
Show HN: I built an app that helps amplify the voice of the customer - boina92
https://www.shieldvoc.com/
======
throwaway13337
Rating and social media systems give the strongest voice to your worst
customers.

I run a few SaaS apps and by far the majority of my time spent in support is
dealing with unreasonable customers. In the past, SaaS apps used to be able to
ignore them but now they hold your company hostage with threat of bad reviews.

It's true that these systems could be used for good - letting other users know
about issues with a product. In my experience, it's not how they're being used
in practice. These people want special treatment and they get it - from me,
and from everyone else.

It's really not fair to my other customers. I'd love to refund these
unreasonable people entirely and send them on their way. I don't want their
business. But the damage is just too great for refusal of service. One 1-star
review is as powerful as ten 5-star reviews.

I'd like to see a rating and social media system that tracks the average
rating of these customers across platforms. I'm sure it's overall negative for
those on the attack.

These often verbally abusive, entitled customers are a real problem. They
increase the cost for those not willing to be as pushy/loud/abusive. Giving
them an even stronger voice is not a step forward.

~~~
dewiz
did you consider using a public support forum to promote transparency? your
helping customers would be visible, and unreasonable asks would be there too,
for everyone to see if you did your best

~~~
Red_Leaves_Flyy
I wish Amazon had forums instead of their awful review system. They'd have a
Facebook level moderation problem but customers would be served better. Good
companies with good products would also benefit.

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the__alchemist
I love the idea! (Admittedly without knowing the details of how it works, or
the complications that may arise) It feels like in many cases, you're reliant
on the company having a good channel for addressing concerns (Some do, some
don't). Reviews aren't necessarily a good fit, yet customers may go straight
there, for want of something better.

Do you think the chance of abuse is high? (Eg a competitor posing as an
unsatisfied customer, or a customer abusing it trying to get free things) What
mitigation plans do you have for this, if you think it could come up?

~~~
boina92
Those are really good points.

> It feels like in many cases, you're reliant on the company having a good
> channel for addressing concerns (Some do, some don't). Reviews aren't
> necessarily a good fit, yet customers may go straight there, for want of
> something better.

That is true and even more so having a social media presence in our case. Our
approach is to focus on companies that already have a social media presence
and propose an alternative way to track customer satisfaction and reduce the
subjectivity baked into that metric by relying on the facts and measuring
customer service quality instead. We still provide users with a space to
express their feelings as they would on review sites and receive support from
other users in similar situations, while we work with companies to get better
at serving their customers.

> Do you think the chance of abuse is high? (Eg a competitor posing as an
> unsatisfied customer, or a customer abusing it trying to get free things)
> What mitigation plans do you have for this, if you think it could come up?

Moderation is key for any platform like ours, because our user community is
placing an enormous amount of trust in us to ensure that we’re helping genuine
users like themselves, which means letting through genuine complaints on our
platform and bringing down abusive complaints where we have compelling
evidence. We have processes in place for complaint moderation today, and as we
scale, we will automate more of these processes where needed.

------
verticalflight
"And immediately my issue was eventually resolved." \- from their testimonial.

~~~
surround
“ _eventually_ my issue was _immediately_ resolved”

/nitpick

~~~
dewiz
even that way, the sentence doesn't make any sense, it's either eventually or
immediately /nitnit

------
dgellow
Twitter mob as a service?

~~~
eplanit
It might create so much more noise that people would find Twitter even more
annoying and less useful, and thus help its demise. That'd be a positive
result.

~~~
quickthrower2
You underestimate how much annoyingness and uselessness people will tolerate,
for the goal of being distracted. It is arguably a feature!

(Tongue in cheek!)

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brody_hamer
This type of brigading is pretty clearly against twitters terms.

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saagarjha
The obvious way I can see this making money is allowing companies to come in
and pay for problematic reports to go away–is this how this will be funded?

~~~
hellotomyrars
Or the exact reverse. Customer pays a small-dollar figure to ensure they get a
more meaningful support response. Either way an idea I'm not a huge fan of.

~~~
maximp
That was what came to mind as well. We have a landscape where customers with
the largest social media following/ore persistence are more likely to reach
customer support - a system that -should- be serving everyone equally well.
Rather than trying to improve customer support, this product strikes me as
allowing users to buy influence and get a response - at the expense of
customers who aren't willing or able to pay.

