“MouthShut.com is a consumer-driven review platform where consumers profit by reading others' experiences and help others with their own, honest, and unbiased reviews on products and services.”

That is how consumer services portal MouthShut describes its mission on its website. Starting its services in early 2000, MouthShut paid surfers to post reviews of products on its site. Though the portal has stopped paying consumers for their reviews now, MouthShut since then has emerged as a key destination for consumers looking for information on products but do not know where to search.

In fact, MouthShut.com today is India’s largest and the most comprehensive person-to-person information exchange where consumers get a voice. Says Faisal Farooqui, chief executive officer, mouthshut.com, “Our goal is to empower the consumer. As India sits on the threshold of breaking into the consumer culture, we want to offer the tools that empower consumers and businesses.”

The Big Idea

The core concept behind MouthShut is to provide a platform where people can check up on products before spending on them. As “word of mouth” counts for so much, it is this brand value that the site hopes to cash in on – the absence of any one source of reviews of consumer products such as the Consumer Report in the United States. The site posts reviews on products, and writers can file in reports – from a minimum of two paragraphs to a maximum of 8,000 words. The site covers a whole range of products – from the latest movies to the newest FMCG products.

The idea of such a platform originated when Farooqui was in college in New York. A computer fanatic since the age of 11, Farooqui gave up a lucrative career with the Fairfax, VA-based American Management Systems to pursue his entrepreneurial dream in the year 2000. Inspired by amazon.com's section on book review and convinced about the prospects of reviews being extended from books to almost everything, Farooqui set up mouthshut.com “to give consumers a voice”. He says, “I realised the potential of feedback in college and ever since then the concept of feedback helping improve products and services kept lingering in my mind.”

But what is the need to have a website to review prospects of brands? Farooqui says that more often than not manufacturers of goods and providers of services take their consumers for granted. They are happy doling out products and services as long as consumers accept them, “without even a token of respect for their opinion”. On the other hand, consumers are handicapped by the fact that they do not have even a single platform where they can express their opinion on products and services freely. Explains Farooqui, “The consumer, much like the proletariat, was invested with a lot of power, but unfortunately was rendered powerless to execute the same. The fact is, the consumer is an end in itself and not the means to an end. Yet, his opinion mattered little to manufacturers who thought it best to beguile his/her judgment by clouding it with fanciful advertising and marketing strategies.”

The scenario, he says, would have remained the same had it not been for the Internet. With the advent of the Internet it became easier for consumers to get relevant information. And that is exactly where MouthShut found its niche. Interestingly, MouthShut also has a lot of negative feedback from consumers. But that has not made brand owners turn away from the platform. Instead, some reviews have forced companies to rework their policies and make strategic moves in their brand positioning properties.

Today at MouthShut.com, a consumer gets reviews in 17 categories (automobiles, books, business, computers, education, electronics, entertainment, fashion, food and drinks, government, health and beauty, household, Internet, media, personal finance, sports and travel), besides hundreds of sub-categories to choose from. On MouthShut, grievances and accolades are put up in equal measure. Apart from writing and reading reviews, members also get to rate each others’ reviews and comment on them. This helps writers assess themselves. MouthShut has, through all its initiatives, formed a community of consumers who get to interact with each other on a regular basis.

Today's brand owners know the imporatnce of a consumer platform such as mouthshut.com where consumers freely talk about their products. They willingly pay for some genuine consumer feedback and that's the revenue model for mouthshut.com. As Farooqui, says, “Mouthshut.com earns revenues by providing market research solutions to corporate clients. Over the years we have provided market research services, brand identification services and we've also help companies retain their customers and build brand loyalty,” he adds.

How does the company do it?

Using a complex technology called SORT™, developed in-house, MouthShut.com is able to deliver "effective" opinions to the consumer. But it isn't just about boring facts and figures. The information one finds is built around real-life experiences and opinions voiced by people. Users are awarded incentives for providing and reading opinions, and through proprietary customer relationship management (eCRM) software, MouthShut.com pushes relevant product and service information based on an individual's user profile and likes/dislikes.

MouthShut.com uses state-of-the-art software to data warehouse and analyse data provided by the consumer. In addition to consumer satisfaction, this data includes consumer profile demographics, as well as pricing and purchasing information. Mouthshut.com is currently working with manufacturers and service providers to establish Mouthshut.com as the single source for Total Relationship Management.

Surviving the dotcom burnout

Though the idea of MouthShut was conceived at the height of the dotcom euphoria, the company finally launched its services when dotcoms were beginning to go out of fashion. Farooqui says, “From day one, the MouthShut management was aware of each penny spent. We studied financial models of dotcoms that were dying and avoided their mistakes.”

For instance, MouthShut assiduously avoided large-scale publicity and decided to concentrate instead on building a critical user base. It also invested more on technology and less on other frills that were normally associated with dotcoms of that era. MouthShut curtailed unnecessary investment and went whole hog trying to match its revenue generation with spending. “That is one of the reasons why we are still here while most major players of that era are extinct or are on the verge of being wiped out,” says Farooqui.

The company believes the next 12 months are going to be extremely exciting for it. “We have decided to further create a synergy between consumers and manufacturers. No efforts will be spared towards helping the consumer make the right decisions. We are going to revolutionise comparison shopping in India,” says Farooqui.

And the times are good. Customer services management is gaining in popularity among companies as they try to have any advantage, no matter how slight, over their rivals in the marketplace.

agencyfaqs! Content Bureau