If you’ve had a bad experience at a restaurant or business recently, you might be able to “Grumble” about it soon.
Grumble, an up and coming mobile application developed by four USC students, provides users with the chance to answer quick survey questions in exchange for coupons and other benefits from the businesses they review.
Michael Cederberg, a fourth-year management science student, came up with the idea for the app last summer during a trip to New York. After Cederberg had some bad service from a local business, he wanted to provide the business with his input, but realized that there was no easy way to do so.
“I realized that there’s no effective outlet for you to communicate the problems that you’re having, shy of going up to a manager and getting in their face, which is something most people don’t like to do,” Cederberg said. “So if it’s on the convenience of your smartphone, it’s kind of a way to apply both incentives and a way to communicate with management that isn’t a big deal for the customer.”
When Cederberg pitched the idea to fourth year management science student Mackenzie Mylod, fourth-year finance student David McGibbon and third-year business economics student Yousef Ibreak, the group quickly realized the potential the app could have for customers and businesses alike.
The Grumble team plans to sell the app primarily to businesses at the corporate level, while stressing the ineffective quality of current survey methods and the higher amount of input that would be received from Grumble users.
The team all chimed in to detail the benefits of the app’s use for both customers and business owners.
“Right now there are services that provide the individual parts of what we’re doing, but we’re combining the rewards service with the consumer feedback,” McGibbon said. “Things like the URLs at the bottom of receipts just don’t work. And the rewards companies that exist don’t really add much value back to the company like we are.”
Mylod added that businesses typically only get about one percent responses on survey receipts, so with this system they will be able to get a larger number of responses from customers.
“So we’re combining the two platforms and adding value back to the business and for the customer,” McGibbon said.
The company hopes to have a working version of the application ready by May 1, which they have scheduled as their official “Demo-Day.” That day will also come as the culmination of their participation in Tminus6, a six-month program designed to fund Columbia-area tech startups.
Grumble’s participation in the Tminus6 program came after their second place finish in The Proving Grounds, a contest designed to showcase upcoming product ideas that occurred in November.
“It’s a good program to help us along a path that we don’t necessarily know,” Mylod said. “We would find out slowly ourselves, but they can help us get there a lot quicker.”