Ideas

A lot of companies really like using the Internet for product information because it's a "publish and forget" model where they can put up their info on a site and not have to interact with each and every potential customer who needs that info. The internet gives them scalability they could never have with something like a telephone sales line.

This site would remove that scalability and force companies to monitor and respond to your service. No doubt many would be willing, but many don't have the resources unless you can demonstrate up front that your users are generating solid leads. If the majority of your users are just lazy (not to say they shouldn't be) and are asking questions that are answered on the company's website, the company might not see much benefit. Your service would be a great convenience to the user, but it might be hard to get prompt attention and response from companies if you're just asking FAQs.

Thanks for the thoughtful comments micco. What I didn't mention is that members and companies will be encouraged to rate other members' questions and a member's question ratings will convert into an average rating for that member. A company will then be able to choose to only receive questions from highly rated people.

This is also where companies' existing customers should come in handy, answering questions that they can.

Finally, a company will have the option of subscribing for the RSS of their category rather than having a message sent to their inbox. This way, they can decide when to answer or not or indeed when to even review the RSS.

I welcome other suggestions on how to keep this from turning into a lazy person's paradise.

Rating members would certainly provide some benefit, but it means the casual user will see a less usable site. If I'm looking for info on a product and find your site, it seems like I have to hang around and establish a reputation before I can get my questions answered, and how do I establish a rep if the companies all ignore questions from a newbie. I'm sure there's a way to structure that so it has the desired effect; I'm just pointing out that you'd need to build your rating system carefully so you don't block out newer users.

Thanks again. I agree. The ratings would have to be such that new users start out with a clean slate and don't get punished. And no, it isn't beyond the wit of man to find a way to make this work.

interesting

I agree with micco.

I first thought was - how is the RFI going to "automatically" go to the right companies? Someone will still have to go trough companies to categorizes etc. Or where you thinking of using an automatic search algorithm?

Hi firefox - thanks.

Hi Elmer - I agreed with Micco too above but I have offered additional ideas on how his concernas might be addressed.

Hi bcforrester - there are a number of ways in which this could be done, categorisation being one, tagging/keywords being another.