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Can you trust the reviews? A critical look at the Salesforce AppExchange.


My mom published this article on LinkedIn, and I just have to share.  It is quite clever.  Enjoy!

 While researching Salesforce data backup providers on the AppExchange, I discovered something intriguing. I navigated to a random profile for a person who wrote a review and was surprised to find that the profile contained no information other than the person's name. How could I verify that this review was from a real customer?

 This is the review:


The user's profile: https://success.salesforce.com/profile?u=0053A00000DLnOiQAL

Did this user create a Salesforce profile solely for the purpose of writing a review? Possibly.

 The Experiment: Search for "backup" in the Salesforce AppExchange and sort by rating. Use 6 top rated data backup vendors and determine what percentage of the reviews are from "Trustworthy" vs. "Questionable" profiles.

 The Question: Can you trust Salesforce AppExchange reviews?

 I started with my own company by researching every profile for every review that Capstorm has received since entering the AppExchange in 2011. If a profile contained anything other than 1 review, such as a comment or idea vote, I flagged it as "Trustworthy." Profiles like the example, with no photo, groups, location, comments, questions, etc, were flagged "Questionable." I also counted a profile as "Trustworthy" if the person's review contained their company name or if the profile name indicated a specific business, such as "Capstorm Admin." Here are my findings:
To clarify, a "Questionable" review is not necessarily fake. The person crafting the review could be logged into a developer environment or may desire to remain anonymous.

Next, I took the same critical profile examination to OwnBackup's reviews and found a high percentage of "Trustworthy" profiles.

Sesame Software Relational Junction for Salesforce was next, and the findings were very interesting. Slightly more than half of the most recent 20 reviews were from users with "Questionable" profiles. Oddly enough, 26 reviews appeared to come from one single profile.

Odaseva: The majority of the 23 reviews were from "Trustworthy" profiles.


Undo Button: Slightly more than half of the reviews, or 53% were from "Questionable" profiles.

Conclusion: It is reasonable to assume that a proportion of reviews for any application will be generated from developer or anonymous accounts that contain very little data. Thus, allow for a reasonable percentage of reviews - say 30% or less - to come from empty profiles.
Can you trust reviews on the Salesforce AppExchange? Yes, around 70% of the time.

Comments

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