Feefo independent feedback

[george]

Actually, you appear to have a siamese twin as well?

[Rich Brady]

Are you Lee Hurst?

Is that a follicley challenged reference?

[george]

Are you Lee Hurst?

[Rich Brady]

Both Charles (@ctshirts) and Ed (@Feefo_Ed) have been very good at replying to my twitter interigation guys, so if you do have questions ask.

Ed is yet to tell me to leave him alone for 5 minutes

[Ed - Feefo]

Feefo Preferred to Bazaar Voice

I've now pulled together a few of bits of infromation on actual usage of Feefo, including comment from one of the Actinic sites.

Charles Tyrwhitt

Over a 40 day period in the early stages of Charles Tyrwhitt's use of Feefo, those who looked at reviews were three times as likely to buy as those who did not. Also, buyers who had looked at reviews, on average, made two orders over that period, while those who did not made 1.1 orders. While not definitive, these results do support the idea that there is a significant impact on sales. If you have looked at the video on YouTube by the Charles Tyrwhitt guy, you will know that another part of CT use BazaarVoice, but despite looking at that product, the UK has found Feefo preferable.

Samara James (Actinic and Feefo user)

Samara James sells a relatively low volume of expensive rings and uses Feefo with Actinic. They had the following comment:

"We've been using Feefo with Actinic for more than 15 months. I must admit that we did have some initial worries about the feedback, as we knew we wouldn't be able to edit it. In practise, it's turned out not to be an issue at all. While I can't be certain of the numbers, my guess is that our sales have increased from using Feefo. The service is well thought through and does a great job for us". Ed Searancke, Director, www.SamaraJames.com

Survey of those giving feedback

In a survery conducted by Feefo on Feefo's own landing page after feedback had been given, the question "How important were the reviews by other customers in your buying decision?" got the following answers:

Critical 4%
Very Important 33%
Were taken in consideration 41%
Unimportant 21%

Comments made by those who answered in the last category were mainly 'I know and trust this supplier without other people's opinions'.

On average 17% of buyers leave feedback with Feefo. This all suggests a very positive impact.

Chris

Hi Everyone

Sorry I haven't been on the forum for a few days. I just noticed that there was a comment that CT Shirts had tried BazaarVoice in the USA. BV is a premium priced "moderated" white label product only review system (like most of them, it looks integral in the site and uses 5 star ratings).

CT no longer use the BazaarVoice service, we are active on their US site and their German site.

There has also been a lot of comment about who doesn't like us, or some negative feedback to balance our seemingly "wall to wall" positives..... We have lost only one client and that was because they changed their platform to one that has an exclusive deal with "Power Reviews" - another system like BazaarVoice. The feedback that I have since they left us is that they have gone from 48 reviews a day to 8. Draw your own conclusions as to whether they are happy, and whether the replacement service is helpful to that business staying in touch with their clients.

I will be quite clear and say that in terms of pros and cons, if you consider it a con that you will have to reply to customers rather than delete their comment and/ or ignore them, then that is a possible "downside" in that our system requires some effort.

Hope that helps, folks.

I am happy to talk to anyone on the phone and if we unearth other helpful pearls of useful info in discussion, I'll post them here. Email me if you want a user guide... ed.lennox@feefo.com. It may answer some of the questions going around.

Ed

[Rich Brady]

A twitter post I made aaagggggeees ago, got a response today from a feefo user:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1GwvcRxook

I've asked him for a bit more info pros/cons that sort of thing, so I'll keep you up to date.

[leehack]

I understand where you're coming from Chris, i guess the problem is that when you are provided with information about the system, you hardly expect to read or hear particularly bad stuff. Would you for instance use one of your problematic clients to market how good actinic is etc.

The big selling point for me is that things cannot be altered, that gives you an honest and balanced view. When viewing feedback on a system you almost want to read some bad so that it balances the positives in the same way. If you listen to someone selling something, you'll rarely hear bad news. Rest assured it may seem a little biased, but it's only the negatives people want to know at this stage, the positives are easy to find anytime.

[cbarling]

Agree with your sentiments, Jo.

The thing I'm finding frustrating is that so far there have been no comments made on the experience of the actual users of the system.

It's the experience of the real users that I'm trying to draw attention to, not the opinions of Actinic staff (including me). So I've got the quotes and figures above, there is the YouTube video from CT and there is the feedback on the Feefo site itself. Has anyone bothered to read any of this or view the video?

If we all give our opinions on how it ought to work, and ignore the people who are actually using Feefo, isn't that the same failing as Actinic development are accused of?

Chris

[pinbrook]

I think we are all agreed that reviews can be a good thing Chris. It is up to individual site owners as to whetherthey want to introduce them.

The thing that concerns us is how it works and whether it will be implemented with end user concerns answered. My cynicism stems from previous killer new features being a disappointment often because they were spec'd by developers and not end users.

the WAD (working as designed) factor versus real life

[cbarling]

I've now pulled together a few of bits of infromation on actual usage of Feefo, including comment from one of the Actinic sites.

Charles Tyrwhitt

Over a 40 day period in the early stages of Charles Tyrwhitt's use of Feefo, those who looked at reviews were three times as likely to buy as those who did not. Also, buyers who had looked at reviews, on average, made two orders over that period, while those who did not made 1.1 orders. While not definitive, these results do support the idea that there is a significant impact on sales. If you have looked at the video on YouTube by the Charles Tyrwhitt guy, you will know that another part of CT use BazaarVoice, but despite looking at that product, the UK has found Feefo preferable.

Samara James (Actinic and Feefo user)

Samara James sells a relatively low volume of expensive rings and uses Feefo with Actinic. They had the following comment:

"We've been using Feefo with Actinic for more than 15 months. I must admit that we did have some initial worries about the feedback, as we knew we wouldn't be able to edit it. In practise, it's turned out not to be an issue at all. While I can't be certain of the numbers, my guess is that our sales have increased from using Feefo. The service is well thought through and does a great job for us". Ed Searancke, Director, www.SamaraJames.com

Survey of those giving feedback

In a survery conducted by Feefo on Feefo's own landing page after feedback had been given, the question "How important were the reviews by other customers in your buying decision?" got the following answers:

Critical 4%
Very Important 33%
Were taken in consideration 41%
Unimportant 21%

Comments made by those who answered in the last category were mainly 'I know and trust this supplier without other people's opinions'.

On average 17% of buyers leave feedback with Feefo. This all suggests a very positive impact.

Chris

[pinbrook]

it would be nice if actinic released a working spec for feefo/reviews, use it as an experiment in user/developer collaboration

[cbarling]

Agreed Lee.

Chris

[leehack]

Can the customer identification information shown against the reviews be customised, one of my sites has very aggressive competitors and if they can identify who my customers are they will be cold calling them, I put something along the lines of Fred from Bolton or similar at the moment.

This is a fab question.

This sort of question and those that Mike has already been asking, epitamise why software companies simply have to talk to their users and open up discussions. There must be at least 5-6 very good points raised, that Actinic hadn't considered or thought about, that simply has to bode well for an integration and all its users.

[Jan]

What happens when a customer buys the same product repeatedly, are they asked to review it each time or does feefo remember that they have already been asked / written a review of the product.

Can the customer identification information shown against the reviews be customised, one of my sites has very aggressive competitors and if they can identify who my customers are they will be cold calling them, I put something along the lines of Fred from Bolton or similar at the moment.

Regards,

[Ed - Feefo]

Hi - I usually respond to everything very promptly, as Chris and all our customers will attest. I have to confess I wasn't prepared for the storm we seem to have created! If it's any consolation, I left home at 7am and got back at 10.30pm. There are so many advantages to the Feefo system and I hope that some of you will give it a try. We have one Actinic user already, who is on an old version (as I understand it) so he uploads a file manually every day - as he has done for a year - so I'm certain he would not do it if he didn't find value in it...

I hope to be able to share some of this as time passes (rather than writing an advert right now!)

Cheers

Ed