The good folks at ReadWriteWeb quickly noticed that the new service behaves an awful lot like Get Satisfaction. Aww shucks! We’re really flattered … but more important, we’re happy for all the users who are going to get great support from the new system.

If I try to do some mind reading for a moment, I have a feeling that the scalability-obsessed GoogleBot realized two things:

1. No matter how often you update your FAQs, or how well your search algorithm works, the machine can’t always answer users’ questions. It’s a “long-tail” problem, with the tail being defined by how rapidly the knowledge base needs to change.

2. Forums (or Google Groups, in this case) are just too uncontrollable and chaotic to effectively crowd-source customer support, and the answers — if they are there — are just too hard to find. It’s a structural problem that can’t be solved without an “outcomes orientation” built into the system.

These are problems that Get Satisfaction began solving more than a year ago, so here’s the part where we shamelessly market ourselves: If you have a company that wants to provide high-touch, highly scalable customer support while keeping costs low — then be like Google and use our service.

It’s great to see the Googlers jumping on the customer-service bandwagon!

In case you missed it — or wouldn’t throw down the cash for entrance to the full convention — we’ve collected the slides from our two biggest presentations of the week.

First, here are the slides from Lane and Thor’s presentation, Customer Service is the New Marketing:

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And here are the slides from Scott’s talk, The How of OAuth, about that scrappy up-and-coming OAuth protocol:

Thanks to everyone who showed up and asked all those great questions.

Plus, thanks to everyone who attended Cameron’s OAuth Hackathon on Saturday. We had a huge turnout, especially considering it was such a stunningly sunny Spring day. Thanks for spending it indoors with us!