SANDBLOCK: A DECENTRALIZED PLATFORM THAT REWARDS CUSTOMERS FOR THEIR FEEDBACK ON SERVICE PROVIDERS BASED ON BLOCKCHAIN AND SMART CONTRACTS

Customer satisfaction is a very good way to ensure the profitability of business, because satisfaction is a very important component in determining differences as well as the loyalty of customers. In short, customer satisfaction is a key performance indicator (KPI) that measures how the expectations of customers are met in a particular business in terms of its products and services. Businesses should pay more attention to customer satisfaction by ensuring that it doesn’t drop, as it is an indicator of business growth. It is known from a study conducted by Harvard professors J. Heskett, W. E. Sasser Jr. and L. Schlesinger that a customer that is satisfied is relatively loyal to a brand, while a customer that is very satisfied becomes truly loyal to that brand. This shows that the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty in a competitive environment is exponential.

However, in business, it is a lot easier to design a decent customer experience, than it is to implement and scale it, as should anything go wrong in the process, identifying the errors can be complex. Customers do not give very precise answers to surveys, and tools for troubleshooting are costly.
The Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) and the Net Promoter Score (NPS) are tools that are widely used to provide overall level of customer satisfaction experience, and measure customer experience as well as predict the growth of businesses, respectively. The Customer Effect Score (CES) is also a new customer satisfaction metric that measures the amount of customer effort input when he or she comes across an issue. From it, we have found that the lower the effort put in by a customer in cases of challenges, the better it is for the customer as well as the provider of the service.
However, in reality, businesses spend significant resources in trying to better understand their customers, yet their customer satisfaction improvement tools often produce the opposite result, as customers that pay for a product or service can refuse to provide free feedback. Sadly, the customers that provide feedback are the ones that hated their experience and wouldn’t come back for it, or the ones that loved it so much that their opinion loses tone and can sound fake, thereby making it difficult to make out the actual point of their opinion. Customers who can provide more valuable feedback are the ones that are not likely to give feedback, yet at the moment businesses are asking them to do it for free.
Isn’t it possible to collect critical data on customer behavior without infringing their privacy rights as well as data confidentiality regulations? Yes, it is. Sandblock wants to do this. Sandblock comprises of a network of merchant partners, their customers as well as third-party actors, all connected via a decentralized protocol – Satisfaction Protocol, and merchants can join the network via partnership by purchasing a specific amount of Satisfaction Tokens (SAT). The Satisfaction Token is a tradable cryptocurrency that will be created during the Sandblock crowdsale. Sandblock wants to unify the already scattered field of customer satisfaction as well as give merchants or brands the enablement to reward customer engagement, in terms of e.g, sharing their user experience, and loyalty via cryptocurrencies, based on blockchain technology.
The Sandblock ecosystem is designed to incentivize early adoption by merchants. The cost of joining the partners network will grow over time as Satisfaction Tokens (SAT) supply naturally weakens. When the pool of early adopters is full, the network would have reached a size where a move can be made to a fully decentralized governance where the amount of SAT required to join the network is controlled by existing partners, and predefined rules based on Smart Contracts. To achieve customer satisfaction unification, Sandblock will allow each merchant payer to create its own cryptocurrency based on the Satisfaction Token. These cryptocurrencies (Branded Tokens) will be created using smart contracts that will describe the applied set of rules by merchants for the reward of customers for their engagement, with the Satisfaction Protocol responsible for reward computation and independent allocation based on merchant set rules. Requirements for the seamless connection of the entire Sandblock system is being developed. Also, in development, is a mobile application for customers, a desktop/web dashboard for merchants and other professionals, a multiple custom integration on payment terminals, and e-commerce widgets/plugins for easy merchant integration.

SATISFACTION TOKEN (SAT) AND BRANDED TOKENS
SAT is an ERC20 tradable currency on the Ethereum blockchain, while Branded Tokens are tokens created by merchants based on the Satisfaction protocol. Branded Tokens are linked to the SAT at a defined ratio. Branded Tokens contract can only be sent to predefined addresses (merchant wallet(s)), via P2P transfer which is controlled by the Satisfaction protocol for equal SAT amount. The ensuing schematic signifies an uninformed number of Branded Tokens linked to the SAT with different ratios as well as their connection with exchange platforms;

Note that Branded Tokens are not ERC20 standard compliant and are not tradable on exchanges.

REWARD MECHANISMS
Branded Tokens can be given to customers as reward, either directly through their Ethereum wallet address or indirectly when an off-chain is made by a customer via fiat currencies. The indirect reward seems to be more innovative as it will help to further push cryptocurrency adoption and its capabilities. Customer feedback and loyalty will also be rewarded.
Branded Tokens can be converted to SAT so as to switch from one merchant reward program to another or for other uses.

CROWDSALE
The Sandblock crowdsale will happen between the 1st and 2nd quarter of 2018, and will be in 2 phases (pre-sale and sale). SAT will be created on the Ethereum blockchain using Smart Contracts that are based on the ERC20 protocol. Contributors will be able to purchase SAT using Ether (ETH) and later, other cryptocurrencies or fiat for a price. The crowdsale hard cap is US$8 million which might vary slightly, depending on the value of accepted currencies after the crowdsale. After the crowdsale, SAT’s will be transferable after a predefined period.

CROWDSALE RATES

TOKEN ALLOCATION
50% - Crowdsale
30% - Partners Incentive
12% - Team and Advisors
8% - Bounty Campaigns

FUND ALLOCATION
17% - Marketing & Communication
50% - Development
13% - Sales % Partnerships
8% - Legal & Compliance
12% - Operating Costs

ROADMAP
2017 - Q3
• Project creation
- The Sandblock project is initiated and the eight core team members join the adventure to build a decentralised consortium of merchants and customers
• Technical research
- Technical research of feasability on the potential blockchains (public and private). The first technical architecture is created using the best candidate, the public Ethereum blockchain and its Smart contracts

2017 - Q4
• Whitepaper
- The second and third revisions of the whitepaper is published and shared with the community. A bounty program starts to help the Sandblock project reach a broader audience
• Partnerships
- We begin taking interest notice from merchants, retailers, brands and various service providers
• Protocol - private alpha
- Development of the Merchant Token contracts, consortium protocol and loyalty protocol. Contracts are deployed on the Ethereum Ropsten test network for internal/private testing
• Application
- Mockup and design of the customer application focusing on a user friendly experience for all kind of consumers (including non crypto friendly users)

2018 - Q1
• Public crowdsale
- The Sandblock project runs a public crowdsale to emit the Satisfaction Tokens and create the liquity for the future merchant partners. SAT become tradable on exchanges
• Protocol - private alpha
- Audit of the first implementations of the Satisfaction protocol. Development of the feedback protocol. Contracts are deployed on the Ethereum Ropsten test network for internal/private testing
• Application
- Development of the mobile application on iOS and Android. The first version includes the account and wallet setup, cryptocurrency payment using ETH, Merchant Tokens/loyalty programs management and merchant private feedback
• Merchant dashboard
- Development of the web dashboard dedicated to Merchants in order to help them integrate cryptocurrency payments, create, manage and configure their Merchant Tokens and its features

2018 - Q2
• Partnerships - 500+ shops
- Partnership with 500+ points of sale and early adopters (brands, merchants, payment providers). Constitution of the merchants pilot group
• Protocol - public beta
- Audit of the first public implementation of the Satisfaction protocol. Contracts are deployed on the Ethereum Ropsten test network for public beta testing
• Application - public beta
- Release of the first version of the public application on the iOS appstore and the Android playstore using the protocol in beta phase on the test network
• Dashboard - private beta
- Tests of the Merchant dashboard begin with the merchants pilot group

2018 - Q3
• Consortium - 2k+ shops
- First public merchant offer is release, target 2k+ online and physical points of sale from merchants partners using the Satisfaction protocol
• Protocol - release
- The first version of the protocol is released on the Ethereum main net. Pilot merchants programs are migrated from the test net to the main net
• Application - release 1.0
- Release of the first version of the public application on the iOS appstore and the Android playstore using the protocol on the Ethereum main net
• Dashboard - release 1.0
- Release the forst version of the public dashboard open to registration for merchants and brands

2018 - Q4
• Consortium - 10k+ shops
- Intensify merchants acquisition, target 10k+ online and physical points of sale from merchants partners using the Satisfaction protocol
• Protocol
- Development and implementation of the advanced feedback protocol and the CSR protocol to help merchants engage more their customers through feedback and donations
• Application - release 1.1
- Development and implementation of the Marketplace to barter Merchant Tokens directly within the application
• Dashboard - release 1.1
- Upgrade of the merchant dashboard to handle automatic token generation and Smart Contracts deployment. Implement the new protocol features for merchants

TEAM
Fabrice Bascoulergue - Product Lead
Sarah-Diane Eck - Business & Marketing
Jérémy Grenier - Engineering Lead
Emmanuel Juliot - UX/UI Designer
Clément Dal-Palu - Backend Engineer
Thomas André-Micolon - Engineer & Copywriter
Matthieu Hocquart - Software Engineer
Alexandre Tuchmuntz - Finance & Business Devevelopment

ADVISORS
Simon Cocking - Marketing Advisor
Guy Corem - Strategy Advisor
Harold Kim - Financial Advisor
Jean-Baptiste Soufron - Legal Advisor

For more information about our unique project and to connect with other participants across the globe, please feel free to click on any of the following links;
ANN thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2254884
Website: https://sandblock.io/
Telegram: https://sandblock.io/telegram
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sandblock_io
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Sandblock.io
Whitepaper: https://sandblock.io/whitepaper?utm_source=bt_bounty&utm_medium=bitcointalk&utm_campaign=whitepaper

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