Get Satisfaction: Start-Up Makes Customer Service Top Priority

Love a company? Despise a product? Have a technical problem that needs solving? San-Fran start-up Get Satisfaction is making your customer service needs its top priority.

“Part online discussion, part FAQ, and part social network for all your products and services”, Get Satisfaction works by putting customer service back in the hands of customers. Power to the people! Anyone can submit a suggestion (user search would be super nifty), ask a question (how can I obtain a rebate on a lost iPhone?) or publicly applaud or berate a company (Company X sucks) free of charge on this public site (fee-based add ons may come later); customers and participants alike can then put their customer service hats on and chime in with answers, solutions or comments.

There are no ‘calls recorded for quality assurance’ on this site, but some organizations are actively ‘listening’ in and participating in the discussions as well. A rating system is also used to judge overall effectiveness of answers. From what I have seen, Timbuk2 is doing a really great job at getting back to its customers with useful, relevant information to their questions; answers are written in a friendly and helpful manner and, when appropriate, injected with humor. A refreshing change!

As a consumer of many products and services, I’m always excited by sites that make ‘me’ the center of the universe, so I’m pretty optimistic about Get Satisfaction. As a marketing professional, though, I’m reminded once again why it is critically important to actively monitor and participate in online discussions, respond directly and honestly to service issues or complaints and always make me and my needs your customers and their needs the heart of your business.

NOTE: How is Get Satisfaction really all that different from other online community sites or message boards? In a recent BusinessWeek article, entitled Crowdsourcing Customer Service, Thor Muller, co-founder of Get Satisfaction, describes the service’s value. According to Muller, Get Satisfaction helps companies think more like customers, makes existing discussions public, turns noise into information and gives users the ability to engage in conversations across multiple sites with a single login.

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Tagged as: Customer Service