Portland Startup Hively Teams Up With TangoCard To Reward Great Customer Service

Portland StartupsLast week when we brought you our interview with Hively co-founder Jason Lander, we knew we were going to hear an announcement regarding a partner for customer service rewards. Now we hear about rewards startups all the time and loyalty and rewards programs. Hively is a little different, they’re taking the responsibility for a great customer service interaction back into the providers hands. Quite frankly, the way it should be.

Customer service is the number one driver of loyalty. It’s what turned Sprint around when Dan Hesse took over. It’s why I stayed with T-Mobile for years (not anymore as their customer service slid), it’s why I try to stay at Drury when I can.  All of these companies have had superior customer service. In fact, several studies have shown that customers will pay a premium, or maybe a little more for a product or meal from a place where they know they are going to receive great service, than go for a deal with places that have bad customer service.

Customer service and rewards for good customer service are the foundation for Hively.

In our interview Lander told us that they were soon going to unveil a way for customer service people to redeem points from good one click reviews. Now we’ve found out what the customer service people can do with the points. They can get “stuff” from TangoCard’s network of retailers.


Three things happen in the Hively model:

A customer service agent focuses on their quality of service using the incentivized program. This way, even in non commissioned sales environments, agents and sales people can earn something “more”,and it’s not even based on a sale. With the improved customer service the sales will flow in, just ask Sptrint.

A customer service agent/sales rep will encourage customers to use the one click method of rating their service. They obviously want their points and the establishment wants the feedback.

Sales are driven by better customer service.

We love startups that turn an industry on it’s head.

“We believe that the right rewards given at the right time will drive significant and valuable results,” said David Leeds, CEO and founder of Tango Card. “We’re excited to partner with Hively to source and fulfill their program requirement for digital rewards.”

“Hively has always been about gathering and measuring customer happiness,” said Jason Lander, co-founder of Hively. “Since virtual rewards can quickly lose their appeal, our customers have asked for a way to more tangibly recognize colleagues and top performers. Our partnership with Tango Card is the perfect solution.”

Linkage:

Hively is here

TangoCard is Here

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Interview With Portland Oregon Startup: Hively, Easy Engagement Feedback Platform

Businesses, retail establishments and restaurants have been using the internet for surveys for the past fifteen years. Lot’s of restaurants still resort to printing a phone number to call or a website to go to to enter a code, do a survey and get some kind of discount. The problem with this method of surveying is, despite the reward, there is still extremely low engagement.

Even customer service surveys at the end of a call to a cell phone carrier or cable provider go unanswered, and that’s after you’ve said yes you’ll answer the quick two minute survey. Most travel related surveys that I get in my personal in box go straight to a spam folder and never get completed.  In fact the only time I typically fill out a survey is if the customer experience was bad, and there are a lot of people in the same boat as me.

An Oregon startup called Hively is looking to change that for business. They are hoping their platform will have a better engagement rate for two primary reasons. It takes just nanoseconds to complete and they make it happy and fun. Hively just asks one simple question, please provide feedback and with that simple question customers can quickly hit one smiley face, like the ones above, and that’s it.

On the side of the employee, employees who receive good feedback are awarded points that they can accrue for a prize.

We got the chance to interview Hively’s co-founder Jason Lander, check out the interview below:

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