What Happened to GetSatisfaction?

Many people have noticed that I recently stopped using GetSatisfaction. I have been receiving many alarming emails wondering the reasons behind the move. This is most likely alarming because I have developed GetSatisfaction Stacks and Snippets for Rapidweaver.

Today I want to go over what I liked and disliked about GetSatisfaction. Then I will get into the reasons as to why I decided to stop using their service.

What I liked about GetSatisfaction

Get Satisfaction (referred as GS throughout this post) is a great alternative service for companies that would like to outsource their support infrastructure for their website. When I was first getting started, I saw it as a fabulous place where I could have all my customers post all of there questions, problems, and ideas. I envisioned having a single location that I could go to to track all of my bugs/issues and feature requests. Below is a short list of what I enjoyed about GS.

1. I really like how GS allows customers to four different categories: ideas, problems, questions, and praise.
2. GS allows customers to be able to associate products to a particular entry/post
3. Fabulous widgets that easily and beautifully integrates your website into your GS company page.
4. The Management View that GS provides give an awesome birds eye view of all of your open threads. When was it last updated, who made the last update, etc.
5. The GS site looks very attractive.
6. Last and definitely not least, its FREE! This is very important for someone just getting started.

What I disliked about GetSatisfaction

1. While I like that GS has the four categories, customers almost never post them in the correct place. I understand that this is not the fault of GS, however, it leads into my second pain point.
2. GS does not allow me as the owner of the company to moderate my customer’s posts. So if a customer files a feature request under a problem, you cannot change that. The only way to be able to to this, is to get a paid GS account which will set you back $1200/year.
3. The last pain point was eluded to previously. While its amazing that GS can provide a nice support forum for free, its just as shocking that the first paid account that will give you any additional benefit will cost you $100/mo!! One of the most common tasks that I wish I had was just the ability to moderate my customer’s posts. I would like to re-categorize posts as well as delete unrelated or offending posts. And that is just not worth $100/mo to me. Now GS does have a new cheaper account for $19/mo. However, this newer entry level account gives almost zero functionality. Its all about customizing the look and feel of you GS site. For $19/mo I would expect a whole lot more functionality.

Why I Stopped Using GetSatisfaction

I can answer this with one simple word: K.I.S.S! I was spending an increasing amount of time answering questions on GetSatisfaction, email, as well as the Rapidweaver forums. There was a decent amount of duplication in the questions that I was answering as well. So I decided that I needed to simplify things. Since I was already watching each post in the Rapidweaver Forums as they came it, it just made sense to utilize that. This is also a benefit to the customer because they can now tap into the amazing RW community and possibly get even better answers than what I could provide. So this in combination of my dislikes about the tool (documented above) brought me to the tipping point…

With all this said, if I did not have the Rapidweaver Forums to leverage, I would still most likely be using GS. If your company does not have a dedicated support forum already, than GetSatisfaction may be for you…