Frown Upside Down

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?

Then again, there may be another reason good customer service makes sense. “Jeff used to say that if you did something good for one customer, they would tell 100 customers,” Mr. Kotha said.

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.]

News of the World

Computerworld

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.

A New Face

I figured I might introduce myself since you’ll be hearing from me sooner than later. Get Satisfaction has hired me to help out with the upcoming Customer Service is the New Marketing Summit.

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.

Google News invites newsmakers to comment on stories

It is hard to argue against the idea that conversation is the basic organizing principle of information on the Internet. Blog trackbacks and comments, Wiki discussions, peer-to-peer file-sharing, social networks and cross-linking in general have been methodically devastating the hegemony of one-way broadcasting for years now. The latest move by Google’s news aggregation service recognizes this and creates a narrowly defined conversation involving only the news sources and subjects, a potentially useful way to cut out the noise of an open discussion. PRWire reports:

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.”