OwnersAsk - A Point-of-Sale Mobile Customer Feedback Applications for Business Owners

June 4, 2012 - PRLog -- June 4, 2012 - Bend, Oregon. Today, OwnersAsk announced the release of their SaaS application to allow small business owners to capture customer feedback at point-of-sale using their smart phones.

For businesses, getting valuable and timely feedback from customers can be like pulling teeth. But mobile technology is offering a way to make that a lot easier and more attractive to consumers. OwnersAsk,  a part of The Mobile Cloud Group, based in Bend, Oregon, is bringing its mobile point-of-purchase analysis and customer survey software to businesses worldwide. The service is currently free while they build out the network and feature set. This application gives retailers, merchants and franchise owners a way to solicit almost instant feedback from their customers.

The beauty of OwnersAsk is mobile users use a QR reader to fire off the survey in exchange for a chance to win a gift card or other valuable gift. If the user has a QR app on their phone, there is no additional software they have to download, thereby reducing the barrier of downloading another custom application on part of the customer.

Customers have the option to use link their Facebook profile to their survey question in order to enter into a drawing for a free gift card offered by the merchant. This gives retailers the ability to respond to the survey, and enables customers to opt-in for future offers by that merchant. This solution is focusing on resturants, pubs, deli's and franchise owners where customer traffic is high and loyalty cards are not viable. The standard survey is designed to offers customers a quick A-F rating on food and service, with the option to add a quick comment.  The results can be read directly by the business stakeholders either from their browser or mobile device.

Customers are often using OwnersAsk while they're still in the business, allowing the owner to immediately follow up with the consumer, forward the comment to a floor manager or forward it on to public relations if the person had a great experience. Either way, OwnersAsk lets the customer know their concerns have been heard.

Mobile Cloud Group, the developers of OwnersAsk belives their simplistic approach will boost response rates to surveys by 500 percent. That’s because it’s more immediate and requires less commitment from consumers. And it also helps consumers actually engage in more of a conversation with a retailer, immediately after the point-of-sale, instead of pushing them into a traditional survey days later. This may help prevent some users from venting on social media by giving them a way to communicate more directly with the business owner. And it gives retailers a better sense of what is driving a user’s purchase decisions.

OwnersAsk believes if you have something to say, you want to say it immediately. Retailers want immediate feedback, which is far more accurate than something 1-2 weeks later.  The fact that it’s happening directly from their mobile device, using a standard QR code,  it’s a immediate and effortless.

Some analysts believe there are about 1 billion surveys handed out each year with a response rates are below 1 percent. The OwnersAsk team believes there’s a big opportunity to make that business more efficient.

OwnersAsk is built on Microsoft's Windows Azure and is designed to scale quickly across thousands of retailers, each getting hundreds of survey hits a day. In addition, when customers opt-in for the merchant's reward program, OwnersAsk captures the customers basic information (name and email addresses) from Facebook and builds a customer relationship management (CRM) database with this data enabling the business owner to easily promote offers to these users.  For many high traffic retailers, this gives them the ability to build a loyalty program without all the hassles.

OwnersAsk is in their beta phase and is currently offering the service free to businesses in exchange for feedback. if you would like to participate in the beta, please sign-up at http://www.OwnersAsk.com