• by Aaron Baar , June 10, 2010

People have been using their smartphones as a shopping aid for a few years. But if they've wanted to register their feedback, they've had to rely on filling out paper comment cards or using the Internet long after the shopping trip is over.

Until now. Customer feedback company OpinionLab has introduced DialogCentral, a mobile application (and mobile optimized Web site) that takes advantage of a smartphone's GPS capabilities to enable consumers to provide instant customer feedback to store owners, managers and decision makers.

"Some of the antiquated methods we've been using to collect customer feedback don't work in the modern era," Rick Blair, chief information officer of OpinionLab, tells Marketing Daily. "The advancement of smartphones has made this a much easier endeavor to consider."

The service, which can be accessed either via a phone's web browser or through a downloadable app, uses the phone's location device to give people a list of businesses nearby. They can then select the business they want to rate, submit ratings and make other comments. The feedback is then immediately transferred to the business (if it's an OpinionLab client; others will have feedback collected that could become accessible if they work with OpinionLab, Blair says.)

"The feedback streams in real-time to the business owner," he says. "Every time someone leaves feedback, it's emailed straight into [a business'] in-box."

For those businesses that are customers, OpinionLab has developed point-of-sale materials for the retailers to display, expressing the message "We're listening," Blair says. The app is currently available for Apple devices (iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch), other platform apps will be available in the coming months.