Following the growth in review sites where consumers can rate the services they use, retailers have welcomed the launch of the website RateThatCustomer.com which allows them to rate and review their experiences with individual customers.
‘It’s finally payback time,’ said Thomas Brindle, assistant manager of the O2 shop in Sheffield which has already joined the new site. ‘A recent customer left us negative feedback because we wouldn’t give him a 60% discount and one of our till operators ‘has acne’. Now we can go to RateThatCustomer and let everyone know that he’s a tight ugly bastard who only needed 60 minutes a month on his phone contract because he hasn’t got any friends to call.’
With a 5-star rating function and the ability to upload a photo of the customer being reviewed, RateThatCustomer.com already has over 5,000 businesses subscribing to the service. Customers are marked on their ‘browsing-to-buying ratio’, ‘politeness to staff’, ‘suggestibility’, and even their ‘looks and appearance’.
‘Anyone in retail knows you can’t just lavish high-quality customer service on everyone who comes through the door,’ explained the site’s founder. ‘RateThatCustomer helps retailers to avoid expending effort on the serial complainers and the timewasters who’ll never buy anything. In fact data from the site shows that the customer is always right only 0.3% of the time.’
Some customers have criticised the new service, however. After stumbling across her review by chance when Googling herself, Doreen McAllister was ‘furious’ at receiving a 1-star rating from retailer Monsoon for ‘trying on four different sizes of the same dress without buying any of them’, and then ‘loudly announcing that the quality is better in M&S’.
‘The review makes me look like some kind of snob’, said Doreen. ‘They said I asked for assistance with absolutely everything and called me a ‘pestomer’ rather than a customer. But what they said about my appearance was just spiteful. It’s not at all the case that I was too fat for any of the dresses, and I certainly won’t be taking their advice and going to Millets to pick up a tent instead.’
Jesus H (based on an idea by Dumbnews, and with a hat-tip to NewBiscuit)
