Grad Profiles highlight the personal and professional stories of Founder Institute Graduates from across the globe.
This profile on JetJaw, a Graduate of the Denver Founder Institute, was written by Emma Tzeng. Co-Founded in 2010 by Mark Salsberry, JetJaw helps businesses better serve customers by allowing them to collect and manage instant feedback at the point of sale.
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There’s no doubt that we live in the age of the consumer. Social networks such as Yelp, Twitter, and Facebook, continue to grow their reach as people acknowledge, for better or worse, that they now harness the power to broadcast their thoughts and opinions to thousands across the globe in a matter of seconds.
This newfound authority, however, is a major pain point for consumer-facing business owners. In the past, customer dissatisfaction couldn’t travel much further than one’s social circles. Today, however, angry consumers can represent tech-savvy, well-connected individuals with diverse social media followings. A single tweet, Yelp review, or Facebook status heralding discontent with a business’s service or products can reach thousands with the single click of a button.
So what does this all mean for business owners? For one, managers need a basic understanding, at least, of the ins and outs of the digital landscape. Furthermore, the necessity of establishing efficient systems to properly and instantaneously address consumer dissatisfaction is also stronger than ever before.
JetJaw, a Denver-based startup, aims to help business owners adapt to today’s fast-faced, social media-centric world by helping businesses get instant feedback and respond accordingly to positive and negative customer reviews.
According to the National Association for Retail Marketing Services, 95 percent of unhappy customers will return to a business if an issue is resolved quickly and efficiently. JetJaw wants to put business owners back in charge by providing a private outlet for customers to leave on-the-spot feedback on specific, pre-selected survey questions. If a customer leaves an unfavorable review, the owner is notified right away through a text or email so he can address the issue immediately. In this way, disenchanted consumers can rest assured in the knowledge that their grievances are heard and acknowledged, while owners begin to learn what makes their customers tick.
On the other hand, a study done by Econsultancy shows that 90 percent of online consumers trust recommendations from people they know. When satisfied customers leave positive feedback through the JetJaw application, they are automatically given the option to share their experiences with their social networks.
To help business owners gain insight into consumer sentiment, JetJaw offers a dashboard that displays the number of shares and the reach of those shares across different social media platforms for a monthly subscription fee. This data, in turn, helps business owners make better-informed business decisions.
Founded in 2010 by Mark Salsberry and James Gardner, JetJaw currently consists of a team of 11, which include direct sales representatives and former Google developers. Salsberry boasts nine years in the mobile industry and 13 years working with multi-unit retailers, while Gardner helped take a SaaS company to acquisition in 2010. Both founders started JetJaw out of a desire to “make it so the customer is essentially an executive team member,” according to Salsberry in an introductory video.
The opportunity landscape for JetJaw appears expansive: a study by Forrester Research states that the SMB social media marketing space is expected to grow to $7.8 billion by 2016. JetJaw hopes to capitalize on these optimistic forecasts by partnering with 5,000 small businesses and 15 medium chains in the near future.
“By allowing a customer to provide feedback in the moment, the response rate is higher, the feedback is more accurate, and the customer feels as if the company cares more because of the immediacy of the response they can provide,” explains Salsberry in a press release. “In this age of transparency, the ability to diffuse negative feedback can tremendously improve brand reputation.”
As mobile technologies continue to advance and gain popularity, the potential for JetJaw to become an industry norm doesn’t seem so farfetched.
Learn more about JetJaw:
