Today’s interview is with Eetu Raudas, Eemeli Ahonen and Kalle Ek of Gizlo, a software company from Finland that connects retailers and individual shop owners to customers through a platform used for mystery shopping, store audits and consumer surveys by making use of the customers own smartphones. Eetu, Eemeli and Kalle join me today to talk about their application, what they are up to in the voice customer space, success to date in Finland and their plans for taking the UK by storm.

This interview follows on from my recent interview: Behavioural science is a gold mine for service design and customer experience – Interview with Nicolae Naumof– and is number 135 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate and deliver great service and experience.

Highlights from my interview with Eetu, Eemeli and Kalle:

• Established last year, Gizlo has had some great success to date in Finland, is backed by some serious investors and is now looking to enter the UK market.
• Gizlo is a customer feedback channel.
• Before their establishment they thought that providing feedback to companies was not easy for a customer as every company tends to have their own methods and channels.
• So, they have built a feedback channel that puts the customer in control but also allows companies access to real-time feedback data.
• Specifically, what they have done is build a smartphone app that helps customers provide feedback to retailers and restaurants.
• The benefit for companies is that they can get access to real-time feedback from their customers, can save a lot of time and money associated with their other voice of the customer, survey and feedback initiatives.
• Gizlo incentivises customers to give feedback by rewarding them with Gizlo points. These points can then be exchanged for benefits like Amazon giftcards or Spotify credits.
• Gizlo’s experience is that providing the reward really works and in Finland they have now collected over 50,000 pieces of feedback about customers experience.
• People often make the mistake that Gizlo is just a super-charged loyalty programme but it’s not. It’s a channel that allows customers to be rewarded for giving feedback and a source of real-time feedback for companies.
• Gizlo feels a bit like TripAdvisor/Yelp application for customer experience feedback.
• The largest restaurant chain in Finland uses Gizlo to collect customer feedback across their entire chain, which has allowed them to monitor and improve their customer experience, provide essential input into company training and has also lead to increased revenues.
• From the 1st March 2015, Gizlo started tracking 12,869 retail and restaurant locations in the UK. The locations are associated with many of the major UK retailers and restaurant chains, including Asda, Co-operative, Costa Coffee, Greggs etc. You can see the full list here.
• They are intent on capturing the power and insight of feedback from these brands customers whether they are signed up for their service or not.
• They are intent on replicating their experience in Finland where they first built up their user base and database and that allowed them to attract big clients.
• They have over 10,000 active monthly users in Finland.
• They are looking to partner with and would like to get in contact with customer experience professionals across the UK and Europe.

About Eetu, Eemeli and Kalle

Eetu Raudas, Eemeli Ahonen and Kalle Ek are all co-founders of Gizlo, a software company that connects retailers and individual shop owners to customers through a platform used for mystery shopping, store audits and consumer surveys by making use of the customers own smartphones.

Eetu Raudas (far left) is the CEO and can be reached at: eetu.raudas@gizlo.com or via LinkedIn here. Eemeli Ahonen (middle) is the Head of Marketing and can be reached at: eemeli.ahonen@gizlo.com or via LinkedIn here. Kalle Ek (far right) is Head of Customer Relations and can be reached at: kalle.ek@gizlo.com or via LinkedIn here.

Photo Credit: followthethings.com via Compfight cc