Bazaarvoice hopes to encourage consumers and buyers to provide feedback on its customers’ Web sites and online brand communities by integrating technology from Badgeville that recognizes frequent contributors. It makes providing feedback a game, recognizing visitors who contribute meaningful content, especially those who offer it frequently.
Bazaarvoice offers technology (delivered as a service) that enables companies, often retailers or consumer products companies, to harness customer conservations and feedback and use them to help drive interest in products and services. Some of its clients include Best Buy, L.L. Bean and Walmart. The Bazaarvoice application layers into a company’s existing Web presence.
The relationship between Bazaarvoice and Badgeville enables Bazaarvoice’s customers to integrate the Badgeville Behavior Platform into those communities. Companies that use Bazaarvoice-driven communities can use Badgeville to recognize customers who provide frequent reviews, who take the time to respond to questions from others, or who rate products they have bought. Visitors can also point to the reviews and content that have been most valuable in helping resolve a question.
“It really taps into the human emotion of wanting to be recognized,” said Mike Svatek, chief strategy officer of Bazaarvoice.
The integration of Badgeville has helped key Bazaarvoice customers realize a 200 percent increase in content contribution and feedback sharing, Svatek said.
A sample screenshot that shows how someone’s profile might look appears below:
The relationship between Bazaarvoice and Badgeville is mainly a strategic one. That is, Bazaarvoice is suggesting the Badgeville gamification capabilities to its customers as a way of enriching their customer communities, Svatek said.
“Gamification and reputation programs have become exponentially more important through the enterprise landscape,” said Badgeville CEO Kris Duggan, in a statement. “Together with Bazaarvoice, we will enable its roster of global clients to achieve increased lifetime customer value, loyalty and revenues, with proven technology to measure and influence user behavior.”
