August 21, 2008

Apple Profile of Get Satisfaction

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We’re not just Internet famous. We’re Apple famous. (Take that, fake Bigfoot.)

The folks at Apple called us up some months ago wanting to find out what we do and how we do it. They were looking for all-Mac organizations to profile on their Web site. How could we say no?

We’re definitely an all-Mac operation at Get Satisfaction. Everyone here drank the Apple Kool-Aid a long time ago. We all proudly sport Mac laptops, we all have iPhones, and we’ve developed everything at Get Satisfaction using Apple technology. It’s almost comical when a phone rings (or even vibrates) in our office. Everyone immediately reaches for their iPhone. I think we need to institute a mandatory “unique ringtone” policy. Seriously.

The Apple people came to our office a few times and interviewed each one of us and took a ton of pictures. (We hid the one PC laptop we keep around for testing purposes.) Sadly, they didn’t decide to use the picture of me looking all cool and casual with my feet up on my desk as the big, glossy face of Get Satisfaction. I think I squinted too much that day. The pictures they did include are quite good, and the words that accompany the pictures sound great to our ears.

Thanks, Apple, for including us on the business-facing section of your site as an example of a scrappy start-up full of people who live and breath Macs. We’re honored.

Read all about it right here.

By Eric Suesz | Posted in Satisfaction, press | Comments (3)
July 25, 2008

Trafficking in Complaints

This week, Twitter got a big boost in traffic to its Web site from an ABC News Story that showed how an everyday consumer got help from Comcast’s Frank Eliason on Twitter (we’ve written about similar things on this blog in the past). I’ve gone ahead and coined a silly phrase for this kind of outreach: “micro-service”. Thank me later.

All that mainstream-media-led traffic inevitably led to additional traffic to Get Satisfaction, and we were inundated with a wealth of people who had a lot to complain about, but who hadn’t ever used Twitter or Get Satisfaction before. Unexpected events like this are always a great way to see how well we’re framing our service. If they don’t get it, perhaps we aren’t explaining it well enough.

I’m seeing a lot of stories like this ABC News story popping up. Reporters are trying to find a way to write about Twitter, and they seem to want to frame the story in a particular way. More stories like these are surely coming, and most of them will probably be following up on the same Comcast/Twitter story that’s already been written by other, more astute journalists.

I wouldn’t mind seeing stories about Twitter that focus less on complaints. There’s so much more to Twitter. Tons more. When they frame the story as “how to complain and get a company’s attention” rather than “look at all this unexpected interestingness that comes out of new ways of communicating,” I don’t know that they’re accomplishing much — beyond prompting the big complainers to reach out and rant to someone.

Not that I’m complaining too loudly myself. They’re reporting on customer service. That’s a start. More please! I’m ready to direct the traffic.

By Eric Suesz | Posted in Satisfaction, Uncategorized, customer service, press, reputation | Comments (0)
July 22, 2008

New Feature: Image Uploads

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Computers are complicated. So is software. User interface glitches, buttons that don’t work, menus that are misleading — all of that is hard to explain with mere words when you are trying to get help from a company. Sometimes, it’s just easier to show them what you’re seeing on your screen. It’s easier for both customers and company employees. Win-win, as they say. So we’ve added image upload.

It’s pretty straightforward. When you’re posting a topic or reply, just click on “Add an image” and upload what you got to show. We’ll upload it and insert the image in-line in your topic or reply. You can also insert an image URL and point to an image that already exists somewhere online if that’s what you prefer. It’s a feature we’ve wanted to add for awhile, and we’re happy to say that it’s now ready to go.

If you’re a Mac user and want to improve the way you take screen shots — and annotate them — you have to try out Skitch. It’s pretty awesome. We’re all big fans of it in the Get Satisfaction office, and we use it every day to share thoughts, ideas, and detail what we’re seeing on our computers. Five minutes with this application, and you’ll quickly see how it can benefit you, even without digging into the advanced features.

Skitch or no Skitch, we hope that having the ability to show everyone else what you’re seeing will make using Get Satisfaction easier and more efficient.

By Eric Suesz | Posted in Satisfaction, appearances, delight, design, development | Comments (1)
July 10, 2008

Redesign! New Company Home Page

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The development rolls on at Get Satisfaction.

This time, we’ve updated the company home page. If you’ve got a problem with a company, that’s where you’ll likely end up: on that company’s Get Satisfaction home page. So what will you do when you get there?

Previously, the page was focused on exploration. We wanted you to get into the existing topics and look around. The new version is focused on getting answers. Our main goal with this redesign was to give this page a clear focus on starting a topic. We also wanted to give you the ability to easily scan existing topics.

Key to that quick search for answers is the big box right under the company’s name. Start typing, and we’ll look for topics that match. It’s a search box, but it’s also the start of your new topic — if you don’t end up finding a topic that satisfies you.

As always, it’s not just about questions. Problems, ideas, and discussions are still here, and they are more clearly called out as distinctively different. We feel that each topic type almost has its own personality, and we plan on calling that kind of distinctiveness out even more in the future. For now, the four topic types are available to choose from right away, and you can switch between them (and when you search, we search everything, not just “ideas”, for example).

We also added subsections as tabs: “People”, which displays the employees of the company, “Products & Services”, which displays all the products and services the company offers (plus related ones), and “Overheard”, which is, of course, that nifty way of seeing what people are saying about the company on Twitter.

Finally, the topics in the list below the big search box have clear chunks of information that make it easy to scan. And, we show more of them. Each one includes the avatar of the person who started the topic, as well as the name and avatar of the last person to reply to the topic.

Want to sort those topics? Go for it! We’ve added a way for you to pull out the most active, most popular, most recent, and unanswered topics. You can also filter by topic type. So, for example, you can quickly find the most popular ideas in a company’s space.

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Those are the basics of the new page. We have a bunch of other details baked in there, but I won’t go on about them. Go give it a look-see — and, as always, let us know what you think.

By Eric Suesz | Posted in Satisfaction, design, development | Comments (3)
June 30, 2008

Netflix Abandons Their Plan to Abandon Profiles

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“We Are Keeping Netflix Profiles”. So reads the title of the e-mail communciation that Netflix users are getting in their e-mail in-boxes today.

This is clearly a well-deserved victory for all the Netflix customers who banded together to voice their outrage at the plan to cancel the popular feature, which lets household members set up and manage separate online queues for their DVDs.

Kudos to everyone who participated in this near-boycott, especially the folks on Get Satisfaction who helped spread the word. This is a powerful affirmation of the power of customer opinion. It smacked down the attempt by Netflix PR man Steve Swasey to make the issue go away. His insistence that taking away the Profiles feature was a “final decision” has been proven wrong.

Let’s celebrate with a movie! Now, what to pick?

By Eric Suesz | Posted in Satisfaction, customer service, delight, reputation | Comments (0)