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?).

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.]

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.

Super big thanks to our partners in crime Songbird, and particularly Sharon and Marion, who worked tirelessly to get everything set up.

Hyper super big thanks to our sponsors, without whom we wouldn’t have been able to pay for almost anything (we are a scrappy startup, after all): Timbuk2, who stepped up to pay for some of the beer and all of the liquor; Moretti Beer, who brought the rest of the beer along; (oops) wine, with the wine; Event Magic, who did the setup, breakdown, and lighting; and Terra SF, who hosted us. Buy and/or use all of them! You won’t be sorry.

And, finally, extra hyper super big thanks to our event planner, Tara Anderson, who’s fantastic and without whom we wouldn’t have been able to pull this off. If you’re in the SF Bay Area and you need an event manager, Tara’s the person you should talk to. Thanks Tara!

UPDATE: Ooops, almost forgot to mention Mannequin Madness, who helped us out with those fun/creepy mannequins we posed all around the room. If you’re in the bay area, and you need a mannequin — no questions asked! — they’re the place to go.

It’s our way of thanking everybody who’s helped us out over the past year (and if you’re reading this blog, you’re one of those people.) It’s been a great ride so far, and this is our way of saying thank you to everybody who supported us through it.

To make it extra super fun, we’re throwing the party with Songbird, makers of the Songbird Media Player, because they’re the other San Francisco startup that likes to have fun. And since they’re a music company, they come with DJs; they’ve got a great line up planned.

And just for fun, we’re going with a Stanley Kubrick theme — “Kubrick & Cupcakes,” to be exact. Aiming to recreate the milk bar sequence in “Clockwork Orange” as closely as possible (minus the excessive violence), so wear white and we’ll provide the bowler hats!

Details:
Terra SF (Map)
511 Harrison Street (@ First St.)
7pm til late

You can also RSVP on Upcoming or on Facebook. Hope to see you there!

One of the highlights for us was the 8-Bit Party we threw with our pals at 30Boxes and Rocketboom. It was the first big party we’ve thrown since our celebrated (and infamous) Valleyschwag Hoedown last July, and expectations were high.

Throwing outdoor parties is always a bit risky, especially in early March, and so I confess we were nervous. 8-Bit was set at Red’s Scoot Inn, centered on a massive backyard area with fire pit, dance area and the vintage video games we had carted in. It turned out we had a lot to worry about: it rained cats and dogs almost the entire week. But for our event, the skies parted for a balmy evening. The only condensation was the sweat dripping off of dancers’ gyrating bodies.

The theme was 8-Bit, which meant Pac Man, Asteroids, Light Saber Limbo Dancing, and a Human League/Flock of Seagulls dance-a-thon. Satisfaction was in the house, which meant an underwear giveaway–hot little numbers with “Demand Satisfaction” plastered on the rear. Lest you doubt the veracity of this report, here are some photo highlights from the night, with pull quotes from bloggers who stopped by:

The parties and social events were (as always) great. SXSW is the social event of the geek year. 8-Bit was insanely good, an 80s flashback with a playlist straight from my prom. (Adaptive Path)

“This was the highlight of the evening. After walking a mile or so to east Austin, literally on the other side of the tracks, we arrived at the Scoot Shack – a bar that I can only describe as some sort of field surrounded by chain link fence, with a fire pit, video games, live dj’s, and a bar. It turned out to be a pretty fun venue – lots of interesting folks, music, and drinks. I felt I was finally getting a taste of the real Texas.” (echoditto)

The 8-bit party was really fun last night, and damn what a difference a year makes in the number of people you know. It was a bit out of hand. People everywhere you look. It really is geek spring break. (Billetdoux)

Finally, one poor sod details how he and his friends “liberated” mixed drinks from the designated (and fenced in) hard liquor zone. It reads like the screenplay to the Great Escape, and comes complete with an illustrated map of the scene of the getaway.

Yes, a good time was had by all. Thanks to the many folks who made the trek, helping us throw an event to remember.

There will be a bar and a patio, free alcohol, DJ INVIDKLLR and DJ V.I.N.Cent, and we’ve even rented a bunch of stand-up arcade games for your early 80’s amusement. Frogger or Ms. Pac-Man, anyone?

10pm-2am at the Scoot Inn in lovely east Austin. Not to be missed! More details and a guest list on Upcoming.org.

More details to come…