SG Rating – A Tool for Consumer Businesses

Customer service is one of the most talked about topics in Singapore. Hell hath no fury like a Singaporean customer scorned. At the same time, we have this incredible obsession to share what we eat, wear, buy and do, often with “value-added” comments (“yay” or “nay”).

Unfortunately, retailers and F&B operators are often oblivious of what their customers think. While a few do trawl the web to search for answers (good or bad), most continue their operations in blissful ignorance.
With SG Rating, consumer businesses can tune in to what their customers feel as soon as they’ve completed their transactions. Operating on iOS and Android devices like smartphones and tablets, this mobile app created by iAPPS Pte Ltd allows consumers to vote on their experience onsite while reducing the hassle of filling in paper forms. To encourage greater social sharing, customer ratings are automatically posted on SG Rating’s Facebook page.

From a business perspective, SG Rating helps owners and managers to understand what their customers truly think of their service on a “real-time” basis. Reports on service experience can be generated, alerting them on possible “crises” which could be nipped in the bud.

To incentivise consumers to download the app (its free), businesses can reward them with points that can be used to redeem future products or services. They can also offer lucky draws as carrots to elicit customer feedback.

Here’s a screen by screen walk-through for merchants to understand how it works.

Logging in is fairly easy and straightforward.

On the home panel, you can see your average rating, ranking in specific sectors, and notifications on surveys made. A summary of service ratings can also be viewed.

For the today notification menu, the time in which surveys are done, and the names of users can be determined (if they choose to identify themselves).

The overall statistics menu allows merchants to see what their average ratings are. This can be divided by industry, category, and time period.

The outcomes of each question can also be determined as seen above. Here, merchants can discern where they do well and where they fail.

While the idea behind the app is great, I felt that its integration with its Facebook page could be better organised. Having an endless stream of customer rating updates on Facebook doesn’t really add any value to subscribers – on the contrary, it may irritate them so much that they “unlike” the page.

SG Rating also needs to work with its merchants on ways to encourage shop floor colleagues to nudge customers to provide their feedback. This could perhaps take the form of an incentive for number of ratings collected.

Care must also be taken to ensure that this tool is used to improve standards rather than to track staff performance. Nothing irks workers more than a “Big Brother” app which customers can use to “get back at them”.

SG Rating is available in Apple’s iTunes Store and Google Play Store, and can also be accessed via Facebook and SG Rating’s website.

Would you use a service such as SG Rating?