidence that we’re making a good decision
    • Reviews can also help alleviate any concerns we might have about the product or business
    • By reading reviews, a buyer can make a more informed decision that can help the user discover things about the product or business that identify better with the buyer.

    As a business owner –

    • Reviews bring credibility to my business. They help you build trust
    • Reviews can help increase sales – because they can naturally support a customer get comfortable around the idea of doing business with you
    • Consumer reviews build an online reputation for you business
    • Customer reviews can help you build up the SEO you need for your online presence.
    • Reviews provide the (neutral) social proof thats required to influence a new customers behavior
    • Reviews help you improve your product or service. Any aspect of your business that is consistently appreciated (or criticized) is a prime item for you to act upon. Do more of what is appreciated and do better about the things that are being criticized.

    trustENGINE by connectchief helps business owners collect unbiased reviews from their customers online or offline.

    Learn more about trustENGINE