February 8, 2008

16 Bit @ SXSW 2008

16bit @ SXSW

After the success of last year’s 8 bit opening night afterparty, we knew we had to do to it again at SXSW Interactive this year. And we knew we needed to do it with friends! So with that, Get Satisfaction is proud to present 16 bit, co-hosted this year with returning favorites 30 Boxes and Rocketboom, but also new additions Laughing Squid, Pownce, Joyent, Comicvine, and Dogster/Catster. Return performances by DJ Invidkllr and DJ V.I.N.cent, and also a stage performance by the Austin-based freakshow 999 Eyes.

Saturday, March 8, 2008
Scoot Inn, 1308 E. 4th St., Austin, TX
10pm to 2am

Mad props to Scott Beale of Laughing Squid for stepping up to help with the organizing this year. Everybody’s contributed to the effort, of course, but we wanted to call out Scott specifically, because that guy really knows how to throw a party! Thanks also to Joshua Ellington, responsible for the beautiful poster you see up above; stay late Saturday night and you can grab one for yourself.

RSVP on all the usual suspects: Upcoming, Facebook, and Pownce.

By Lane Becker | Posted in Satisfaction, appearances, community, company | Comments (0)
February 7, 2008

Slides from the Summit Now Available

SlideShare is featuring the presentations from our fantastic “Customer Service is the New Marketing” Summit speakers as their spotlight item today. Check ‘em out:

Tony Hsieh, Zappos

Robert Stephens, The Geek Squad

Michael Murphy, Virgin

Alex Frankel, Author, Punching In

We’re editing video of the event, too, and will have that out in a couple of weeks.

By Lane Becker | Posted in company, conferences | Comments (1)
February 6, 2008

API! API! API!

Here’s some news that will make some of you very, very happy: Get Satisfaction is superclose to releasing a RESTful API (including some very cool OAuth support) through which you can access almost all of our current features and functionality. Hurray!

(Ed note: If you’ve never heard of an API, or if “OAuth” sounds like some creepy weird thing you’d find in some dark corner of the Web, don’t worry about it. Just rest assured that our adding them is great news for everybody who frequents the site, because it means a lot more interesting uses of Get Satisfaction that will hugely benefit you are just over the horizon.)

We know some of you developers out there are itching to bake Get Satisfaction into your own site, have a desire to integrate Get Satisfaction more extensively into your own customer support systems, or just want to build some interesting little app on top of Get Satisfaction to make it work a little better for you. We’re all for every one of those things, too. And though we’re still a little ways away from a full public release of the API, we want to open up access to those of you that are ready to get started as soon as we possibly can.

So if you’re ok with not having a whole bunch of documentation available to you before you jump in and get coding, and if you don’t mind that some things might break/change along the way, email us (tim at getsatisfaction dot com ought to do it) and I’ll add you to our alpha list. We’re hoping to have the initial push out before the end of the week, and when we do you’ll be the first to know.

By Lane Becker | Posted in applications, company, development | Comments (4)
January 15, 2008

The DreamHost Nightmare

DreamHost overbilled their customers to the tune of $7.5 million today. Then, they joked about it.

Today, in what is surely the most readable and contentious blog posting so far in 2009 — er, I mean 2008 — DreamHost took a lighthearted approach to an undeniably serious customer service snafu.

And the blogosphere is going crazy over it.

When running a billing script to clear out their charges for the remainder of 2007 (a script which determines when and how customers of the Internet hosting company get charged) they accidentally entered a date of December 31, 2008. This resulted in nearly every account they service being charged for the rest of 2008.

Wow.

That’s a mistake of colossal, perhaps company-ending proportions. It’s every PR person’s worst nightmare and every vice president of customer relations’ death knell: the complete and utter screw up that can’t possibly be explained away.

Time to call in the PR army.

Only, DreamHost doesn’t have an army of PR flaks. They’re a small company with a lot of goodwill in their community, a decent track record, and a whole lot of lighthearted attitude. So, they relied on their strength: the funny.

With their usual tongue-in-cheek attitude, they posted an amusing blog post (“Um, Whoops”) that explained the situation, what they are doing to fix the problem, and what they have learned from the experience.

Not everyone found it laugh-out-loud funny. I did, but I’m not a DreamHost customer. I have nothing to lose from this mistake. The responses to the blog posting are riveting, hilarious, and deadly frightening from a customer service point-of-view.

If you’re in any way involved in customer service, you should spend at least ten minutes reading DreamHost’s blog post and the responses that follow.

At the time of this writing, according to an informal poll set up by one of the blog’s commenters, the answer to the question, “Will you stay with DreamHost after their billing screw-up,” is 53% yes, 31% no, and 17% undecided.

Ouch.

Did DreamHost do the right thing by being dead-set on openness and transparency? Did they simply shore up their base of dedicated customers who like to laugh, at the expense of more serious-minded customers? What about that swing vote?

DreamHost is on Get Satisfaction, and you can join the conversation about them here.

By Eric Suesz | Posted in appearances, community, company, customer service, entertainment, reputation | Comments (3)
December 12, 2007

Vote for us for the Crunchies.

Crunchies2007

There’s a new Web award in town, and we’d love your vote. Specifically, in the category of “Most Likely to Make the World a Better Place.” We truly believe we’re on to something with this customer empowerment/consumer advocacy thing, and your support would help us out. Thanks!

By Lane Becker | Posted in Satisfaction, company | Comments (1)