Get Satisfaction is about harnessing the social web to improve online customer support, and with this release we’re raising the bar in just about every way.

A Social Support Hub – Organizations may communicate in an increasing number of ways, and Get Satisfaction now provides a unified hub for connecting customers to the right people, wherever they are. The community may be emerging as the center of customer communications, but it’s intimately linked to distributed conversations on Twitter & Facebook, official channels like email and phone, or even Get Satisfaction partners like Zendesk, the popular helpdesk software. Get Satisfaction ties it all together.

Simplicity itself – Get Satisfaction 2.0 refreshes the user interface to enhance usability and present content in simple, easy-to-digest ways. Its never been easier to search, browse or interact, encouraging participation from a wider range of people.

Curated Views – Based on our structured convers ations we’re excited to announce a new feature, Content Auto-Curation. By leveraging the natural activity of your community we’re now presenting useful sets of topics, things like frequently asked questions, common problems, popular ideas and many more. The hidden value of conversations is unlocked for the first time.

Focus on results – Get Satisfaction has always focused on helping reach their desired outcomes, whether that was an answer, a solved problem, an idea implemented as a new feature or product. Get Satisfaction 2.0 highlights which topics need input from the community, and prominently features answers and answerers.

Customer-to-customer help – This new release puts a new emphasis on customers connecting with each other to answer questions and solve problems. Through positive participation, every user can now earn reputation (and possibly win the coveted Champions status) within the community.

Customizable, Configurable Widget Toolkit – We’re famous for allowing organizations to embed community through their products and web sites via our widgets. Get Satisfaction 2.0 includes a new premium widget toolkit: now you can fully configure and customize four different kinds of widgets that make plugging community content into your site as easy as cut-and-paste. Filter suggested content, auto-tag new topics, customize the look-and-feel and more.

Choose your own participation level – Not all organizations use Get Satisfaction in the same way–some don’t use it at all while their customers do. This release includes a new feature that allows an organization to set its participation level and a personal message to users, in order to set the right expectations about how its relationship to the Get Satisfaction community.

And those are just a few of the highlights. For details check out our in depth overview of Get Satisfaction 2.0. Do let us know what you think!

After over two years of building a product and company with broad adoption (over 12000 companies and 1.5 million monthly customers!), we’ve reached a major inflection point as we roll out the value-packed business services that we believe will become essential to how companies do business in coming years. With this move, we’re deepening the leadership on our team to deliver on Get Satisfaction’s full potential.

We feel incredibly fortunate to have found Wendy Lea. From the first time we met her (through mutual friends, Dave McClure and Eric Case) we recognized her as an extraordinary fit for our business. As the VP Marketing at OnTarget, and the SVP of eBusiness Consulting at Siebel, she knows how to deliver results to business customers. As an investor, advisor, board member and interim CEO at numerous Web 2.0 companies, she comes with the relationships and insight that you just don’t see very often. Most importantly, she grokked our big vision immediately, and proved a natural fit for our culture.

As the founding CEO I’m now handing over the keys to her with nothing but enthusiasm. In my new role as Get Satisfaction’s Chief Technology Officer, I’ll be focusing on expanding our platform to keep wowing our customers in a way that’s built to scale (and last). And boy do I have some big plans!

As always, I can be reached at Thor at Getsatisfaction dot com.

Related:

• Venturebeat’s coverage
• The official press release
• Wendy’s personal blog announcement

On Tuesday, we presented at the Dow Jones Web Ventures 2008 conference, and we just learned we were chosen as one of their top ten startups out of the full list of 70.

This sits nicely on the mantelpiece next to the audience pick for “Best of Show” we got yesterday, for our song and dance at the Under the Radar conference put on by Dealmaker Media, which Eric mentioned in his earlier post.

How sweet is that? To celebrate we ordered pizza and took silly photos of ourselves.

Just a little bragging here on a Friday afternoon. Enjoy the weekend, everybody!

“Love the Customers Who Hate You.” That’s the title of the lead article in the new issue of BusinessWeek, as part of their “Customer Service Champs” special section.

We can definitely get behind that idea. I always chuckle when I hear Thor express something similar around the Get Satisfaction office: “Start a love affair with your customers.” It’s an award-winning idea, and one that people like, perhaps because it feels as if there’s a very big paradox buried somewhere in that phrase.

After reading the section, I have to say, “Great job, Jena McGregor,” management editor at BusinessWeek. We were happy to be one of the sources for this feature section. They bent our ear about emerging customer service trends, and it turned out to be a very good read. As we saw during our recent Customer Service is the New Marketing convention, there’s a major trend going on that’s reshaping customer service, and we’re definitely excited to see a magazine put together a high-caliber focus to the subject.

The theme behind this feature section is consumer vigilantism. Like the recent story about Get Satisfaction in the New York Times, the editors of BusinessWeek start with an idea that will draw readers in — customers complaining — and then provide some more depth.

There are a few highlights that caught my attention.

First, there’s an interesting story about customer vigilantes that calls out the Comcast Must Die blog (which we also wrote about previously) as an extreme example of customers using the Internet as a channel to demand better customer service from corporations.

There’s also an article about GetHuman.com and the dwindling prospects of their site becoming an ongoing resource for customers looking to get around phone trees.

Then, there’s my favorite article: the one where we’re mentioned. That one is a story about the plight of the Better Business Bureau and how it’s trying to leverage its brand and reputation — while at the same time trying to become a place where people go to get product reviews. That sounds like a very tall order.

And, who doesn’t love a good list? Readers definitely do. BusinessWeek put together a list of the top 50 companies in their customer satisfaction survey.

You can read the whole thing online here.

[BusinessWeek is on Get Satisfaction.]

This blog — Demand Satisfaction! — is ready for an extreme makeover.

We’re going to rip out the musty old verbiage that’s been rotting under the weight of time’s obesity, scoop out the puns and cliches that have built up in the underbelly of the PHP, and hang a wall of solid earnestness with an embossed fleur de lys pattern imported from a specialty shop in Prague.

Then, we’re going to paint it pink. Or teal. We haven’t decided yet.

Along with this new look, we’ll be changing the content. We won’t be taking away anything you’ve seen already. Rather, we’ll be adding a wealth of new content that’s specifically focused on consumer advocacy.

Why? Because there’s always room for more consumer advocacy in this world. In fact — in case you haven’t noticed — the deck is still stacked surprisingly high on the side of the table where the corporate players pretend that they’re only able to answer Frequently Asked Questions. We’re going to keep working at balancing out that equation — to transform the nameless and faceless corporate voices into real people with an ear cocked toward your ideas and concerns. We’ve accomplished a lot since going live nearly four months ago, and we’re pumped up about the next year and beyond. We can’t promise that we’ll fix every problem you have, but we’ll give it a damn good shot.

One key thing we’ll be doing with this blog: hooking in and displaying Get Satisfaction questions, problems, and ideas that are directly related to the topics we’re covering on the blog. This marriage between the Get Satisfaction Web site and the Demand Satisfaction blog will allow us to spotlight the funny conversations, the telling examples of companies behaving badly, and the success stories of forward-thinking organizations that are rising to the challenge of providing excellent customer service.

Dishing out consumer-focused information is essential to our core mission, and we’re stoked about this blog renovation. As we develop the new look over the next few weeks, if there’s an issue you want to see us cover, a behemoth of a problem that needs exposing, or a wrong you want righted, send us your suggestions, tips, and big ideas to editor [at] getsatisfaction [dot] com. We’ll blog about it, and we’ll push it as high into the consciousness of the Internet world as possible, so you can get the answers you’re seeking.

And, of course, we expect you to demand satisfaction from us, while we work at bringing satisfaction to you.

I’m just now catching up to this stellar New York Times article, Put Buyers First? What a Concept. It details Jeff Bezos’ obsession with customer service.

The author, Joe Nocera (who’s a great business reporter), gets a free Playstation 3 for his son (mm-hmmm) shipped to him from Amazon.com just in time for Christmas — even though his originally purchased Playstation had been delivered and signed for by someone in his apartment building.

The article points out that Amazon’s focus on customer service isn’t exactly a barn-burner of a strategy when it comes to pleasing Wall Street, but that it seems to be working when it comes to repeat sales.

Best part of the piece:

“

There is simply no question that Mr. Bezos’s obsession with his customers — and the long term — has paid off, even if he had to take some hits to the stock price along the way. Surely, it was worth it. As for me, the $500 favor the company did for me this Christmas will surely rebound in additional business down the line. Why would I ever shop anywhere else online?

I guess that’s what I just did.

”

Indeed, you did, mister journalist. I believe Amazon just spent $500 very wisely.

[Amazon.com is on Get Satisfaction.]

We’ve been written up again. Oh wait, that’s a good thing.

Unlike in our days at elementary school, getting written up as an adult in a national publication is what many people strive for. It’s a sign that people are taking notice. Of course, that kind of spotlight isn’t always desired — especially if you’re being called out for not responding to customer complaints.

The article in question appears online in Computerworld as part of the ongoing Facebook controversy. In the article, Disgruntled Facebook Users Look to Get Disabled Accounts Reactivated, Heather Havenstein recounts the problems Satisfaction users have been having with their Facebook accounts.

Satisfaction users are still reporting problems on that front, and unfortunately Facebook hasn’t yet entered the conversation. But there’s plenty of room in this conversation for everyone, and we hope to hear from them soon.

I’m a customer service consultant and writer. Every weekday, I write on my own blog about customer service – Service Untitled. I’ve been doing that for almost two years and it has been a great experience. I’ve also worked in marketing and operations, two areas which I try to combine with my customer service experience.The ultimate goal, of course, is delivering a (nearly) perfect customer and customer service experience. It’s my job to help companies do that.

I’ll be helping to put together the speaker list, promote the summit, and help with the summit’s overall content and direction. Over the coming weeks, you’ll see interviews with speakers, some behind the scenes looks at the summit, and more information about this exciting event.

Remember, the summit is on February 4. Get your tickets now – space is limited and you save money by acting early.

I’m looking forward to meeting many of you soon.

The new technology allows newsmakers to comment on articles by submitting an e-mail to Google with their contact information. The tech giant then verifies the submitter’s identity through a labor-intensive process…The approved comments will appear – in full and without editing – on Google News…[It] limits feedback to those directly related to the story, their comments will maintain prominence and not get buried under the barrage of feedback from the public.

As the NYTimes reports, the usual naysayers (”Media professionals”???) have all kinds of reasons why it won’t work:

Media professionals characterized it less charitably as an effort by engineers who do not understand the impracticalities of such a project on a large scale — for instance, how do you verify a source’s identity or screen for inaccurate statements? — and the potential sensory-deadening impact of long-winded statements.

These, of course, are unconvincing objections, but not surprising from PR traditionalists used (and committed) to controlling a one-way information flow.

On the other hand, there are some good reasons to be skeptical of Google’s initiative, not least because they have historically been so ham-fisted with products that aren’t based on algorithms (Google Answers, anyone?). I particularly appreciated Steve Rubel’s comments:

“Obviously, it gives us a way to provide feedback on a channel that reaches millions of people,” Rubel said. “But I think the way they’re going about it gets them into very dangerous territory. They’re going from being an aggregator and being agnostic to being an editor. I’d really love to see them open it up to everybody, but delineate if somebody is a source in a story.”