Humm Launches On-Premise, Real-time Customer Feedback Technology

AUSTIN, Texas, Feb. 7, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Humm, an Austin-based startup aimed at changing the way guest-centric businesses interact with customers, today officially unveiled its patent-pending technology and analytics platform.

Since initially taking their product to market in February 2013, Humm has been quietly making significant impacts on the local and national restaurant scenes. With Celebrity Chef and Entrepreneur, Robert Irvine as a partner, Humm is providing restaurateurs and other guest-centric businesses, like retail and health & wellness, with unprecedented access to real-time customer feedback, enabling them to improve their guest experience and head off online negativity. 

Humm's proprietary platform has helped its clients capture and analyze guest feedback in real-time at unprecedented response rates of 85-95 percent (versus the 1 percent response rates of traditional methods).  By allowing guests to voice their opinions while still in the establishment, companies adopting the Humm platform have experienced up to a 43 percent reduction in negative customer reviews on user-generated review sites.  In their first year, Humm also prompted more than 150,000 interactions between businesses and their guests, allowing business operators to authentically evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their operations.

"The service industry is facing the most empowered customers the world has ever seen," said Bernard Briggs, Humm founder and CEO. "Given the state of the industry, developing tools to engage with these customers at the right time and in the right way is paramount to their survival, and it's what Humm is maniacally focused on providing."

Powered by an Android tablet exclusively running Humm's customizable application, the easy-to-use Humm platform empowers customers to voice their opinions in an elegant, client-branded and intuitive method prior to leaving the establishment. This unique approach is also yielding impressive opt-in rates by customers to join email lists and loyalty programs, which customers can also do right on the device.  

The feedback shared by each customer on their experience is captured and instantly uploaded to Humm's Insights Portal, a proprietary cloud-based software that business owners and managers can directly access to view actionable insights from raw customer data in real-time.  The Humm Insights Portal also features a robust mix of tools that allows stakeholders to stay in-tune with their business while on the go.

"For me, the ability to be involved with my restaurant on a guest-level from anywhere in the world is incredibly valuable," said Robert Irvine, Celebrity Chef and entrepreneur. "I am very impressed with what Humm has done for my restaurant, Nosh, and I'm excited about becoming a partner in this very promising business."

Additional key features offered via the Humm portal for restaurateurs and other guest-centric businesses include:

• Instant Alerts: Receive real-time updates via SMS and email
• Natural Language Sentiment Analysis: Humm's proprietary tool analyzes free-form comments, making sense of a customer's experience in ways that cannot be achieved through surveys
• Performance Tracking: Humm tracks and ranks the performance for each of a businesses' locations and its employees based on what really matters – guest perception and experience
• Anytime Reporting: Creating and sharing rich reports of detailed customer data is made easy with Humm
• Aggregated Data: Humm scans publicly-facing user review sites like Yelp, OpenTable, and TripAdvisor, providing a single destination to monitor online reputation and fraudulent reviews   

About Humm

Founded in April 2012, Humm is an Austin-based startup that's changing the way businesses interact with customers. Humm's innovative on-location feedback system quickly and elegantly gives customers a voice while their emotions are at their peak. This patent-pending approach provides its roster of more than 100 guest-centric clients with an unprecedented vision into the strengths and weaknesses of their operations. For more information about Humm, visit www.hummsystems.com.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Chris Marsh
Porter Novelli
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512-241-2241

SOURCE Humm