With yet another major product announcement iSeekplant are at it again. The young company recently rolled out their Endorsements system, solving the issue of finding reliable and quality operators online.
The Endorsements system allows plant hire companies holding up their end of the bargain to be acknowledged for their hard work. When a contractor is happy with the work that a plant hire company has done, they can endorse them on the iSeekplant platform – demonstrating to users that they are a quality supplier.
A recurring complaint that iSeekplant hears about the online plant hire model is that it’s difficult to tell who’s able to take on a sophisticated civil or mining contract. In construction and mining, there isn’t much room for error and productivity of machine and operation is crucial to profitability. You can’t waste time and money on a poor operator with ancient or unmaintained machines.
There are plenty of shades of grey in plant hire, and the performance of an earthworks or plant and equipment hire contract involves many components. This is the key reason that iSeekplant endorsements are only positive. It isn’t a rating or review system. Endorsements allow iSeekplant users to endorse the good work and recommend companies, anonymously (but with many filters applied to ensure endorsements are legitimate), to others in the industry.
The decision to keep things positive was a simple one. Sally McPherson, CEO of iSeekplant, commented on the issue.
“Negative reviews are far more common than positive ones on most online review platforms, such as Yelp. That is the inherent flaw in online ratings systems – the attitudes expressed are highly polarised and people are more inclined to unload when they are unhappy. People are really angry, or really happy; rarely in between. We don’t believe it’s possible to create an unbiased and fair ratings system in our industry, given all the factors associated with contract performance. The best execution of this concept is to only allow people to gain recommendations from previous clients. The more endorsements each of our customers have for their work, the more the user can trust them with their job. We’ll also take steps in the near future to prioritise endorsed companies in our search results.”
In the couple of weeks that it’s been live, iSeekplant’s Endorsement feature has seen significant uptake. Managers and marketers for plant hire companies recognise the value of word of mouth – it’s how they get a lot of their jobs. Endorsements are a great way of showing that someone’s trust in you was validated.
The Endorsements feature builds on a string of impressive announcements from iSeekplant in the second half of 2016. The new app for both Android and iPhone launched in August. The Real Short Film Series also went live around the same time, and has recently received over ½ a million views. The Customer Portal was completely revamped, giving plant hire companies a huge amount of data and options to attract more work.
Click here to read more about iSeekplant’s Endorsement feature.
