Devon Blog

Tag: user-experience

  • 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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Are ads a good idea for my business?

    Advertising is a good way to attract new customers and as a by-product also remind existing customers of your presence. However the goal of advertising is to inform the cusotmer of your message.
    The message in ads can be of one of 4 types. See more here

    Ads can be a good idea for your business if you have the following goals

    + You goal is to build brand recall

    Digital display ads are a great tool when your focus is to re-engage with non-returning customers or to build brand recall

    + When ad spend meets a ROI watermark

    We recommend you always have a clear ROI budget before you spend on ads. To achieve the right outcome, its equally important to be able to measure your targeted returns. As an example, if you say we want to get $1 back in revenue for every $1 spent on ads, thats an easy to achieve goal. However, are you measuring and more importantly are you able to reliably measure how much revenue you are generating from those specific ads.
    At connectchief, we often find ourselves saying “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there” This statement is as true for marketing spend on ads than anything else.

    + You wish to target users at a specific location or in a specific moment

    Running an ad for your ice-cream parlor at or near the campus of a local community college or elementary school is a great way to be in front of your customers when they are most likely to think (students wanting to hang out or families with kids looking for a treat) of a business like yours.

    Advertising a promotion is an even better way to run Ads

    + Promotions can be targeted to different user groups (aka cohorts)

    Promotions give the business a lot of flexibility. You could provide incentives to users for shopping at your store or to buy a certain product or service at an advertised price or to receive a discount for making purchases on a specific day or time. The opportunities are endless and when paired with location targeting can produce phenomenal results

    + Promotions are also a great way to acquire new customers

    Money spent on ads is cash spend. When money is given away through promotions, the spend is in goods or services – each of which have a higher perceived value to the consumer as opposed to the amount they cost you (the business owner to produce). Moreso, a promotion provides the consumer a way to try your product and services at a lower price point. You only spend, if they transact with you.

    + You are looking to engage with customers

    Promotions are generally structured as some benefit that a customer gets in exchange for a certain action. So a call-to-action is always built-into the promotion but it may not be the case for an advertisement. The ad is simply a means of informing the target user of your message.

    Advertising is meant to inform.

    Promotions are meant to engage. Promotions can be advertised too!

    What budget spend should one allocate on marketing activities ?

    This is an age old question. The answer is, it depends. As a thumb rule, if it costs you $x to acquire a custome through ads, are you able to generate 2x or better margin (not revenue) from that engagement? If yes, then the ad was worth it.

    Both ads and promotions are marketing tools. While advertising presents a reason to buy a product, sales promotion offers a short-term incentive to purchase

    The ultimate goal is to
    (1) Either acquire a new customer or
    (2) turn a one-time customer into a returning customer.
    Achieve any of the above and you are it mostly right.

    Any technology platform that offers ads allows you a lot of flexibility to experiment. Digital Ads are generally far more cost-effective over traditional media. They provide you to tune and customize your target audience. And most platforms are flexible where you can start, stop or even adjust your ad budgets at any time. The most important piece for any business (which most seem to forget is to measure if the ad or promotion is actually effective).

    PromoENGINE by connectchief takes a unique approach to promotions and ads. Our tools enable the small business to promote themselves to customers not just at vantage locations but also directly within your storefront (online or offline). Learn more about PromoENGINE and how these tools help you engage better with your target customers.

    How does a business turn a customer into a returning customer?

    Customers only return to businesses they like transacting with. They may find your product or services to be superior to other options. They may return because you are easy to do business with. They may return because your staff is caring and listens to its customers.

    To know if you are doing the right thing, you as a business owner or manager need to be in touch with your customers’ perception of the experience you and your team deliver. In business transactions, particularly service-oriented ones, customer experience issues can occur. However, a business that listens and attempts to make improvements, even if they delivered a poor experience to start, has a way higher chance of the customer returning to them vs one that seem to not care. Coming soon! with VisitXP business owners can get a quick check of their service delivery experience

  • Why we’re building connectchief…

    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?

    Every large company was once a small business.

    team connectchief
    • There are an est. 28 million small businesses in the U.S. alone — which outnumber large corporations 1162 to 1.
    • 70% of all small businesses are owned and operated by a single person.
    • Most small businesses employee fewer than 25 employees.

    Running a small business is real hard work.

    We asked ourselves, what do small businesses that grow up to be large businesses do differently?

    Of course, they all get access to large amounts of capital that they invest and grow. But before getting that capital, they all have done a great job to attract new customers, retain existing customers and they keep discovering & offering more “things or services” that those customers need.

    Why are these organizations able to do what they do?

    They are always listening – to customers, to employees, to stakeholders and to anyone that is relevant to their business. Now they don’t necessarily listen to everything everyone has to say. They have an ear on the ground so the can hear what their stakeholders say and then do something about the things that matter.

    What we found

    After meeting with and analyzing the journeys of multiple successful businesses we found that the ones that did well where those who engaged with their customers, paid a lot of attention to what their customers were saying (or signaling through their behavior) and had managed to convert a larger than average amount of their visitors into to loyal users.

    Customers exhibit a very interesting (and obvious) behavior – they tend to go back to businesses where they feel heard. Even if a customer didn’t have a great experience with a business at first, they feel comfortable giving that business a second or third chance if they feel that business heard them and is taking steps to do better the next time.

    As a business owner its very important to listen for signals. And its impossible to listen to anything if you aren’t really trying. However, once you make an effort to listen there is an incredible amount of learning that keeps coming from it. Your customers can show you the way to succeed. Companies that are wildly successful have found various ways to engage with their stakeholders, to listen for feedback and they tend to put in the efforts in making continuous improvements along the way.

    An incredible and very commonly known example of such outward focused behavior is Amazon. Amazon has been known to be laser focused on customers. They started out from being an online bookstore and have evolved into a company that disrupts and leads practically any industry vertical they enter. They’ve achieved this through maniacal customer engagement and an action bias driven by data. All this decision is powered through sophisticated technology and data analysis. However, not everyone can afford to do what the likes of Amazon can achieve. At connectchief, we’re focused on bringing to your business the competitive edge and technologies big business has used to GROW.

    So what does connectchief do?

    We build (software) tools that enable businesses to thrive.

    We identified a few signficant needs for most businesses –
    • Every business needs to build and nurture its ecosystem for long term success …learn more about bizz by connectchief
    • Every business needs to promote itself – most people we spoke with do not make much of a difference between marketing, branding and advertising… learn more about PromoENGINE
    • Gain trust & build a reputation … learn about trustENGINE
    • Loyal customers are the lifeblood of growth businesses. …learn about loyaltyENGINE
    • A lot of internet or technology-driven businesses do not have a store front. They need effective ways to work remotely … learn about flexxWORK
    • Engage your audience – not just customers. Be in front of them. Talk to them. Listen to them… we’ll share some things about hearecho soon!

    We built these by listening to you, our target customers. And we plan to keep building more solutions that help your business grow.