“..I think you’ve treaded into a moral grey area by adding companies without their knowledge and without doing some due diligence to find their official support channels and linking to them, however arcane they may be.

“…But again, without an obvious link to official support, you are doing a disservice to both the customers and the company. If absolutely no official support exists, state so. Its better for everyone.”

One of the things that Thor, et al., have continually said is that GetSatisfaction support pages are either largely created by companies (80-90%), or by customers seeking support where none exists or where they’ve received inadequate support from “official channels” (10-20%). GetSatisfaction isn’t adding the “unofficial” support pages — dissatisfied customers are.

From a customer support / community management perspective, if a company doesn’t provide adequate support, their customers will get it somewhere else. It is a company’s responsibility to engage their customers wherever they congregate. If customers complain on Twitter, companies need to engage them on Twitter. If it’s on Google Groups, they need to engage them there. And if it’s on GetSatisfaction, then they’d better engage them there, too — even if it’s simply to say “Thanks! We’ve created a support ticket for the issue you’re experiencing on our official support site — we’d love to engage you there!” However, it is because many companies do not do this that GetSatisfaction has such a devoted (and satisfied) user base.

The best customer support occurs wherever customers ask for it.

For the record, the only issue that still nags me is the “xxx has not yet committed to open conversations about its products or services.” I know you changed it when it was pointed out but the ethos behind that wording bugs me a little. I initially interpreted it as “well, they should be HERE and only HERE and we will make sure they NEED to be here”, seemingly dictating their arena for a conversation. I’m guessing you probably meant it more along the lines of “here are your users and here is where you CAN (as opposed to SHOULD) engage with them. Now that I think about it, it is the strength of the wording that bugged me. I think that was probably what bugged a lot of people. Oh, the irony, considering my skills of diplomacy.

I’m not so sure the ability for customers to start a discussion arena in a (eventually) paid forum, offsite from the owner is a good idea. I feel it dilutes and fragments support networks of those who have already established a focal point to engage their clients. Your SEO skills probably just add to the feeling of being hijacked (on Google) a little. I know there is a free option but we both know that to use this on a big scale you’d have to use a paid account. That’s where it feels ever-so slightly extortionate. That’s a strong word and one I will stop using since you are in the process of rectifying that situation.

I have also discussed this with Eric via email. He hinted at some changes afoot and I will be watching to see what goes on. Hey, everyone stuffs up occasionally and the internet is a very public stage. The only people who don’t frack up occasionally are the only people who never tried.

Let’s see how it goes after the dust settles, eh.

The topic that you see is a “Welcome” topic that is auto-generated whenever someone adds a company to Get Satisfaction. It’s just a default topic. I’m happy to explain exactly how this works, and you are also welcome to email me at eric [at] getsatisfaction [dot] com. I’ll do my best to explain it to you.

We are completely open about our business, and have been since we launched two years ago. We only recently rolled out premium services and now the free product certainly could use more documentation. That’s not the result of obfuscation–we’re just a scrappy startup.

The way it works is that anyone can create a community around any brand or product, and anyone from the company can come in, claim to be an employee (which we then verify). Henceforth they can respond as an employee, with a badge that indicates their affiliation, and additional tools that allow them to create “official responses”, create official messages that are emblazened across the top of the site, add other employees, and additional customization options.

Paid services revolve around professional moderation tools, integration into other internal systems (e.g. Single Sign-in), branding control, and support.

I hope this helps explain it better.

roger
Posted April 1, 2009 at 6:22 am

2 questions:

- Do you notify companies when you add them to this forum
- When you do, is there an easy to use (1-click) opt out button ?

If not, we all know what this is about.

-Roger

Me: These are both crucial points in determining whether you are offering a genuine service or a thinly disguised hijack and extortion racket. Strong words but this is a serious matter.

Also, nowhere could I find any details of the limitations of your free account.

There is too much FUD here – My instinct is telling me not to trust you – very loudly.

Looks like your communication director is an employee of over 15,000 companies!

http://www.getsatisfaction.com/people/amy

Something else to consider changing: the “Welcome” message from GS when it establishes a new company listing. (I just saw the one on Micro Center.)

It says that this space is “dedicated to open conversation between customers and employees.” The implication of such a statement is that the company’s employees will see posts on that forum.

In any event, I’m sure that this kerfluffle is driving many people to your site. I’d frankly forgotten about GS until I saw Fried’s post, proving, perhaps, that any publicity is good publicity.

We’ll also take a fresh look at that front-page copy.

Thanks.

Extracting from your letter to Jason, “After starting it, we noticed that everyone we talked to was frustrated with customer service with big companies. We hypothesized that the companies that needed open, honest customer interaction the most were those that were least likely to embrace it in a programmatic way. So we launched Get Satisfaction not only for companies to set up their own customer communities, but also to let customers start a community space around any brand they liked–to give them the same kind of soap box for results that you have with your blog, Signal vs Noise.”

This part makes some sense. What I’m then having trouble with is the implication of the first paragraph of text that appears on the GS home page, which reads as follows:

“Welcome to the place where questions really are frequently asked. Get Satisfaction brings customers and company employees together to make things better for everyone. Great answers and ideas can come from anywhere; we just do our part to get them to the people who can do something about it.”

Can you honestly say that this does not strongly imply that the support is provided by the company’s employees?

I really don’t think you guys really understand the nature of copy writing and the importance of clarity in what you write for the web.

I hope you find this helpful and while I wish you the best of luck, my personal advice to you would be to segment your site into two very distinct parts: (1) where companies are using your service as a platform for them to provide service (which I hope you charge for), and (2) the user-generated forum-type area where customers of a company can help each other. I would further advise you to make the mode of operation painfully clear on both.

Regards,
-Bob