There are many different ways this concept can be stated … paradox, oxymoron, dynamic tension. But no matter how elegantly you try to express yourself, it really just means you are stuck. Finding your way through these sticky situations is what makes business so fascinating. Some people love crossword puzzles, others play Sudoku, but I love the opportunity to try to unravel these Gordian knots.
Let me share one of the biggest challenges we faced when we created VendorRate. The issue was how to make it easy to rate while maintaining the integrity of the data. The easier it is for anyone to rate, the more likely the ratings inaccurate. (Like we don’t know some people will want to game the system!) But the more we tighten up identity controls in our registration process, the fewer ratings we would get.
So we were stuck between a rock and a hard place, right? Not quite! We’ve completed three initiatives that make rating easy while still only permitting verified business users to rate.
1) First Rate- We’ve reversed the workflow of our rating process, so a user can now rate a vendor BEFORE registering. First Rate lets a new user experience the rating process first and then decide to move on to the next step of verifying that they are a real business user. The First Rate process is more like using an online shopping cart where you try it, then buy it. The rating won’t post until a new user verifies their business email address, but they will get to see how easy our “3 Minutes or Less” rating system is to use.
2) Mass Registration for Corporate IT Departments- Another new and speedy way we are validating business raters is by permitting IT and telecom departments to register their users en masse. Since one of our primary identity verifications is a valid business email address, we concluded that an IT department is really our ultimate source of validation. We are now allowing IT departments to bypass the individual registration process, giving speedier access to all their employees with email addresses from the main domain. In order to create an even deeper layer of user privacy, we don’t even ask for the names of the user, just the email address.
Like Alexander’s bold stroke of slicing the knot in half, these two initiatives help VendorRate gather more ratings faster without sacrificing the quality of rater integrity.
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