[BryanB55]

I worked on creating a similar service for a few months in regards to helping businesses (SaaS companies specifically) capture testimonials. I ultimately decided not to pursue the idea after having conversations with potential customers. SMS was not going to be a feature in the initial version and we may have been targeting different niches but I would definitely recommend getting it in front of your target audience as soon as possible or just talk to them about it.

I found that most SaaS companies wanted a few really well written and well placed testimonials rather than a constant stream of subpar testimonials and didn't really need a system for that.

It sounds like you may be going more towards local small businesses though and maybe they have a need for it. Happy to discuss any questions further with you if you'd like.

[digisth]

My starting market is definitely local businesses, though I do think there might be hope for online companies too (one idea for subsequent versions would be to have the ability to turn Twitter/FB/forum posts and linkable web comments into testimonials with just a couple of steps, rather than going through the whole copy post->go to your CMS->reformat it stuff. There will also be an embeddable testimonial board.)

I'm pretty far along with the initial version to demo it to them, so I should have it front of them fairly soon. Dealing with sub-par testimonials is something I thought about early - that's part of the reason everything requires approval by default. I'm hoping these businesses will post the great ones, appreciate, but maybe not post the so-so ones, and take seriously and act on the negative ones.

Ultimately, I'd like it to cohere from three things: a central place to aggregate reviews/testimonials from many sources, a customer feedback system, and a "reminder to review elsewhere" (to nudge the marginal reviewer to actually leave that Yelp review) service rather than just a feedback system like TalkBin or Talk To the Manager.