April 1, 2008

To Better Serve You

I hate boilerplate. You do, too. I know you do.

When you hear the phrase “your call is important to us” while you’re on hold, you sigh deep down inside like I do, don’t you?

I call this “to better serve you” language. It’s often double-speak or language that purports to serve the customer, but really serves the company. Enough with the fake professionalism. Stop ironing out all of the emotion. I’m dying for some reality-based customer service.

Not everyone is like me (thank God, right?), but I think most people have reached a point where their anger reaches critical levels as soon as they detect boilerplate language in a customer service interaction.

Today, I was thrilled to find that a Get Satisfaction user after my own heart has composed a very terse — but very effective — list of ways to respond to customers. It was his way of recommending that a company step up and answer questions that have been asked on our site, but not yet answered. To wit:

“It would be great to hear one of the following:

1. Oh my God, we’re so sorry. Didn’t realize the problem. Fixing immediately.
2. Yes, sorry about that. We’re aware of it, and it’s on our list of things to fix soon.
3. Yep, unfortunately, it’s a complex issue, and we’re not sure if we’ll be able to do anything about it.
4. We appreciate your situation, but this is the way we intended our product to work. And we don’t see that changing.
5. Go to hell, buddy.”

Nicely done, sir.

If you want to break out of the mold of canned responses, start with something this spirited — and straightforward — and mold it to fit your own company’s culture. You might want to massage that last one a bit (#5), although people like me love that last one the most. Then again, not everyone is like me (thank God, right?).

By Eric Suesz | Posted in Tips and tricks, appearances, customer service, entertainment | Comments (0)
March 21, 2008

We’re #1! Twice!

We’ve won a couple of awards this week we’re pretty proud of, at two different startup-oriented conferences down in the south bay.

On Tuesday, we presented at the Dow Jones Web Ventures 2008 conference, and we just learned we were chosen as one of their top ten startups out of the full list of 70.

This sits nicely on the mantelpiece next to the audience pick for “Best of Show” we got yesterday, for our song and dance at the Under the Radar conference put on by Dealmaker Media, which Eric mentioned in his earlier post.

How sweet is that? To celebrate we ordered pizza and took silly photos of ourselves.

Just a little bragging here on a Friday afternoon. Enjoy the weekend, everybody!

By Lane Becker | Posted in appearances, company, news | Comments (1)
March 6, 2008

All Wired Up About SXSW

The Get Satisfaction office is slowly emptying out this week. One by one, we’re spreading our wings and migrating to Austin for SXSW.

Lane was the first to arrive in the Lone Star state, many others are en route, and I’ll be bringing up the rear.

Will Wired be waiting to interview me about my hair when I step off the plane?

Doubtful.

Come to our party, eat our tacos, hear us speak, and say hello if you see us around town.

[Wired is on Get Satisfaction.]

By Eric Suesz | Posted in Asides, SXSW, Satisfaction, appearances, company, conferences, entertainment, tacos | Comments (1)
March 4, 2008

The Price of Control

Wal-Mart has been criticized for both sucking and blowing, but it looks like they may actually have a chance to polish their tarnished reputation.

After a number of years of dismal public relations blunders (in particular, an ill-fated PR-hatched Web site) Wal-Mart has finally figured out that people desire authentic experiences.

So, they’re letting their merchandising buyers blog about the products they come across. In fact, they’re actually encouraging them to speak their minds.

That’s a refreshing change of pace from a company that has continually refused to sell just about anything that might remotely offend anyone.

Will it work? Only time will tell, but — like any decent blog — it’s already started a few contentious arguments. There are already knee-jerk doubters accusing Wal-Mart’s PR firm of rigging the blog and an article in the New York Times lending credibility to the idea.

It’s tough to dig out from this kind of mess. I think that Wal-Mart’s reliance on short-term results over long-term reputation has put them in this spot. But, it’s nice to see them try to dig out.

[Wal-Mart and The New York Times are both on Get Satisfaction.]

By Eric Suesz | Posted in Branding, appearances, company, press | Comments (0)
March 3, 2008

Tuesday = Tacos

Attention taco lovers: Tuesday is your day.

Join us next Tuesday, March 11 — high noon — at SXSW, in Austin Texas.

We’ll be munching on (free!) breakfast tacos and talking about exactly what it is we’re up to at Get Satisfaction.

We’ll be right next to the convention center, and we have bona fide conversations for you to join:

* 12-12:30: Breakfast tacos! (Salsa!)

* 12:30-1:15pm: Get to Know Get Satisfaction: A Primer. All the ways companies are using Get Satisfaction to reinvent customer service and build community. We’ll have some current company users on hand to talk about their own experiences with Get Satisfaction.

* 1:30-2:15pm: The Secrets of Managing Customer Communities. The tough problems around community management — and the easy solutions. Our community management team talks about building and maintaining the Get Satisfaction community, with an eye toward helping your company get started building your own community.

* 2:30-3pm: Of OAuth and APIs: Integrating Get Satisfaction on Your Site. Your customers can hop from your site to ours. We tell you how. Specifically, we’ll cover OAuth, a new third-party protocol that makes it (relatively) easy to give your users instant access to Get Satisfaction without the need to create another account.

Come, listen, participate, and be part of the breakfast taco community.

PureVolume Ranch
323 E. 2nd Street
Austin, Texas 78701
Map it

You can RSVP right here.

Can’t wait to hear exactly which different types of tacos are on the menu? Contact lane [at] get satisfaction [dot] com.

By Eric Suesz | Posted in SXSW, Satisfaction, Tips and tricks, appearances, community, company, conferences, customer service, hospitality, tacos | Comments (2)