Imagine customers tapping the social function of the web to create their own company-specific communities --- a PR nightmare or PR opportunity?
That's a question Facebook had to recently address when several of its users enlisted a new company called Satisfaction (see their blog) to discuss issues they had with the networking site.
The focus of Satisfaction is customer service. According to Satisfaction, they are a "people-powered customer service for absolutely everything. More specifically, though, it's a place where communities of customers come together to answer each others questions, share ideas with each other or with an organization, report and solve problems and generally talk about what matters to them around these products or services."
As Tim O'Reilly pointed out: "What we found compelling about Satisfaction was their use of collective intelligence to redefine the relationship between a company and its customers."
Company sponsored forums where customers can talk and help each other is not new; more and more businesses are creating them to help customers, build loyalty and deflect expensive calls to support centers. But Satisfaction's communities meet a need for customers of companies who lack forums or want an alternative. It makes it easy for customers to set up and interact with one another within a neutral environment.
Satisfaction taps the power of crowdsourcing to give customers a collective voice. For the uninitiated, crowdsourcing involves engaging a large, undefined group of people to develop a product, solve a problem or refine a process.
A growing list of companies have bought into the idea and now employees at such companies as Google and Timbuk2 are becoming members. Thor Muller, Satisfaction's CEO and co-founder estimates that about 40 percent of Satisfaction's communities include representation from the companies being discussed.
From a PR perspective, a Satisfaction community gives companies an alternative channel to reach and converse with their customers. Ideally, companies should not have to wait for a Satisfaction community to appear. They should already be creating social networks for their customers to address service issues, announce products and solicit customer feedback. But ignoring a Satisfaction community is not only a lost opportunity to increase customer loyalty, it potentially blemishes a reputation and could threaten future sales.
Satisfaction has made the job of creating social networks easier, and companies should determine how this new twist on crowdsourcing meets their customer support needs. It will be interesting to see if Satisfactions's strategy is scalable and will be able to handle an influx of participants. While crowdsourcing is a compelling complement to an existing support structure, I would not advise companies to rely solely on crowdsourcing. Businesses come and go but continuity is critical to customer relations. Company run forums help ensure a constant dialogue with customers.
While I can't predict Satisfaction's future, using crowdsourcing as a customer support tool will force companies to assess their customer service strategy. It is yet another example of how, in an era of social media, the name of the game may not be control but the ability to adapt to new technologies. Perhaps the benefit for companies is not in how they control social networks, but how they choose to embrace them.
Later this week I will post an interview I recently did with Thor Muller.
Let me get back to you.
Technorati Tags: Satisfaction; Social Networks; Customer Service; Social Media; Forums; Community; Thor Muller;link to original post