One of the projects we’re working on is a new version of the community overview page for each organization, and today I’d like to invite you to take a look at a draft design and give us any feedback that you think would help us improve it. But first, let me fill you in on some background.
Most customer support communities on Get Satisfaction have some level of employee involvement (about three-quarters), but the rest are added and cultivated by customers. Some of these are very active, and others have little or no activity. Our recent redesign of the page wrapper and header was aimed primarily at helping organizations who want to use Get Satisfaction as an official or semi-official customer community. But it’s also very important to us to serve the customers of non-participating organizations in a way that honors those organizations and allows them to promote their preferred support channels. Above all, we want clarity about what Get Satisfaction is in relation to any organization in our system, whether they use us as a primary support system or have opted out of all involvement. In fact, the code name for this release is Clarity.
We’re viewing these support communities as “spaces’ that can be modified depending on the needs of the customer. In addition to these changes, we’re also planning more ways for organizations to personalize their space. This draft design focuses on the instance of the community overview page in which an organization is not participating (”unclaimed”). Our goals for this page are as follows:
- Communicate the purpose of the site to people unfamiliar with Get Satisfaction
- Display in the clearest of terms the organization’s level of participation
- Provide a transparent path for an organization to claim their space or opt-out
- Point users to the organization’s preferred support channel, and feature links to other places on and offline where they may communicate with the organization
- Expose the Get Satisfaction customer community (latent or realized) around this organization, and provide a simple way for a user to self-identify as a customer
- Provide ways for users to interact (e.g. discuss, rate) around the organization and its products/services, again in a way that honors it
The draft below is unfinished, and not a fully rendered visual design. So please keep that and our goals in mind as you review it.
The Unclaimed Community Overview Page
Below is a brief explanation of each part of the design.
1. Organization name and participation indicator
First off, you’ll notice that there is no logo here. For non-participating organizations we will no longer be displaying logos uploaded by users in the header. Instead we will display the organization name under the default descriptor “People-powered customer support for.” The phrase “People-powered” is intended to convey the distributed, crowd-sourced approach that we’re all about. (For participating companies we’ll still display the logo)
Below the organization name is the Participation Status, which says that this organization is Not yet Participating. By placing it in bold type treatment right under the logo we hope to be crystal clear about the role of the organization here. Other organizations may have a Participation Status like one of the following:
Cyberdyne Systems is Active in this Community
Cyberdyne Systems is Monitoring but not Active
Cyberdyne Systems has Opted Out of this Community
We’re still working on the language, but that’s the general idea. Organizations will be able to set the status to the one that makes the most sense, and change it at any time.
2. Get Satisfaction Explanation
To the right of the organization name we display boilerplate text explaining what Get Satisfaction is. We will also display a link to the user who added the organization to Get Satisfaction to display the customer-created origins of these unclaimed organizations.
Under the explanatory text is a link that invites employees of this organization to claim or set their status as explained above. This will open a new page with the options to proceed. It’s worth noting here that Get Satisfaction validates the employee relationship with every initial claim.
3. Support Links
We’ll be adding a link box that prominently features the official support channels for the organization, wherever they are. This might be a 1-800 phone number, an email address, one or more help pages, even a UserVoice feedback forum. Our goal is to direct people to the best place for getting results with that organization.
Part of this link box will provide social media links. We’d like to connect customers with the organization not just at its official support channels, but anywhere it is interacting online (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc). Anybody may submit links or contact info to fill this area out, and employees will be able to manage the link box.
4. Customers Spotlight
Here we’re showing some of the customers that have associated themselves with this organization on Get Satisfaction. Visitors may add themselves to this membership by clicking the I’m a Customer, Too! button. We’re also showing other organizations and products that these users are affiliated with.
5. Rate the Organization
We’ll continue to let users rate organizations and their products using the well established Net Promoter Score. This is the lightest weight satisfaction survey, used by many of the top brands in the world to understand how customers perceive them.
6. Post a topic to the community
The main difference here from the current site is the revised headline, “Ask a Question of Cyberdyne Customers.” Since no employees from the organization are here, we’re marking this as a place for conversations between customers.
So that’s the draft. We’re looking forward to any feedback you have. We’ll be making similar changes for the support overview page for participating organizations, as well as providing greater layout control of their space. This is but one piece of a larger redesign effort that we’re in the midst of, so please continue to make your general suggestions here: Get Satisfaction Ideas. We’ll be posting more sneak previews of upcoming features in coming days and weeks.
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