Looking for feedback from business owners on a potential service/website

zig

Hi folks,

I figured posting here is a great step to get objective feedback before proceeding.

Im wondering would you use this service?

I am looking to improve the culture of business in Ireland and how its conducted, and also promote competition too. I am also looking to create more transparency in business by bringing out in the public how your business is performing both as providers and as customers.

Basically a website where you register your business on it and other businesses can leave a rating/feedback on a transaction you carried out with them, much in the same way as ebay. You would have no control over this rating. This would be strictly B2B. So its not a trip advisor or a facebook review type system, in that the general public cant leave reviews. Its more like a place you can look up a business and look purely and objectively how they are performing with their customers (other businesses), or how they are performing as buyers.

Hypotheticaly if it was very popular, the key benefits for you would be:

• Your profile would have lots of ratings of transactions, they would be split into two, one where you are being rated as a customer/buyer etc, and another another as a provider. Yes of course nobody is perfect and there may be some average ratings but on a whole if you are a solid business it will be very obvious how you conduct business.
• You could include this info in proposals, tenders, presentations during sales pitches or even simply as a useful reference for any business looking for more information about you. And unlike testimonials that you are supplying yourself, this is very real, very specifc data that has been added by others, and is alot more thorough too.
• If you are a good payer you would get public acknowledgment for this, which shows professionalism (even though in my opinion it shouldnt have to)
• If you dont have that many clients, or do not purchase off that many people but instead have a long running relationship with a small number of businesses this would also reflect well on you.
• If you get an enquiry or about are about to be dealing with a new business you could instantly look up this business and see how they are to do business with. Are they good payers? On the other side, do they have happy clients?

I can imagine there is probably some anxiety about the privacy of this. "Surely bad businesses wont sign up?", "What about disputes where both sides feel they're right" and I have thought about all that and much more. The main aim is to try break down those barriers.

But for now, I am wondering would you use this? Do you see the benefits? Or do you think it wouldnt work and why?

Dades

Sounds like a B2B Trustpilot?

They make money by allowing you different levels of promotion of your rating. How would this site make money?

I like the idea that companies could review another company before, say, offering them credit. I'm just wondering if the business world is a bit close for companies to be leaving really honest opinions and potentially jeopardising future business. B2B can be symbiotic whereas consumers are different - there's no fallout for them over feedback they leave for a business.

As an idea it's interesting but scary the potential development and sales and marketing costs.

jimmii

In an ideal world it would certainly be a useful tool.

I think it would end up full of other people puffing up each others businesses and would have no real value, because whereas customers have nothing to lose slamming someones business if something went wrong or bad, business people won't be so quick to do that for a variety of reasons. So IMO it would turn into a hug fest. And if you did end up with bad comments about a business your just going to get inundated with requests from lawyers to remove them.

zig

Yep I can see what you both mean re: businesess need to be a bit more diplomatic end consumers.

My theory on that is if you do indeed want to hold onto a relationship with a business and fear giving them a bad review then there must be a good reason for that. You obviously value them more than just that transaction.

Yes the ratings as a result may be a little too fakely positive but I would like to think over time when the dust settles a bit this will balance off.

Also bare in mind, I do think the majority of ratings WILL be positive. Not really sure if this is a bad thing but at least it will give opporunities to people who feel differently.

The difference between this and a bunch of testimonials is that you cant hide the "glitches". And more importantly if a company has a lot of problems appearing then the site is serving its purpose.

I dont see lawsuits happening as its up to you if you want your account on it or not. I was thinking in an ideal world it would eventually become obvious that businesses that wont seem to join have something to hide.

zig

zig wrote: »

I dont see lawsuits happening as its up to you if you want your account on it or not. I was thinking in an ideal world it would eventually become obvious that businesses that wont seem to join have something to hide.

So anyone who has a bad comment will delete their account because you can't as a business afford to have negative comment in the public domain where possible.
Then I'd expect it kind of undermines your original intention for such a research tool

zig

Deleted User wrote: »

So anyone who has a bad comment will delete their account because you can't as a business afford to have negative comment in the public domain where possible.
Then I'd expect it kind of undermines your original intention for such a research tool

Thats a point, but I do honestly think people would have said the same about Trip Advisor or any B2C system like that had it been suggested prior to its existance.

I feel a new generation of businesses would be far more open to this idea. And perhaps everyone else would then have to follow suit.

Btw, I was considering the idea of having no text as part of the rating. To spare the rants and keep it cleaner.

Dades

zig wrote: »

Btw, I was considering the idea of having no text as part of the rating. To spare the rants and keep it cleaner.

I'd be thinking the opposite - a minimum character requirement for a review when rating a company.

You also need to way of verifying a trader/company has done business with the business in question to stop competitors slamming each other. Trustpilot require you to provide a valid order number from something you paid for for random reviews. Otherwise you can be invited to review by the business itself via mailshot.

pedroeibar1

Your idea as outlined will not work. It has to have scalability and limiting it to Irish companies prevents that. It also has to have a core ‘manager’ for data verification and the associated costs are too high.

Your concept is a variation of what was first tried in the 1990's in the infancy of B2B e-commerce and was most commonly known as a 'trusted marketplace' back then. The most successful of those who tried at that time added more – e.g. payment processes to make it more attractive (‘cos Version 1.0 did not work). They then got ‘lift’ because exporters found it was considerably cheaper and more efficient than ILC’s. The most successful of several that tried similar morphed into Tradecard. The others failed primarily because the cash-burn was huge and the DotCom crash prevented further fundraising.

To make your idea work profitably would require huge set-up costs and partnerships with companies that have large databases (most of whom already have tried something similar). One of the biggest issues you would face is re-use of propriety data bought from the likes of Lexis-Nexis, Experian and D&B, who will strenuously defend multiple-use by you of their data. In Ireland you will have issues with the CRO because their data is 'unreadable' and cannot be migrated electronically, so you are facing costly manual input.

You also will have basic issues like customer disclosure - many companies (particularly exporters) will not want to put their customers on the database - it simply is giving leads to the competition. Also on a customer level several will deliberately mis-use it to prevent giving leads to competitors and input a negative reference to put off the competition..

Simply put, it has been tried before and failed, and you will have nowhere near enough capital to launch it.