Taking sides with GetSatisfaction

GetSatisfaction is working to become the Switzerland of customer service, a neutral intermediary between warring factions of customers and companies on the CS battleground. They're off to a good start, with 413K unique visitors per month and a good set of investors (O'Reilly Alphatech Ventures, Jeff Clavier's SoftTechVC, First Round Capital).

It's an interesting experiment. I'm paying close attention, because it challenges one of the lessons I've learned: serve a single master and take a side.

At Visible Path, we tried to simultaneously serve the sales representative and the sales manager. The goals of these two audience were often different, the tensions often significant, and it was difficult to serve both. Ray Lane at Kleiner Perkins often depicted the struggle in pictures like this:

In practice, the feature that the sales manager wanted was the same feature the sales rep hated, and vice versa. In a Visible Path example, the sales manager often wanted to automatically see who the sales rep knew, while the sales rep wanted to keep these relationships confidential. Sometimes, we found a way to make both audiences happy. More often, we frustrated them both.

But GetSatisfaction isn't taking sides - instead it is extending itself equally to companies and the customers of these companies. From their about page:

Get Satisfaction is a direct connection between people and companies that fosters problem-solving, promotes sharing, and builds up relationships. Thousands of companies use this neutral space to support customers, exchange ideas, and get feedback about their products and services.

It's an especially interesting experiment because the Switzerland goal is baked into the company from the start. It's one thing to imagine a consumer-slanted site becoming more company friendly as they searched for a business model, but GetSatisfaction has targeted the Switzerland status since founding. From CEO Lane Becker's initial blog post:

Hi there! I’m Lane Becker... We started Satisfaction to help companies and customers find better ways to interact. A good company’s customers have always been more than just something to “support,” but historically that’s been the main channel through which they’ve been able to communicate. Now, thanks to the internet, customers have a lot more to say, and smart companies know they need to listen — and even (gasp!) engage.

Other companies in the crowd-sourced customer service space fall all over the spectrum:

Among them,TheConsumerist (1M uniques) and the ThePoint (23K uniques) are the most consumer-leaning, arming consumers with the weapons they need to fight. On the other end of the spectrum, CrowdSound (14K uniques), UserVoice (127K uniques), and the SalesForce IdeaExchange (unknown) are basically company tools for gleaning crowd wisdom. GetSatisfaction (413K uniques) is alone in the middle.

There's a credible logic behind GetSatisfaction's approach - the idea that consumers benefit more if companies are actually around to listen:

You’ve all seen the “I Hate” Web sites out there, right? I Hate Microsoft, Wal-Mart Blows, I Hate Starbucks?They’re all fun for, like, ten seconds. Once you realize that their cries for retail justice are essentially occurring in a vacuum, with no engagement or even acknowledgment by the companies being hated, you move on. Boring.Complaint sites are similar. They also try to harness the ire of customers to make companies step up and take notice, but, again, what company representative would dare step foot in an atmosphere like that? It’s a veritable digital lynching waiting to happen. Obviously, we’re trying to find a middle ground here at Get Satisfaction, a place where both companies and customers feel comfortable expressing their love, hate, and everything in between.

That said, it's easier said than done, and some of the tensions involved are visible:

• GetSatisfaction's new premium services allow a company to bury outdated and obsolete topics so they no longer show up in search results, remove inappropriate user content, and remove inappropriate topics and take full editorial control over their Get Satisfaction forums (a wikipedia-style change log offers some transparency into what's been moved, buried and edited)

• The GetSatisfaction Satisfaction Hall of Shame announced last year has sort of disappeared. Aggregating and promoting this list could be great from consumers - telling them what companies to avoid - but it's easy to see how this would be bad for business.

GAME THEORY AND NON-ZERO GAMES

Game theory might offer some insight here. Game theory frames zero-sum games (also called conflict games!) and non-zero games. In zero-sum games, there is a winner and a loser, a finite pool divided between two parties. In non-zero or positive-sum games, both parties can win, and win together by cooperating. The prisoner's dilemma is a popular example of a non-zero game.

In the end, I think GetSatisfaction's success may depend on whether customer service is a positive sum game. I'm not sure if it is. On one hand, it's credible to suggest that companies win when they deliver their consumer great service. On the other hand, my experience consulting for customer service organizations suggests that, at least in the short term, the economics don't support great customer service.

WRAP-UP

Wrapping up, I may be skipping a step and applying the wrong rule. Perhaps the rule is not: serve a single master and take a side. Perhaps its: define whether the game is zero-sum or non-zero. If it's zero sum, then serve a single master and take a side. If it's not, then Switzerland is still an option. I'm staying tuned and looking forward to see how GetSatisfaction fares.

Let me know what you think:

• Is customer service a zero-sum or positive sum game, or is the wrong lens to use altogether?

• Do you think GetSatisfaction can play Switzerland successfully, or do you think they will need to pick a side?

Comments

[Thor Muller]

Great post. In particular, I love how you bring up game theory as a frame for understanding the economics of customer relationships. This is exactly how we think about it, too. We fully reject the outmoded zero-sum game approach to customer service.

Our business hypothesis has multiple parts:
- good companies win the more they empower their customers to have a voice as measured in customer retention, word-of-mouth and crowdsourced help
- the traditional calculus of avoiding customer interactions is turned on its head in a Web2.0 world; providing support using social media tools actually helps reduce cost *while* increasing satisfaction
- any special company powers in the community (e.g. our premium services) can be perceived as a positive by making processes more transparent

We're true believers in this stuff, but we're also business people. And we're more bullish than ever in our future. It's working!