7 ms·

37signals' follow up on "Get Satisfaction, Or Else..."

112 points by steamboiler 18y ago

pchristensen 18y ago
I'm impressed with how Jason handled it. GS made some changes that sounded good enough to me, but after reading this post, I'm firmly on 37signals side. GetSatisfaction is a good idea but it's presented very deceptively and has the potential to hurt customers as much as it helps.
- mdasen 18y ago
  The problem is that morality comes into competition with money in this situation. The more legitimate and official and connected to the company Get Satisfaction makes their pages look, the more customers are going to use them as a way to try to get official-ish support. The more users use them as a way to get support, the more pressure there is on the company to use it as a support mechanism - whether they want to or not. Even beyond that, Get Satisfaction is essentially operating an unofficial forum that a company can pay to co-opt. Their paid plans specifically say that you get to shape the conversation. How Orwellian! So, you'll let users post bad things about my company on your service unless I start paying you in which case I get to decide what gets posted? That's just gross on both sides. And, of course, the more official it looks, the more it matters when people are posting bad things. Plus, once a company starts endorsing it, more customers will use it meaning that they can never stop paying. There's a huge moral hazard there. If their business plan were to offer an unofficial support system for all companies, that would be great. If their business plan were to offer a product companies could sign up for to outsource their support IT infrastructure, that would be great. But their business plan is to offer the first in the hopes that companies will feel pressure to do the second. EDIT: I want to clarify that I don't think Get Satisfaction is maliciously plotting in this way. I'm guessing that their plotting is to give customers the best support channels possible - in cases that they can be official, that means being official, but in other cases, it means giving customers the chance to unofficially talk about the company/products. However, it also means that their profits become tied to whether companies feel pressure to make Get Satisfaction an official support mechanism and the more people that use it because it looks official-ish, the more their profits are likely to be.
  - batasrki 18y ago
    As I said in a comment just posted, the user who wanted satisfaction, no pun intended, created that page on GetSatisfaction forums. If anything, the failure was technical, since GS did not notify 37Signals that a page has been created for their company. Matter of fact, same can be said for any third-party service that lets users create pages/forums for companies they have beef with.
    - mdasen 18y ago
      See, but most third-party services aren't also trying to sell themselves as a legitimate, official thing too. Sure, I can post links to Amazon releases here, but HN isn't trying to offer itself to Amazon as "pay $X and you'll have your press releases up here" at the same time. The difference is that anyone can post things on here and there's nothing any company can do about it. I could post, "Amazon's new MapReduce is a plot to steal my data" and people could vote it up. Likewise, I could post that on GS, but it's different: GS then has this option for Amazon to stop comments/posts they don't like (for a fee). That's the difference. Most third party sites have this: "we'll let users post bad things about you". GS has this: "we'll let people post bad things about you. . .unless you pay us." That's morally hazardous.
      - batasrki 18y ago
        Yes, but had they not had their pages looking semi-official, there would be no reason to use GS, now would there? As I've said somewhere lower in the comments, two things would have made a world of difference here. 1. GS should have had an e-mail notification system in place. They should notify any company, much less 37Signals, that there's been a question posted on their forums. Same can be said for UserVoice and any other third-party site who wants to get into this game. Had they notified the support people at 37Signals, none of this would have come to bear. 2. Jason, no matter how angry he is/was, should have NOT used a public forum for dealing with this issue immediately. Had he talked to GS's admins/support through e-mail privately, there'd be no need for this hubbub. If the e-mail route did not work, then I agree with denouncing GS publicly. All I'm alluding to here is maturity. There are good ways of handling issues and then there are bad ones. Even if Jason has a good point about GS's business conduct, it's lost, not just on me, based solely on his approach to it.
- saturdayplace 18y ago
  I wondered why Jason didn't just contact GS directly with his concerns. Even if his customers might be confused by GS, Jason knows who/what they are and could of raised his grievances with them directly. Instead he published some serious accusations on his widely-read blog knowing it'd get a lot of buzz. I imagine this whole story could've played out a little better if instead of jumping the gun and shouting 'malice' he'd've taken some extra time to work things out directly with GS.
  - rimantas 18y ago
    Because acting this way assures that the problem will be noticed and acted upon. Private letter would achieve nothing at worst and maybe some tweaks to 37signals page on GS at best. Customers of the other companies would get the same confusing message making it easy to take GS pages as official support. As you can see I don't believe in GetSatissfaction "mistakes". All the design decisions (which eventually led to the trouble with 37s) they took look very logical.
    - tptacek 18y ago
      Also, because maybe Fried doesn't give a shit about whether GS gets their act together (as long as they fix the page), but does care that the 100 other startups that have the bright idea of grabbing 37signals logos have some idea that they're going to get smacked down for doing that.
      - gry 18y ago
        I wonder how the discussion would've been had Jason used GS' site itself to note concerns. It'd be a sanctioned and public forum. Would people be discussing public vs private airing of grievances? Probably not.
        Semiapies 18y ago
        One of Fried's original points was that they didn't want to run a duplicate support site just because another company wanted to make money off of them.
Brushfire 18y ago
Personally, I'm more on the side of Get Satisfaction on this one. There are some valid points about how GS is doing things, granted, but Jason at 37Signals seems to have problems with the entire concept of their business/service. I dont. I think its fantastic. I think it puts the impetus on companies to either really flush out their support processes, or to find a vendor that will do it for them. That said, I think the 'Unofficial' notification does need to be more obvious.
- gsmaverick 18y ago
  How can you be? I mean GS is making the 37signals page look really official and making their customers mad because 37signals isn't answering their questions. They are clearly in the wrong. This has nothing to do with support processes.
  - Brushfire 18y ago
    I said previously that I think the 'Unofficial' needs to be more noticeable. Once that is corrected, I dont see it as a huge issue. People are not idiots, but they are generally frustrated about support options. If there are tons of people using GS's unofficial support forums instead of your own, that tells you that your system is broken, and needs to be repaired.
    - pxlpshr 18y ago
      If there are tons of people using GS's unofficial support forums instead of your own, that tells you that your system is broken, and needs to be repaired. SNAP!
      - pxlpshr 18y ago
        Ok ok, I should have provided more substance in my post. Thank you for spanking me HN. :) Certainly I don't feel 37signals customer support is broken, but there is a point in that quote: Would it have really been that difficult for Jason to have his people monitor a customer-created Get Satisfaction page too? Honestly, he's probably wasted at least two full work days writing these posts — which could have been direct-from-the-founder responses to a lot of customers while he picked up the phone and had a talk with GS team. After all, all the link-backs from GS to 37signals is only going to boost their SEO overtime. There are a lot of benefits to GS that 37signals ignores in favor of an ego-driven tantrum that has turned me off yet again. For the record, I am both a 37signals and GS customer.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
brm 18y ago
Some things here still don't jive... 37Signals customer support person (Sarah Hatter) just wrote a comment stating that they've known about this for a year and that she's been friends with the founder of GetSatisfaction for a long time. I don't see how that leads to angry blog post to 80k people... What it really sounds like is Jason was in a bad mood and now they're doing damage control
Jem 18y ago
I've stayed out this for the most part because neither company are of interest to me, but Tom's comment on this follow up post is interesting. It's almost as if 37signals knew about the site, made an attempt at using it and then couldn't be bothered to continue - instead preferring to wait a while and cause a little controversy (possibly for their own benefit). That's not to say that GS were/are in the right, but why wait nearly a year to start a conversation on this?
- unalone 18y ago
  Do you always follow such a logical path to everything you do? I know I've gotten in situations where I've reacted to bad things way after it might have been necessary, because things build up to a bottleneck. And 37signals prides itself on being a small company where the individual people matter. They aren't professional in the smooth-and-polished-and-impregnable sense, and while that leads to some immaturity, it makes their company seem more human. So I doubt there's conscious scandal-making effort here: they don't strike me as cynical enough to work like that. http://getsatisfaction.com/37signals/topics/customer_services_sucks_totally_unresponsive http://getsatisfaction.com/37signals/topics/customer_service... That's from 10 months ago. The guy's mad, they respond (on GetSatisfaction, mind you), and the guy gets happier. But they don't keep using GS, because they do have their own support forum for this. Apparently they got more upset responses over the past year. So the first one wasn't terrible, but when you keep getting people hating you for poor customer service, eventually you hit a point where you flip and yell at GS for not providing a good intuitive solution.
  - brm 18y ago
    I don't think anyone said there was a scandal in the works here, but in the realm of much ado about nothing... some things dont seem to add up and they're seemingly less human and honest when they start having stories that don't match for pr and damage control purposes... thats big corporation stuff just as much as it is small company with personality (especially now that that personality is turning towards full of themselves)
    - 18y ago
mhp 18y ago
Another problem not mentioned is this business model doesn't scale well for the companies it targets. It isn't just Get Satisfaction's pages you have to check... it's UserVoice's as well, and I'm sure there are others. If people have a problem or a feature request and I don't choose to use those businesses, shouldn't it be the burden of those business (and not me) to make that clear to my customers if they inadvertantly end up there? Otherwise I have to sign up with them, or at least check their sites regularly...
- Semiapies 18y ago
  That's the blackmail aspect for this niche, if not properly and ethically handled. "Hey, we've set up a page to catch unhappy customers. Better pay us time and/or money or we'll get them good and pissed-off at you."
- simonk 18y ago
  Most places like Uservoice only the site owner can sign-up.
Semiapies 18y ago
This follow-up by Rundle gives a good dissection of the GS page design. He doesn't even mention the "Popular products & services from 37signals", where GS uses 37S's product logos as category links. Nor does he mention the fact that one of the two bits of GS branding on the page is a "Powered by" icon that an unfamiliar person would mistake for server software - or a service. Go to that page, and the word "Unofficial" and a small-print disclaimer are your only tip-offs that this is a "community". The bad part of it all is that there's no need or justification at all for designing a customer support page that looks that official and target-company-branded if it isn't. There's no call for using another company's product logos as category links. As much as GS supporters laud that company as being a great bunch of people, I have trouble coming up for an honest purpose for these details. I do note that they appear to have pulled down 37S's logo from the heading, though they've conspicuously left it up for other companies that don't use their support ( http://getsatisfaction.com/ups http://getsatisfaction.com/ups ).
calambrac 18y ago
The frustrating thing about this for me is that I liked Get Satisfaction. It's a really well-done site, for the most part, and it was easy and convenient. I had never used it deeply, and only for services that were actually using it as their primary support channel, so I didn't even realize that they had pages for companies that hadn't signed up with them. All the GS pages look pretty much identical, save for a few logos. After a while, you blow past the repeated boilerplate on each page, and you just use the functionality. I was one of the people who would never have noticed the small distinctions between official and unofficial; I would have thought any GS page was sanctioned by the company, because frankly, it never would have even entered my mind that GS would so brazenly try to unilaterally pose as a company's support channel. This is exactly the kind of thing that trademarks are intended to protect against. I hate to say it, but all the hand-wringing over whether 37s was being rude by dropping a bomb of a blog post, is kind of silly. It could have very legitimately been a bomb of a lawsuit.
- jerf 18y ago
  "It could have very legitimately been a bomb of a lawsuit." I agree, there's a very strong case for a trademark lawsuit. What's more, I think I can almost guarantee that some other company will file a lawsuit if Get Satisfaction doesn't clean up their act. And I'd bet on whoever files the lawsuit, too. This is quite clearly trademark infringement, from my non-lawyer-but-spent-time-studying-this point of view.
  - geebee 18y ago
    Some people actually need to lose, big, in order to gain introspection. I remember Steven King on NPR talking about the guy who badly injured him in a car accident. He was frustrated that the courts were lenient, because he said the guy continued to seem in denial about the connection between his actions and the damage he had caused. Apparently, this guy had a history of reckless driving (Steven King had been walking on the side of the road when he was hit), but he continued to view these accidents as bad luck, circumstance, things happen, and so forth. When asked what he wanted to see from the courts, Steven King said he wasn't looking for vengeance, but he wanted to see the guy placed into a situation where he'd be forced to finally confront his actions and fully acknowledge his role in the damage he had caused. Now, obviously GetSatisfaction is not guilty of something as serious as physical harm. But I still hear the same lack of introspection, the same denial, that I think Steve King was referring to. They are still calling this a "learning experience", an "error", something to "discuss and improve on." Their tone alternates between defensive, accusatory, and chirpy. This shows a complete lack of introspection and self-awareness. It's alien to most, but some people require a true legal defeat to develop introspection, something that strips away every final defense and puts them in a position where they have no recourse but to truly and deeply acknowledge their behavior. As long as 37Signals engages with these folks in a blog vs blog thing, they're going to see this as a he said, she said, where there are good points to be made on each side. Personally, I don't get any indication they recognize how manipulative, deceptive, and wrong their actions really are.
batasrki 18y ago
I don't understand why this is top of HN. Sure, GetSatisfaction screwed up their text on one of their badges, but that shouldn't have been cause for Jason to go off on a rant. Also, I think that GetSatisfaction could have notified 37Signals when the page got created as per this quote from Sarah: "customer himself pointed me to the GS page he had created to ask 37signals a question". However, these are all issues that could have been handled differently, most notably NOT being aired out to the general public. If Jason Fried thought that GS has "blackmailed" him, isn't he stooping to their level then by publicly denouncing their service, thereby essentially blackmailing them into action? Seriously, let's all be adults.
- mechanical_fish 18y ago
  I don't understand why this is top of HN. Because apparently a lot of people need an elementary lesson in trademark law and the reason it exists. Of course, you don't have to learn about trademark law before you build your startup. You could always learn about it after you've constructed and deployed an automated system for violating it.
  - batasrki 18y ago
    Of course, had there been a bug in your "automated system" and you did not intend on violating the law in the first place, you'd still want to be publicly embarrassed just because the person who's angry with you did not have the manners to do it privately?
    - tptacek 18y ago
      Every time you try to make GS out to be the victim here, you provide another hook for us to keep debating this. Look at the comment scores and the balance of comments. GS isn't winning this debate. In fact, not only are they not winning it, but 37signals has now also managed to impress a lot of us with Sarah Hatter's customer service skills, which builds a case for doing this work in-house. There's something to learn from this, and it's not trademark law --- it's how not to handle a PR crisis.
sscheper 18y ago
I'm glad Jason stuck to his guns and didn't back down. He's right.
dpnewman 18y ago
I think the question of "honesty" in business is always more complex than we'd like it to be. It's amazing how powerful is the pull to make a business model "work". And very hard to balance that with being conscious of the fairness of it. I very much like how Jason broke down the various aspects of what "customer service" can be. I think this incident is a great reminder, that we have to be incredibly diligent in balancing the pursuit of our business goals, with creating truly healthy communication and commercial ecosystems.
- Semiapies 18y ago
  Yes. I think this whole thing has been valuable in terms of discussion, which is why I'm glad Fried actually took things out into the realm of open, transparent communication in his first post.
bonaldi 18y ago
The point of Get Satisfaction is to give people a way to corral ignorant and unresponsive companies into taking action. This a good thing. Concomitant with doing that, though, is a bit of extra work for responsive companies who are already good at support. Fried's demands about unofficial badging and so on would destroy the good that GS does. If he can emblazon the page with UNOFFICIAL and LOOK HERE FOR SUPPORT, then what's to stop ShittyCorp from doing the same and pointing people to their own useless support pages? To an extent, GS has to subvert the official support pages, otherwise it doesn't work. Fried's real argument is "this whole business model annoys me", but instead of just admitting that, he's going on about badges and design.
- inklesspen 18y ago
  So, you're saying 37signals should expend their own energy to help GetSatisfaction's business model succeed, simply because their competitors don't have good support? Sounds asinine to me.
- dave_au 18y ago
  If GS really highlighted the unofficial part and also linked to official support pages then companies with good support and / or people who are neutral on whether the company is ignorant or unresponsive get the check out the official support forums first and won't be confused about the nature of the GS page. People who have already something against the support offered by ShittyCorp will stick around and use the unofficial support provided on GS - why on earth would they follow a link that they know would be unhelpful? It's only a problem if you assume a staggering amount of stupidity on the part of the target market. As long as ShittyCorp doesn't have the option of making the GS page automatically redirect to the useless support pages all is good.
jhawk28 18y ago
The flip side is that if a company is to create a good QA site for an another company...Wouldn't they want it to be so official looking that the user would not be able to see the difference?
sachinag 18y ago
We have an "official" page on GS. But I am astounded at how good their SEO is: [dawdle support]: http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+support&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+support&ie=utf-8&#... [dawdle help]: http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+help&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+help&ie=utf-8&... But this is pretty old hat for online retailers: [dawdle reviews]: http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+reviews&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+reviews&ie=utf-8&#... I totally, totally get why 37signals is upset - but, sadly, what GS is doing isn't new. I'm envious that Jason has a big enough soapbox to get things changed; we certainly don't. That's why I'm thrilled he's being as public as he is.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- trapper 18y ago
  Is it just me or was getsatisfaction nowhere to be seen on those links? If so, go google!
  - mahmud 18y ago
    Yep, google seems to have done its deed.
    - sachinag 18y ago
      Wow, you're not kidding. (Now, the Google dance has hurt us negatively, but wow.)
tptacek 18y ago
Check the comments out. This started because a "very, very angry customer" yelled at them about their questions not getting answered. Still on the fence about GS?
Semiapies 18y ago
One nice thing from Thor Muller in the comments: "Very clear feedback, which we’re grateful for and will take to the drawing board. And yes, we are as serious as can be about removing all confusion. As we’re in the midst of significant design effort, we will see changes continue to hit the site regularly. It should be no surprise that we welcome public feedback about it as it happens. My apologies again." Yes, that's what they should have been saying all along instead of playing the poor-misunderstood-and-bullied-community-site card. However, they may be taking matters seriously enough to actually fix their approach.
- shiranaihito 18y ago
  However, they may be taking matters seriously enough to actually fix their approach. Or they may be just throwing up smoke and mirrors. If they stopped doing their thing in an underhanded way, would they have much of a business left?
quellhorst 18y ago
I was considering using Get Satisfaction until I found out they would create pages for companies that hadn't asked for them. Even if the service is good, I don't support companies that don't match my values.
gsiener 18y ago
So do I go to 37signals' website for support on GS now?
WebTom 18y ago
Get Satisfaction should stop creating support pages for companies that HAVE NOT SIGNED UP . That is the end of the problem and the ONLY WAY TO GO . 37 Signals isn’t creating Basecamp accounts for companies that have not signed up, is it? Get Satisfaction business models is very similar to Yelp = Extortion 2.0
- daleharvey 18y ago
  somewhere around 95% of the 37s fanboys comments I have read in between the last 3 threads are seemingly oblivious to what get satisfaction actually provides 1. there are the small companies who would like and out of the box solution for their support to save them time / money 2. there are the large companies that have terribly supported products and the community generally has to replace them, their official support channels are usually private (so they only help 1 person), or very heavily moderated to the point where they are just a pr exercise and of very little use. (remember creative?) the idea that companies can ban users from provided the support that they should rightly be doing themselves is just plain ridiculous
- axod 18y ago
  Right. and Google shound not index pages of websites that have not signed up! Google even use your name in their search results!

112 points by steamboiler 18y ago

I'm impressed with how Jason handled it. GS made some changes that sounded good enough to me, but after reading this post, I'm firmly on 37signals side. GetSatisfaction is a good idea but it's presented very deceptively and has the potential to hurt customers as much as it helps.

mdasen 18y ago
The problem is that morality comes into competition with money in this situation. The more legitimate and official and connected to the company Get Satisfaction makes their pages look, the more customers are going to use them as a way to try to get official-ish support. The more users use them as a way to get support, the more pressure there is on the company to use it as a support mechanism - whether they want to or not. Even beyond that, Get Satisfaction is essentially operating an unofficial forum that a company can pay to co-opt. Their paid plans specifically say that you get to shape the conversation. How Orwellian! So, you'll let users post bad things about my company on your service unless I start paying you in which case I get to decide what gets posted? That's just gross on both sides. And, of course, the more official it looks, the more it matters when people are posting bad things. Plus, once a company starts endorsing it, more customers will use it meaning that they can never stop paying. There's a huge moral hazard there. If their business plan were to offer an unofficial support system for all companies, that would be great. If their business plan were to offer a product companies could sign up for to outsource their support IT infrastructure, that would be great. But their business plan is to offer the first in the hopes that companies will feel pressure to do the second. EDIT: I want to clarify that I don't think Get Satisfaction is maliciously plotting in this way. I'm guessing that their plotting is to give customers the best support channels possible - in cases that they can be official, that means being official, but in other cases, it means giving customers the chance to unofficially talk about the company/products. However, it also means that their profits become tied to whether companies feel pressure to make Get Satisfaction an official support mechanism and the more people that use it because it looks official-ish, the more their profits are likely to be.
- batasrki 18y ago
  As I said in a comment just posted, the user who wanted satisfaction, no pun intended, created that page on GetSatisfaction forums. If anything, the failure was technical, since GS did not notify 37Signals that a page has been created for their company. Matter of fact, same can be said for any third-party service that lets users create pages/forums for companies they have beef with.
  - mdasen 18y ago
    See, but most third-party services aren't also trying to sell themselves as a legitimate, official thing too. Sure, I can post links to Amazon releases here, but HN isn't trying to offer itself to Amazon as "pay $X and you'll have your press releases up here" at the same time. The difference is that anyone can post things on here and there's nothing any company can do about it. I could post, "Amazon's new MapReduce is a plot to steal my data" and people could vote it up. Likewise, I could post that on GS, but it's different: GS then has this option for Amazon to stop comments/posts they don't like (for a fee). That's the difference. Most third party sites have this: "we'll let users post bad things about you". GS has this: "we'll let people post bad things about you. . .unless you pay us." That's morally hazardous.
    - batasrki 18y ago
      Yes, but had they not had their pages looking semi-official, there would be no reason to use GS, now would there? As I've said somewhere lower in the comments, two things would have made a world of difference here. 1. GS should have had an e-mail notification system in place. They should notify any company, much less 37Signals, that there's been a question posted on their forums. Same can be said for UserVoice and any other third-party site who wants to get into this game. Had they notified the support people at 37Signals, none of this would have come to bear. 2. Jason, no matter how angry he is/was, should have NOT used a public forum for dealing with this issue immediately. Had he talked to GS's admins/support through e-mail privately, there'd be no need for this hubbub. If the e-mail route did not work, then I agree with denouncing GS publicly. All I'm alluding to here is maturity. There are good ways of handling issues and then there are bad ones. Even if Jason has a good point about GS's business conduct, it's lost, not just on me, based solely on his approach to it.
saturdayplace 18y ago
I wondered why Jason didn't just contact GS directly with his concerns. Even if his customers might be confused by GS, Jason knows who/what they are and could of raised his grievances with them directly. Instead he published some serious accusations on his widely-read blog knowing it'd get a lot of buzz. I imagine this whole story could've played out a little better if instead of jumping the gun and shouting 'malice' he'd've taken some extra time to work things out directly with GS.
- rimantas 18y ago
  Because acting this way assures that the problem will be noticed and acted upon. Private letter would achieve nothing at worst and maybe some tweaks to 37signals page on GS at best. Customers of the other companies would get the same confusing message making it easy to take GS pages as official support. As you can see I don't believe in GetSatissfaction "mistakes". All the design decisions (which eventually led to the trouble with 37s) they took look very logical.
  - tptacek 18y ago
    Also, because maybe Fried doesn't give a shit about whether GS gets their act together (as long as they fix the page), but does care that the 100 other startups that have the bright idea of grabbing 37signals logos have some idea that they're going to get smacked down for doing that.
    - gry 18y ago
      I wonder how the discussion would've been had Jason used GS' site itself to note concerns. It'd be a sanctioned and public forum. Would people be discussing public vs private airing of grievances? Probably not.
      - Semiapies 18y ago
        One of Fried's original points was that they didn't want to run a duplicate support site just because another company wanted to make money off of them.

Brushfire 18y ago

Personally, I'm more on the side of Get Satisfaction on this one. There are some valid points about how GS is doing things, granted, but Jason at 37Signals seems to have problems with the entire concept of their business/service. I dont. I think its fantastic. I think it puts the impetus on companies to either really flush out their support processes, or to find a vendor that will do it for them. That said, I think the 'Unofficial' notification does need to be more obvious.

gsmaverick 18y ago
How can you be? I mean GS is making the 37signals page look really official and making their customers mad because 37signals isn't answering their questions. They are clearly in the wrong. This has nothing to do with support processes.
- Brushfire 18y ago
  I said previously that I think the 'Unofficial' needs to be more noticeable. Once that is corrected, I dont see it as a huge issue. People are not idiots, but they are generally frustrated about support options. If there are tons of people using GS's unofficial support forums instead of your own, that tells you that your system is broken, and needs to be repaired.
  - pxlpshr 18y ago
    If there are tons of people using GS's unofficial support forums instead of your own, that tells you that your system is broken, and needs to be repaired. SNAP!
    - pxlpshr 18y ago
      Ok ok, I should have provided more substance in my post. Thank you for spanking me HN. :) Certainly I don't feel 37signals customer support is broken, but there is a point in that quote: Would it have really been that difficult for Jason to have his people monitor a customer-created Get Satisfaction page too? Honestly, he's probably wasted at least two full work days writing these posts — which could have been direct-from-the-founder responses to a lot of customers while he picked up the phone and had a talk with GS team. After all, all the link-backs from GS to 37signals is only going to boost their SEO overtime. There are a lot of benefits to GS that 37signals ignores in favor of an ego-driven tantrum that has turned me off yet again. For the record, I am both a 37signals and GS customer.

deleted 18y ago

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brm 18y ago

Some things here still don't jive... 37Signals customer support person (Sarah Hatter) just wrote a comment stating that they've known about this for a year and that she's been friends with the founder of GetSatisfaction for a long time. I don't see how that leads to angry blog post to 80k people... What it really sounds like is Jason was in a bad mood and now they're doing damage control

Jem 18y ago

I've stayed out this for the most part because neither company are of interest to me, but Tom's comment on this follow up post is interesting. It's almost as if 37signals knew about the site, made an attempt at using it and then couldn't be bothered to continue - instead preferring to wait a while and cause a little controversy (possibly for their own benefit). That's not to say that GS were/are in the right, but why wait nearly a year to start a conversation on this?

unalone 18y ago
Do you always follow such a logical path to everything you do? I know I've gotten in situations where I've reacted to bad things way after it might have been necessary, because things build up to a bottleneck. And 37signals prides itself on being a small company where the individual people matter. They aren't professional in the smooth-and-polished-and-impregnable sense, and while that leads to some immaturity, it makes their company seem more human. So I doubt there's conscious scandal-making effort here: they don't strike me as cynical enough to work like that. http://getsatisfaction.com/37signals/topics/customer_services_sucks_totally_unresponsive http://getsatisfaction.com/37signals/topics/customer_service... That's from 10 months ago. The guy's mad, they respond (on GetSatisfaction, mind you), and the guy gets happier. But they don't keep using GS, because they do have their own support forum for this. Apparently they got more upset responses over the past year. So the first one wasn't terrible, but when you keep getting people hating you for poor customer service, eventually you hit a point where you flip and yell at GS for not providing a good intuitive solution.
- brm 18y ago
  I don't think anyone said there was a scandal in the works here, but in the realm of much ado about nothing... some things dont seem to add up and they're seemingly less human and honest when they start having stories that don't match for pr and damage control purposes... thats big corporation stuff just as much as it is small company with personality (especially now that that personality is turning towards full of themselves)
  - 18y ago

mhp 18y ago

Another problem not mentioned is this business model doesn't scale well for the companies it targets. It isn't just Get Satisfaction's pages you have to check... it's UserVoice's as well, and I'm sure there are others. If people have a problem or a feature request and I don't choose to use those businesses, shouldn't it be the burden of those business (and not me) to make that clear to my customers if they inadvertantly end up there? Otherwise I have to sign up with them, or at least check their sites regularly...

Semiapies 18y ago
That's the blackmail aspect for this niche, if not properly and ethically handled. "Hey, we've set up a page to catch unhappy customers. Better pay us time and/or money or we'll get them good and pissed-off at you."
simonk 18y ago
Most places like Uservoice only the site owner can sign-up.

Semiapies 18y ago

This follow-up by Rundle gives a good dissection of the GS page design. He doesn't even mention the "Popular products & services from 37signals", where GS uses 37S's product logos as category links. Nor does he mention the fact that one of the two bits of GS branding on the page is a "Powered by" icon that an unfamiliar person would mistake for server software - or a service. Go to that page, and the word "Unofficial" and a small-print disclaimer are your only tip-offs that this is a "community". The bad part of it all is that there's no need or justification at all for designing a customer support page that looks that official and target-company-branded if it isn't. There's no call for using another company's product logos as category links. As much as GS supporters laud that company as being a great bunch of people, I have trouble coming up for an honest purpose for these details. I do note that they appear to have pulled down 37S's logo from the heading, though they've conspicuously left it up for other companies that don't use their support ( http://getsatisfaction.com/ups http://getsatisfaction.com/ups ).

calambrac 18y ago

The frustrating thing about this for me is that I liked Get Satisfaction. It's a really well-done site, for the most part, and it was easy and convenient. I had never used it deeply, and only for services that were actually using it as their primary support channel, so I didn't even realize that they had pages for companies that hadn't signed up with them. All the GS pages look pretty much identical, save for a few logos. After a while, you blow past the repeated boilerplate on each page, and you just use the functionality. I was one of the people who would never have noticed the small distinctions between official and unofficial; I would have thought any GS page was sanctioned by the company, because frankly, it never would have even entered my mind that GS would so brazenly try to unilaterally pose as a company's support channel. This is exactly the kind of thing that trademarks are intended to protect against. I hate to say it, but all the hand-wringing over whether 37s was being rude by dropping a bomb of a blog post, is kind of silly. It could have very legitimately been a bomb of a lawsuit.

jerf 18y ago
"It could have very legitimately been a bomb of a lawsuit." I agree, there's a very strong case for a trademark lawsuit. What's more, I think I can almost guarantee that some other company will file a lawsuit if Get Satisfaction doesn't clean up their act. And I'd bet on whoever files the lawsuit, too. This is quite clearly trademark infringement, from my non-lawyer-but-spent-time-studying-this point of view.
- geebee 18y ago
  Some people actually need to lose, big, in order to gain introspection. I remember Steven King on NPR talking about the guy who badly injured him in a car accident. He was frustrated that the courts were lenient, because he said the guy continued to seem in denial about the connection between his actions and the damage he had caused. Apparently, this guy had a history of reckless driving (Steven King had been walking on the side of the road when he was hit), but he continued to view these accidents as bad luck, circumstance, things happen, and so forth. When asked what he wanted to see from the courts, Steven King said he wasn't looking for vengeance, but he wanted to see the guy placed into a situation where he'd be forced to finally confront his actions and fully acknowledge his role in the damage he had caused. Now, obviously GetSatisfaction is not guilty of something as serious as physical harm. But I still hear the same lack of introspection, the same denial, that I think Steve King was referring to. They are still calling this a "learning experience", an "error", something to "discuss and improve on." Their tone alternates between defensive, accusatory, and chirpy. This shows a complete lack of introspection and self-awareness. It's alien to most, but some people require a true legal defeat to develop introspection, something that strips away every final defense and puts them in a position where they have no recourse but to truly and deeply acknowledge their behavior. As long as 37Signals engages with these folks in a blog vs blog thing, they're going to see this as a he said, she said, where there are good points to be made on each side. Personally, I don't get any indication they recognize how manipulative, deceptive, and wrong their actions really are.

batasrki 18y ago

I don't understand why this is top of HN. Sure, GetSatisfaction screwed up their text on one of their badges, but that shouldn't have been cause for Jason to go off on a rant. Also, I think that GetSatisfaction could have notified 37Signals when the page got created as per this quote from Sarah: "customer himself pointed me to the GS page he had created to ask 37signals a question". However, these are all issues that could have been handled differently, most notably NOT being aired out to the general public. If Jason Fried thought that GS has "blackmailed" him, isn't he stooping to their level then by publicly denouncing their service, thereby essentially blackmailing them into action? Seriously, let's all be adults.

mechanical_fish 18y ago
I don't understand why this is top of HN. Because apparently a lot of people need an elementary lesson in trademark law and the reason it exists. Of course, you don't have to learn about trademark law before you build your startup. You could always learn about it after you've constructed and deployed an automated system for violating it.
- batasrki 18y ago
  Of course, had there been a bug in your "automated system" and you did not intend on violating the law in the first place, you'd still want to be publicly embarrassed just because the person who's angry with you did not have the manners to do it privately?
  - tptacek 18y ago
    Every time you try to make GS out to be the victim here, you provide another hook for us to keep debating this. Look at the comment scores and the balance of comments. GS isn't winning this debate. In fact, not only are they not winning it, but 37signals has now also managed to impress a lot of us with Sarah Hatter's customer service skills, which builds a case for doing this work in-house. There's something to learn from this, and it's not trademark law --- it's how not to handle a PR crisis.

sscheper 18y ago

I'm glad Jason stuck to his guns and didn't back down. He's right.

dpnewman 18y ago

I think the question of "honesty" in business is always more complex than we'd like it to be. It's amazing how powerful is the pull to make a business model "work". And very hard to balance that with being conscious of the fairness of it. I very much like how Jason broke down the various aspects of what "customer service" can be. I think this incident is a great reminder, that we have to be incredibly diligent in balancing the pursuit of our business goals, with creating truly healthy communication and commercial ecosystems.

Semiapies 18y ago
Yes. I think this whole thing has been valuable in terms of discussion, which is why I'm glad Fried actually took things out into the realm of open, transparent communication in his first post.

bonaldi 18y ago

The point of Get Satisfaction is to give people a way to corral ignorant and unresponsive companies into taking action. This a good thing. Concomitant with doing that, though, is a bit of extra work for responsive companies who are already good at support. Fried's demands about unofficial badging and so on would destroy the good that GS does. If he can emblazon the page with UNOFFICIAL and LOOK HERE FOR SUPPORT, then what's to stop ShittyCorp from doing the same and pointing people to their own useless support pages? To an extent, GS has to subvert the official support pages, otherwise it doesn't work. Fried's real argument is "this whole business model annoys me", but instead of just admitting that, he's going on about badges and design.

inklesspen 18y ago
So, you're saying 37signals should expend their own energy to help GetSatisfaction's business model succeed, simply because their competitors don't have good support? Sounds asinine to me.
dave_au 18y ago
If GS really highlighted the unofficial part and also linked to official support pages then companies with good support and / or people who are neutral on whether the company is ignorant or unresponsive get the check out the official support forums first and won't be confused about the nature of the GS page. People who have already something against the support offered by ShittyCorp will stick around and use the unofficial support provided on GS - why on earth would they follow a link that they know would be unhelpful? It's only a problem if you assume a staggering amount of stupidity on the part of the target market. As long as ShittyCorp doesn't have the option of making the GS page automatically redirect to the useless support pages all is good.

jhawk28 18y ago

The flip side is that if a company is to create a good QA site for an another company...Wouldn't they want it to be so official looking that the user would not be able to see the difference?

sachinag 18y ago

We have an "official" page on GS. But I am astounded at how good their SEO is: [dawdle support]: http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+support&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+support&ie=utf-8&#... [dawdle help]: http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+help&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+help&ie=utf-8&... But this is pretty old hat for online retailers: [dawdle reviews]: http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+reviews&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+reviews&ie=utf-8&#... I totally, totally get why 37signals is upset - but, sadly, what GS is doing isn't new. I'm envious that Jason has a big enough soapbox to get things changed; we certainly don't. That's why I'm thrilled he's being as public as he is.

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
trapper 18y ago
Is it just me or was getsatisfaction nowhere to be seen on those links? If so, go google!
- mahmud 18y ago
  Yep, google seems to have done its deed.
  - sachinag 18y ago
    Wow, you're not kidding. (Now, the Google dance has hurt us negatively, but wow.)

tptacek 18y ago

Check the comments out. This started because a "very, very angry customer" yelled at them about their questions not getting answered. Still on the fence about GS?

Semiapies 18y ago

One nice thing from Thor Muller in the comments: "Very clear feedback, which we’re grateful for and will take to the drawing board. And yes, we are as serious as can be about removing all confusion. As we’re in the midst of significant design effort, we will see changes continue to hit the site regularly. It should be no surprise that we welcome public feedback about it as it happens. My apologies again." Yes, that's what they should have been saying all along instead of playing the poor-misunderstood-and-bullied-community-site card. However, they may be taking matters seriously enough to actually fix their approach.

shiranaihito 18y ago
However, they may be taking matters seriously enough to actually fix their approach. Or they may be just throwing up smoke and mirrors. If they stopped doing their thing in an underhanded way, would they have much of a business left?

quellhorst 18y ago

I was considering using Get Satisfaction until I found out they would create pages for companies that hadn't asked for them. Even if the service is good, I don't support companies that don't match my values.

gsiener 18y ago

So do I go to 37signals' website for support on GS now?

WebTom 18y ago

Get Satisfaction should stop creating support pages for companies that HAVE NOT SIGNED UP . That is the end of the problem and the ONLY WAY TO GO . 37 Signals isn’t creating Basecamp accounts for companies that have not signed up, is it? Get Satisfaction business models is very similar to Yelp = Extortion 2.0

daleharvey 18y ago
somewhere around 95% of the 37s fanboys comments I have read in between the last 3 threads are seemingly oblivious to what get satisfaction actually provides 1. there are the small companies who would like and out of the box solution for their support to save them time / money 2. there are the large companies that have terribly supported products and the community generally has to replace them, their official support channels are usually private (so they only help 1 person), or very heavily moderated to the point where they are just a pr exercise and of very little use. (remember creative?) the idea that companies can ban users from provided the support that they should rightly be doing themselves is just plain ridiculous
axod 18y ago
Right. and Google shound not index pages of websites that have not signed up! Google even use your name in their search results!