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Anonymous posts?
Is it possible to allow visitors to post questions anonymously... I hate the fact that I would have to ask our members to create another account just to post a support question... or perhaps just ask them their email address so that they can be notified of updates to the ticket.
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To update this topic:
While we don't have anonymous posting, we do now offer several login options.
We've got Single Sign On (FastPass) available with some of our paid plans which allows companies to pass their users over fairly seamlessly from their web site to their GS community.
But in our free service we now have the ability for users to sign on via Facebook Connect or with their Google or Twitter credentials. There's also OpenID and WindowsLive ID which are login options we've had for quite some time now.
Get Satisfaction is about more than just leaving feedback. It's a customer support tool and is about conversations between customers and between customers and employees. Without requiring at least some basic information and a user account, we'd have no way to a.) inform people when there's been an update to their question, problem or idea and b.) allow people to manage those notifications.
As always, though, we are constantly evolving Get Satisfaction and we hear the concerns around this issue. We're definitely taking all the feedback into consideration.
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Inappropriate?hi, luc! actually, our signup for already does this -- all it asks for is an email address and a nickname, and then auto-assigns a password. we originally had it ask for only an email address and gave those users a generic "cupcake ###" nickname (which you still see in our system on occasion), but people found that kind of repetitive naming scheme off-putting, so we added the nickname requirement.
also, to make it easier for them, we do the entire sign-up process in-line on a particular topic page, so they don't even have to go to a separate page to get access.1 Comment Add a comment
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I would like the ability to post anonymously per-company. There might be companies that I'm interacting with that I would prefer that interaction not be indexable under my name by search engines, etc. I realize that opens a lot of doors for abuse, but I think your moderation system is strong enough to defend against that. -
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Inappropriate?I really think you should allow totally anonymous posts - but force CAPTCHA challenge obviously. It really is painful that users have to enter their details twice, and some of our users are not likely to understand your oAuth or OpenID stuff when it gets implemented. Are there really no plans to accept anonymous posts?
I’m sad
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Inappropriate?Demian,
We've stayed pretty firm on the belief that truly anonymous posting is a detriment to the community and to serving customers. One of our abiding goals is to bring humanity, transparency, and efficiency to online customer service, and I believe in many ways that those goals are antithetical to truly anonymous posts.
But, the driving problem here, in the way you describe your problem, is not anonymity: it's the barrier of creating a new account. Our goal is to make your account on Get Satisfaction disappear when it isn't important, and have it become an extension of your external account. While our solution to single sign on is built on-top of the OAuth specifications, it isn't the OAuth user flow as described by the specs. It boils down to basically clicking a "Yes, log me in" button once: No need to remember passwords or usernames.
That doesn't go into all of the details, because there are a few wrinkles, but the general case is what I describe.
-Scott2 Comments Add a comment
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Hi Scott
Thanks for taking the time to respond to my comment. The bottom line is my customers have complained about having to identify themselves twice, and I share their reservations. I think your business offering hinges on being seamless, and as long as there is friction felt by some users, ie those who cannot set an oAuth token due to lack of qualifying partner registration, the customer service experience will not be seamless and somewhat defeats its own purpose.
When evaluating your service I overlooked the fact that anonymous posts were not possible. Currently I'm in the awkward situation of considering discontinuing GS now I know all the facts.
Congrats on all the other aspects of your service, however, some great ideas here. -
Thanks for your response.
There is more friction to participation in filling out a CAPTCHA than there is in our OAuth based solution to account integrations, and so I feel very confident in the value the system will provide. -
Inappropriate?I have to agree with Scott 100%. But, what he doesn't mention is that when we launched Get Satisfaction, we did have anonymous posts, and the early companies in our system *hated* it and asked us to remove it. They hated it because they had no idea who their customer was, or why they should respond to them, or even if it was actually a customer of theirs.
We were asking companies to be open and transparent to their customers, but weren't asking customers to do the same thing. After a lot of frustration on the part of companies, we finally removed the feature, and are, as Scott pointed out above, working on other even more seamless ways to avoid having users log in a second time.
Because of that experience, we created, and now ask both companies and customers in our system to abide by, the company-customer pact. Point 2 is all about authenticity, and allowing anonymity from customers would directly violate this point.
I’m Lane Becker
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Logically speaking your comments don't rule out the possibility of some customers selecting anonymous posting as a valid option. I think GS would show more openness by acknowledging customer requests. No one is saying they have to be uniformly enforced.
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Inappropriate?I understand the tension between these competing desires: transparency and openness, and reducing obstacles. It's a tough call.
At the moment, I lean towards allowing anonymous posts. We launched an alpha product last week and have been using GetSatisfaction to engage with our audience. Really liking it so far, but several people have skirted the forum to contact us directly instead -- stating they didn't want to create yet another account or provide their email address to yet another source. I can certainly understand that feeling.
IMHO, transparency is achieved primarily through the way GetSatisfaction is structured: allowing anyone to start a forum about any company/product, publishing change logs so that history can't be rewritten, and so on. A person's identity contributes to this transparency, but isn't necessarily required.
Again, I know it's a tough call. Just chiming in with a few data points.
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Inappropriate?I've had the same experience as Robert, people don't want to have to sign up just to report a support issue.
What's happening with the OAuth integration? I'd like some kind of authentication system that would allow we to redirect users logged into my system to Get Satisfaction and have them automatically logged in somehow.
It needs to be made as seamless as possible. -
Inappropriate?Paul, we do now offer Single Sign-On for companies who use our Pro services so customer accounts can be linked.
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Inappropriate?Ok, thanks.
As it stands, your entry level package costs more than my hosting, it's far too expensive while I'm just getting started. I'll have to have a think about what to do.
I’m considering
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Inappropriate?i am just wondering in light of a really nice competing service developing that does offer anonymous posting, is this being re-considered? basically, i am in agreement with all of the for-anonymous posting points above. for a mini-sized startup that wants to develop a user-base, i feel i am not really in a position to force users to sign up with yet another service.
the whole reason for signing up with get satisfaction is to curb and control direct email support, which is what all the users who do not sign-up for an account will do. and, i certainly cannot afford a pro-level account here.
I’m sad
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rpsx, I don't believe we have moved closer to the idea of anonymous posting. Sorry if that doesn't meet your needs.
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Inappropriate?To update this topic:
While we don't have anonymous posting, we do now offer several login options.
We've got Single Sign On (FastPass) available with some of our paid plans which allows companies to pass their users over fairly seamlessly from their web site to their GS community.
But in our free service we now have the ability for users to sign on via Facebook Connect or with their Google or Twitter credentials. There's also OpenID and WindowsLive ID which are login options we've had for quite some time now.
Get Satisfaction is about more than just leaving feedback. It's a customer support tool and is about conversations between customers and between customers and employees. Without requiring at least some basic information and a user account, we'd have no way to a.) inform people when there's been an update to their question, problem or idea and b.) allow people to manage those notifications.
As always, though, we are constantly evolving Get Satisfaction and we hear the concerns around this issue. We're definitely taking all the feedback into consideration.
The company says
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?Amy,
That's really excellent news. I will be ripping out my (empty) support forums tonight and adding GetSatisfaction back in :o)
This is a really good compromise, and demonstrates the problem we as users have with workouting out what it is we actually want!
I've realised that for me it wasn't really "I need anonymous posts", but rather "I need a way for my users to post, without needing to sign up for yet another login".
So thank you so much. This is absolutely perfect for me now :)
Interesting to see you using RPX, I've been investigating them recently myself, how easy did you find it to integrate their service with yours?
I’m happy
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We've been very happy with RPX, particularly given that we need to support all the major identity services. It's very flexible, and we were able to customize our own user experience.
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Inappropriate?i think most of us have reached our limit for having accounts with web 2.0 services. linking accounts seems even worse, and the process is almost as off-putting as signing up for a new account.
how about just allowing users to post their question/comment with just their email address? there's nothing more simple then that. they can still choose to subscribe to the post possibly.
I’m undecided
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There's one reason why we can't just ask for an email address: we need to allow people to turn off or change their email notifications, and for that we need some kind of authentication.
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Inappropriate?Is there perhaps the possibility to allow users to hide their identity for the public when posting? My issue is, that we are trying to get honest and unfiltered feedback, and forward it to possible problematic sites.
With that option, we can stay in contact with the people, but they don't have to fear possible direct negative effects by the people the critique is adressed to. -
Inappropriate?You should allow users to leave feedback anonymously and opt in to receiving feedback if they want it by putting their user info in. Otherwise, it's a barrier to entry for users.
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