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NY Times Article

I just came across an interesting article in today’s NY times. The article basically talks about a situation where a negative (in this case unwarranted) customer review has negatively impacted their business. Business owners are often unaware of the many online sources of review, good or bad. With hundreds of sites offering reviews for products and services… what happens to when a jaded customer seeks out to ruin your business. The internet opens up the possibility of a wide range or research, often disclosing detailed information what ever you are researching. For example, before I go to a restaurant, I go right to Yelp or Foodie Blog and see what kind of reviews have been written. I feel like this is a more honest approach than reading what a newspaper columnist has written. Or for consumer products, I hit up CNET and see what user have written in. 

I do think that companies should be able to confront or at least have knowledge of when someone out in the cyber world has written about them, whether its their store, product etc. There are certain bad eggs that can ruin the “wiki” nature of reviews by falsifying bad encounters and experiences. I am not sure if this exists but we should create a product that is business facing that aggregates reviews or customer opinions and lets companies at least hear the voice of the customer. This way if there is some sort of outrageous claim, a company can approach individuals directly and see if this was true or not. Or could be a good gauge in general as they launch new products or services to see how “real” customers are reacting.

I’m thinking about having a dashboard that summarizes data like “positive reviews, or number of news mentions” that can be done weekly. This will give business analytical power to see trends but also dig into certain extreme details.

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