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Does it have to be companies? Can we create general topics?
For instance, can we create a section that discusses a particular vacation destination or hobby or whatever?
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Inappropriate?That's a good question! Satisfaction is created specifically for the communication of companies & organizations with their customers. A lot of the systems break down outside of companies, and frankly there are better places to have discussions about general topics. Yahoo and Google groups are OK places to start. Satisfaction is really easy to get started with which is definitely attractive, but it's not a system built for general groups.
On the other hand you can frame most anything you want to talk about around a company and the people that use it's products. If I want to talk about something as broad as life or religion I could easily frame it under the organization of a specific church. For me, I'd more likely talk about design, so Apple or Adobe Satisfaction sites would be a great place to start Talk topics on whatever point I want to discuss. Then being general is good thing. Framing discussions under a company really helps people have a common ground to build out a meaningful conversation. Think of it as villages online.
You may want to start a general Satisfaction site to cover relevent interest of yours and keep it housed all in one place. Well we're working on better ways for you to keep track of conversations of interest to you (and ways to find other people with similar interests). Your dashboard will be the home of your general interests and your relevant slice of Satisfaction. Satisfaction is about letting information be free to roam and mingle, so the idea of housing general subjects outside of your dashboard could actually put a damper on the depth and breadth of conversations happening inside of company & organization sites.
Thanks for bringing this up, we're working hard to meet your needs!
I’m sad that groups aren't as easier to start elsewhere.
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Inappropriate?donnacha,
We specifically try to target customer service issues. By focusing on this area, we can have all sorts of complimentary features, such as the product linking and condensed conversations.
It also lets us condense the scope of topic areas, such that we can do all sorts of neat and hacky tricks with our search, so that you can get a more natural experience.
That all is not to say that you can't use satisfaction in the way you describe, just that you won't be seeing the whole picture. Like I said before, the real power going forward is in the focus.
What you want is a forum system, and you can find many of those by googling for "free forums". Or, like leslie said, yahoo or google groups.
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this answers the question
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Inappropriate?Oh please God now - just a business or service. This happened over at Yelp - people started giving reviews of people (Lance Armstrong, noted...business?!). I guess it didn't effect the service, but still - keep it customer service. Niche is the way to go.
I’m hoping this experience doesn't get too diluted.
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this answers the question
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Inappropriate?Thanks guys.
As it happens, I'm extremely familiar with forums, groups and other forms of collective conversation. What strikes me as Satisfaction's advantage is that it lowers the barrier to participation and intelligently heads off duplicate questions in a way that the alternatives currently do not. Those are big advantages, unfortunately big enough to guarantee that you will see them being duplicated by others in all their AJAX goodness within the next six months.
The focus on companies is smart and I read, in another thread here, a Satisfaction employee's statement that the aim is for Satisfaction to become strongly associated in people's minds as the place to come for that specifc type of support.
Might it not be a good idea, however, to create another brand with its own website, driven by the same tech, to accommodate non-company subject matter? That would do a lot to familiarize people with the general concept while keeping Satisfaction itself even more tightly focused.
Yes, such general conversations can occur at Yahoo or Google groups but, temporarily, your interface is better, your barrier to entry is lower, you should seize the opportunity to draw more users in your direction while you can; your advantage won't last forever. -
Inappropriate?Rmm, I agree, that's why I'm suggesting that they split it off to maintain the main site's clarity of purpose.
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Inappropriate?Yes, you're on to something there, rmm. "Niche is the way to go". It's important to know who we are, what we are, who we're for and what we're for. At the same time, we're an open system and people should be able to expirament to a point. The product and tools will either support that expirament or not. As long as we stay focused on developing the product in the direction we've intended it will all work itself out.
I’m focused on focus.
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Inappropriate?Apologies, I was totally confusing Satisfaction with Pownce in one of my replies above - I discovered Satisfaction via Pownce and, clearly, I'm a confused individual right now.
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Inappropriate?We're working on that too. We want it to be clear to people that when they come into Satisfaction, they are no longer on the site of the company where they came from. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to share!
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Inappropriate?donnacha - Apologies? I thought your reply was really thoughtful and applied very much to Satisfaction. You have some interesting thoughts about the opportunities we could take advantage of.
So now I'm confused about which reply of yours was meant for Pownce.
I’m thinking we all need another cup of coffee
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Inappropriate?"It's important to know who we are, what we are"
"... we're an open system ... to a point".
Isn't that a tad contradictory?
Surely it makes sense to abstract out the focus of the site from the underlying technology, allowing you to have a brand/site tightly focused upon this niche (and it is a great , big cavernous niche with tons of potential) but also be free to use the same tech to run other brands/sites with different foci?
Yes, it would require a completely separate team of moderators but the advantages for Satisfaction, apart from building another lucrative brand, would be that it would:
1. Draw off discussion not entirely suited to Satisfaction's focus
2. Provide a sandbox for experimentation that can feedback into Satisfaction, without having to chop and change within Satisfaction itself.
3. Familiarize more people with a Satisfaction-type interface.
4. Escalate awareness of Satisfaction's existence long before users find themselves in need of company-centered support.
As I say, your innovation has created a window - a pretty small ancillary team could collect on that.
I’m just throwing some ideas around, in a happy, confident, thankful and excited manner.
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Inappropriate?LOL, sorry for the confusion Amy, I was talking, 100%, about Satisfaction and have edited my post to correct my mistake.
Funnily enough, a few hours ago a friend pointed me towards Pownce as an interesting concept but, somehow, their support service has grabbed my imagination instead!
I’m braindead sometimes.
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Inappropriate?Cameron, it was actually reasonably clear to me that, having entered via Pownce, I was now in Satisfaction's own support area. My use of the wrong name was, as Amy suggests, down to lack of coffee rather than any lack of clarity in your interface.
Slightly different color schemes would be good but would not, in this case, have saved me from my abject self-humiliation. -
Inappropriate?It's funny that you mention using the "underlying technologies" of SFN as a platform for other kinds of discussions. It's important for us to maintain a focus to best serve our customers. We will continue to make design decisions based on our customer service vision.
On the other hand we do see a lot of room for experiementing with this platform. We love the innovation that comes from that kind of play, it's very near and dear to the heart of Satisfaction. So with that in mind, we've begun designing and building an API that will be as open to use and experimentation as possible. The API has a lot of other potential uses as well. I think I'll leave fleshing that out to one of the developers, since it's their baby.
I’m Always Promoting Innovation
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Inappropriate?Well, off the top of my head, I can already think of something that would work beautifully and would very much like to find out more.
Do you maintain a thread or list specific to these developments?
I’m excited by the potential.
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Inappropriate?We didn't have a topic thread specifically devoted to the API because it hasn't launched yet. So I went ahead and started one. Thanks for the idea!
I’m sure the possibilities are endless
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Inappropriate?Might be good if you started a wiki - best version I've seen used to be at Upcoming before they got bought out by Yahoo (screen capture here:
http://web.archive.org/web/2006020305...)
I’m disappointed they got rid of the wiki - damn that Yahoo
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