Offer private messaging capabilities

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Over the last couple of weeks I have received three e-mails from customers that are "Private Messages". I have then come to the Get Satisfaction site and found NO record of these messages, and no way to reply to these people.


It seems that if you are going to provide a facility to SEND the Private Messages, then I ought to be able to see a record of them ... and reply ... all within Get Satisfaction.


If there is a way to see this, and reply, then it ought to be more visible ... because I can't find it ...


And that leads to the real question ... are these even real messages? Or is someone just forging your e-mail address and doing Phishing attacks?

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
How do I reply to a customer private message through your system?.

It would be great if you could create a private thread between just you and the company. There's some issues that you can't really talk about publicly, such as account related requests that require you to share your a/c details.


If you could create a private support thread that only you and the company can see, that would work well. Traditionally, you might email the company instead — but why not use GS as a one-stop location for company support?


Interested to hear your thoughts. Thanks!

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
It would be great if you could create a private thread between just you and the company..

Is there a private messaging system or any other way for a company to directly communicate to a customer, i.e. to give a personalized license key?

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Are there direct communication capabilities on GS?.

First I would like to say I am very satisfied with Get Satisfaction. However, I was wondering if there is a feature so you can directly chat with a company's representative or employee? I don't know if this is available and I can't find it or if this feature has not yet been implemented. If this feature does not exist, I think it would take Get Satisfaction to the next level.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Can you chat with a company's representative?.

Looking forward to this finally happening, I think the number of people requesting it should get it live pretty soon, we hope.... Lane don't lets us down ;0)

I gotta say, I hope your right. Before I posted earlier to bump the topic there hadn't been any activity on this topic for months, even though it was still listed as "planned". The topic itself is a year old, so it makes you wonder exactly how long they've had this listed as something they were supposedly working on...

Can anyone from Get Satisfaction give us an update on this? It seems to have been "in progress" for quite some time...

Privacy when needed should be top Priority. Also direct contact with Customer Service and Tech problems is fair dealing overall, especially with internet.
Thank you for your time

I concur with this being a very desirable feature. Integration is a bit much for us at this point as well. As a company that makes cell phones apps, requesting their cellular number often becomes part of the troubleshooting process which means we switch to email.

I was thinking that maybe giving the ability to send messages back and forth between members, onsite, might be something useful that could be implemented.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Messaging.

It’s a pretty interesting tool. I will definitely be using it once I get the chance. Thanks for sharing!

I still think it is almost amusing that for over a year now people have been using the Get Satisfaction system, to try and tell Get Satisfaction what we want ... a really simple way to reply privately ... not some big overblown third-party solution.

Yet, they do not seem to think that this feedback from us - the customer - means much. :-(

It seems there is simply argument coming back each time, pushing us to some other system. It might be time to simply go completely to some other system that is able to provide a complete solution. Maybe my businesses, and clients businesses, are not the customers that Get Satisfaction wants.

It could be to "get satisfaction", we need to go someplace else ....

I understand that Get Satisfaction has a road-map and and must prioritize based on what is necessary to run Get Satisfaction in the IMMEDIATE.

Complaints about the time-line of the feature should be kept to a minimal in my opinion, as Morgan's clearly identified it may be developed in the future.

i

We just signed up for the Connect plan for GS. To be clear, we are a startup that is not yet profitable and $80/month is not an expenditure we take lightly for an ancillary service. I was sort of shocked that there is no way to make an issue private without removing it. This seems like a fundamental issue to me, because there is always private information in any account-based site, and it seems inevitable that private issues will arise for any organization.

The 3rd party integrations are fine for what they are, but unless we have some specific need for their features, it's a ridiculous amount of complexity and overhead to add a huge CRM app. To us getsatisfaction is supposed to be the CRM app. I guess you probably see yourself as more of a consumer service than a B2B CRM product, but the fact is that for a significant market segment you can fulfill that role, and do so in a way that is very user-centric, which is why we chose you. We use a handful of other apps internally for various purposes, but none of them are user-facing. We don't need anything complex, but we do need a way to communicate on private issues that is less cumbersome than email when multiple staff people need to get involved.

I am participating as a product customer in a forum of one of your clients, and when I respond to new questions and topics that I think are related to other topics, people can get confused like I work for the company when I am not. The confusion can come in from giving answers that are short, quick, and to the point, especially in trying to be mindful with people's time and the use of mobile devices. Here is one of the reasons why:

People tend to subscribe to receive emails from the GS forums to even their smart phones and PDAs, and the emails do not tell the status of the reply person in terms of employee, champ, or user (already posted as another idea topic). This causes participants to make inquiries to the company looking for me, or looking for information that did not come from the company that in turn can cause confusion within the company. Ideally, people do want quick and short answers especially when using mobile devices for those itty-bitty little screens and/or using SMS notifications; but not having enough of the right information in that email can set off a string of unnecessary inquiries.

Confusion, of course, can come in on my part with how I may word responses; but there is a such a thing as "responders remorse" after finding out what happens when a simple response that is meant to help can really turn out to be unhelpful due to all the applications, devices, and work flow methods people are using while receiving the same information. The issue is aggravated further if I am using a mobile device myself with those predictive typing technologies, word shortcuts, and such where I may tend to keep responses short. If there were also an auto-signature in the reply or comment posting, then some of the confusion of responder's relationship as not actually an employee would be averted.

If the Private Message idea was right there, I could avert all the mess where the company employees can merge topics readily if they think the topics are related when they go to look at a topic I commented on privately. In this sense, by adding a Private Message to a topic, I am effectively choosing to self-moderate my remarks for acceptance and approval of the forum moderators. Since Private Messaging does not exist, self moderation consists of emailing the moderators off-board of the topic to consider whether or if to take further action of updating or converting the topic. This is not much different than what Matt Hanna describe in his Step 2 above in their workflow: "We ask ask [users] to provide us with some data, perhaps downloadable from their ftp server." Sometimes that data requires passing a username and password to access that file server privately. Providing a link for that data right on the topic gives the link all the context that is needed. A link to sample data that is out of context somewhat makes that link dubious for the purpose of that data.

In addition, IF users could also PM users then any user that happens to be confused or needs more information before voting yet feels there is a chance a post might appear irrelevant to the topic, then they can PM the user to get some clarification before voting or posting. What I recommend to avert PM abuse between users and users is that you use the Contacts area of the user's profile as a opt-in for receiving PMs from another user. If a user sets somebody up as a contact, then it is expected that the user does want PMs from that contact. If a user sends a PM to a particular user where a Contact association is not yet setup, then a Contact Request setting can be had in the Privacy area to automatically accept or prompt the user for the Contact requests. Such a mechanism would curtail much user abuse and if a user does not want a PM connection set with another user then all that user will need to do is delete the Contact association. That delete function could be made prominent in the moment a PM is in the queue for that user.

Another use is the need to write a note to yourself while doing research on a topic but not mature enough to post without some undue confusion. Sometimes the notes are pointed questions to follow up on. As topics can be similar and new users will tend not to know or be able to search readily on topics already posted, new topics appear that seem to be similar to topics I already voted on and prompts me to wonder if I am looking at a new topic or not. That is when I would want to put in notes so I can brainstorm how I am going to respond to that post.

An additional frequent use case is that customers often are using their own ticketing system for their help desk for one reason or another. They are simply not prepared to reroute all their technical support people's use of phone, online chat, and email into Get Satisfaction. In our unique case, we had an asset tag system that supported printing out asset tag labels and was integrated with a financial software package for depreciation and asset warranty tracking. But going with an online help desk solution disassociated the asset tags with the help desk to only become a manually key affair.

In such a scenario where Get Satisfaction is being used in a limited scope such as for R&D purposes to get more ideas from their clients, the posting of a Problem gets blurred with the posting of an Idea. As a user, I am disadvantaged in offering help to users who are posting a question to the company without the mechanism of Private Messaging because I am uncertain at the time if the company is going to take the question as an Idea or defer the question to their technical support group using another system. If I post too prematurely then there is a likelihood that my post will be removed by moderators anyway.

In closing, a pattern that can be seen here is that having the ability to post Private Messages alleviates some of the pain of other features that are lacking in Get Satisfaction. Private Messages can provide a proxy method for features that are in development or have not even been articulated yet.

I was wondering if GetSat now has the ability to send private messages to members or to those added as contacts?

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Private Messages.

Sometimes we need valuable information of our customers to solve there problems while communicating on get satisfaction, we just cant say our customers to re-post there problem to another section again in need of information and i guess that's not a good way too.


So i am looking for perfect solution to find out our customers email address so that we can create phone ticket and ask for the necessary information that we need to solve there problems.


Any thoughts?

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
how to communicate with users via email or support ticket.

Thor, your employee talk about the Zendesk integration for one to one email system, but i don't think every one does use Zendesk.

In our case we are using kayako resolve for one-to-one support. Is there any way so that we can connect get satisfaction with kayako.

Or any other way to communicate with users via email through get satisfaction.

Thanks

How can i send private message to user

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
How can i send private message to user.

Trying to figure how to contact a moderator / admin person. I see a site with the intials of my company so I could not register here under that name, but it is registered to someone with zero starts and has not used it in over two years.

How can I approach a process to claim that name?

Thanx,
Jim

I reported a bug in a product forum, offering to send screenshots to the developers. I do not want to share these screenshots on the forum because they contain client data.

A developer requested the screenshots, but it appears I have no way to send a message directly to him.

-- Ward

Morgan,

Any update on this much-needed feature? I just read through the above posts hoping that I was missing it somewhere but it looks like it is still not launched. We also need to get somewhat private info from users and need a way to just private message them. We don't want to pay and install Zendesk for this.

It's been a long wait. Do you have any update on this issue?

Dealbreaker. Private information is part of providing good support.

Chat has been mentioned a lot latley. Private messages haven't been mentioned that much so it MIGHT be a good idea if you would like to have one. In the armor games community, there have been a lot of chat topics recently, so if you want to pop by and give some feedback, feel free to do that!!!!!

So many useful information,thanks!

Offer private messaging capabilities

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Offer private messaging capabilities.

Would love to have the ability to send a private message to a customer rather than posting a private email address on the community

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Private Message facility.

Within our GetSatisfaction community, i would like to send a private mail to some of the active participants, will this be somehow posible?

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
private messages, or how to retrieve email accounts from users.