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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 seem

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.
      - Semiapies 18y ago
        I think the premise here is that it's better to stop this sort of exploitation through some short-term action than to pay off GS over the long term.
      - trapper 18y ago
        Shouldn't whether a company CHOOSES to do it be their choice? The law would say yes. I'm betting a bigco will C&D them in the near future if they don't make it company-opt-in.
      - ricree 18y ago
        How far does this extend, though? It's all well and great to say that they can monitor any one third party support site, but Get Satisfaction isn't the only one out there. Should companies really be expected to go monitor every third party support site that decides that they're going to post a page?
  - run4yourlives 18y ago
    GS shouldn't set up anything for companies that don't want to use their service, full stop, end of story.
  - cedsav 18y ago
    Users end up on GS because of a Google search. Does that necessarily mean that they looked for and couldn't find a proper support channel first? I don't think so. I'm sure there are plenty of people (me included) who google first, and navigate the site to a support page as a last resort.
  - sounddust 18y ago
    "Unofficial" isn't enough. The post itself explains why; pretty much every part of the UI suggests that the GS page is coming from 37signals. Things like "report a problem" which imply that it will be reported to someone who can do something about it (rather than GS). And using "we" ambiguously. Furthermore, many companies offer "unofficial support" pages on their own websites, which are meant to allow people to help each other resolve problems in the case that they are waiting for an official response. GS should not allow themselves to be confused by that type of forum. They need to remove company logos, remove excessive mentioning of the company's name, and put a big description at the top of the page that explains that GS is in no way related to the company being discussed.
  - gamache 18y ago
    People are not idiots It sounds to me like you have not worked in tech support. Considering that GS is a hosting site for tech support forums, my opinion is that they should be as close to idiot-proof as possible. For some reason, in my estimation a financial one, they are not.
  - ricree 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." Or it means that they have good placement on google results. When I search for "37signals help", the third result is the getsatisfaction page. Now, in this case the actual 37signals page came up first, but 37signals receives a fair amount of incoming links due to the popularity of their blog. In the case of a company that doesn't play quite as well with PageRank, might getsatisfaction be the number one result? It doesn't seem that unreasonable that some people might end up there instead of the actual support avenues.
dougp 18y ago
They should at least take down the page on request.
- Brushfire 18y ago
  Definitely, that seems fair.
- mustpax 18y ago
  Consider the flip-side: how would you feel if Comcast went around filing crease and desist notices to take down 3rd party customer support sites like dslreviews? GS has every right to create a forum where customers can air grievances. They should add links to the official support forum, and throw in a couple more "unofficial"s in there as well. But beyond that, they don't have an obligation to take down the whole forum. That's extreme. The really sad part is: GS is easy to confuse with 37 signals, because they are both minimalist and elegant web sites. It's the high polish that adds to confusion. GS should go the extra-mile to avoid confusion, but let's not lose our heads here. Edit: It's been pointed out that I was using "DMCA request" incorrectly. I replaced it with "cease and desist."
  - Semiapies 18y ago
    "GS has every right to create a forum where customers can air grievances" Yes. They have no right to make it look like they represent the company in question, though. GS's defense is that they mostly do represent such companies...and yet they use the same setup for companies that may not even know their site exists. Consumer-grievance forums have been around for years. They don't impersonate companies.
  - mechanical_fish 18y ago
    filing DMCA requests to take down 3rd party customer support sites No, don't confuse the issue. Copyright and trademark are not the same. (And are distinct from patents and trade secrets, for that matter.) The DMCA is about copyright. None of the posts on GS violate copyright. [1] And, if one does, a DMCA notice can be used to take it down, but not to take the whole site down. This GS incident is (or would be, if and when lawyers enter the picture) a trademark dispute. GS stands accused of misusing other companies' trademarks in a way that creates customer confusion: Customers see a trademarked logo and a trademarked name on the GS pages, and are misled into thinking they are visiting a site that is officially associated with the trademark holder. You can say any damn thing about Comcast you want. [2] And I believe you can even use Comcast's trademarks in the process, so long as you do so for the purpose of commentary (and not, say, to compete with Comcast in the cable business), and so long as there isn't evidence that you're misleading people into thinking that your site is officially associated with Comcast. P.S. I am not a lawyer. Though sometimes I wish I were. I certainly spend enough time talking about IP law. --- [1] Well, very few, anyway. Obviously anyone could put up posts on GS that violated copyright. [2] Well, okay, anything that you honestly believe is true. You're not allowed to defame them.
mhp 18y ago
"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." I have to say, I think you're missing the complaint. It's not against them providing support FOR COMPANIES THAT DON'T ALREADY DO IT. It's another for them to make MY company have to go to their site and look for customers who are expecting answers. Imagine if there were five companies just like GS competing... I would now be competing with them for PageRank on google searches and having to visit EVERY one of their sites to make sure I don't have any confused customers thinking they're going to get answers from us on those sites. It's unmanageable. 37Signals HAS a support process in place and GS is putting the burden on them to go to their site and fill out their free doohicky that points people there. That's just ridiculous. It's automatically opting you in to a system that you didn't ask to be part of.
- Brushfire 18y ago
  I see your point -- but you dont see it as an issue that there is a place where your own customers are posting complaints instead of your process? Clearly that means your internal support processes are too hard to find, to difficult to use, or too onerous overall. These are YOUR CUSTOMERS -- they should already know how to find you. If they dont, and they find GS instead, that says a lot.
  - mhp 18y ago
    All it says is that your customers could be bad google searchers. Jason pointed out that depending on what you search for GS is the 3rd hit on google. It's not fair that I should have to compete with other people for my own product on Google. It would be just as slimy if a competitor was using my product name to generate business for them (which is exactly what is happening)
    - Semiapies 18y ago
      And that's if you're making generic "support" searches. What if customers Google something related to a problem they're having and the best match is someone's similar question on a GS page? You have customers wandering around a page that impersonates your support service!
bluefish 18y ago
The key dispute here is not about having a forum for individuals to provide support for each other and discuss issues with the company regardless of the company's involvement. I don't think that 37signals would argue over a resource like that. The dispute comes when GS presents themselves as the authoritative source for customer service for a company, especially when that company all ready cares deeply about their customers and tries to provide support elsewhere. Accountability good, deception bad. It's a tough balance to strike for GS. Obviously they want to appear as the authority thus attracting customers and companies, but they risk alienating companies that have their own methods of triaging support issues.
unalone 18y ago
SH in the comments explains just why she was so upset: We found out because a very, very angry customer posted in a comment on our blog about our lack of reply to his inquiries. Now, we know as a company that years ago, we didn’t offer the same support we offer now. But I also know that I reply to EVERY email for support we receive, and I’ve done so for 2 years now. Two months ago, we hired Michael as our second support person, so we can reply with even more timely and more informative emails. We scoured our records and found no trace of his email. I had our system administrator manually search our incoming mail logs and found nothing. Finally, the customer himself pointed me to the GS page he had created to ask 37signals a question. I was dumbfounded. Angry. Extremely, beyond belief, upset by this. Customer support is my job, and I take it very seriously, and I am very, very good at it. To have another website undermine that job which leads to a customer with 1) a bad experience, 2) a bad impression of our company, 3) a bad impression of my work…well, it’s infuriating. Not only was I angry on the customer’s behalf, I was angry on behalf of our company to see our name and logo plastered all over a site we had never known about until then. (After that, there were two identical incidents over the past year.) So that’s how we found out. Our frustration isn’t new, and it’s not unfounded. It’s based purely on the bad experiences GS has caused for our customers, and the harm it’s caused our brand. I’ve been friends with GS’s co-founder Lane Becker for years, and I don’t think he has sour intentions at all. But I do think perhaps as a company, GS is blinded to the harm their site can cause other companies.
- pchristensen 18y ago
  Geez, I hope I can hire a support person that committed and thorough.
  - ja2ke 18y ago
    Achieving "It's better, initially, to make a small number of users really love you than a large number kind of like you" is a lot easier with a really good support person.

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.
    - Semiapies 18y ago
      I think the premise here is that it's better to stop this sort of exploitation through some short-term action than to pay off GS over the long term.
    - trapper 18y ago
      Shouldn't whether a company CHOOSES to do it be their choice? The law would say yes. I'm betting a bigco will C&D them in the near future if they don't make it company-opt-in.
    - ricree 18y ago
      How far does this extend, though? It's all well and great to say that they can monitor any one third party support site, but Get Satisfaction isn't the only one out there. Should companies really be expected to go monitor every third party support site that decides that they're going to post a page?
- run4yourlives 18y ago
  GS shouldn't set up anything for companies that don't want to use their service, full stop, end of story.
- cedsav 18y ago
  Users end up on GS because of a Google search. Does that necessarily mean that they looked for and couldn't find a proper support channel first? I don't think so. I'm sure there are plenty of people (me included) who google first, and navigate the site to a support page as a last resort.
- sounddust 18y ago
  "Unofficial" isn't enough. The post itself explains why; pretty much every part of the UI suggests that the GS page is coming from 37signals. Things like "report a problem" which imply that it will be reported to someone who can do something about it (rather than GS). And using "we" ambiguously. Furthermore, many companies offer "unofficial support" pages on their own websites, which are meant to allow people to help each other resolve problems in the case that they are waiting for an official response. GS should not allow themselves to be confused by that type of forum. They need to remove company logos, remove excessive mentioning of the company's name, and put a big description at the top of the page that explains that GS is in no way related to the company being discussed.
- gamache 18y ago
  People are not idiots It sounds to me like you have not worked in tech support. Considering that GS is a hosting site for tech support forums, my opinion is that they should be as close to idiot-proof as possible. For some reason, in my estimation a financial one, they are not.
- ricree 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." Or it means that they have good placement on google results. When I search for "37signals help", the third result is the getsatisfaction page. Now, in this case the actual 37signals page came up first, but 37signals receives a fair amount of incoming links due to the popularity of their blog. In the case of a company that doesn't play quite as well with PageRank, might getsatisfaction be the number one result? It doesn't seem that unreasonable that some people might end up there instead of the actual support avenues.

dougp 18y ago

They should at least take down the page on request.

Brushfire 18y ago
Definitely, that seems fair.
mustpax 18y ago
Consider the flip-side: how would you feel if Comcast went around filing crease and desist notices to take down 3rd party customer support sites like dslreviews? GS has every right to create a forum where customers can air grievances. They should add links to the official support forum, and throw in a couple more "unofficial"s in there as well. But beyond that, they don't have an obligation to take down the whole forum. That's extreme. The really sad part is: GS is easy to confuse with 37 signals, because they are both minimalist and elegant web sites. It's the high polish that adds to confusion. GS should go the extra-mile to avoid confusion, but let's not lose our heads here. Edit: It's been pointed out that I was using "DMCA request" incorrectly. I replaced it with "cease and desist."
- Semiapies 18y ago
  "GS has every right to create a forum where customers can air grievances" Yes. They have no right to make it look like they represent the company in question, though. GS's defense is that they mostly do represent such companies...and yet they use the same setup for companies that may not even know their site exists. Consumer-grievance forums have been around for years. They don't impersonate companies.
- mechanical_fish 18y ago
  filing DMCA requests to take down 3rd party customer support sites No, don't confuse the issue. Copyright and trademark are not the same. (And are distinct from patents and trade secrets, for that matter.) The DMCA is about copyright. None of the posts on GS violate copyright. [1] And, if one does, a DMCA notice can be used to take it down, but not to take the whole site down. This GS incident is (or would be, if and when lawyers enter the picture) a trademark dispute. GS stands accused of misusing other companies' trademarks in a way that creates customer confusion: Customers see a trademarked logo and a trademarked name on the GS pages, and are misled into thinking they are visiting a site that is officially associated with the trademark holder. You can say any damn thing about Comcast you want. [2] And I believe you can even use Comcast's trademarks in the process, so long as you do so for the purpose of commentary (and not, say, to compete with Comcast in the cable business), and so long as there isn't evidence that you're misleading people into thinking that your site is officially associated with Comcast. P.S. I am not a lawyer. Though sometimes I wish I were. I certainly spend enough time talking about IP law. --- [1] Well, very few, anyway. Obviously anyone could put up posts on GS that violated copyright. [2] Well, okay, anything that you honestly believe is true. You're not allowed to defame them.

mhp 18y ago

"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." I have to say, I think you're missing the complaint. It's not against them providing support FOR COMPANIES THAT DON'T ALREADY DO IT. It's another for them to make MY company have to go to their site and look for customers who are expecting answers. Imagine if there were five companies just like GS competing... I would now be competing with them for PageRank on google searches and having to visit EVERY one of their sites to make sure I don't have any confused customers thinking they're going to get answers from us on those sites. It's unmanageable. 37Signals HAS a support process in place and GS is putting the burden on them to go to their site and fill out their free doohicky that points people there. That's just ridiculous. It's automatically opting you in to a system that you didn't ask to be part of.

Brushfire 18y ago
I see your point -- but you dont see it as an issue that there is a place where your own customers are posting complaints instead of your process? Clearly that means your internal support processes are too hard to find, to difficult to use, or too onerous overall. These are YOUR CUSTOMERS -- they should already know how to find you. If they dont, and they find GS instead, that says a lot.
- mhp 18y ago
  All it says is that your customers could be bad google searchers. Jason pointed out that depending on what you search for GS is the 3rd hit on google. It's not fair that I should have to compete with other people for my own product on Google. It would be just as slimy if a competitor was using my product name to generate business for them (which is exactly what is happening)
  - Semiapies 18y ago
    And that's if you're making generic "support" searches. What if customers Google something related to a problem they're having and the best match is someone's similar question on a GS page? You have customers wandering around a page that impersonates your support service!

bluefish 18y ago

The key dispute here is not about having a forum for individuals to provide support for each other and discuss issues with the company regardless of the company's involvement. I don't think that 37signals would argue over a resource like that. The dispute comes when GS presents themselves as the authoritative source for customer service for a company, especially when that company all ready cares deeply about their customers and tries to provide support elsewhere. Accountability good, deception bad. It's a tough balance to strike for GS. Obviously they want to appear as the authority thus attracting customers and companies, but they risk alienating companies that have their own methods of triaging support issues.

unalone 18y ago

SH in the comments explains just why she was so upset: We found out because a very, very angry customer posted in a comment on our blog about our lack of reply to his inquiries. Now, we know as a company that years ago, we didn’t offer the same support we offer now. But I also know that I reply to EVERY email for support we receive, and I’ve done so for 2 years now. Two months ago, we hired Michael as our second support person, so we can reply with even more timely and more informative emails. We scoured our records and found no trace of his email. I had our system administrator manually search our incoming mail logs and found nothing. Finally, the customer himself pointed me to the GS page he had created to ask 37signals a question. I was dumbfounded. Angry. Extremely, beyond belief, upset by this. Customer support is my job, and I take it very seriously, and I am very, very good at it. To have another website undermine that job which leads to a customer with 1) a bad experience, 2) a bad impression of our company, 3) a bad impression of my work…well, it’s infuriating. Not only was I angry on the customer’s behalf, I was angry on behalf of our company to see our name and logo plastered all over a site we had never known about until then. (After that, there were two identical incidents over the past year.) So that’s how we found out. Our frustration isn’t new, and it’s not unfounded. It’s based purely on the bad experiences GS has caused for our customers, and the harm it’s caused our brand. I’ve been friends with GS’s co-founder Lane Becker for years, and I don’t think he has sour intentions at all. But I do think perhaps as a company, GS is blinded to the harm their site can cause other companies.

pchristensen 18y ago
Geez, I hope I can hire a support person that committed and thorough.
- ja2ke 18y ago
  Achieving "It's better, initially, to make a small number of users really love you than a large number kind of like you" is a lot easier with a really good support person.