37signals' follow up on "Get Satisfaction, Or Else..."

The frustrating thing about this for me is that I liked Get Satisfaction. It's a really well-done site, for the most part, and it was easy and convenient. I had never used it deeply, and only for services that were actually using it as their primary support channel, so I didn't even realize that they had pages for companies that hadn't signed up with them.<p>All the GS pages look pretty much identical, save for a few logos. After a while, you blow past the repeated boilerplate on each page, and you just use the functionality. I was one of the people who would never have noticed the small distinctions between official and unofficial; I would have thought any GS page was sanctioned by the company, because frankly, it never would have even entered my mind that GS would so brazenly try to unilaterally pose as a company's support channel.<p>This is exactly the kind of thing that trademarks are intended to protect against. I hate to say it, but all the hand-wringing over whether 37s was being rude by dropping a bomb of a blog post, is kind of silly. It could have very legitimately been a bomb of a lawsuit.

I'm impressed with how Jason handled it. GS made some changes that sounded good enough to me, but after reading this post, I'm firmly on 37signals side. GetSatisfaction is a good idea but it's presented very deceptively and has the potential to hurt customers as much as it helps.

We have an "official" page on GS. But I am astounded at how good their SEO is:<p>[dawdle support]: <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+support&#38;ie=utf-8&#38;oe=utf-8&#38;aq=t&#38;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&#38;client=firefox-a" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+support&#38;ie=utf-8&#...</a><p>[dawdle help]: <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+help&#38;ie=utf-8&#38;oe=utf-8&#38;aq=t&#38;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&#38;client=firefox-a" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+help&#38;ie=utf-8&#38;...</a><p>But this is pretty old hat for online retailers:<p>[dawdle reviews]: <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+reviews&#38;ie=utf-8&#38;oe=utf-8&#38;aq=t&#38;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&#38;client=firefox-a" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?q=dawdle+reviews&#38;ie=utf-8&#...</a><p>I totally, totally get why 37signals is upset - but, sadly, what GS is doing isn't new. I'm envious that Jason has a big enough soapbox to get things changed; we certainly don't. <i>That's</i> why I'm thrilled he's being as public as he is.

This follow-up by Rundle gives a good dissection of the GS page design. He doesn't even mention the "Popular products &#38; services from 37signals", where GS uses 37S's product logos as category links. Nor does he mention the fact that one of the two bits of GS branding on the page is a "Powered by" icon that an unfamiliar person would mistake for server software - or a service. Go to that page, and the word "Unofficial" and a small-print disclaimer are your only tip-offs that this is a "community".<p>The bad part of it all is that there's <i>no</i> need or justification at all for designing a customer support page that looks that official and target-company-branded <i>if it isn't</i>. There's no call for using another company's product logos as category links. As much as GS supporters laud that company as being a great bunch of people, I have trouble coming up for an <i>honest</i> purpose for these details.<p>I do note that they appear to have pulled down 37S's logo from the heading, though they've conspicuously left it up for other companies that don't use their support ( <a href="http://getsatisfaction.com/ups" rel="nofollow">http://getsatisfaction.com/ups</a> ).

Check the comments out. This started because a "very, very angry customer" yelled at them about their questions not getting answered. Still on the fence about GS?

Another problem not mentioned is this business model doesn't scale well for the companies it targets. It isn't just Get Satisfaction's pages you have to check... it's UserVoice's as well, and I'm sure there are others.<p>If people have a problem or a feature request and I don't choose to use those businesses, shouldn't it be the burden of <i>those</i> business (and not me) to make that clear to my customers if they inadvertantly end up there? Otherwise I have to sign up with them, or at least check their sites regularly...

I think the question of "honesty" in business is always more complex than we'd like it to be. It's amazing how powerful is the pull to make a business model "work". And very hard to balance that with being conscious of the fairness of it. I very much like how Jason broke down the various aspects of what "customer service" can be.<p>I think this incident is a great reminder, that we have to be incredibly diligent in balancing the pursuit of our business goals, with creating truly healthy communication and commercial ecosystems.

I was considering using Get Satisfaction until I found out they would create pages for companies that hadn't asked for them.<p>Even if the service is good, I don't support companies that don't match my values.

Some things here still don't jive...<p>37Signals customer support person (Sarah Hatter) just wrote a comment stating that they've known about this for a year and that she's been friends with the founder of GetSatisfaction for a long time. I don't see how that leads to angry blog post to 80k people... What it really sounds like is Jason was in a bad mood and now they're doing damage control

One nice thing from Thor Muller in the comments:<p>"Very clear feedback, which we’re grateful for and will take to the drawing board. And yes, we are as serious as can be about removing all confusion. As we’re in the midst of significant design effort, we will see changes continue to hit the site regularly. It should be no surprise that we welcome public feedback about it as it happens.<p>My apologies again."<p>Yes, that's what they should have been saying all along instead of playing the poor-misunderstood-and-bullied-community-site card. However, they may be taking matters seriously enough to actually fix their approach.

I've stayed out this for the most part because neither company are of interest to me, but Tom's comment on this follow up post is interesting. It's almost as if 37signals knew about the site, made an attempt at using it and then couldn't be bothered to continue - instead preferring to wait a while and cause a little controversy (possibly for their own benefit). That's not to say that GS were/are in the right, but why wait nearly a year to start a conversation on this?

So do I go to 37signals' website for support on GS now?

Get Satisfaction should stop creating support pages for companies that HAVE NOT SIGNED UP .<p>That is the end of the problem and the ONLY WAY TO GO .<p>37 Signals isn’t creating Basecamp accounts for companies that have not signed up, is it?<p>Get Satisfaction business models is very similar to Yelp = Extortion 2.0

The point of Get Satisfaction is to give people a way to corral ignorant and unresponsive companies into taking action. This a good thing. Concomitant with doing that, though, is a bit of extra work for responsive companies who are already good at support.<p>Fried's demands about unofficial badging and so on would destroy the good that GS does. If he can emblazon the page with UNOFFICIAL and LOOK HERE FOR SUPPORT, then what's to stop ShittyCorp from doing the same and pointing people to their own useless support pages?<p>To an extent, GS <i>has</i> to subvert the official support pages, otherwise it doesn't work. Fried's real argument is "this whole business model annoys me", but instead of just admitting that, he's going on about badges and design.

The flip side is that if a company is to create a good QA site for an another company...Wouldn't they want it to be so official looking that the user would not be able to see the difference?

Personally, I'm more on the side of Get Satisfaction on this one. There are some valid points about how GS is doing things, granted, but Jason at 37Signals seems to have problems with the entire concept of their business/service. I dont. I think its fantastic.<p>I think it puts the impetus on companies to either really flush out their support processes, or to find a vendor that will do it for them.<p>That said, I think the 'Unofficial' notification does need to be more obvious.

I'm glad Jason stuck to his guns and didn't back down. He's right.

I don't understand why this is top of HN. Sure, GetSatisfaction screwed up their text on one of their badges, but that shouldn't have been cause for Jason to go off on a rant.<p>Also, I think that GetSatisfaction could have notified 37Signals when the page got created as per this quote from Sarah: "customer himself pointed me to the GS page he had created to ask 37signals a question".<p>However, these are all issues that could have been handled differently, most notably NOT being aired out to the general public. If Jason Fried thought that GS has "blackmailed" him, isn't he stooping to their level then by publicly denouncing their service, thereby essentially blackmailing them into action? Seriously, let's all be adults.