Springleap.com’s holding company Fashion Evolution has acquired the rights to sell the online customer feedback service – eKomi – in South Africa. eKomi allows online businesses to publicly showcase their customers’ views and ratings. We chatted to Eran Eyal, Co-founder of Springleap.com to find out more about this service and how it can effect the South African ecommerce market.

Why have you launched this service?
South African ecommerce providers have suffered from many setbacks thus far ranging from payment options to shipping and bandwidth. Whilst many of these are finding a path of resolution the fact is that many customers fear shopping online – 92% of ecommerce customers site security as their PRIMARY reason for not shopping online. The real issue at play here is actually a lack of GLOBAL standards. With this in mind we seek to launch a fast-growing standard of ecommerce trust and authenticity in South Africa to remedy the issue at hand.

eKomi has processed over 1 million customer feedbacks to date and has over 3000 clients in Europe with fast growth. It is becoming the standard in customer reviews and feedback which not only empower the customer with the knowledge that the site rating is not open to fraud, but also the ecommerce client with a method of talking directly to their customers and converting them into prosumers. That means trust and authenticity for the market and greater revenue streams for the ecommerce trader.

As a well known company trading in ecommerce locally and abroad (last year our site Springleap.com won the SA ecommerce awards) we understand these core needs intimately and the value of a solution that is easy to implement, a global standard, best-of-breed and reasonably costed.

How does it differ from other similar services?

Whilst there are a few other customer feedback systems in the world, eKomi stands apart – head and shoulders – as the only one that is transactionally tied. This means that both the customers who come to a site who see an aggregated customer rating (for the site and it’s services) as well as the ecommerce client themselves knowing that all the customers who give them feedback are real customers with real problems, creates an atmosphere of trust, accountability, transparency and reciprocity.

So when a customer rates the site – they can only do so after a transaction occurs – this way the client knows that all the reviews and issues are authentic and can be directly and easily addressed. There is an arbitration system that comes to play here where once the customer’s issues are addressed, the customer can re-rate the site based on the manner in which the whole service and transaction took place. This is an AMAZING opportunity for the ecommerce client to convert customers who would never shop with them again into happy customers, positively increase their site rating and show their existing and new customers that they are trustworthy and look after their clients. That translates into greater revenue and trust in ecommerce language that’s power.

All the comments also go directly into SEO for the site and push their organic SEO up.

For enterprise clients we can push the feedback into their CRM systems or wherever the feedback is going to be most meaningful for that particular client.

It is also a constantly and aggressively evolving product and now even an iPhone application is possible for managers.

Where are you targeting this?
There are 2 major targets: every ecommerce site in South Africa (and later Africa) as well as educating the market that when they see the eKomi widget – it signifies that the site is trustworthy and authentic; it’s the mark of ecommerce trust.

Where does the name come from?
The product originates from Germany where certification is highly valued – in fact it’s a must. So the name finds it’s origin in eKommerce.

Isn’t it dangerous to expose yourself like this?
How? Clients are already exposed. There are sites and social media platforms where people are CONSTANTLY complaining. There’s word of mouth. Sticking your head in the ground like an ostrich in the face of onslaught really isn’t a solution – the ecommerce players know this. This is a solution where they actually actively get to take control, have power they never had before, a global standard of trust, it’s cheap as chips, there’s a free 30 day trial, they get to talk to customers directly without being held to ransom by third party websites… There is only gain in this case. It’s a win-win scenario.

Sure sounds like a great opportunity for clients and customers! Thanks a lot Eran for telling us more about eKomi – a customer feedback service that will seem to rock the South African ecommerce world.

by Yolandi van Rensburg

Read the article on the Ideate website