The relationship between brands and consumers has ‘fundamentally changed’ as a result of social media’s dominance, a website founder believes.
Talking to B&T about his new venture, ServiceRage, former marketing advisor Matt Travers said Twitter, in particular, has offered consumers new leverage to forced increased accountability from Australian and international brands.
“Social media provides the most unique opportunity for consumers to rate and evaluate brands’ services,” he said.
Travers recently created ServiceRage in response to a gap he saw in the market for service-based brand reviews.
“I came up with the idea after surveying the comparison sites that existed and realised they were mainly about price.”
He said more traditional service reviews from family and friends “don’t give consumers the full picture”.
“I wanted to create a direct service to service anecdote and put the weight of data behind that,” he said.
“It’s very clear just in the amount of data that people are using social media to interact with brands.”
ServiceRage surveys comments on social media about insurance, banks, energy and health insurance and creates an equation based on the positive and negative feedback.
Comments are included if they are written by a consumer and relate to service.
“The thing that’s important to me is that it’s completely transparent and that the same process and guidelines apply to every mention,” he said.
Travers said in an increasingly price-competitive consumer space, the response to his service-based comparative venture has been positive since its launch last month.
“I think brands can generally see the benefit of having these sorts of comparisons and it does highlight those who are doing well and encourage others to improve,” he said.
