Rewards for Reviews: Whole new ball game for consumers

An innovative Kiwi team have built a site for customer feedback that directly benefits any New Zealander.

A new site enables people to get between $10 and $20 of value for each review written. People can use it to review pretty much any business in the country and provide feedback directly to friends as well as others.

"Many people have useful ideas and feedback for and about the businesses they deal with. A lot of it never makes it to the businesses, their friends or anyone else. If it does it often doesn’t have the impact people want." said Mark Thomas, founder of the 2Review concept."Our job is to encourage people to write quality feedback using a system that makes sense for them and the people they know. As well as the extreme experiences people can't wait to write about, we wanted people having ordinary experiences with any business to still feel that their feedback would be of value to someone.

As well as the feedback, people could recommend to their friends and this was important for many businesses. There are a lot of small businesses out there which are working hard doing wonderful things for people that rely on word of mouth to help spread the word. We say that if you are a customer then you can help that business get more customers by recommending them to your friends. People can also provide feedback about large businesses, all is welcome."

However, while people would be provided benefits for their feedback, reviews could only be written by verified customers of the business. "It's too easy to write stuff online about businesses these days and who knows if they are actually customers. People are losing faith in some reviews because of uncertainty over whether the reviewer was even a customer and whether there was a proper process for writing these reviews"

He felt people wanted to trust more in the reviews they read and wanted both appreciation and results for time and the thought they spent writing quality feedback. By incorporating a friends and followers system the site easily enabled people to pass on review information to people who they knew or who were already interested in what they were saying. For people not interested in rewards this has already proven to be more important than the rewards program which people did not have to take part in.

The site differs from social media and other review and directory services in that there is no paid advertising, there is a customer authentication process, a full review process, a rewards plan for reviewers, a friends and followers system, a recommendations system, review distribution via social media and email and that it covered all consumer oriented businesses in both New Zealand and Australia.

The concept has already got strong interest with over 3,000 people and businesses on social media channels interested even before general release. People interested in reviewing could register to review at http://www.2Review.co.nz. People interested in the reward process could check out the latest blog.

ENDS

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