It´s a Thursday evening, your bae is craving Mexican and you want to explore a new part of the old, familiar city. You Google, you Yelp, you Zomato — you look for the prices, the distance, the menu but most importantly, you look for the rating.
Jose owns a local Mexican place in an enchanting corner of your old, familiar city. A year ago, he took a small loan and opened a small place of his dreams, bringing you the food from Cancun.
In the beginning, it was a chaos. The restaurant was short-staffed, leading to long waiting times, unanswered phones, early sold-out(s) and billing issues — leaving some customers dis(s)satisfied and agitated.
La esquina de Jose got mediocre to poor reviews.
Jose took the feedback hard. He sulked, he cried, he got up, he asked for more loans, he saw how other businesses functioned, he worked hard. Most importantly, he learnt from his mistakes.
Like all of us, he was a work in progress.
He learnt and he grew, the few customers who saw the 3.0 rating sporadically showed up, those who were extremely happy, rated him well.
Today, La esquina de Jose has an average review of 3.8.
However, if you take an average of the reviews for the last month only, it turns out to be a whopping 4.4.
This difference of 3.8 and 4.4 is what drives a hoard of potential customers away. This difference of 3.8 and 4.4 is a whole amount of lost capital that Jose could re-use to pay back his loan. This difference of 3.8 and 4.4 is what could make his dreams come true, and for once, not feel like an utter failure.
This difference is what could keep a small business from eventually shutting down.
So, what´s the solution?
It is simple. Online ratings for businesses could have a feature that allows you to select a time-frame for which you would like to see the ratings.
This means Jose´s restaurant gets a small button that allows you to see the average rating in the last year, the last 6 months, the last month.
You select the most current time frame, and you´re closer to the truth.
It gives Jose, room to err.
It gives people a chance to make mistakes and learn from them.
It rewards people who learn.
It fosters growth.
It fosters kindness, it fosters new chances.
It sustains small business, that, like you and me, learn on the job.
It makes Jose want to keep believing.
