How do you encourage companies that are hesitant to participate on Get Satisfaction?

We’ve got a lot of theories on that. I won’t go into all of them, but there are some companies — often larger companies with an entrenched beauracracy, for example — who don’t participate on our site. They may simply not know about us yet, may not understand what we’re up to, or they may have a big wall set up to discourage customers from contacting them. They often seem to have a culture that doesn’t embrace the idea that communicating with customers openly and honestly is the way to go about things. What is the best way to reach that kind of company?

Again, we have a lot of ideas. But it seems immediately clear that the companies that feel compelled to participate do so because their customers want them to. Or, to put it another way: Their customers ask them to join the conversation on Get Satisfaction. So, they do.

Being invited, asked, and encouraged is the flip side of being compelled, shamed, and threatened. It would be ideal if companies received an invitation from sincere Get Satisfaction customers and responded to that request to participate. Wouldn’t it be great if you could send them that kind of message — and then see how they respond?

We’ve been working on the backbone of a system that helps customers invite companies to Get Satisfaction. We’re coming up with some interesting ways to find the people in large organizations who are most open to our ideas behind customer service. That’s the key part, I think. Reaching the right people, as opposed to spamming everyone and hoping the message gets through to someone.

However our system ends up working on the technical side, we’ll need to write the invitation language. We spend a lot of time crafting and framing our language because we believe it’s extremely important. We’re constantly joking and making fun of the really bad examples of language we uncover in customer service correspondence. It’s not too much of a stretch to believe that everyone else does that, too, is it? Everyone hates that faux-formal verbiage, that “your call is important to us” language.

We’ve yet to wet our pen on this invitation language, and we may not have to. We may have already uncovered a template we can borrow. A Get Satisfaction user has created his own excellent call to action for companies.

He posted it in the Target section of Get Satisfaction:

Open Invitation to Target Corporation

I’m writing to inform you that a small group of Target customers have banded together at GetSatisfaction.com, a customer-driven website that aims at directly communicating with businesses and companies. Target is among other great companies like Google, Pandora, YouTube, and more.

As a former Target employee, I think this is a great opportunity for Target to directly work with customers to resolve complaints as well as broadcast news, ideas, and information to interested Target customers.

Please, take a moment to visit about what I and other Target shoppers have to say about YOU.

Nicely done, sir. You’re definitely a Get Satisfaction superstar. You’re reaffirming our beliefs about our goals. And, as a former Target employee, you’re exactly the kind of person we want to reach: informed, helpful, understanding of the importance of customer engagement, and someone with an inside voice on the subject.

Thanks for passing it on to the company. We’ll do our best to amplify your voice — and help others do the same.

“Great product, customer service sucks! Sucks! SUCKS!”

How’d you like to stumble upon a conversation about your company that reads like that?

That’s how some company representatives learn about Get Satisfaction. While searching for info about their products online, they see a big complainer. Sometimes, you just can’t resist clicking through to read a good rant. I know I can’t. But it’s no fun when it’s a rant about you.

At that point, you’ve got two choices: Ignore it (and hope it goes away), or engage. Since it probably won’t be going away anytime soon — it’s going to be up there in Google search for a long time — you’d probably be well-advised to get involved in the conversation. Even if you don’t change their mind, you can at least show them that you’re listening.

I believe they call that validation. Whether complaints are legitimate or not, whether you have a way to fix it or not, you’ll always move the conversation forward by validating a complaint with some kind of positive response. That’s the hardest part of customer service, the killing-them-with-kindness part. But, you’d be surprised at how people respond. Many big complainers come back with a surprisingly contrite attitude.

Case in point: Lane, our president at Get Satisfaction, unexpectedly invited everyone from his GMail account to join him on LinkedIn. He felt like the “invite” interface on LinkedIn had deceived him. So he complained mightily on Get Satisfaction. Sure enough, the folks from LinkedIn saw his complaint and jumped right in to respond and try to find a way to fix the problem. They even said, “Thank you very much for posting this feedback.”

Lane responded: “Well, now I just feel like a jerk. :) Steve and Adam, thanks for being so responsive to my issue. First off, let me apologize for overreacting….”

And so it often goes. Not always, but much more than I ever expect to see.

I share this little customer service parable because we have a new company rep on our site who could perhaps use a little validation of his own. He’s jumped onto Get Satisfaction to represent his company, TomTom.

I’ve done my own complaining in the past about GPS device makers and how they seem to be disproportionately represented on Get Satisfaction with a wealth of unhappy customers chiming in, but no company employees brave enough to get in there and make a difference. My attempts at reaching out to these GPS companies have not been successful, but perhaps it’s because I wasn’t reaching the right people.

Since joining Get Satisfaction a few weeks ago, this GPS rep has gone in and responded to numerous complaints, some many moons old. Give him a pat on the back — or a fresh complaint — if you get a chance. I’m hoping he can change the minds of angry GPS owners; or at the very least, show them that their complaints are being heard.

Here’s to not sucking.

[LinkedIn and TomTom are both on Get Satisfaction.]

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.

“Customer Service is the New Marketing” — What a zany idea.

Well, not so crazy judging by the number of people who showed up for Get Satisfaction’s first Summit yesterday. The San Francisco Weather Gods startled everyone by punching the “Rain” button that had been stuck and depressed for the last few weeks. With our eyes now opened by sunshine (and ten or twelve cups of coffee), a packed crowd sat down to see if anything innovative is going on in customer service.

Boy, is there.

At the conference, I was chatting with Kathy Badertscher, of the DIY online book publisher Blurb, and she remarked that she had taken more notes at this Summit than she’d taken at any other conference in recent memory. She’s not the only one. Here are a few of the best blog posts and comments I’ve seen so far about what went on yesterday at the “Customer Service is the New Marketing” Summit:

On the Damn, I Wish I’d Thought of That! blog, Andy Sernovitz put together not one, not two, but three lists of great ideas he heard at the conference. That’s 38 great ideas! Bravo, Andy. These are real, actionable ideas.

Brian Solis, host of the “How to Listen to the Market and How to Engage Customers Online” workshop, put together a compilation of the tools that were talked about throughout the day. These are the online Web services you can use to open your ears and eyes to the things customers and bloggers are saying about you online. If you still haven’t started using these kinds of tools, drop what you’re doing right now and get yourself set up.

Ross Mayfield gives his impressions of Robert Stephens’ tongue-in-cheek (and very laugh-out-loud) “Marketing is a Tax You Pay for Being Unremarkable” presentation, which included the history of the Geek Squad.

On the Web Strategy blog, Jeremiah Owyang puts forward his findings from the Online Community Best Practices workshop he hosted. These are things you can utilize as best practices and benefits/cost analyses as you figure out how you’re going to incorporate and grow a real community.

If you want some wonderfully detailed and business-savvy coverage, Christine Herron’s take on the Summit’s main events are where to look. She writes down nearly every percentage and statistic mentioned — very impressive.

Jon Silvers’ Blog Bites Man blog has some well-rounded thoughts on what he considered “probably the most riveting presentation” at the Summit: the speech by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. I can attest that everyone was as impressed by Tony’s humble and unassuming style as they were by his insight. “Creating the right culture is what keeps Tony up at night,” writes Silvers. “Not sales, not merchandising, not operations… culture. To address culture, everyone in the company — whether you’re in sales, service, or merchandising — everyone, gets five weeks of training. It includes immersion in the culture, core values, customer service, warehouse, and more.”

Five weeks! Now, that is impressive.

I was personally impressed that all of the speeches, panels, workshops were bursting with witty and telling observations. These are the exact same kind of interactions companies are trying to foster by marrying customer service and community. No one took themselves too seriously yesterday, but it seemed like everyone got something seriously useful out of the Summit.

Well done, community.

If you were there, thanks for attending! If you missed it, we’ll have video of the presentations posted in the coming weeks, which I’ll try to roll out as it gets edited. Flickr pics of the event are also available here.

And, of course, thanks again to our very generous sponsors, Joyent, VentureBeat, Mohr Davidow Ventures, and Web 2.0 Expo!

Courtesy of the Washington Monthly, this is an unforgettable image of one of the earliest call centers. It’s a scan of an ad from the October 1958 copy of Newsweek, and the copy (obscured here) reads:

This “magic scoreboard” makes it possible for the Hilton Reservation Offices listed below to give you, while you are still on the phone, complete reservation information at any of the 33 Hilton Hotels around the world. You will receive an immediate verbal reply on your reservation request, and a written confirmation will be mailed the same day.

There are some informative comments below the post. For instance, the “magic scoreboard” showed rates and availability to the operators, and was called the “rack”. This is the origin of the term “rack rate,” which means the base room rate.

My favorite part is the young woman carrying the vase of carnations across the workroom.

Thanks to a nasty sinus infection, I had the ill fortune of ending up at the urgent care center at my local hospital last weekend. I wasn’t at all surprised when it took me more than two and a half hours to be seen by the doctor for five minutes and get my prescriptions written. It wasn’t surprising to me because I’m all too acquainted with the U.S. health care system.

These hours were mostly spent waiting sitting in uncomfortable chairs, in a seemingly unventilated room with two dozen patients with unknown infections, and bad daytime television blaring overhead. Then there were the multiple interrogations by administrators working to get me in the queue, process my insurance and document my conditions.

The whole process seemed downright medieval. I couldn’t help but fantasize how Apple would re-engineer the clinic. I’m sure they’d allow us to pre-process ourselves online (either from home or in the lobby), filling in our own insurance information and description of symptoms from a point-and-click interface. We’d get an approximate time-slot rather than waiting around for hours. Perhaps the doctors would see patients in a space-efficient set-up that kept them maximally engaged at all times–standing at a bar, with patients sitting on stools across from them. (Alright, this last part is ridiculous given strict health privacy laws, but still the simplicity of it is appealing).

I must admit that this isn’t the first time I’ve overlaid the Genius Bar solution onto a crappy customer experience problem. But why is it that the Genius Bar concept is so attractive a solution? It may be because the concept is based on the hospitality industry, in particular the concierge services offered by fine hotels. It’s not just that there are knowledgeable staff ready to fully engage with everyone with a problem–clinics have them, too–it’s that the environment and philosophy seem to be perfectly aligned with the interests of customers. Danny Meyer, the restaurateur behind Union Square Cafe and others, recently talked about the magic of hospitality at the Good Experience Live (”GEL”) conference. Peter Merholz of Adaptive Path provides the highlight:

There was a time, not too long ago, when all you needed to do was deliver Quality, and you’d succeed (see: Total Quality Management). Then when everyone offered the same quality, service was important. Now, however, the differentiator is hospitality, which Danny defined as that feeling that the people you are doing business with are “on your side.” (A firm that excels in service could still not be on your side.)

Yes, that’s the difference! Apple behaves as if it’s on my side, at least at the Genius Bar. It also explains well why doctor visits remain such unsatisfying experiences. No matter the bedside manner of individual doctors, the system itself handles patients as entities to be managed and potential liabilities to be mitigated. Thus waiting rooms feel like quarantines. But let’s be honest, it’s no easy task to be on the side of both patients and insurance companies at the same time, let alone hospital boards, pharmaceutical companies and lord knows what other interests. Let’s just agree that it makes perfect sense they’d opt to remain agnostic on the whole issue of sides.

This works even better with everyday customer interactions. When I eat out at restaurants I like to ask the wait staff about their favorite dish on the menu. I can often predict the quality of a meal based on the strength of the waiter’s opinions. A good restaurant will give its staff lots of opportunities to sample its food. It wants its servers to know not just the culinary factoids about tonight’s unpronouncably gourmet dish, but also how it tastes, its mouth feel, what else it’s like. Not just which wine should be paired with the dish, but why.

And I’m far more likely to trust a waiter, and the restaurant by extension, if he also talks about what he doesn’t like. Though it is counter-intuitive, it gives me real comfort when I order to know that some dishes aren’t as good as others. Similarly, I spend more money at clothing stores where the salesclerk tells me when something’s not looking so hot on me. I trust them when they give me the thumbs up on something else.

Now think about the customer service interactions that fail–insurance companies, phone companies, PC-makers. These are organizations that have no place for opinions, nor the passionate involvement of their staffs. They actually provide scripts designed to protect against such things.

As people we share opinions when we genuinely care–care about the subject we’re discussing and those we’re sharing with. So it’s natural that the wait staff at great restaurants tend to be foodies themselves. Successful boutique workers are fashionistas. We can see that being opinionated is ultimately tied to who we are. We can’t fake it, at least very well. That’s what makes being opinionated so special, and why it’s today’s New Rule.

So I called the Nintendo customer service telephone number, located right there on their web site (you would be surprised how many companies, and especially repair departments, don’t list their phone number on the web). The message telling me I had to wait for a CSR didn’t even finish playing before a rep was on the line. I explained my problem and she said she’d get me an RMA right away to get it fixed.

She asked for my phone number. I gave it to her. She did a bit of a verbal double-take and said, “Are you here in Washington?”

“I’m in Redmond, as a matter of fact [location of Nintendo of America's campus],” I replied.

“Well then, let’s not bother with the RMA and the shipping labels and all of that. Just bring it on in to Nintendo,” she said.

What I love about this is that it’s just common sense, plain and straightforward. Saska lives in the same city as Nintendo’s US headquarters, so of course she should be able to come on over and drop off whatever she need to get fixed. And yet it’s so unusual for a large corporation to do this that it deserves to get called out in our Hall of Fame.

Most of good customer service is about doing the obviously human thing. Most of bad customer service is about abstracting away from the human element, instead focusing entirely on the bottom line and efficiency, “closing tickets” instead of satisfying customers. Not that costs and efficiencies are to be dismissed — obviously not, since they’re critical to business success — but the best companies understand that there’s a very real relationship between how their customers feel and how their numbers look. More companies like Nintendo, please.

Though Joel’s focus is understandably software-oriented, all seven (well, eight) points can be generalized out to pretty much every other kind of business. At the heart of every single step is the idea of hospitality — that finding ways to demonstrate your concern for your customers, fulfilling their emotional as well as material needs, is the key to gaining their lifelong appreciation. And he shows how good customer service also makes good business sense, sharing details from his company Fog Creek’s financials to show how a strong service ethic has benefited their bottom line. Music to our ears.

By contrast, my dad never seemed to be working at all. I’d look on as he mingled with diners, mostly making idle chit chat. With strangers he’d walk up to their tables as they ate and ask them how their meals were. At the tables of regulars he might sit down and share a drink, maybe even roll some dice. It was a fantastic excuse for a job. Or so I thought.

It turned out that my dad had the most important job in the place. His endless conversations with patrons clued him into changes he needed to make on the menu. He was quickly able to comp a round of drinks if customers received slow service, nipping their frustration in the bud. They would often tell him how they’d heard about the restaurant, and possibly mention an upcoming party they were planning and did the restaurant do banquets? (answer: of course!)

My dad knew his regulars intimately. It wasn’t unusual to see him uncorking a Special Reserve bottle, pouring a round, and then bouncing ideas off of them, knowing they would give him candid feedback. To be a regular was to be part of the extended family. Some of those folks spent the equivalent of a mortgage payment each month at the restaurant.

It didn’t work when somebody less engaged tried it. The restaurant had an artless manager who tried to do the rounds, but rarely got further than “How is your meal?” before moving on. My dad actually enjoyed breaking bread with his customers–they were guests in his house. And it was largely due to this deep sense of connection, the fact that customers felt listened to (and entertained), that kept the restaurant in business for sixty years.*

* The restaurant, Lou’s Village, was sold to a real estate developer last year