Although not a gadget, per se, the new online community customer service platform “Satisfaction” could be a welcome balm to the travails of gadget ownership. In most ways, Satisfaction is just a web forum for customer questions and complaints—nothing too transformative there. And while Satisfaction employees have jumped into the fray to try to own discussions (in a positive way) and provide support, the real power of the service comes when official representatives from the companies log in, as well, their answers given a special mark of officiality, but are placed in-line with everyone else’s.
Because Satisfaction is “neutral ground,” the control of the customer service conversation swings back toward the users. Technologically, Satisfaction doesn’t do anything your average forum or social network does, but with an intention towards luring in official responders from a variety of companies, it has a chance to be an important part of the customer service process. It’s a chicken-and-egg thing, for sure, but they’ve got a few of the Web 2.0 companies like Twitter and Digg on board already, as well some that sell real world products.
I once had a similar idea for telephone customer support, creating a branded third-party group of highly trained agents who could be trusted to always get the job done no matter what product or service they supported, but the obvious training and setup costs never made sense. Satisfaction is a better idea, if it works: bring the official experts to the customers and record the conversation in public.
Product Page [GetSatisfaction.com]
Bonus Link: Crowdsourcing Customer Service [BusinessWeek]
