Blacklist is the powerful megaphone to vent out bad consumer experience and get heard

Blacklist is the powerful megaphone for people to react after a bad consumer experience to get their voice heard. Blacklist’s innovative, yet disruptive solution offers the power to the people to express themselves on their brand experience.

The aim is to ease the consumer feedback anywhere and anytime to bring brands closer for a more aligned interaction. The concept positions itself as a destination on the web deployed across platforms that leverages the voices of individuals and their reach to impact accordingly.

Blacklist started the summer of 2012 after writing the book ‘The Power to the People’ as a bold approach to tackle this vision and opportunity. Val Lefebvre, the Founder of @Blacklist and the Author of “The Power to the People” spoke to StartupsFM on how Blacklist is empowering consumers.

After several very frustrating experiences with brands (Orange & Galeries Lafayettes) I thought: “It’s 2011 and I have no easy way to react on those bad consumer experiences!?” So I went on to think and research how could this be changed. It’s well know that when you’re a happy customer you tell 3 maybe 5 people, and when you’re pissed you want to tell the whole world. Well Blacklist is the tool that helps you do exactly that.

Blacklist aims to be the destination online for people to react and complain on their bad consumer experiences

When you had a bad consumer experience you’re frustrated and you want to release this pain. The easiest way to do that is by expressing yourself, and today people use the web to spread out their voice beyond their friends and family.

Blacklist is a digital megaphone

If you think of Blacklist as a digital megaphone, it leverages your voice and extends your reach online. What this means to you, as a user is that your post on Blacklist will always be deployed across platform and reach more people. It’s about increasing the chance to get heard and impact accordingly. If you just post in a lonely forum or website, if you post on Facebook but you don’t have many friends, if you tweet but don’t have many followers or put the correct handle or hashtag, your feedback won’t get heard as much as if you post on Blacklist that is then deployed on Facebook and twitter. Here’s the thing people can access and see Blacklist from the web, from Facebook as an app and from twitter retweeting everything. It’s really about distribution and better reach.

Bring more transparency in the interactions between consumers and brands

So yes, the whole idea behind this movement is to bring more transparency in the interactions between consumers and brands. Indeed we would all benefit from more aligned interactions from the company to the people, and I think a disruptive approach is the best chance to achieve that. We aim to offer the opportunity for brands to have be presence on our platform to listen, acknowledge and respond, effectively engage with people to improve and correct themselves faster.

On starting up Blacklist

So it’s still early and we are in a stealth mode where we have hundred of testers that play around with the core product. The distribution will be focus around social media channels mainly and then from other sources like SEO and Guerrilla marketing. We have many things planned and we are going to test and experiment a lot soon.

I came to London this end of summer to be part of the best European Startup eco-system. It’s been a great decision so far as London is a dynamic city and a lot is going on, including in the Startup world. Especially the Google Campus provides a great community, along with Central Working they are vibrant and very important here for any person in the Startup world.

Challenges as an entrepreneur to work on a disruptive idea

The challenges are many, and I have to say the biggest is the money (ie: London is a very expensive city, and also the competition on the market for tech people is very tough).

Yes I’m still bootstrapping and it is really tough in London, the market is very competitive and opportunities are all over the place so rolling through without financial support is definitely a challenge. I am building some interesting connections among people that have money and valuable connections, funding will be an important boost for Blacklist.

Coming soon

Blacklist is still not released yet, as we’re working on a good core version at the moment. The product will be ready soon and early birds will be able to able to use it before hand to leverage their importance and the power of their feedback. Be sure to signup so we can invite you among the early users.

Follow Blacklist everywhere

• Sign up at Blacklist.co
• Ramblings of the founder at Blacklist blog
• Follow them on Twitter
• Like them on Facebook
• Know more on AngelList

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