*release name:DefaultReviews
Solving DHH's American Airlines problem
DHH is not alone. Unfortunately, too many have shared his frustration. Unfortunately many more have endured like frustrations across innumerable poorly-acting organizations. Fortunately, the progress in our tools and connectedness makes this now a solvable problem. Hackers, your challenge should you choose to accept it is to harness like developers to launch DefaultReview (DR).
DefaultReview, formally Default Reviews and abbreviated DR, is an app that runs on your smartphone. It solves a very big problem.
A problem solved. Have you ever had a bad experience with a company, where the company was clearly at fault? For those whose answer is yes and whose experience included "having a bad day" needlessly caused by bad-acting companies or harm-producing policies or frustration-inducing practices or mistake-denying representatives... DR offers a solution. DR is the solution to that "really bad day" caused by that company that failed to take responsibility for its mistakes.
- DefaultReviews solves the problem of my utility company overbilling 61.92, incorrectly cutting off my power for days, and being to get away with it.
- DR solves the problem of my gas company fraudulently reporting extra usage and being to able to get away with because I'm to busy dealing with the electric company.
- DR solves the problem of the cable company leaving holes in my walls... and getting away with it.
- DR solves the problem of my losing streak with warranty companies... offering resistance at every step to avoid replacing defective product and classically losing items in the mail.
- DR solves the problem of my eating the cost of two laptops failing due to manufacturer defect.
Every month for every service you use, for every product you buy, a rating is submitted on your behalf into one big global survey pool. That rating by default is the equivalent of saying "everything is okay". That rating is made without you having to lift a finger. You only have to lift a finger to change it to "awesome" or to "sucks" or to add a elaboration for others to read. Your review app knows which service/product to submit on your behalf because you photograph your bill, receipt, bar code. Or you enter a company name. Small obscure submissions may require manual attention, e.g., looking up id code for the business in the database on the DR site.
DR allows spikes and unusual changes in satisfaction ratings to be seen plainly and in real time. Asking "which product should I buy" finally has answer. Don't get the model that has all the negative submissions. Magazine reviews and Consumer Reports lab testing pale in comparision to the direct feedback from hundreds or thousands, maybe even millions, of actual real-world users. DR tells you whether those 1000 complaints is a 50 percent disapproval rate or a neglible .0001 percent complaint rate. DR has a two dimensional rating system. Thus, DR tells you whether a negative review should be ignored because its from someone who complains about everything. Conversely, DR tells you whether a positive review should be ignored because its from someone who likes everything.
By 2010 a gross number, large enough to warrant a recall, of HP laptops failed in the field in a (statistically improbable) short amount of time. The laptops if reviewed would have been reviewed favorably. The laptops if tested in consumer advocacy labs would have tested favorably. This is because out of the box they behaved fine. Later performance was a different story. DR could have alerted consumers in real time to occurence of the failures. DR could have alerted consumers to the enormity of the failures. DR overcomes the conflict of interest to cover things up and reveals when recalls should happen.
Coordinated actions, organized by the benefit corporation (b-corp) sponsoring DR, are targeted at the worst offenders. Coordinated actions are also targeted at organizations selected at random from offender pool. Random targeting discourages rated organizations from adopting the complacency of being a lesser evil. Coordinated actions include boycott of the month, class actions and a public wall of shame. What about the other/lesser offenders? Competition addresses lesser offenders. Competing organizations are afforded a chance to stand out by not being on the bad list and to stand out via positive reviews. Complacency becomes measured and known for organizations that decide "who cares about bad reviews as long as we're not among the worst who are subject to coordinated actions".
Informed market actors, coordinated actions and increased competition form a powerful set of initiatives. Even so, the most impact may come from the effect on public relations (PR). Being on the bad list is a PR loss. DR effectively turns poor customer experience into reverse advertising.
DR relies on a vouch infrastructure to maintain quality of submissions. Fake accounts are blocked using controls for screening membership. A existing member has to "vouch in" a member. Verified accounts must be vouched for (similar to the act of friending) by the account of a trusted DR principal or by several other verified acccounts. In other words, you can join anytime but will have unverfified staus. To get verified status you must prove to DR you a real person, or several of your already-verified friends must vouch for you. In accordance with the principles for a vouch architecture, misbehaving accounts are pruned by de-vouching, similar to un-friending. Moreover, the entire vouch network is easily and rapidly re-assembled by new principals whenever the quality of the current network declines under the current principals.
DR obsoletes the crude signals consumers currently use to decide what to buy. DR is what Better Business Bureau, Consumer Reports, Angie's List, Yelp, class actions, and reviews sites would be if they had kept up with the times.