In this blog post we chat to the CEO of Clic and Walk about everything their app has to offer. If you want to get involved with their app just click the banner to sign up at the bottom of this blog post
Can you tell us about Clic and Walks history in the rest of Europe before you decided to expand into the UK market?
Clic and Walk first launched in France in 2012 and quickly became the market leader as it was the first app of its kind in France. New competitors have entered the market but Clic and Walk is still the leader with more than 150,000 ClicWalkers in France.
Once we were well established in France, our home country, we decided to open new countries as we had requests from some of our clients for missions that would be available in all three countries at the same time.
Clic and Walk expanded internationally in October 2013, launching the app in Germany and in The UK at the same time. Today, we have more than 20,000 ClicWalkers in the UK and more than 20,000 in Germany, for a total of more than 200,000 ClicWalkers in Europe.
How have you found the UK market so far in terms of traction – both from clients AND from end user uptake?
We have noticed that the UK ClicWalkers are particularly receptive to the app, as they have immediately understood our concept and started completing our missions
Furthermore, as there were already rival apps on the market before we launched in the UK, the users were already familiar with the concept of paid tasks and welcomed the opportunity to make easy money with a mobile app.
As for the clients, our solution answered to an actual need from companies that need to know how their products are perceived at home and in stores. What’s more, offering the opportunity of collecting data in 3 major European countries at the same time piqued immediately their interest, and our clients in the UK have already ordered multiple missions, UK only, but also in France and/or in Germany.
The UK market plays a key role in Europe, and being able to quickly collect data on that market is a huge asset for us, making the UK market a crucial part of our strategy going forward.
You keep users engaged well within the app by offering small paid tasks they can do in their homes etc. No other app offers that to keep engagement healthy – What made you want to go in that direction instead of say the Roamler style of unpaid tasks?
Clic and Walk offers unique missions to complete at home, as our core business is not only store check and mystery shopping, but also consumer insight, as we give our clients a true “consumer vision” of their products.
To be more specific, we do not only collect data, we analyse all the data and offer our clients a full report based on their needs. We have a unique ethno-marketing expertise that allows us to offer our clients the consumer vision of a brand or a produt at home and in stores, at every step of the product’s lifecycle.
This expertise allows us to offer regularly paid missions to complete at home, keeping our ClicWalkers engaged while paying them and collecting data for our clients in the same time. And of course, all the data we collect is secured and 100% anonymous.
Our strength is our community, and the fact that many of our ClicWalkers use the app not just to make money, but also to have fun, is why we have developed a system based around our ClicPoints with badges and levels to reach; we want our ClicWalkers to make money while having fun.
Furthermore, we offer unpaid missions from time to time to entertain our community of ClicWalkers. These missions are not meant to collect data, just to have fun with our ClicWalkers and share – with their consent – fun facts and some of the pictures sent by them.
The UK market is quite crowded now in terms of apps such as this with Field Agent, Roamler, StreetSpotr, StreetBees and yourselves – has this caused any problems for you at all or do you think it will do in the future?
Each one of these apps has a unique feature that differentiate it from the others. We all offer tasks/work/missions to complete for money, but our vision of data collection is different. Clic and Walk focuses on consumer vision and consumer insight, a unique expertise that no other app currently offers.
The growing number of apps means that there is an actual need from companies from all kinds of fields, be it retail, high-tech brands or any other kind of brand. It’s actually healthy to have more competitors, as it proves our business model is the future of data collection.
Compared to France, where we were the first ones to enter the market, our growth is slower, but we don’t have to educate our users, as they are already used to using apps such as Clic and Walk, and mystery shopping is much more developed in the UK than it is in France.
We are very confident in our growth on the UK market, as we have more and more clients and the number of ClicWalkers is growing regularly, and the growing number of apps just means our concept is becoming more and more popular, so that’s good news.
Some users have mentioned on The Money Shed that they worry that the ‘workers’ are becoming seen a crowd sourcing commodity now instead of a mystery shopping / auditing work force they are able to harness and people are worried this will drive down fees – Have you noticed a shift at all in how the people who go out and do these tasks are being perceived by companies such as yourselves.
I can’t really speak for other companies, but from our point of view, our first clients are the users of the app, and we do everything we can to offer them the best experience possible while using the app. Winnings for each mission may vary according to each client, but we always try to offer the fairest pay possible. Since we launched in the UK, the winnings of our missions to complete at home have not gone down and depending on each mission, we try to offer the highest pay possible.
We do not consider our ClicWalkers as a workforce or a crowdsourcing commodity; the ClicWalkers are consumers with smartphones that are willing to give their opinion on various products and services, and they are paid for that.
Furthermore, I just wanted to mention that we use geolocation only to offer missions close to their locations, and that we do not sell their private information, they are only used to offer custom missions depending on their profiles.
Can you walk us through the process of how you go from connecting with a client to the work appearing within the Clic and Walk app to the user being happy with the finished work?
Finding new clients is a huge part of our work, as we need first to help them identify their needs and show them how we can help them achieve their goals or optimise their activity. We’ve had a huge diversity of clients from all fields: retail, high-tech, restauration, insurance, banking, car manufacturers, food, cosmetics…
Each client needs a specific kind of data and a specific way of analysing the data we collect. First, we sit down with our client to help him define his needs, and once we agree on what he needs, we write a first draft of the mission, that the client validates.
Once the mission has been validated, we check it again but this time, with the eyes of a ClicWalker, to make it understable and easy to complete by switching technical terms with common terms for example.
Once the mission has been checked a final time, we launch it and make it available to our ClicWalkers.
Depending on the client, it can be either a long or short process, as we have already launched a mission less than 24hours after having met wit the client for the first time; being reactive, be it with our clients or with the ClicWalkers, is very important to us and is a major asset.
Is there an average yet of what a typical UK Clic and Walk worker tends to earn each month from your app?
It really depends the ClicWalker’s location and on the missions available at a specific time, but on average a UK ClicWalker earns about £10 a month. We may not offer currently as much paid missions in stores as other apps, but we guarantee winnings of at least £5 – £10 every month with easy missions to complete at home.
However, a ClicWalker can earn a lot more money on special occasions with our special “repeatable” missions. To give you an example, one of our ClicWalker once managed to earn £500 in one week-end, as he visited more than 20 stores, and he completed 3 missions in each store!
Of course, that was a very special occasion, but we’ve had many ClicWalkers able to win hundreds of pounds in a short time. On average, in one year a UK ClicWalker may earn about £100 a year just with our missions to complete at home available to everyone.
Have you come up against any obstacles or opposition since you have bee in the UK that maybe you didn’t think you would?
Each market has its own characteristics, and it takes some time to adapt to fit perfectly each market. However, we already had the experience of the French market, with hundreds of missions already created, and we knew what works and what doesn’t.
Of course, we had to make a few adjustments to the UK market, but we were well prepared we didn’t encounter any huge hurdle that prevented us from launching the app on the UK market.
If you were trying to convince someone to use Clic and Walk over other similar apps how would you do that?
Our missions to complete at home are truly one of our biggest strength, as we allow every ClicWalker to make money (between £5 and £10) every month of the year, and that is almost guaranteed and doesn’t depend on where they live. And we also offer repeatable missions in stores with higher winnings!
As already mentioned, we want our ClicWalkers to have fun while completing their missions and making money, and the “fun” part of our missions is not just accessory, we design most of our missions with the “fun” part in mind, we try new things to entertain our ClicWalkers. For example, we connected the ClicWalkers from all our three countries during the World Cup with predictions for each match, and we created a Clic and Walk Christmas Carol for last year’s Christmas.
Furthermore, we are currently working for a partnership in the UK like the one we have in France with the Restos du Coeur, one of France’s biggest charity. We have just renewned our partnership with them, allowing our French ClicWalkers to donate their winnings to the charity (last year, we donated €13,000). At Clic and Walk we strongly believe that supporting charities is a duty for every company, and our app is the perfect way to do it.
What work have you got coming up in the future that you can share with us?
Our repeatable “High-Tech” missions will soon be available again accross the UK. These missions allow you to complete several missions in the same store, and you can complete them in as many stores as you wish. Furthermore, we had recently missions in dealerships and various missions about soft drinks… We are working on offering more and more exctiting missions every month in addition to our regular “at home” missions, so keep an eye on the app!
The post The Money Shed chats to the Clic and Walk CEO Frédérique Grigolato appeared first on The Money Shed Blog.