You know that old quote from JFK? “The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis.’ One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger – but recognize the opportunity.”
One of the things I love best about working with the team here at Get Satisfaction is how focused they are on the real opportunity the events of the last couple of days have presented. Emotionally challenging as it can be to suddenly have the eyes of the world cast down upon your service, and difficult as it is to wade through the tone of some of the language that was used in the heat of the moment, the team has really risen to the occasion. From our initial discussions, where everybody on the team tried to take the blame from what happened, to the tech team’s willingness to quickly make the changes that could be made quickly, to the business team’s acknowledgement that some things just aren’t worth the revenue, it’s been quite a revealing and cathartic couple of days. We’re definitely a stronger, more focused team as a result.
Still, we’re not done. We knew there were simple changes to make, and we made them. But we also know there are some much deeper issues we need to grapple with, specifically around how we represent the areas where customers are actively engaging with each other but companies aren’t (and sometimes don’t want to!) participate.
We love having companies active inside Get Satisfaction, or using Get Satisfaction as a critical component of their customer service strategy, but we also still believe there’s a strong need for spaces where customers can talk to each other outside the company’s walls. Unfortunately, as recent events have born out, we’ve done a terrible job with our most recent redesign of making it clear which of the areas in Get Satisfaction are company-supported and which aren’t. We recognize that there are a number of significant changes that need to be made — from the look and feel of those pages, to the language we use, to the way certain elements are presented — in order for this difference to be made as clear and explicit as possible.
We are going to fix this.
But it is going to take us a little bit of time, because these are not quick changes — they require time to design, time to vet, and time to implement — and because we’re determined to make sure we’re effectively addressing the issues at hand, we’re going to check and double-check and then triple-check them before they go out. And we would ask everybody who’s involved, in the spirit of the third point of the Company-Customer Pact, to please be understanding and give us the time necessary to make these changes.
Which isn’t to say that we don’t want your help! We welcome your suggestions, your criticisms, your feedback — that’s the whole point of Get Satisfaction, after all! And in that spirit, it was with a lot of gratitude this morning, with the need for all these changes floating around in my head, that I read Jason’s most recent post, in which he details out the changes he wants to see us make on Get Satisfaction in order to effectively communicate that it’s not officially sanctioned by 37signals. He makes a number of excellent points and suggestions, complete with visuals! We are absolutely going to use this as the starting point for redesigning these areas, and we’re grateful for the input.
A few of you Web old-timers like me might remember that back before they were a web app powerhouse, 37signals was a fantastically talented design consulting firm, working on other peoples’ sites before they started launching their own. Though they’ve since moved on to sharing their knowledge through their books, applications, workshops, and conferences, I’ve always felt a little sad at the thought that I’d never be able to get their eye directly on something I was doing. But how lucky are we that we just got a little bit of consulting love from Jason Fried? I know some companies that would probably pay millions for the opportunity, and we just got it for free.
Well, mostly for free. Because, Jason, next time you and the 37signals team are in San Francisco, I’m buying the drinks.
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I submitted a question via the Get Satisfaction interface and received no response. My question is, what is a “Direct Click” in the additional stats area?
Hi, Brian! Which company were you trying to contact via Get Satisfaction?
Why are you branding your service as a customer support site when you really have little to nothing to do with support and everything to do with rating companies and their product? Your site provides a central place for people to find out about how companies and their products are viewed. It is NOT a good place to get customer support.
How about branding what you really do and start being this honest and transparent company you like to say you are?
In fact, even your so-called big customers like Zappos do not have much traffic of any kind on their site. I think you need to focus on making what you are trying to do work before you take on something else.
@joe: Actually thousands of companies use Get Satisfaction as their primary or secondary way to provide open customer support. And for many others such as Apple there are vibrant, helpful discussions between customers that happen all the time. It’s what we built the system to do, and do well. Rating companies and products is a tiny portion of what we do.
You can see support discussions as they flow in here: http://getsatisfaction.com/companies
You actually think you provide a good alternative for customers to get support rather than going to the companies’ support site? You have little to no support material on your site and the people posting are generally not knowledgeable enough to turn to for answers. So why would people turn to your site for support?
The guys from 37 signals have good reason to question your model and intentions.
I also noticed that you have not changed the wording for all companies like you did for 37 signals. Why is that?
I’ve been following the 37signals debacle for the last few days now.
I have to say I am very disappointed about all this, but not for the reasons you might think.
Who is running this company? Who is setting the vision?
Because at the moment, it looks like it’s a narcissist named Jason Fried. I understand needing to do something about the bad press he’s given you guys, especially as it’s partly justified, but to the outsider, it looks like he’s given you s slap and you’ve thanked him for it.
It’s bordering on sycophancy.
I think it’s great to listen to feedback. But surely it should come first from your paying customers, and second from your potential ones. Clearly 37signals is neither.
But look, now I’m the one telling you how to run your company. It’s your company; decide for yourselves what to do, and make it great.
As a potential customer, I would sign up because I believe you know, to some extent, more than I do about how to provide customer support; or at the very least, to provide me with the tools to do so.
I want to buy your expertise, not your pandering. As someone not yet committed, I want you to tell me what Get Satisfaction is, I don’t want to be referred to a series of articles written by someone else telling me what it shouldn’t be.
There’s a point where being noble and “doing the right thing” unfortunately comes across as weakness.
Jack, thanks for the feedback. You should know, we have a very strong point of view here at Get Satisfaction, that reflects the fundamentals of our philosophy, the goals of our company, and the way we think that businesses now need to work in order to continue to be successful. And we firmly believe that it’s our commitment to this philosophy and this outlook that’s allowed us to grow our business as quickly as we have.
So while I certainly understand the basis of your argument, I have to disagree with you that we don’t need to listen to people who operate outside of our traditional customer base. We all now operate — and by we I mean every single one of us, not just our company — in a relatively new environment where our collective actions can be and are routinely scrutinized and criticized, sometimes politely and sometimes less so. Doesn’t matter which — learning to respond in a meaningful and measured way is one of the many skills companies need to develop to operate effectively in this new world. And since Get Satisfaction is one of the many platforms that’s actively encouraging this kind of transparent criticism, it’s also incumbent upon us to provide an example to the organizations that use us of how best to respond when this happens. And, we think we did a pretty good job. :)
To your larger point: We definitely see this as a real opportunity to reiterate our larger philosophy and our value proposition in the near term, but honestly, last week wasn’t the week for that. Last week was, for us, an opportunity to reflect on the message buried down underneath all that frustration, to understand what aspect of our service triggered it, and to make the necessary modifications to assure that that misperception (and make no mistake, it is a wild misperception of our intent) no longer exists. So, yeah, we actually are a little thankful — not for the slap itself, but for helping us understand the motivations that drove it.
You might see that as weakness, but we believe that not responding, or responding to the tone but not the content, is the true weakness here — using this as an opportunity for change and growth, on the other hand, and from there as a chance to reiterate our philosophy and spread it to the even larger group of people that’s now paying attention, well, that’s actually all kinds of awesome.
On that point, keep an eye out this week for additional blog posts and other kinds of community-oriented information we’ll be sharing that should help you better understand our values, goals, and expertise. Hopefully that will assuage some of your concerns.
Thanks again for the feedback. It means a lot to us.
Lane, I do appreciate you taking the time to write that response.
I will watch this blog closely over the next few weeks.
I agree with Jack, GS is 100% in the right here. I’m a little disappointed that Fried’s post was granted this much legitimacy and that he and his commenters were vindicated at all.
The only reason 37s cares – the reason that GS is even on their radar – is that you’ve built a quality product. There is no reason they couldn’t just pay, or deal with the consequences of not paying – but by whining they get what they want in exchange for $0.
You guys are victims of blog mob mentality. We have tech people coming in here and repeating the gospel truth straight from Jason Fried that you’re engaging in this and that unfair whatever and it’s simply not true. It’s just human fairness intuition being manipulated (after all, Craig Newmark pretty much nuked the newspaper industry – but he’s an ok guy, right?).
You’re kind of making it true though, now.
As a longtime follower of 37signals and a recent convert to GS, I find this debate really interesting.
While 37signals had a pretty good point about the language (and maybe about the philosophy), I wasn’t as impressed with the way they chose to sensationalize it rather than deal with it privately.
That said, one of the things they are about is to directly, and publicly, point out design flaws and suggest ways to correct them. People who know UI know this (including the folks at GS). It can be taken as a kind of compliment, since, if 37signals takes the time to think about it, it probably is a design problem worth solving. Ultimately that’s what they’re after, so I don’t think what they did was bad… just a little sensational.
But I think GS responded really splendidly. They took the criticism at face value (because it was valuable) and are taking action to correct what they now see as a flaw.
I don’t see GS’s reaction as one of being intimidated by a mob; I see it as being able to examine themselves, take feedback, and improve. That is the very model of customer service they would like to see from everyone. Kudos to GS for walking the talk.