Get Satisfaction!
Just happened upon a pretty cool new web service called Get Satisfaction. It is a community site self proclaimed as “People powered customer service for just about everything”.
I found the service doing a search on private video chatting for Seesmic.
It is incredibly easy to use, and addresses a number of customer experience and support needs:
- I can pose a problem to the community and get feedback and answers
- Users can vote on my problem / question and opt-in as having it too - allows the biggest issues to bubble to the top
- Customer self-support is naturally enabled
- Employees of companies represented within Get Satisfaction can identify themselves and participate in the discussion around their products and services
- I can add companies and products/services to my dashboard to monitor - I may be a customer or just interested in buying
Seems like a great site for getting customer support and service, and for referrals and pre-purchasing research.
The UI was very easy and intuitive … the process is easy … see the “how to” below … very interesting!
Social Enterprise Software discussion buzzing last week
Across the blogosphere, the topic of “Enterprise Social Software” was hot this past week.
- Fred Wilson asks if the term itself is an oxymoron.
- Sam Lawrence makes a case here on how social software vendors, including his own Jive Software, and SocialText, Atlassian among others, could upend the incumbent enterprise vendors SAP and Oracle, while referencing this article about a recent Forrester report about these emerging collaboration vendors.
- Dennis Howlett debates Sam and makes a case here for why the incumbents will not be upended, and partially bases his argument on this viewpoint on enterprise inertia from Sig Rinde.
- Jeff Dachis of Razorfish fame raises $50mm from Austin Ventures to pursue the social networking application space within the enterprise
- Last, but not least, Oliver Marks provided a good synthesis of this set of conversations.
The buzz is great news for those of us betting on collaboration and social networking as fundamental disruptors to the traditional enterprise landscape and as fundamental enablers for the next generation of value creation from enterprises of all kinds (corporate, governmental, non-profits, and others). It means something is happening, and it surely is.
However, I feel the debate about this “Enterprise Social Software” market is being viewed through the wrong lens. It is a great set of reading, but it seems that most of the conversation can be summarized with the phrase “Where’s the beef?”. This is consistent with ongoing discussion around Enterprise 2.0 continues to swirl around the topic of the lack of repeatable case examples of ROI for wiki, blog, forum and social network applications.
The perspective that I believe is missing from all of these conversations is that the next generation of enterprise applications - Enterprise Social Applications - are not strictly about wikis, blogs, forums, etc. The emerging Enterprise Social Applications market, as discussed in the conversations listed above, should be about how those Web 2.0 capabilities (blogging, wikis, forums, social networks) are applied to applications to solve the business problems of next generation enterprises.
The problems to be solved by and emerging demand for these new applications arise from three underlying multi-decade mega trends hitting large enterprises today - Globalization, the Talent Crunch and Web 2.0. The push toward being global and acting global will force enterprises to have much more agile, open and collaborative business processes, and the applications to support those processes. The same thing is true with the talent crunch which is upon us - as boomers “retire” and the Net Generation enters the workforce, the demands for more agile, open and collaborative work processes and applications will grow dramatically. This is how the Net Generation gets work done. The fact that Web 2.0 is upon us and that wikis, blogs, forums, social networks exist enables all of this - however, these capabilities are not the specific applications which will be the next generation of enterprise applications, or Enterprise Social Applications as coined in the conversations this past week.
Further validation of Twitter as a customer experience touchpoint
These blog posts further highlight now Twitter has become a natural outlet for customer feedback as well as a relevant touchpoint.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_to_get_customer_service_via_twitter.php
http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/2007/12/does-jamba-know.html
Below are companies which have set up Twitter Channels.
Entering the Web 2.0 Innovation Abyss
Fred Wilson put up a great post last week which generated a ton of commentary on the post itself and across the blogosphere on the topic of a ‘new path to liquidity’ for startups. Be sure to scan through the comments. Umair Haque had a supportive follow-on post as well. Fred hit on a very compelling point for me personally as a heavy user of a series of Web 2.0 applications and services which have been acquired by the likes of Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google and others only to see the services and apps stagnate in their innovative capability post-acquisition. One might say upon acqusition, these compelling products and services enter an Innovation Abyss inside their larger parent companies. At the same time, as an entrepreneur and entrepreneurial deal-maker in my current role, Fred’s post and subsequent conversation generated strong interest for me as well on the topics of paths to liquidity and the overall VC model.
I think Fred was spot-on in his post. However, it is critical to really parse what he was saying. Felix Salmon wrote a follow-up to Fred’s post on Seeking Alpha, and I believe missed the point Fred was making. Felix seemed to interpret Fred’s post to be saying he was looking for more or better liquidity opportunities for his portfolio companies in an effort to generate a higher rate of return for his fund - hence the statement about ‘greed’.
Quite the contrary, I suspect that Fred and Union Square Ventures and others like it are generating just fine RORs for their limited partners. What I believe Fred was expressing was the statement I made at the top of this post - that the acquirers are not doing justice to the innovation being funded by VCs. What Fred is looking for is a new path to liquidity which generates returns that are comparable to those he gets by selling to Google et. al., but that the targets will also do something with the innovation and keep the founders and core team behind the innovation incented to continue to build their compelling products or services, only now post-deal with more leverage and resources.
Look at a service like FolderShare. It was quite amazing what was accomplished with that service prior to the acqusition by Microsoft. What has happened since? In my opinion, the quality of the service may even be lower as part of Microsoft. How about del.icio.us, to which Fred refers. I cannot point to anything innovative since the Yahoo! deal. I still use both services, but was hoping for something positive following those deals.
In short, I do not believe Fred was asking for higher returns or even more potential acquirers - he appeared to clearly be asking for more appropriate acquirers for his innovative portfolio companies. He may make better returns if he continues to hold the stock post acquisition, but that is not the point. Also, in the absence of better options, Fred and his brethren have an obligation to maximize ROR for their limited partners and execute their fiduciary duty as board members of their portfolio companies, which will mean to continue to sell their portfolio companies in the manner in which they have been - regardless of it may end up stifling the innovation in a portfolio company. Fred appears to be pleading for better exit options for his portfolio companies to help those companies continue to deliver the customer experience gains he expects as a user of the many products and services in which he invests. I hope plea is answered with new paths to liquidity.
The post and its many responses caused me to think more about why this is happening, and I believe I have a hypothesis outlining the underlying reasons behind the situation Fred outlines relative to today’s VC model and the overall technology start-up environment. I do not think the answer for this particular issue outlined by Fred is a private liquidity market such as Opus-5 or Goldman Sachs’ GS True Market, or, while plausible in its own right, a new private exchange for accredited investors as suggested by Roger Ehrenberg. Smells like an opportunity.
I will address these reasons in a subsequent post as part of this mini series and hopefully suggest some opportunities. Like Fred’s reference to pmarca in his post, I too cannot seem to get through posts which are too long (though pmarca authors a very compelling blog). I’ve made my point here, so I’ll cover other points in the next posts in this series.
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