As you know, I recently announced the launch of of SmartJabber. This is one of the new companies I have been working on the last several months. To help spread the word we ordered a paid review from JohnChow.com. We weren't quite sure what to expect because the review would be an honest one, regardless of the fact that it is a paid review. I am totally cool with that and I wouldn't expect, or accept, anything less.
When we ordered the review we assumed we would be contacted for a free account so the reviewer would be able to fully use the service and get a real feeling for it, how it works, the pros and cons, etc. Well we never got the request for the test account and today I noticed the review had been posted last night (click here to read).
There is some constructive criticism, which I find extremely helpful. However there are some points made in the review that are flat out wrong. The following was taken from the review itself:
This agent then poses a question of your choosing, possibly offering the customer a discount so that they will follow through on the sale. The thing is that this agent doesn’t really exist. They’re nothing more than a photo and an automated script. This is not a true instant messenger in any sense of the word, because the faux agent isn’t really responding to anything that the customer is typing.
This is totally incorrect. The agent responses are completely customizable and tailored to match the users input based on your own keyword/response settings. There is no limit to how many keyword(s)/responses you can use (and each response supports multiple keywords) so you can make your agents seem as real as possible. When a user asks a question that doesn't have a programmed response, it is flagged and logged for your later review. You can then add a response to that question based on the keywords within it.
Because this is the heart and soul of our application, and with the size of JohnChow.com's readership, the fact that they got this wrong is really upsetting. The review appears to be a review of our main website, not the actual service itself. The true benefit was never relayed to the reader because the reviewer never had a chance to see the customer interface, which is where users are able to customize their campaigns based on agents, links, responses, etc.
The review also made no mention of the statistics tracking that we provide. We track everything from the number of interactions, the number of link clicks, the number of sales, CTR, which browsers convert better, etc. All of this is available in the customer control panel but since the reviewer never got to see this they had no idea.
Another issue the reviewer had was the cost. Here is what he had to say:
SmartJabber offers three pricing plans:$49.95 a month for 3 campaigns
$79.95 a month for 10 campaigns
$199.95 a month for unlimited campaignsI don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty expensive for what SmartJabber does. It’s also curious that there is no plan for a single campaign.
He has a valid point about the single campaign plan. I will look into adding that option immediately. While I understand that $49.95/mo is expensive for a web service, especially in today's "free" internet service culture. But when you look at the competition, we are a huge discount. None of our competitors (there are only one or two) offer a flat rate fee for their service. Our competitors charge on a per sale basis. Meaning for every sale their service saves for you, you are charged $10 (last we checked, it was $10 per sale). So if you save 50 sales a month, you are paying $500! Now saving 50 sales a month is being done routinely by us and some of our users. How many saved sales would it take for SmartJabber to pay for itself? That depends on your product & pricing but I am guessing not very many.
I am working on getting in touch with the folks over at JohnChow.com so they can (hopefully) offer a real review of our service. At least update their current review but I am afraid that will not improve the damage that the current review may have done. Oi...
Update: We went ahead and added a single campaign plan for $19.99/mo. In addition, we are going to offer a 60 day free trial to the public. If you want to take advantage of that, click here!