Top 5 things we learned at VON.x2008

Notes from the first public unveiling of VendorRate at the VON (Voice Over Network) show in Silicon Valley March 18-20. We normally don’t get to watch hundreds of raters in action, and user feedback stimulated some great enhancements that are keeping our development team working around the clock.  Here are my top 5 takeaways from the show.

1)   The time has come for a confidential rating system for B2B IT & Telecom- According to everyone we spoke with, the VendorRate system is sorely needed in the marketplace.  Nobody told us this doesn’t have “legs.”    Every user we spoke with needed help in identifying great vendors and avoiding those vendors with marginal customer satisfaction

2)  Raters were fair.  Many good ratings came in. Raters gave equal voice when complimenting great vendors and when offering candid feedback on vendors who had a pattern of ignoring them. As one senior exec raved about a hardware vendor, “I just love these guys!”

3)   Some vendors were excited about the idea of free public ratings, and some vendors wanted to flee the scene.  It didn’t take a rocket scientist to tell us which vendors had the happiest customers; they were the vendors asking us if they could send out VendorRate links to all their customers.

4) Surprise!  Not everyone wants a $5 Starbucks card when they rate a vendor. Many raters wanted to rate because, to quote one director of a mid-sized company, “this is for our own good!”

5) VendorRate’s extensive experience in B2B technology really shines through. Nobody walking down the aisles at 10:05am on the first day of VON could tell that our company was in its first 5 minutes of public life!  Our team worked with clients as if we’d been doing it together for years. Score one for the old timers…those of us over the age of 30!