Oh, and thanks for the link to my profile above.

Have a great and safe New Year!

Cheers!!!

Thanks for your comment! I checked out your site — it looks cool, and I’m wondering what you’re doing differently to be more socially/ethically responsible. Can you provide more info? I’d love to do a blog post about your site, especially if there’s an element of consumer advocacy to it.

All the best,
Joanna

Thanks so much for your comment. We are also big fans of TripAdvisor.com — it’s the only site we use when we’re searching for a place to stay for work/vacations. It’s definitely solving a need for the public, the majority of whom want to spend their money on “the best” and depend on the feedback of others (via reviews today) to help them determine if a hotel or package really is the best. Marketing messages just aren’t dependable… ‘cos they’re biased.

TripAdvisor, like WCS, took a lot of heat from hotels, etc. in the beginning. I don’t think that’s too surprising. When you put your brand reputation on the line, and when there are real $$$ consequences to customers speaking openly & honestly about you, it’s understandable to get a bit freaked out.

But that didn’t cause TripAdvisor to go away. Eventually, the smart hotels and vacation groups caught on to the potential to leverage the great words of their customers — the best, most underpaid marketing copywriters in the world — to drive business.

What-Customers-Say.com will follow a similar philosophy, as you put it. We don’t and won’t bend over backwards for agents — even though it’d be easier for us if we did! We just want to create a forum where customers can honestly rate their real estate agents. The effect of that is that agents can then market themselves based on those reviews… and that’s where this conflict around “who’s yo’ customer” comes from.

Suffice it to say, we’re here for reviewers. Just as you said, without them, there is no purpose for this site.

Thanks, again, Julie. Great to hear your perspective!

I am an avid user of Trip Advisor…another type of customer review site. I’ve been using Trip Advisor since August 2005 (I just went back to my profile and checked). Back then I don’t think they had much advertising at all on their site – I remember wondering how they were going to make money. But today, they have plenty of ads for hotels and travel packages… and after reading a bunch of good reviews about a hotel I am ready to book! Before the ads, I would then switch to the hotel’s website, and book. Now, I click the link beside the review, and book the best rate. Trip Advisor then (I assume) makes some commission from that sale as well as pockets some ad money.

Everyone wins really…as a hotel, where else can you find such a specific and targeted audience to sell to?? And where else can you get such high quality market research for FREE (now they know EXACTLY what customers like and don’t like!). For me, I get one stop shopping with confidence in the choice I’ve made. And Trip Advisor makes money because I, the traveler, am happy and loving them (not because the Hotel is happy). Trip Advisor should not bend their service to accommodate the hotel or they will lose me.

I think that What Customer’s Say should follow a similar philosophy. The minute they start bending over backwards for Realtors is the minute that their site will fail because customers (the reviewers/home buyers) will smell it a mile away. If they have no reviewers, they have no reason for a Realtor to want to pay to be on their site.

BTW, we’re not trying to make the industry unhappy. We’re just… erring on the side of putting “our” customer first.

I think you and I have two different ideas about what “successful” means. (And that’s okay.) The site was a step closer to “lucrative” the first time a real estate agent created a profile —- that was the first indication that anyone might be interested in paying us a dollar or two for using our services.

But the site was what I would call “successful” the first time a client rated an agent with a profile. That’s when it clicked: when the client and the agent worked together to share their story openly and transparently. The agent trusted the customer, and the customer believed in the value of the agent. Mmmmmmagic.

Call me a romantic, but that’s what I think success looks like for our site. Now, will customers be able to shape our site into something you would call successful?

~jw

Having worked for two major Canadian web portals, I know the advertisers are the clients, and the product we sold was our audience/community. We had to be good at both attracting an audience with good content and services, and attracting advertisers. There is plenty of proof from the dot com bust, that just having a happy audience does not a successful company make. The audience was not our client – we certainly didn’t have any of them at our client appreciation events, nor did we send them gift baskets at Christmas.

As a frequent user of Google, I’ve never had them call me a client, except for when I am advertising on their site. In fact I’ve been wined and dined by Google as a Marketing Director, but not as a user of their web site.

And even if you don’t agree with any of that, I definitely haven’t seen Google “bashing” potential advertisers in public. It seems to me that they do whatever they can to make the people who pay for them to stay in business happy.

You guys have some great ideas, but I think if you want to make any money at this, you’ll need the industry to get on board. If you want the industry to get on board you need to have a good service (done) AND make the industry happy.

Let’s consider Google. Google is made for users/researchers… not for the companies that advertise on it. A company’s customer is the primary persona for whom their service is intended.

Same goes for us. So, when I said that our customers are “‘real’ customers”, I meant it.

Of course, just like Google cares for and tries to provide services for its advertisers, we care for and try to provide services for our advertisers. We only want the best for our advertisers.

~jw