CRM Cloud Computing

Last month, Get Satisfactions introduced the availability of Get Satisfaction Integration on Salesforce.com's (News - Alert) AppExchange.

Customers can now combine social conversations taking place in Get Satisfaction communities with CRM information available in CRM software provider, Salesforce.com’s Service Cloud, company officials said. Apart from providing complete visibility into every customer conversation, this new service this new service also helps them to track service cases, and capture social knowledge.

And now, Get Satisfaction, a Web application providing an outsourced customer service platform and the inspiration for a million a) bad puns and b) references to old Rolling Stones songs, is being touted by online observers as a “forum-based service infrastructure for companies or products that is really easy to create and manage.”

At least that's the estimation of Mark Gibbs, who describes himself as “consultant, author, journalist, columnist and blogger” – what, not songwriter too? – who said that it is, in fact, “much easier than almost anything you could do as an in-house project.” Additionally, the company recently announced a new round of venture funding.

Registered users can track products and companies, contribute to forums by “asking questions and making product suggestions, and sharing comments on Facebook (News - Alert), Twitter, by e-mail, and through other social networking services,” Gibbs said. And, we're beginning to see a potential issue here; more on that later.

The comment process as Gibbs describes it seems fairly straightforward; it lets users categorize their input as a question, an idea, a problem or as praise. Users can add tags or even that obnoxious smiley faces to their comment.

A red flag goes up with the fact that “you don't have to be from the company that the forum is about, anyone can create a forum for anything,” Gibbs said, adding that he thinks this has interesting implications for companies that don't have a coordinated, comprehensive customer service strategy.

We think it's a recipe for a train wreck, and we're not ones to mix our metaphors. Let's say your company has an angry or disillusioned user community. Oh we know, but play along, pretend that it's possible for your company. 

“The PR consequences of unhappy users finding a common forum could be a big problem if not addressed,” Gibbs said, and we know the man speaks truth. Let's hope these aren't the same people posting to Facebook, either.

Gibbs notes a nifty feature.

“In the user comment creation process, they assess and report on how likely the comment is to get noticed based on whether tags are used, whether a smiley is used, whether the length of the comment is long enough, and whether the comment is titled. This is great because it encourages users to be more engaged and relevant,” he said.

“Paid (News - Alert) for accounts start at $19 per month. This adds one official rep, hosting on your own URL, and some simple customization, while the top end account option at $899 per month buys extensive customizability, analytics, integration with Zendesk, and so on,” Gibbs added.