feefo question

[Mike Hughes]

Also, the majority of our customers believe that being scored "Average" (3 out of 5 stars) is not what they want to see or hear. It doesnt help improve business or products. Average, if your passionate about your business, is actually "poor".

But here's the thing Andrew. If you don't allow customers to rate your products or services as 'average' then how do you know what they actually think and how can you do anything about it?

Fine, believe if you want to that a rating system that doesn't allow customers to choose the option they want to is a good idea. People know and understand what 'average' or 'not good or bad, just 'OK'' means. By not providing this option you a) don't allow people to use the option they might want to and b) distort the figures you provide because they're missing a feedback option that customers might actually want to provide.

We agree though that those people who believe Average is acceptable for their business would probably not find Feefo suitable for themselves.

Not sure this really justifies a response but the whole point here is to get the customers feedback. Of course Average isn't the aim. Any more than Poor or Bad is.

Thinking this through, I think I maybe understand what you are trying to do. Provide a straightforward rating like ebay does on whether the experience was positive or not. This is good, but the problem as I see it is that as soon as you take a polar, yes / no , question and turn it into multiple levels you end up with a bit of a mess.

So, actually, ebay's system is very nice. They have a simple 'Rate this transaction' option of 'Positive', 'Neutral', 'Negative' and then use the standard 5 star levels to rate the details (as Amazon etc do for products).

So yes, I agree that 5 stars isn't a good scale for the 'was this experience good?' question. Ebay's 'yes', 'no', 'neutral' is best and I still don't like the 4 level approach. As you say, the 'percentage' figure is the most important and the 4 levels just complicates the issue and mises the important 'neutral' (not good / not bad) level.

For actually rating a product or service detail I think the 1-5 star scale is simple, clear, meaningful and easily understandable. The 4 level scale misses out the important 'Ok' level, with attendant problems, and just doesn't fit any of the requirements I can think of for such a system better than a 5 star system would.

But that's fine. It's my opinion and different people think different things. I like the concept of feefo and think it does fill a need for a merchant organised feedback system that hopefully can be aggregated and fed back into Google. I just think it could be so much better if the rating system was sorted and currently it's something I couldn't use.

Mike

[cbarling]

I’ve had a chat with Andrew from Feefo about this and thought I would drop some thoughts in.

To some extent, the argument about four or five stars can become a bit like a religious debate.

I can see the argument for eliminating the score of “average” as I’ve come across it before in my career in a totally different context. By not allowing that score, you force people to think harder about whether they actually approved or disapproved.

On the other hand, it’s undoubtedly the case that people are getting used to a 5 star rating system being displayed, and Google insist on it.

Rather than debate the pros and cons further, I would like to record the facts and also suggest a way forward.

THE FACTS

Feefo can already display it’s ratings as 5 stars although this hasn’t yet been made available as standard to Actinic users. It will meet the objection from Google so we will make this available to Actinic customers shortly.

Feefo is proving very successful for merchants in its current form. It will be even better when Google fully recognise it.

SUGGESTED WAY FORWARD

We leave aside the argument and simply implement 5 stars for display as soon as possible.

Chris

[PartiesinaBox]

SWShoes - no Google Rating

If Feefo's star alternative is approved by Google can anybody explain why SW Shoes www.swshoes.co.uk (Feefo said above that they use the star system already) are not rated on Google Products?

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ita...20&sa=N&num=20

Grahame
Parties in a Box
http://www.partiesinabox.co.uk

[cbarling]

Feefo's 5 star rating system accords with what Google state that they need.

Google have still to generally accept feedback from Feefo. They haven't done this yet and Feefo are in discussion with them.

The conversation between the Actinic Feefo user and Google recorded earlier in this thread is a slight red herring. If a 5 star rating was available on that site, the Google representative still wouldn't accept the Feefo feedback.

Believe me, Google aren't easy to deal with. I can tell you this from my own personal experience. Feefo are pursuing this as a top priority and I am sure that in time their feedback will be accepted, particularly due to the growing importance of Feefo and the sheer volume of feedback that they hold.

In the meantime, the more complaints to Google, the more likely they are to move.

Chris

[leehack]

If Andrew’s stance is that it will ‘never’ happen, then I agree with Chris to a certain degree, it is like a religious argument and there will never be a compromise, so pointless discussing. I personally think he is very wrong and his security seems gained by confirming with existing clients, instead of engaging with possible new ones. He always has the option to survey possible new clients in the future if he wants to consider other ideas. He could even (with Chris’s approval) have a poll on the forum and engage directly with potential Actinic users on the matter. I fear when the word ‘never’ is used though, that the decision will never be changed, maybe only considered if about to go out of business, which they are clearly not for the foreseeable future with the excellent growth figures quoted.

Adjusting the system to now show 5 stars seems the best solution at the moment, it seems strange to stubbornly stick to an underlying 4 star mark though and mathematically I think that is flawed. When a good or a bad mark is chosen, when a customer would have chosen average, you are actually weighting a decision either with an extra half-point (the good) or with half-point less (the bad) than it would have scored.

Unless you can categorically and statistically prove that there will always be a perfect 50/50 split between the people who would have ideally chosen average actually choosing good or bad, then the whole basis of mathematically turning a 4 tier system into a 5 tier mark is flawed as you create a weighted average towards one side or the other. To statistically report 5 tiers, you have to collect 5 tiers of scoring.

Example Customer 1
Never received parcel for over a week and when it arrived it was the wrong product and it then took 2 weeks to get a refund.
Example Customer 2
Parcel arrived late missing a deadline and was poorly packaged.
Example Customer 3
Parcel arrived a little late, was packed OK and communication throughout the transaction was a little tardy or non-existent.
Example Customer 4
Parcel arrived on time, well packaged and communication was good throughout.
Example Customer 5
Parcel arrived earlier than expected, was very well packaged and communication was excellent throughout with a follow up phone call to make sure all was ok also.

4 Tier System Scores the customers as so:
1) bad – 1 point
2) poor – 2 points
3) poor – 2 points
4) good – 3 points
5) excellent – 4 points

5 Tier system scores the customers as so:
1) bad – 1 point
2) poor – 2 points
3) average – 3 points
4) good – 4 points
5) excellent – 5 points

4 tier total points = 12 / 5 = 2.4 points average (overall rated as poor)
5 tier total points = 15 / 5 = 3 points average (overall rated as average)

That’s a pretty simple mathematical explanation and I sincerely hope their conversion to 5 tiers is far more sophisticated than that, but it gives an indication of why IMO it is simply impossible to accurately convert 4 tiers into 5 and provide an accurate measurement. For the simple fact that 4 tiers has no average mark so you cannot falsely introduce an average (in the middle) mark.

The USPs of Feefo (IMO) are that they are unadulterated reviews and integral to actinic, I love these facts, this is what should be sung from the rooftops, it has immense credibility once known. It’s sad that I have seen more Feefo chat about their rating system, than their USPs.

[Golf Tee Warehouse]

I can't see how google would accept the 4-tier marking system, as although Feefo can take averages of all Feefo feedbacks a merchant receives and generate a score out of 5 the individual marks for each individual review are still a 4 tier score.

Many merchants are likely to have reviews from other review sites such as pricerunner, trustpilot, reviewcentre, etc and each individual review will be scored out of 5 making it easy to calculate an average, but to use the Feefo scores would be more complicated. I can see that the maths is quite easy but would Google want to bother manipulating the Feefo data.

I see on the Trust Pilot site a merchant is given an averaged score out of 10, but the individual scores are still based on a 5 star system.

[cbarling]

Google don't need to manipulate the Feefo data, Feefo can provide all of their data on a 5 point scale. We're now looking at making that available to Actinic Feefo users at the click of a button.

Chris

[Golf Tee Warehouse]

Each review would presumably be scored as 1.25, 2.5, 3.75 or 5 out of 5.

If so how would google be able to display the invidual reviews. If you search for a product on Google Shopping any merchant with more than a certain number of reviews will have an the average number of stars displayed with the number of reviews next to it, if you then click on the number of reviews you are taken to a more detailed display which shows every single individual review along with it's star rating and also provides the option of filtering the reviews by star rating.
I would therefore assume that a 5 star average it not sufficient to meet Googles requirements and each indivual review would have to be given to Feefo as either a 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 so a score of 3.75 out of 5 won't work.

[Darren B]

I had to chuckle when this thread popped up. I can not believe we are still discussing the same topic, and yes two years ago it was agreed the star rating would be an option, i guess it is but still waiting for it to be easily implemented.

We were told that it was inline with ebay and how great it was, has anyone looked at ebay's rating system in the last two years?

On a side note i see we still have no intergrated product review system in Actinic? only the feefo system which i cant help thinking is what is holding back and inbuilt one

just my two pennith

[brucet]

It should be possible currently to use the Feefo 5 star display, AFAICS it's just a matter of using a different logo image. I am testing this out ATM. If it works, I will post the method here.

[brucet]

We've added an article to the Knowledge Base that explains how to use the Feefo 5 star option in Actinic:
http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=50947

Unfortunately as Chris has explained, this makes no difference to Google, but I mention it for the benefit of those who want to use it.

[justinhill]

We were told that it was inline with ebay and how great it was, has anyone looked at ebay's rating system in the last two years?

eBay's feedback system has done incalculable harm to many small sellers here and across the pond - don't take my word for it, read the forums - caused collateral damage to eBay itself, and arguably restricted buyer choice. You cannot have a feedback system that works unless the people leaving feedback have to take responsibility for their comments. This is at the heart of what went wrong on eBay (consider the fact that sellers are no longer allowed to post neutral or negative feedback for buyers).

Having studied the feedback business at length over the past few years I strongly believe the whole concept has lost its way.

Justin

[justinhill]

the proportion of people satisfied (as used by eBay, which has worked for them for a few years now).

eBay requires an average of 4.6 out of 5 in each of four categories. 4 out of 5 reads (in on the eBay help screen) 'Accurate', 'Satisfied', 'Quickly' and 'Reasonable'. Many english-speaking people would choose 4 stars for an average transaction and this would be below eBay's minimum seller performance requirement.

An 'average' seller (not 'top-rated' or 'above average') is also required to have no more than 2% of feedbacks at 2 stars or below (1% in the case of item description). In other words, if less than 98% of your customers are satisfied you are liable for eBay sanctions.

I would question the idea that feedback has 'worked for' eBay at all recently and I certainly wouldn't point to them as an example of how to do it.

Justin

[PartiesinaBox]

I would like to respond. Feefo have no issue in converting our results to star ratings anymore, and we have had a number of customers request this during the course of the year (see www.swshoes.co.uk as an example). Whilst the scoring method is exactly the same and we will never revert to having an “average”, the ratings are only different from the point of view of the image actually shown (stars rather than % score). We are happy to work with you in delivering star ratings for those who wish to display using this method. Actinic will shortly have a choice of Star Rated logos for you to use. selected from the Control Panel.

Regarding Google’s other comment that Feefo need to comply with Google’s rating system, we have done some thorough checks and we do comply with their rating system! However, there is another hurdle to overcome, which is to be formally recognised by Google as a review platform. We have recently had some meetings with Google directly in order to achieve this. Infact a couple of our significant direct clients have approached Google with the same requests that Feefo reviews be formally recognised and here is a recent response that has been sent by Google:

“I've spoken to our reviews-team and there already have been conversations with Feefo. But there is currently no timeline for when we will be able to implement with them to include their reviews. In short - we'd like to show them as soon as possible and the team is working on it. Thanks for raising it with me - they seem a great platform.”

We are working on this as much as we can but can only go as fast as Google will allow us. We have had positive discussions BUT one thing we would be very willing to do is work with Parties in a Box, give them the star ratings as per Google’s response and then, simply if they still do not get the recognition on Google, Grahame at Parties In A Box has every right to challenge the Google response!

It is very frustrating for Feefo that we see one of our client site's displayed in Google shopping with 75 reviews on Dooyou.co.uk (or similar) and the very same client has 100,000 reviews on Feefo and they are not even acknowledged! The more pressure we apply to Google, the better as far as I am concerned. It is in all our interests and many of you already pay Google for Adwords etc, so they should take notice of what you want !

Another 7 weeks have gone by since you posted this message. It would be useful, to your customers, if you could post a regular update on progress with Google.
Thanks
Grahame
Parties in a Box

[robinantill]

Just taken a look on Google shop. The Feefo reviews are appearing on Google now which is great.
http://www.google.co.uk/products/sel...ed=0CEYQqQwwAA