Is Get Satisfaction Evil?

I've just finished reading Jason from 37Signals' post on why Get Satisfaction is getting it wrong.

Essentially, the article says that the way Get Satisfaction is treating companies is akin to extortion. There's more to it than that, but that's at the heart of Jason's argument. He feels that the Get Satisfaction 37 Signals company page represents 37 Signals as not caring about their customers and as a result 37 Signals (and other companies in the same situation) are compelled to participate at Get Satisfaction.

Before I go on I should say that my opinions come from the following perspective:

• Get Satisfaction is in some ways a competitor of OneEyeDeer, though probably not a direct competitor. (I'm guessing they've never heard of us, so this might be news to them...)
  
  
• We're thankful that Get Satisfaction has managed to do so well in building awareness of the benefits of leveraging the skills, knowledge and experience that exist outside of the organisation
  
  
• We're big fans of 37 signals and have even bought their seminal work on developing web apps - Getting Real.

With all of that in mind, here are my thoughts on the situation:

1. I completely understand why Get Satisfaction has pre-populated company sites. First of all it makes it easier for customers to start participating - i.e. for most well-known companies they don't have to actually start a site and for companies it's a simple way to get involved with little to no real cost.
   
   
2. I also understand that a massive benefit of Get Satisfaction is that by aggregating customer service forums you get cross-pollination of skills and ideas etc. as well as a standardised process that customers and companies are familiar with. This is something that has driven our work at OneEyeDeer.
   
   
3. I agree with Jason, however, there is a hint of "extortion" in the way that Get Satisfaction tries to force companies to be involved. The recent improvements made in response to Jason's post addresses this issue somewhat by making it clearer (as opposed to clear) that just because a company isn't actively involved on Get Satisfaction doesn't mean they don't care about their customers, but I still don't think it's enough. I agree most companies need a kick up the ass to start engaging more closely with their customers, but I'm not sure this is the perfect way to to do that.
   
   
4. I'm still unsure about whether or not being evil is in the Get Satisfaction DNA (to borrow a Haque-ism) or whether they just got it a little wrong and by fixing it have demonstrated that they're really a team of good people who are keen to revolutionise customer service. I suspect it may be the latter, but the idea of pay or we won't show competitors adds, as an example, is pretty lame (I know that their paid services offer additional benefits, but that's the one Jason picks up on). Essentially companies are paying for something that is totally uncorrelated to the value that Get Satisfaction provides and that is a losing strategy for any organisation.

Perhaps the lesson here is there isn't a one-size-fits-all process for customer service and that Get Satisfaction needs to work out how to please different customer company segments.

On the other hand, maybe they don't want or need customers like 37 Signals - i.e. their market is companies who don't have efficient customer service portals or good customer service in general (then again, Zappos use them and they are renowned for their customer service)

In reality however, I think the real point made here is that Get Satisfaction is a service with great potential, that has been doing really great things in the market, but they need to be sure that they keep their un-evil hat on when making decisions that will impact either the community or the companies.

Fixing problems quickly is an admirable quality. But if Get Satisfaction can't figure out what the problems are by themselves, people will soon move on.

There's probably a lesson in that for all of us.