[Satisfaction]: Get Satisfaction gets contacts!

RE: Get Satisfaction gets contacts!

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 03:21:47 -0000

Got it ("j)! Great stuff!

RE: Get Satisfaction gets contacts!

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:11:26 -0000

Yeah, it only shows original posts. In this case, it only updates after someone posts a new topic after you've added them as a contact. I should probably fix that so that no matter what it shows their last topic.

That would be for another day though :)

RE: Get Satisfaction gets contacts!

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 04:36:04 -0000

Oh okay! My contacts list looks like this...

Considering that these contacts should be very active posters, the fact that there weren't any "latest" items made me think that it wasn't showing posts yet. Or maybe it only shows original posts but not replies?

Overall, I really welcome this addition of contacts. I'm thinking i'd use it to see what mine are up to in case it's something interesting or if I can be of any help.

RE: Get Satisfaction gets contacts!

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 00:42:05 -0000

It does :)

We only show topics that the person has posted, right now. I would expect that in the future there would be something similar to a dashboard feed that would let you follow a person more closely.

RE: Get Satisfaction gets contacts!

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 06:40:08 -0000

I understand that, here on GS, anything you might want to do together with your contacts should contribute to the overall service objective of providing support.
Maybe your contacts panel should at least show any latest posts your contacts might have made.

RE: Get Satisfaction gets contacts!

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:57:00 -0000

i'll add to scott's excellent decription by noting that your contacts list doesn't show up for other people* when they're looking at your dashboard profile. it's just a list for your own personal use. this was done in part to prevent the "look at everybody in my friend's list" behavior scott described.

does it make it a little harder to find people to add? maybe. but do you really want to have to maintain a whole other "list of friends"?

as we start to figure out more of what we can do with contacts, that makes sense in this service context, we'll add them in. and of course, any ideas you guys have we'd love to hear.

* i believe this was actually scott's idea. or possibly leslie's. or ted's. hard to keep track.

RE: Get Satisfaction gets contacts!

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:53:07 -0000

well said scott!

RE: Get Satisfaction gets contacts!

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:45:15 -0000

To be honest, there isn't much use for contacts at the present moment, but I can tell you where the system will grow, and some of our reasoning behind implementing them now before they have explicit benefit to you.

We see contacts as the people who have helped your service experience in past and may do so in the future. Just like you can mark the products and companies that you use, you can mark the people who have been helpful to you.

In the future we can use this data to bring those people into conversations involving you that they might be able to help with. For example, the following scenario:

You've got a problem with you macbook, and you've marked Alex, one of the Apple gurus here on GSFN as a contact. You post about your problem and Alex gets a highlighted topic that shows up in his dashboard. That's just one idea that I had, but I haven't thought it out to completion yet so don't hold me to it :)

The driver here is that I'm a strong believer that one of the problems with customer support today is that the humanity is gone... on both sides of the counter. I want GSFN to help bring back the sort of customer experience you would get at a neighborhood corner store you've been shopping at since you were a kid. Part of that is letting people express some of those human connections inside the system, and the contacts feature is us dipping our toe into the pool.

We didn't want it to feel like a social network, which in my opinion tends to become "Look at who's in my friends list" for many people. That isn't necessarily the connections we want to cultivate. Rather , our first step into the explicit human connection (I feel like we've done a good job at helping to build the implicit human connection) is the contacts system and that currently amounts to "This person is someone I care about". In the future that statement will grow to be something with more meat, but for now it is just a simple declaration to yourself. A bookmark list for people, in a sense.

RE: Get Satisfaction gets contacts!

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 09:32:48 -0000

Hi GS Team! I realize this sounds really dumb but - just what can i do with these contacts? Seems to me the basic idea of "contacts" is people you want to interact with (more than with other site members). So what is it that you've set-up this new contacts feature to support? The page itself gives no hints...

RE: Get Satisfaction gets contacts!

Mon, 05 May 2008 06:21:27 -0000

Absolutely! Yes, mdy, this is a great idea, and it's exactly what we want. We want people to be able to follow their Contacts' conversations on our site. That's key to having people -- like you and your extensive knowledge of Twitter -- be more visible as a person with expert-like status.