You’ve likely heard that the secret to building relationships with your customers is to “be everywhere your customers are.” As a result, you’ve probably signed up for a dozen social networks hoping that just showing up will turn out to be enough.
Most, if not all, small business owners have a dream for their small business. Maybe that dream is to be acquired and win big. Or maybe that dream is to find an ideal investor to back you up and propel your business into fame and fortune. Paul Greenberg, Founder of the CRM Idol Contest, joins Brent Leary to share how small businesses can have a shot at taking a swing in the big game.
Ten startups will be invited aboard the 100-day cruise, in teams of two or three co-founders each. The trip is aimed at startups with a core product or service that tackles a major social and environmental challenge, and that are ready to scale internationally. Aboard the boat, they’ll have access to twenty mentors, including Google’s VP of New Business Development, Megan Smith; Get Satisfaction CEO, Wendy Lea, and serial entrepreneur, VC, and philanthropist, Kamran Elahian.
We got a stellar crop of finalists last year (both in the U.S. and Europe) including Crowd Factory, Stone Cobra, Assistly and Get Satisfaction, which won the contest. Two of the four were bought — Assistly mid-way through the competition and Crowd Factory last month.
Get Satisfaction, launched in 2007, originally aimed to provide a more comprehensive and intuitive place for customers to get the answers to their questions and provide feedback about their experience with a company. Now Get Satisfaction is hoping to take the tools it has built to create an even more comprehensive dialogue and create conversations anywhere a company wishes to provide it – on their retail page, on Facebook or on mobile apps. The new service is called Get Satisfaction Anywhere.
Get Satisfaction has announced upgrades to its customer engagement platform to extend the company’s Get Satisfaction Anywhere strategy. The introduction of a new Get Satisfaction Engage widget allows community managers to embed their customer communities in multiple online touch points within their websites and across product, e-commerce, and support pages and engage with their customers anywhere.
To me, this is the promise of social media in business. It provides the ability to have social conversations without necessarily getting off topic and discussing weekend plans. And unlike other products that have an in-house collaboration slant, this solution set is all about giving customers access to processes that are increasingly collaborative but which not too long ago were closely held by the vendor. So, good luck to Get Satisfaction on the new products.
This new widget architecture empowers companies and business users in the company to embed community anywhere they want to online, on any page of a site, any product listing, or marketing campaign or product review," Wendy Lea, CEO of Get Satisfaction said in an interview. The company is one of the leading providers of software to power online communities where customers can ask questions, register complaints, make suggestions, and provide other feedback. Its software is delivered from the cloud, as software-as-a-service.
Get Satisfaction was built around the importance of community to businesses. Now, with the launch of a new product called Get Satisfaction Engage, it wants to make those communities embeddable anywhere. Basically, Engage is a new architecture for Get Satisfaction widgets, turning them into customizable versions of a company’s Get Satisfaction community. People can browse the new widgets without leaving whatever web page they’re on. That means all the discussion among a company’s customers, users, and fans will become more useful to people who aren’t a part of that community — including in several contexts outside the customer support arena where Get Satisfaction first made its name.
Why is it that tech entrepreneurs so seldom write business plans anymore? These detailed and expertly presented blueprints for a new company, once the most essential component of starting a business, have become an open joke in Silicon Valley. The reason they’ve fallen out of fashion, as any twenty-something startup CEO will explain to you, is that for a new company there is far more that is unknown than is known.
“Lane Becker has been a familiar figure in the Silicon Valley tech scene for years, as the co-founder of startups such as Adaptive Path and Get Satisfaction, an advisor at early-stage venture capital firm Freestyle Capital, and a generally good guy to know. Yesterday, Becker added “New York Times Bestselling Author” to his list of descriptors, when the book “Get Lucky: How to Put Planned Serendipity to Work for You and Your Business” which he wrote with his Get Satisfaction co-founder Thor Muller debuted at the number six spot on the NYT’s best seller list for hardcover advice and miscellaneous books (which is generally where business books are ranked.) It is also holding the number three spot on the Wall Street Journal’s hardcover business best seller list.”
“Hootsuite is expanding its App Directory, adding support for MailChimp, Chime.in, Identi.ca, Vision Critical Surveys, and RSS Reader. The new apps are available starting Tuesday for all 4 million of HootSuite’s Free, Pro and Enterprise clients.”
“While driving along the other day I had an epiphany as I studied the FedEx logo on the side of a truck as I passed (specifically the cleverly hidden arrow in the negative space that I assume is meant to imply forward progress). I realized that, no matter how well-conceived the logo concept may have been, it’s a bit flawed because, depending on what side of the truck you are on, the arrow can be pointing forward or backward. In a similar fashion it struck me that despite good intentions, an entrepreneur, especially in the tech industry, can find it hard to know what direction to point in order to make forward progress. My hope is that this post, and DailyTekk in general, will be a great resource for tech startups everywhere and a one that will help get them pointed in the right direction.”
“Lane Becker, above left, is the co-founder of Get Satisfaction, an online customer service community platform, and the co-founder of Adaptive Path, which claims to be one of the world’s first user experience design firms. Mr. Becker has co-written a book titled “Get Lucky” with Thor Muller, above right, also a co-founder of Get Satisfaction. The book, as Mr. Becker describes it, is a manual for serendipity in the digital age. Below is an edited interview.”
“Other methods include outsourcing the process, or developing an online customer service channel that can be tied into Facebook and other frequent customer hang-outs. Companies such as Get Satisfaction, Lithium, Moxie Software and Parature enable brands to offer customers a way to connect in multiple online locations, including Facebook, according to Jeff Nolan, VP of product at Get Satisfaction, who Mashable consulted for the tip list. Another option is to “crowd-source,” or identify super-users and “promoters” of your brand, and engage them in helping you answer customer question or issues.”
“Your Facebook wall is not an adequate customer service platform because it is not searchable, and it puts a negative twist on your main page,” says Jeff Nolan, VP of product at Get Satisfaction. Nolan suggests that brands build an online customer service channel and then funnel the data into their current CRM system. Companies such as Get Satisfaction, Lithium, Moxie Software and Parature enable brands to offer customers a way to connect in multiple online locations, including Facebook.”
“For service and support-oriented companies to open themselves up and extend themselves to their Facebook brand page, they have to accept that their customers are there,” says Wendy Lea, CEO of Get Satisfaction Inc., which offers an application that helps retailers respond to customer service issues on Facebook. Those consumers are going to ask retailers questions, she says, and merchants can’t afford not to respond.”
“Goodbye, customer touch-points. Hello, ongoing, meaningful contact that actually drives revenue. Here's what you need to know to be more engaging right now.”
“Cloud computing is still confusing to many of us. With so many cloud-related jargon we have today – cloud lock-in, cloud sprawl, SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, XaaS, virtualization, cloud hosting, etc. – it’s often difficult for an average person to understand those things. But you need to learn the cloud for some reasons – here’s one of them: When you are in the middle of business networking with people who understand cloud computing, talking their language can offer you a bigger chance of getting noticed – and getting business. But fear not, this cloud computing infographic can help you out!”
“When you walk into a store to ask a question, you don’t expect the clerk to ignore you (though, admittedly, it happens). When you interact with a company online, you don’t expect them to ignore you either. But boy, does it happen--especially on what is perhaps the most engaged online community, Facebook.”
“Like a lot of people I have been fascinated by the explosive growth that Pinterest has experienced. At first curiosity, Pinterest is now a full blown phenomena that has jumped from women planning their weddings, or wishing they were planning a wedding, and foodies to mainstream consciousness.”
“With the past efforts of building branded communities online, a lot has changed since 2007,” said Wendy Lea, CEO of Get Satisfaction. “One angle to consider is the discoverability of content. A lot of the problems with these sites [back then] was they were all about pushing out information and not really focused on the interaction aspect. The momentum has shifted because the conversations are now indexed and then discoverable by other consumers who go to Google and ask a question or reference a product. And the sharing features have improved. These are two big movements that can affect a brand’s community and connecting to the consumer. Nowadays it is completely different. It’s the open-network effect.”
“Why we like it: Get Satisfaction takes the online community support experience to digital devices. The app is built with HTML5 and operates in mobile browsers, which means no downloads. It looks exactly like the Web version, only more compact, which makes it familiar and easy to use. The social knowledgebase allows customers to get answers on the spot.”
“The CEO of Get Satisfaction, winner at last year's CRM Idol competition, talks to MyCustomer.com about the disruptive influence of social, and how the company is competing against compete against platforms like Lithium and Jive.”
“Thor Muller and Lane Becker have had a fair amount of luck in their time. The Get Satisfaction co-founders chalk their company’s founding to serendipity, in fact. Turns out, they want the rest of us to get lucky too. And they’ve so far as to write a book about how to do so.”
“Get Satisfaction has as it’s core DNA that concept that a customer is at the center or a customer community. We offer a better, faster, and cheaper model than traditional enterprise software solutions, and perhaps most strikingly, we have delivered a platform that meets the needs of the very largest of companies, while also remaining approachable and productive for the smallest of startups.”
Serendipity is "chance plus creativity," Muller said. "It requires not just bumping into something unexpected, but doing something with it. So Highlight has to create meaningful ways of taking action."
“It’s not surprising that Jive is making a big push into the help desk market, considering the explosion of the space. Customer service SaaS applications are proving to be a competitive (and potentially lucrative) market. Zendesk has seen pretty significant success with its offering, and Get Satisfaction is also a leader in powering customer service communities. And Salesforce recently debuted its full-fledged customer service software, Desk.com.”
We recently sat down with Wendy Lea, CEO of customer service support platform Get Satisfaction, to talk about what companies should be doing now that the rules have changed. "All companies, regardless of size, have to consider the 'outside-in' opportunity," she told us, "whereas before they were designing their technologies and processes from inside out."
“What Facebook is, apparently, pursuing with Timeline in Pages is exactly what Get Satisfaction stands for, a better way for companies and customers to engage each other online.”
“As part of his ongoing series of roundtable interviews, social CRM guru Brent Leary talks to leading experts from the world of CRM and social CRM about topical issues. This month, in the second of a two-part roundtable, his panel debates social CRM's evolution and whether we have reached the end of the beginning.”
“Beagle Research Group is pleased to announce the winners of the 2012 Short Tale Awards for excellence in the use of short video in front office sales, marketing and service.”
“Spotify is to get one of its most oft-requested features in its next update: gapless playback. By default, songs will now flow seamlessly from one to another without any silent pauses in-between.”
“Most businesses should also consider quick start guides, in-depth user manuals and customer support communities. You can easily build this kind of content with your customers using services such as Get Satisfaction or Zendesk.”
“In what may just be the first technology-based implementation of WM’s Knowledge Base Optimization principle, live chat software provider Velaro has announced an integration with online community platform Get Satisfaction.”
“Consumers who engage with a brand in the digital space – whether by participating in a contest or by ‘liking’ a brand on Facebook – are more likely to purchase the products, and make recommendations to their friends and family. Get Satisfaction provides this infographic to look at what makes people want to follow a brand.”
“Do not forget, Spotify also has their Get Satisfaction page, which is another great place for users to find information if they are having a problem with something related to Spotify. Between this, and the forums, it is easy for a user to solve any problems they are encountering while using Spotify.”
“These aren't worker bees. They are whole individuals with human needs and desires. Appreciate those and you can make your company stronger.”
“The face of Online CRM was transformed when Velaro, a provider of live chat software and GetSatisfaction, an online community platform that helps companies enhance customer relationships, integrated their technologies to provide a new customer support tool.”
“Perhaps most importantly, all this hoopla about clouds and rather conventional application areas means that many big vendors are not giving the attention they ought to be giving (in my opinion) to social media companies. They are proving to be a generation behind. Well beyond darlings like Facebook and Twitter, there are fascinating companies like Get Satisfaction, Studentforce and Crowd Factory -- just to pick a few of names out of a hat -- that are rocking their worlds and causing the next disruptions.”
“There are few aspects of growing a business that are easy. But when you think about the big picture, one of the most significant challenges — besides hiring attractive, productive interns — is customer acquisition. Not every business scales like Facebook; many have to fight tooth-and-nail for every client, sell their firstborn, do whatever it takes. And once those customers are on board, the most successful companies make it a point to listen to them, hear their feedback, iterate, tweaking the user experience of their business/service/platform until the cows come home if that’s what’s required.”
"Get Satisfaction, the customer engagement platform that's re-humanizing relationships between companies and their customers, today announced the winners of its first annual 'Love Your Customers' Awards. Celebrating daring feats of customer empowerment and support, the awards recognize companies and individuals for ongoing excellence in social support, marketing and general community awesomeness."
"Social media is like a tornado, creating a whirlwind of open dialog between companies and their customers. This is how Get Satisfaction CEO Wendy Lea described social media to me when we recently discussed the topic. 'Social media gives customers the opportunity to shape the companies they care about,' Lea said. As a result of customers' input through social channels, companies are improving their marketing communications, customer service, and even R&D processes."
"Today, Wendy serves as CEO of Get Satisfaction, where she is focused on applying her expertise to drive the convergence of social media and customer service to bring brands closer than ever to their customers. 'My entire career has been focused on helping companies build stronger relationships with their customers, whether through the high touch connection of professional sales or services, the build out of alliances and channels designed to bring added value to customers, or now in creating online communities where consumers can actively participate in the shaping of a product, service or brand they have passion about.'"
"What makes Get Satisfaction stand apart from the other user feedback apps, is its ability to enable users. The app allows users to discuss problems among themselves, post problems, suggest solutions, or ask questions. Even more, you can track a discussion and find people with similar interests as you."
"Joseph Alminawi, general manager of OMGPOP, a New York City-based gaming platform... uses a site called Get Satisfaction. By clicking on a tab on the website, gamers can post comments, make suggestions and respond to each other's opinions. But, as important, Alminawi can get an immediate feel for users' likes and dislikes. Example: Recently, the company added a new feature allowing gamers to see other participants' scores, expecting the capability to be a big hit. In short order, however, a deluge of comments and discussions on Get Satisfaction revealed that users hated the addition. 'The response was overwhelming, so we changed the game. And the game is better for it,' says Alminawi."
"Get Satisfaction has been on the Watchlist in 2010, 2011, and now 2012. This year they made it as the CRM Idol 2011 winner for the Americas but the reality is that the likelihood of them making it the 'normal' way was pretty much set in stone, I scored them and they were over the 'guaranteed winner' threshold, regardless."
"This app brings customer conversations from Facebook, Twitter and users’ websites directly inside Salesforce for quick resolution and increased sales. 'These conversations can be accessed anywhere from iPhone or Android mobile devices and help customers get instant resolution to questions and queries on the Force.com platform,' said Wendy Lea, Get Satisfaction’s CEO."
"Get Satisfaction, the San Francisco-based builder of freemium online customer support communities, has one of those longest-overnight-success-ever stories. Founded in 2007 by Thor Muller, Amy Muller, and Lane Becker, the company has had at least a couple of brushes with death on its way to finding thousands of customers and $21 million in venture capital. The way it escaped from the first one says a lot about how the company works today."
"Receiving feedback from customers, clients and partners is absolutely vital to the life of a any business. Businesses who don't listen will meet needs that don't exist and businesses who do that don't last very long.... In today's online business world, you must be able to receive feedback from many communications equipped platforms."
"This is the first round of the CRM Watchlist for 2012 - an assessment of the companies that I find important that will end in January 2012 with the announcement of the winners of a place in the CRM Watchlist for this year."
"The service got an HTML5 mobile makeover this week. Businesses with paid plans now have a mobile Get Satisfaction presence for customers who use an iPhone or iPod touch."
"Get Satisfaction for Mobile comes as the company is fielding more mobile demand than ever. The number of mobile visitors to Get Satisfaction communities has more than quadrupled over the past year."
"According to GetSatisfaction's internal metrics, over 25% of the company's users access its online communities via search engine referrals. Over the past year, the traffic from mobile devices has nearly doubled, up from 8% to 15% of total visits... The new Web app will provide an immediate advantage to mobile app makers, who can now link to their GetSatisfaction page from within their app in order to provide customer support."
"The Americas contest was particularly hard fought with Get Satisfaction edging out two of the three other contestants. Edging out was the operant phrase. It was a tough race and there were differences of opinion between the judges and the popular vote."
"Wendy Lea, CEO of Get Satisfaction, also expressed her admiration for the other CRM Idol competitors. 'Winning is wonderful, and we are greatly honored, but at the end of the day, we all need to succeed. Paul Greenberg and his team did a very important thing for new companies by shining a light on the technology and systems that are available to companies. He and other folks know the CRM market is a real deal.'"
"With Atlassian OnDemand, customers can easily choose solutions... and integrate them with third-party applications — such as such as Google Apps, Zendesk, Salesforce.com, uTest and Get Satisfaction — to add additional power, features, and versatility to their project environments. The solution offers free maintenance and upgrades of all its applications."
"As more customers seek you out on Facebook, you may find it difficult to respond to all comments quickly, and you might also start missing comments as they roll off the Wall on a busy Facebook Business Page. When your Facebook Page gets too busy for manual moderation, then it might be the right time to invest and have a custom Facebook application developed to help you with Facebook customer service. provides moderation tools and customer feedback widgets to help you build your Facebook customer community."
"Get Satisfaction, an online community platform that builds strong relationships between companies and their customers, today announced multi-language support enabling businesses everywhere to "love their customers" in their native language. Get Satisfaction communities are now available in English, Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Swedish, Portuguese and Italian."
"The discussion continues about the October 31 removal of Facebook’s discussion tab, and online community tool Get Satisfaction became the latest third party to offer an alternative. Get Satisfaction also urges page managers to back up their current discussion content for future reference. The company counts Walmart, Pampers, and Adobe among its users."
"When you’re receiving five or ten support emails a day, which is typical for a small startup’s app, handling the workload requires little more than setting up a Gmail filter. But as the volume increases, you’ll need to turn to popular options [like] Get Satisfaction."
"As more customers seek you out on Facebook, you may find it difficult to respond to all comments quickly, and you might also start missing comments as they roll off the Wall on a busy Facebook Business Page. When your Facebook Page gets too busy for manual moderation, then it might be the right time to invest and have a custom Facebook application developed to help you with Facebook customer service. provides moderation tools and customer feedback widgets to help you build your Facebook customer community."
"Get Satisfaction can give your customers (and prospects) a place to discuss your product around the clock. This is a big benefit for a startup that wants to answer questions rapidly and engage with its user community, but that perhaps doesn’t have the resources for a 24/7 call center."
"Deciding to take on a $10 million round was a big deal for Lea, who labels herself as an "old-fashioned" executive. 'I've bootstrapped a business in the past, and I'm very wary of taking other people's money,' she said. 'I was very cautious and frugal, and we made amazing progress on the first $10 million.' ... InterWest's Bruce Cleveland and Lea had previously worked together at Siebel Systems. 'When we decided it was go time, I was very keen to go to Bruce and say, 'OK here's the story.' I sensed deeply that he would get it,' Lea said. 'He moved us along very quickly, and the money is now in the bank.'"
"Get Satisfaction can pull customer conversations from these community sites as well as the company's Facebook page. Get Satisfaction's widget can be installed on a company's Facebook page so that customers do not have to leave Facebook to ask a question. The content can then be pulled in to internal systems to support product development, customer support, or marketing. 'We tag that unstructured data and pull it through our API to a company's internal systems,' Lea says. 'The idea is that companies can reach customers where ever they are online and respond quickly.'"
"What separates Get Satisfaction from competitors is the fact that all interactions happen in an open environment and are all easily searchable by Google... The company provides value for its enterprise clients is through a direct data line to CRM services like Salesforce and Assistly, allowing brands to take actionable steps on the data unearthed by customer discussion, reducing research and support costs."
"The San Francisco-based company plans to spend the money on translations and other product development, as well as acquisitions, said CEO Wendy Lea. Lea said she's hoping for $10 million in revenue this year, up from $2 million last year."
"As a Get Satisfaction spokesperson noted to VentureBeat, Lea, hired in 2009, 'has experience on all sides of the industry: CEO, investor, mentor, board member many times over.' And as a co-founder at a company that was later acquired for $250 million, Lea is in a position to patiently lead Get Satisfaction toward a lucrative exit farther down the line. "This isn't the time to search for an exit,' Lea told VentureBeat. 'We are just scratching the surface of what social can do in terms of delivering real, measurable value across work functions and industries. We're witnessing the transition from 'shiny tech toy' to actual business solution.'"
"We spoke with Wendy Lea, Get Satisfaction's CEO, about the new app and some of the new features that it will offer brands and communities.The new app allows for better integration between a post on the Facebook Wall and the existing Get Satisfaction Community. In short, Lea tells us, the system is designed so that information collected or generated on Facebook "can be turned into actionable content." The actionable part is key."
"All businesses thrive on feedback, but some are more distant from the direct experience and input of their customers. And according to Thor Muller, co-founder and CTO of Get Satisfaction, "these are the companies that find it absolutely critical to have a steady stream of feedback."Muller's company offers a platform for creating customer communities on the Web, on Facebook, via mobile devices and within widgets that can be embedded anywhere. Small businesses can use Get Satisfaction to connect openly with their customers to provide Q&A, peer-to-peer problem solving and feedback."
"Social technologies make customer service more fulfilling while scaling more efficiently than traditional technologies, makes customer advocacy for brand promotion and online retail feasible, and engages customers at an individual level which results in better products and services."
"The NCWIT Entrepreneurial Alliance helps growing tech companies plug into the movement to increase women's participation in tech creator roles," said Lucy Sanders, NCWIT CEO and Co-Founder. "NCWIT will work with the Startup America Partnership on the national level to make sure that technical startups receive the resources they need to successfully recruit, retain, and advance women in a way that enhances innovation and business."
"TechSmith's Snagit screen capture software has been available to PC users for twenty years, so the desire to answer users' top request—Snagit for the Mac platform—required an open dialogue to make Snagit on the Mac worth the wait. So TechSmith launched a crowdsourcing initiative on a Get Satisfaction community site to seek ideas and feedback, producing 450,000 participants and $500,000 in research cost savings."
"In the past year, our customer base has grown threefold and our order volume has gone up by 500 percent. But thanks to Assistly combined with Get Satisfaction, the support team receives fewer support tickets than they did a year ago."
"'You have experts who have knowledge, and you have connectors who may not have all the answers but ... they're really good at connecting a question to an answer. And you might have a copy editor who can improve the title of a question so that other people can discover it. If you have a crap product and you add game mechanics thinking that's going to increase your engagement,' warns [Get Satisfaction co-founder Thor] Muller, 'that's the equivalent of polishing a turd.'"
"Over the past three years, dozens of people had contacted an advocacy website called Get Satisfaction with nearly identical tales about DecorMyEyes: a purchase gone wrong, followed by phone calls, emails and threats, sometimes lasting for months or years. Occasionally, the owner gave his name as Stanley Bolds, but the consensus at Get Satisfaction was he and Tony Russo were the same person. Others dug a little deeper and decided that both names were fictitious and the company was owned and run by a man named Vitaly Borker."
"Having been an entrepreneur myself, owned my own business, started & founded my own business with 4 other partners. In that case though we were bootstrapped, we didn't use outside capital. It was a services business & we basically took mortgages out on our house, that's how we did it. Because of the services component the need for capital was different. It wasn't less, it was just different. We built a business from zero to $50million in about 6 to 7 years & we only had a line of credit."
"Q: How did you market your startup initially? What advice do you have for other early stage startups? A: First and foremost, you need a good story. Early on, we had a provocative position: 'Your company doesn't own its customer service.' That statement resonated with a lot of people and that's how we were able to get press"
"Among the better [examples] was Mighty Leaf Tea, a company known for having fanatical loyalists. Including a customer support tab on its Facebook page, Mighty Leaf offers its fans a chance to ask questions, share an idea, report a problem and give praise. (By the way, its Support tab is powered by Get Satisfaction's Facebook app.)"
