Computers are complicated. So is software. User interface glitches, buttons that don’t work, menus that are misleading — all of that is hard to explain with mere words when you are trying to get help from a company. Sometimes, it’s just easier to show them what you’re seeing on your screen. It’s easier for both customers and company employees. Win-win, as they say. So we’ve added image upload.

It’s pretty straightforward. When you’re posting a topic or reply, just click on “Add an image” and upload what you got to show. We’ll upload it and insert the image in-line in your topic or reply. You can also insert an image URL and point to an image that already exists somewhere online if that’s what you prefer. It’s a feature we’ve wanted to add for awhile, and we’re happy to say that it’s now ready to go.

If you’re a Mac user and want to improve the way you take screen shots — and annotate them — you have to try out Skitch. It’s pretty awesome. We’re all big fans of it in the Get Satisfaction office, and we use it every day to share thoughts, ideas, and detail what we’re seeing on our computers. Five minutes with this application, and you’ll quickly see how it can benefit you, even without digging into the advanced features.

Skitch or no Skitch, we hope that having the ability to show everyone else what you’re seeing will make using Get Satisfaction easier and more efficient.

“We Are Keeping Netflix Profiles”. So reads the title of the e-mail communciation that Netflix users are getting in their e-mail in-boxes today.

This is clearly a well-deserved victory for all the Netflix customers who banded together to voice their outrage at the plan to cancel the popular feature, which lets household members set up and manage separate online queues for their DVDs.

Kudos to everyone who participated in this near-boycott, especially the folks on Get Satisfaction who helped spread the word. This is a powerful affirmation of the power of customer opinion. It smacked down the attempt by Netflix PR man Steve Swasey to make the issue go away. His insistence that taking away the Profiles feature was a “final decision” has been proven wrong.

Let’s celebrate with a movie! Now, what to pick?

Comcast, who hasn’t exactly had a great public image in the last few years, appears to be slowly changing that.

When Comcast showed up on Get Satisfaction, they had a lot of complainers. Hell hath no fury like an Internet junkie scorned. Boy, there were some angry folks.

But then, someone from Comcast stepped in and said, we hear you and we’d like to help make it better. And they keep on saying that.

If you haven’t read about him, Frank Eliason is the man at Comcast who seems to be spearheading this new approach. He swoops in on conversations on Get Satisfaction and offers to help fix problems. Plus, he’s set up a Twitter account (follow him!) as an additional way to monitor and respond to Comcast customers who are broadcasting their cable and Internet frustrations on Twitter.

That Twitter/Get Satisfaction combo seems to be working pretty well, as evidenced by this conclusion from a Get Satisfaction user today:

Wow, I stepped out for two hours and by the time I got back I had 3 voicemails from Comcast — from Corporate HQ in Philadelphia, from the California Executive office, from the local office here. An hour later I had the Comcast tech out here, he removed the trap outside, on the street just as I expected, then phoned in to close my order and enable the boxes again. I’m all settled now.

- Get Satisfaction works. Publicity is powerful.
- Comcast listens, kudos to them (including @comcastcares on Twitter)
- The execs and techs involved in such elevated customer care are doing a wonderful job, but it’s like putting out lots of little fires. I think at one point it will rise to the level that will convince Comcast to invest more ( a LOT more) in training their support troops so that there would not be fires to put out in the first place.
- Oh, have I mentioned that Get Satisfaction works? :-)

After reading that today, I feel like I need to give a tip of the Get Satisfaction community manager’s hat to Frank Eliason for pushing for the kind of consumer change that everyone wants and needs. Keep it up, and I bet you’ll be seeing more customer outbursts like that one.

My car was broken into last week, just a few days before Christmas. Bah humbug.  

While undeniably sad, it’s not the first time this has happened. It’s become something I expect to occur about once per year. That’s life in the big city, bub. 

The only worthwhile thing missing was my Sirius satellite radio. This having been my third radio lost to a break-in, I knew the drill: call customer service and have them list my radio as stolen. At least no one will be able to get any use out of it. 

I told the Sirius representative that I wasn’t ready to buy a new radio yet, and that I wanted to deactivate the old radio. Surprisingly, he immediately escalated my call to the finance department, ostensibly to mark my account as one that would still let me listen to Sirius programming over the Internet while I mulled over the idea of buying a new radio. 

To my amazement, the finance rep had a deal for me: We’ll ship you a refurbished $150 radio and throw in three months of service for the low, low price of… nothing. 

Did I hear that right? I wasn’t even asking. 

Like other smart businesses that sell subscription-based services, Sirius knows that if I stop subscribing for even a second, it’s a safe bet that I won’t be back. Once I’m gone, I won’t be letting them have access to my credit card every month. Kudos to Sirius for making me reconsider what I was — admittedly — considering: going back to regular old radio (or my old cassette deck — got to get some use out of those boxes of tapes someday!). Double kudos to Sirius for unloading their old inventory through their customer service channel as freebies and incentives to encourage customer retention. Smart. 

Sure enough, when I got off the phone, Sirius had e-mailed me the invoice for my “order.” And sure enough, everything is free, even the shipping. 

I’ve always been a Sirius enthusiast. Now, I’m practically a Sirius evangelist. I admit that I’ve had a few not-so-great customer service experiences with them in the past, but things seem to be getting better. Would I say that if I weren’t waiting for a free radio to show up on my doorstep? Probably not.

How about you? Have any customer service experiences like this? The kind that change your mind about customer service — in a positive way?

[ Sirius is on Satisfaction. ]

Notably great experiences are punctuated by a moment of “wow,” when the product or service delights, anticipates the needs of, or pleasantly surprises a customer. OXO’s Good Grips Angled Measuring Cup triggers such a moment of wow. A set of angled markings on the OXO cup lets you quickly measure liquids for recipes without having to stop cooking and bend over. Suddenly a little part of your life is easier, because OXO thought carefully about the way you cook. This delightful surprise resonates because it feels tailored to your needs.

This essay resonates with the work we’re doing, because it speaks to those moments where companies genuinely interact with their customers — not as numbers in a spreadsheet or tables in a CRM database but as people with thoughts, concerns, feelings, and most importantly, a need for surprise, empathy, and delight.

With Satisfaction, we’re working to build a tool, a service, and an experience that allows companies to find ways to make these delightful moments more regular, more repeatable, more enticing — more “wow,” really. And longer-term, our goal is to create ways for companies that succeed in producing those wow moments to derive the maximum amount of value from them. We’re developing tools to help companies translate the effect of these wow moments into internally valuable and quantifiable benefits — not just increased sales, but also cost savings, marketing outreach, market research, future product development, and any other touchpoints we can find where consumer affection and joy can be funneled back into a company’s bottom line.

So customers are happy, because they get regular moments of surprise and delight from the companies and products they care about, and companies are happy because they’ve maximized the internal benefit of that experiential response, guaranteeing that they’re going to want to provide it again and again. Everybody wins!

The essay is well worth reading in its entirety. And best of all, the closest Brandon gets to mentioning Apple is the iPod+Nike sports kit — no small feat when you’ve got as big and obvious an example as the entire iPod ecosystem (with its wildly dedicated fan base) looming right there in front of you.