May 16, 2007

What we’re up to with Satisfaction

Secrecy in startups? That’s so 1999. In that spirit, and since you’re here and that means you’re at least a tiny bit curious, let me tell you what we’re up to with Satisfaction.

Satisfaction is people-powered customer service for absolutely everything. We’re building the start page for customer service online, powered by the people that actually use the stuff: the customers.

That’s everything, folks — absolutely everything. Everything that has even been made or will ever be made, for any product or service offered by any company or organization of any type. If you’ve got a question about a product, a problem with a service, or an idea you want to share with a company, we’re going to give you somewhere to put it, and we’ll make it easy to get the response you need. And if you’re part of a company, an organization, or even an individual who needs a way to interact with your users (customers, participants, members, listeners, viewers, adherents, advocates, followers, whatever) we’re going to give you the best possible way to do that, as well as tools to get real business value out of the exchange.

And it’s not just about getting help — you can give help, too. This thing is people-powered, after all. Fortunately for us, the world is a big place, and everybody has expertise in something. Especially about the stuff they use day in and day out — the products they love and identify with, the ones they hate but are held captive by, and everything in between.

Nobody said we don’t think big around here!

Why would anyone participate in this? Because it’s fun! Because people connect with the stuff they own and use, and if they can use that to connect up with other people, so much the better. We’re reframing the idea of customer service, from an experience that’s about unpleasantly long hold times in order to have painful, impersonal interactions with disinterested support reps, to instead be one that’s about endlessly interesting conversation with companies and customers around the products and services they make, use, and can’t live without.

So, that’s a tall order. How will it work? We’re taking the passion we see customers demonstrating on existing company-oriented sites like Mini2 and Tivo Community, two stellar examples, and the interactions they have with the companies they care about in those spaces, and bringing that to a much wider audience. We see an opportunity to 1) expand both the range of products and services around which people can form community, and also 2) greatly improve the ease with which a wide range of people can get access to the full breadth of truly useful information that is created as people help each other out.

To the first point: We’re making it incredibly easy to start a customer service community around a company you’re invested in, whether as a customer who needs assistance or as a company that wants to provide better service to its most valued customers. We did some poking around and discovered that, in the majority of cases with consumer products and services, a good 80% of the issues people raise don’t actually require a company response because other customers already have the answer. So while it’s great when companies are involved in a Satisfaction customer service community, and even better when they’re motivated to kick one off for their own use, it’s not a requirement.

And to the second: You know that experience you have, when you do a Google search to find an answer about how to do something — which cord to plug into the back of your new flatscreen tv or which brand of non-disposable organic baby diapers is the most earth-friendly, to give two quick examples — and then Google points you to a superlong page buried deep inside a nondescript discussion forum you’ve never been to before, filled with lots and lots of text but none of it quite matching the answer you need? We think it ought to be a much shorter trip from Google to answer, so that’s what we’re building, one question at a time.

We named the company Satisfaction (and took the url GetSatisfaction.com) because we genuinely believe that the center of customer service has moved from inside organizations that provide products and services out to the customers. This means companies are going to be engaged in a radically different relationship with their customers, one where the customers are in the driver’s seat. Smart companies need to figure out how to be ok with that — or, better, how to turn it to their advantage. Because this kind of service, when placed in the hands of the customers, becomes not only a better experience for everybody involved, but also allows for a much wider range of beneficial interactions between companies and customers.

There’s a lot more we’ve got planned, but this should give you a good sense of what we hope to achieve. We’re working pretty much nonstop to get the first version of this out the door, and when we do you’ll be the first to know. We plan to get our first release out really soon, because while it will take us some time to ramp up to fulfill the vision we have for Satisfaction, we’re really enjoying the ride and can’t wait until you can hop in and ride along with us.

We’re also really interested to hear what you think about all this, so if you’ve got something to say, please shout out in the comments!

By Lane Becker | Posted in company, customer service, philosophy | Comments (33)
May 10, 2007

Five ways to build and defend your reputation online

Scandal!There has been a lot of talk lately about how the Web can “ruin reputations with impunity,” as if the Web itself was a dark force that wants nothing more than to breakup marriages and destroy careers. An example of this alarmism was seen in this week’s SFChronicle article “Web can ruin reputation with a stroke of a key” by Anna Badkhen. The article describes the tribulations of Sue Scheff who was viciously defamed by a disgruntled client in online forums, culminating in a jury award against the client for nearly $12 million. Scheff’s case aside, it is terribly misguided to blame the Internet for the occasional observance of character assassination.

It’s helpful to remember that destroying the reputations of others has long been a popular blood sport. In the 18th century, for instance, Thomas Jefferson funded hack journalist James Callendar to smear his political enemies by publishing scandalous accusations–and Callendar later turned the tables by libeling Jefferson with the Sally Hemmings affair.

Still, there seems to be something qualitatively different about the nature of reputation online, and something tricky about preserving it.

One company, ReputationDefender, is basing their entire business around this idea. The Chronicle quotes their co-founder as seeing “online smear campaigns” everywhere:

“It is happening … on more or less every Web site where people can create content…From underage people, to university people, to graduate school people, to older people, to people who are being targeted by exes, to people who are being targeted by ex-business partners, colleagues at work.”

ReputationDefender’s service includes a reputation monitoring service, and as they put it, “if we find an item of online content you don’t like, we’ll carry out our proprietary DESTROY process for you on that item.” This reminds me of those “credit doctors” that claim they can zap negative items from credit reports. Sure this might be useful if there’s something bogus and destructive posted against you, but it’s not a strategy for developing a positive reputation, or even offsetting unflattering content. As we’ve seen, the “search and destroy” approach to “protecting” reputation is dicey at best. Besides being difficult to pull off, used broadly it can have a chilling effect on the very free speech that makes the Web useful. Oh, and then there’s the Streisand Effect.

I’d like to propose a different approach. Like cultivating a good credit record, building reputation is done steadily, over time. We need to embrace the messiness of social interactions online that we expect here in the real world, while adapting to its sometimes loony terrain. The first thing to do is reject the notion of online reputation as being a linear score– i.e. how eBay does it with its five star system (an aproach known for being gameable). Reputation in the real world is a mosaic of strengths and weaknesses, an interweave of stories, relationships and work product. We don’t expect flawlessness of people or organizations. That’s why every recruiter’s favorite question is “what is your greatest weakness?”; a non-answer is the only wrong answer.

With this in mind, here are five ways to cultivate reputation online.

1. Cast a long shadow

Often a single cruel review, blog post or forum thread can achieve a crushing visibility in search results. This is a rude awakening for many who don’t already have much of a presence online. Those ten links on the first Google results page can make or break reputations, and it’s negligent to relinquish this control entirely to the fates. With a tweezerful of effort you can exert a big influence on your search results.

The answer to creating a productive reputation lies in increasing online visibility, not minimizing it as some privacy advocates suggest. The answer is to create a bigger Web footprint for yourself, be verbose and connect promiscuously. Dish out meaningful content, ideally on numerous sites, and link to it. You’ll push any unflattering stuff off the front page, or at least dramatically dilute its impact.

For all the talk of Sue Scheff’s massive jury verdict, her online reputation was improved most visibly by her frequent postings to third-party blogs and her press coverage (which she links to from her eponymous Web site to increase their search value).

To quote Clive Thompson in the See-through CEO (Wired, 15.04):

“One bad blog post can kill you. But if you’ve got hundreds or thousands of sites linking to you and commenting on you, the law of averages takes over, and odds are the opinion will be accurate: The cranks will be outweighed by cooler heads…The Net rewards the transparent.”

2. Tell your side of the story

It’s amazing how often people let spurious charges go unanswered in a public forum. It seems that most people and organizations have two modes online, silent or litigious. There’s another approach: responsiveness. The trick is to not respond in a reactionary style, which can create a destructive blowback effect, but rather in the measured and calming tone of someone who is better informed. Your job is to correct facts, provide the missing context, clarify the intentions. It’s important to respond immediately, of course, before the hit piece sinks in. But again, more than anything you must demonstrate more reason and calm than your critics. Bonus points for being sympathetic to the “misunderstanding” that led to the overblown attack. It may not be as cathartic as unleashing your anger upon them, but it wins over the casual observer every time.

Barak Obama observed this approach in January when a conservative magazine (and then Fox News) accused him of having been educated in a madrassah, a radial islamic school. This turned out to be untrue, but Obama responded while maintaining the high ground:

“I think they recognize that the notion that me going to school in Indonesia for two years at a public school there at the age of 7 and 8 is probably not going to be endangering in some way the people of America,” Obama said on NBC’s “Today” show…The push-back was a signal Obama would fight to protect his reputation in the presidential campaign.

The untruth was handily dispatched and has not dogged him sense, thanks in part to his direct and measured response.

3. Give a heartfelt apology

This is the most obvious point here, but it may be the hardest to observe for many people. If you’ve done something that upset someone else then the absolute best way to defuse the situation, and actually enhance your reputation, is a strong dose of humility and a sincere apology. I’ve written about this a lot on this blog, but it bears repeating.

It’s a truism in business that a problem handled well does more to create a satisfied customer than if there is no problem at all. The same may be true of personal reputation. Witness Richard Edelman, whose PR agency was caught creating “flogs” for WalMart:

He apologized on his own blog, apologized some more, and began posting his own responses on blogs that were attacking him. He was wildly promiscuous, personally putting the message out anywhere he could, in what became a largely successful attempt to swamp the Google bots and prevent the critique from metastasizing. (The See-Through CEO)

4. Assemble an army
When you’re being picked on by others one of the best outcomes is that your admirers come to your defense. That’s exactly what happened to Draper Richards venture capitalist Howard Hartenbaum this week. On TheFunded.com, a site designed for entrepreneurs to rate and review venture capitalists, Hartenbaum was brutally critiqued by two founders whose idea he didn’t fund. Numerous fans of his tried to jump to his defense but were turned away with the site claiming they were trying to defend against the gaming of the system. Only after Hartenbaum’s murmur of support became a roar on other sites like VentureBeat did TheFunded relent and allow his defenders to have a voice on its site.

The point is that Hartenbaum’s army not only came to his defense, they rallied as a vocal group to change another site’s policy on his behalf. He wouldn’t have been able to do this alone, but his army gave his reputation a double-shot of resilience–a direct counter to the critics and an impressive show of force.

5. Stand for something

Reputation isn’t about being perfect, or about living up to any pre-existing measure. I’d argue that more than anything it’s about embodying a clear mission, a distinct talent or focus. It’s about showing sustained commitment to an organizing principle over time. An eBay powerseller might reply that reliability and honesty are universal attributes of reputation, and this is true. But without a mission or a higher purpose those elements don’t add up to much. With a commitment to excellence in a core area, though, people will cut you a lot of slack elsewhere.

Tara Hunt, for example, started blogging about her passion for community marketing a few years ago, and has since made a name for herself as an advocate for customers. She’s tireless and focused in her efforts. Though she sometimes ruffles feathers with her candor, she is now an internationally sought after speaker and has a book deal in the works. Her clear sense of purpose has helped inoculate her against the petty lashings of her critics. It doesn’t hurt that she retains her humility through it all.

People are typically generous towards others who demonstrate a willingness to take risks, make mistakes, and even fail. On the other hand, a history of poor character is not so easily forgotten. There’s justice in this structure. Good people get the slack they deserve, while the the bad guys are cooked in their own juices.

It’s true that these five points in principle aren’t much different than the sort of things we do to build reputation offline. That’s the point, after all. All we’re really doing is wrapping up our age-old human foibles in HTML.

By Thor Muller | Posted in Tips and tricks, philosophy, reputation | Comments (8)
May 3, 2007

How Digg could have avoided a community revolt

The firestorm around Digg’s user revolt has mostly focused on the supposed dangers of empowering communities of users (as in this Chronicle piece, where I’m quoted), and whether Digg was right to flip-flop on its original decision to remove the potentially illegal code. Instead, we’re asking a question: what should Digg have done in the first place?

Its lawyers were advising it to comply with the cease-and-desist letter to avoid a lawsuit, but that action potentially undermined the basis of its users’ trust in the service. Beware of business decisions that masquerade as legal issues. You’ll be tempted to defer to your lawyer’s advice. And it’s a good bet your lawyer’s instincts will be wrong when it comes to fostering open, two-way dialog with your customers. It’s more likely they’ll enmesh you in a battle of wills with the very people you depend on to grow your business.

Whatever the “right” decision was for Digg regarding whether or not to delete the offending post, Digg knows it is nothing without its passionate and participating members. The enlightened path should have been obvious to them: be completely transparent with users from the beginning. Before it took any action that stripped power from users, Digg should have shared its dilemma with the community, explained the conundrum and the legal advice it had been given, and then solicited candid feedback via its forum. Debate would have ensued, but everyone would have felt like they were part of Digg’s ultimate decision, even if that was deletion of the code. More than anything, passionate users want to be heard.

These are simple steps that would have turned “us vs. them” into “us and only us”…without having to relinquish control to a “tyranny of the majority.”

By Thor Muller | Posted in case studies, community, philosophy | Comments (29)
May 2, 2007

Genius bars for everything

Genius Bar by rachly

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.

By Thor Muller | Posted in case studies, hospitality, philosophy | Comments (4)
April 23, 2007

The Wisdom of Customer Crowds

This is one of my favorite customer service anecdotes right now, and I can’t seem to stop blabbing about it.

The story tells of how 30Boxes, an infectious social calendar app, abandoned conventional wisdom in their pursuit of extraordinary customer service. It’s a prime example of how embracing chaos can energize a business. (It was originally told to me by Nick Wilder of 30Boxes on my Customer Service is the New Marketing panel)

The Trouble with Trouble Tickets
Nick, along with serial entrepreneurs Narendra Rocherolle and Julie Davidson, started another company a few years ago, the photo-sharing site Webshots, ultimately acquired by CNET. As Webshots’ customer base and support issues began to scale up they did what every proper technology startup does; they installed trouble-ticket software to respond to all the customer issues. They anointed staff as official reps, established a process that worked with the software, and began to answer customers in this ostensibly optimal workflow.

Here’s the first plot twist: they discovered that almost fifty percent of the support issues coming in through that system went unresolved. Consistently. The remainder of the issues were sheperded through this siloed system by the staff, but were rarely viewed by the product developers or managers. Even with this efficiency-focused software, devoted support personnel, and the best of intentions Webshots was unable to rise to the goal of decent customer service.

Closing Issues by Opening Conversations
When the team launched their new startup, 30 Boxes, they decided to try something different. They opted out of trouble ticket systems altogether. Instead, they set up a forum. Just an old-fashioned discussion board, albeit one with a pretty, minimalist design. They didn’t publish an email form, and avoided any of those trumpeted CRM applications we read so much about. It was just a standard open source forum that anyone could post to.

This time the results were dramatically different. Right away users began to post questions, bugs, product ideas, company praise, and whatever else was on their minds. All this interaction from customers and the company was public, not hidden away in a private database like before, and each day the vibrant interactions pulled even more users into the conversation. All this hubbub created interest and involvement, stoking the passions of the customer community.

Now here’s the second plot twist: Instead of half of customer issues withering away unresolved in a trouble ticket system, on the 30Boxes forum almost 50% of customer issues were resolved by other users! Of the remaining issues, the vast majority were handled quickly by the 30Boxes product team which monitors the forum closely, not as their job, but because they’re eager for user feedback. And the biggest pain point of any customer service system–answering the same questions over and over again–mostly vanished now that all answers were posted publicly instead of sent to a private email inbox.

Just like magic.

New Rule: Wherever you can, keep your conversations with customers public

By Thor Muller | Posted in Tips and tricks, case studies, new rules, philosophy | Comments (6)