Do you like awesomeness, especially as it applies to making products that make customers happy? I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you do. If so, there’s an event you may not be familiar with that’s happening this weekend, which you should attend. It’s LessConf 2009, and it’s being held in Jacksonville, Florida.
LessConf is organized by the folks who make Less Accounting, an online accounting app for small-business owners to help them manage their money. They’re focused on making very simple, very approachable Web applications that nearly anyone can use to make life — and work — more efficient. Their goal: Make everything less complicated, less formal, less confusing. “Less Everything” — that’s the name of their company.
What I love most about them is their scrappy, DIY, don’t-just-dream-it-but-do-it-this-weekend-in-your-spare-time attitude. I am a lover of the informal and the creative and a hater of all things that tell us that unproven ideas are better left on the drawing board until enough people agree to form a committee. These guys throw that kind of restriction out the window and challenge themselves, and others, to adopt a strategy of no restrictions. It’s “Just do it” taken to another level.
If you are in Florida this weekend — or can be — spend your Saturday with a group of people who are at the forefront of ideas that make consumers happy. It’s affordable, informal, and bound to be tons of fun. I bet you’ll even learn a thing or two about how to please customers. To please you, their customer for this event, they’re even offering free massages. For real. Sign up here.
Here’s a wonderfully creative promo video they made to get the word out. Even if you can’t attend the event, you’ll find something to borrow from this gem:
Lane will be giving the keynote speech tomorrow at the ICMI ACCE convention. Whew. That’s a lot of acronyms.
If you’re not familiar with those letters, that’s the International Customer Management Institute and the Annual Call Center Expo. As you might expect, this is a group of people who’ve witnessed big changes to the call center industry. The Internet sure does change things quickly, doesn’t it?
To reflect and respond to this rapid pace of change, the convention’s theme is “Thinking Forward – The Power of the Customer Experience.” And, they’ve asked Lane to give the closing keynote speech, “The Age of Social Media: Customer Service Is the New Marketing.”
Go, Lane! And, if you’re going to be in Vegas tomorrow, go see Lane!
This one is from Forrester Research. It’s written by Nathalie Petouhoff, Ph.D., and Chip Gliedman, and it’s a case study about how and why Yola adopted Get Satisfaction — and then what they did to transform their customer service department into a community-oriented group and reduce support costs.
I know from my own experience in dealing with Yola customers that they’re pretty darn enthusiastic. By coincidence, one of my favorite Yola employees has been visiting San Francisco, and Amy and I had lunch with her yesterday. I was introduced to a new (well, new to me) Yola employee, who actually came from the ranks of Yola customers. Now that’s taking the idea of community to heart — promoting customers to employees.
Yola is definitely a model of how to do it in Get Satisfaction, so it’s not surprising that the Forrester folks went digging into the idea of customer communities and landed on Yola as a model for how to do it. So, congratulations, Yola! And thank you, Forrester, for writing about us. We’re thrilled to see the idea of using community to serve customers growing bigger and more mainstream.
People are writing reports about us. They’re analyzing us. And we don’t even have to pay them!
First up: Tippingpoint Labs. According to their Web site, Tippingpoint Labs is a “digital content creation shop.” I think they’re selling themselves short. In addition to creating content, they release very interesting, very free reports that are designed to help companies make smart decisions about where — and how — to participate in online spaces.
From reading their recently released report about Get Satisfaction, I’d say they’re a pretty savvy bunch of marketing folks. What impresses me about them, apart from their obvious design sensibilities (to be expected from a firm that creates content), is the system they’ve created to analyze businesses and trends. They call their methodology “New Media Lifecycle Analysis.” It’s similar to the kind of thing you’ll get from Gartner, although it’s more approachable and granular — and definitely more readable — than a Gartner Hype Cycle analysis.
I notice that New Media Lifecycle Analysis is a trademarked term. Lots of companies try to trademark a methodology or system like this, but many of them are, well, lame. Not this one. Their take on marketing is a bit more thoughtful than most, and I think that’s exactly what’s needed in today’s social-media-obsessed business climate. If you’re in charge of your company’s marketing or PR or customer-facing projects, you need smart, tailored advice — not just boilerplate social-media consulting advice. These guys seem to do what they do pretty well.
Here’s a collection of reports and other valuable documents they’ve shared on Scribd.
I think it’s well-written and provides a different take on customer service and social media. You could use it as a model for a report about your own business.
Or, why not hire them? Someone needs to pay them for all this valuable content.
We’re rolling out a new plan for companies. It’s called the “Promote” plan, and it’s designed for the little guys. The price of this new plan: $19/month.
The details are pretty straightforward. First and foremost, you can use domain aliasing. So, for example, instead of this:
http://getsatisfaction.com/company_name
You could do this:
http://support.company_name.com
Why do this? Well, you may want your customers to feel like they’re not leaving your site. Or you may simply want a specific URL to match your site’s organization scheme. Or, you may want some juiced-up SEO. This is one of the main benefits of the Promote plan. You can get enhanced search engine optimization by using domain aliasing with your Get Satisfaction community.
The Promote plan also provides for light customization. You can change the background image and colors of your Get Satisfaction commmunity section, either at your whim or to perhaps match the color scheme of your company’s Web site.
Sound good? Check out our Plans & Pricing page for more info about the new $19/month Promote plan.
Join us here as we chat about customer communities, the benefits of transparency, principles of hospitality, and what we're doing with Get Satisfaction.
You can also contact us anytime at info@getsatisfaction.com.
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