VOKENT creative digital agency

Please describe your company.

It's a small business. We have a fast tool that helps generate new, authentic, positive reviews targeted at restaurants. We run surveys and use different prompts to provide a more customized approach. If it looks like they had a great experience based on their survey, we prompt them to go to certain sites and share it. If they had a bad experience, we prompt them a little bit differently to solicit more feedback, and figure out what exactly went wrong. Then, we give the business or restaurant owner a change to make it right in a personal, custom way. If they didn’t like a specific meal, maybe we give them a free, new meal. If they want to try the same one again, they can find ways to turn negative experiences into positive ones, and turn positive experiences into a positive online review.

Are you a startup?

Yes, we're a startup. We launched three months ago. We raised our initial seed round, and then we engaged VOKENT about two months ago.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I’m the founder.

What was your reason for working with VOKENT?

We needed an application development team, and the version we are working on now isn’t even an app. We're going with an even simpler, cheaper route. Our goal is to have an app within about six months, but we’re going to put this out first, test it, and see what works. I have my own design team, although they provide that too. I have a designer, so it’s the coding, developer, and backend work VOKENT performs. They’re very good at providing strategic guidance and suggestions along the way, helping incorporate that into the scope, or deferring that to the next time. They’re pretty collaborative, which is nice.

What was your process for selecting VOKENT?

I had researched a lot of different firms, and we put out a bid to three firms, all about the same size. I would guess that VOKENT has between five and 10 people. When we bid it out, everybody was within 15 percent of each other.

I decided to go with VOKENT mainly because I’ve seen the other types of work they’ve done. They have some nice brand development that they’ve worked on in time. The only developer I interviewed on the phone was very impressive, so we went with them. That’s proven to be true. We’re very happy with what they’ve developed so far and what we’re about to put out.

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the work that they’ve done for you?

It’s in the low five figures. We’re going to end up between $30,000 and $40,000 for the project. There will be additional revisions to it, but that was for the initial project that we contracted them for.

When do you expect the work to be completed?

Our drop date is about mid-December 2013.

Do you have any statistics, metrics, or feedback to track their performance on the project?

I’m stoked. They’ve done a great job. The team that they have on the project includes the lead developer. They have an additional developer serving as an account rep who helps bridge the gap and keeps everybody on schedule. They have someone who advises and drops in on the meetings. It’s a good team. They’re all very competent, and they’ve delivered everything they said they would deliver. There’s communication every single day, and we get daily updates even if we don’t owe them anything or that’s directly involved, which is very nice.

We’ve done a couple of in-person meetings, and we’ve done a couple of Skype and screen-share conference calls. It’s been very efficient, and they’re very focused on getting everything done. I don’t think our project is extremely complex. It required a good deal of API integration, and they had to write some scripts for how to process it all. I’m not sure it’s the hardest developer project they’ve ever had, but they’ve been able to deliver on it. They’ve hit every milestone, which is something I have never experienced before in this space. In terms of what we gave them for scope, and what they said they would do on the schedule they gave us a lot.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

Their lead developer is able to communicate very well. I’ve had some bad experiences in the past, where you’re literally speaking different languages. But, there’s usually a lot of clarification that has to go on, which isn’t bad, If they don’t understand something, they ask right away, and we figure it out within about 10 minutes, so it’s not an issue anymore. That’s been great.

The other thing that’s cool is that they are in a lot of different industries, so they’re not tied to mobile app development for software. They work with some alcohol and food brands as well as event branding. Some of those have apps, sites, or a digital strategy. Anecdotally, we’ve gotten a lot of good feedback on what we can do in that space as a part of developing the app. That’s not part of our scope, but it’s value added. I think their core business was or is digital strategy brand management and, through that, they’ve brought on developers who are really talented. They’re able to do these app or software developments because they have those people on board full time.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or that you might do differently?

Overall, it’s been really good. There have been perhaps two times where there was a complete miscommunication that didn’t get picked up for a week or so. But, that’s not the norm. I’ll see in two weeks if it launches on time, but as long as that happens, I’d definitely recommend them to anybody else looking to do a similar project.