Speakeasy

What does your start-up business do? Our tagline is: “We tell businesses what their customers are too polite to say.” Speakeasy invites customers to use their phones to share problems directly with a business instead of dragging them over the coals online. These conversations help businesses deal with problems in private before they make it […]

April 11, 2013; 4:22 PM • by RVANews staff

What does your start-up business do?

Our tagline is: “We tell businesses what their customers are too polite to say.” Speakeasy invites customers to use their phones to share problems directly with a business instead of dragging them over the coals online. These conversations help businesses deal with problems in private before they make it to social media. The results we’ve seen from our testing show that this approach creates much closer relationships with your customers, powerful data on how to improve your bottom line, and a boost to your business’s rankings online.

How did your venture start?

The idea behind Speakeasy came about out of a pretty common problem. I have three kids, so when my wife and I do manage to escape for the evening it’s really special and I need everything to go pefectly. When it’s not, it’s a real bummer. But what options do you have? Create an awkward scene by seeking out the manager, call a 1-800 number and waste 20 minutes of my life, or wait till I get home and write a rant on social media or Yelp? No thanks. Do any of those options sound like appealing routes for either the customer or the business who has to deal with it? That’s where we got the idea for this startup.

How will you use the $10,000 cash prize to help your start-up?

What we need most of all now is to get the word out to restaurants that this service exists and figure out the best way to get to work for them. The prize money will cover printing and outreach costs so we can roll out in Richmond and start planning an expansion into the DC & Hampton Roads markets.

April 11, 2013 4:22 PM 0