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Title:

Customer Service is the New R&D

Your vote:
Yes No
Organizer:
Pamela O'Hara, BatchBlue Software
Description:
With forums, Get Satisfaction, good old email support and more, let your early adopters help build your product and create the solution they've been searching for. See how boot strapping start-ups (and some past the start-up days) build an online R&D lab to turn 1000+ voices into real features.
Questions
Answered:
  1. What are some of the tools to use for collecting feedback from customers?
  2. How can you coordinate information coming from all of the different online and offline sources?
  3. How do you communicate this information back to the entire company?
  4. How do you integrate feedback into the product development cycle?
  5. How do you collaborate on what feedback to implement?
  6. How do you handle feature requests that go against your product vision?
  7. How do you keep CS knowledgeable about the product?
  8. How do you handle letting go of "corporate messages" and allow employees to speak for the company?
  9. How do you keep customers updated on changes being made?
  10. How do you let customers know you appreciate their input?
Level:
Advanced
Category:
Business / Entrepreneurial
Type:
Panel
Event:
SXSW Interactive 2009
on 8/8/08
Customer service does not have to be overwhelming! The plan for this session is to collect a group of CS evangelists (from start-up phase to established brands) to talk about how they used the myriad of tools available to stay connected to their customers, build a better product, scale the technologies and make a better business. From live chat to social media to the good old fashioned phone - hear how to make it all work together.
on 8/8/08
Well, I'm with Get Satisfaction, and one of us would certainly love to be a part of this if you want us! Otherwise we'll just attend. :)
on 8/8/08
Hey Ian - we'd love to have you on the panel! Talk about your CS gurus. We've got some great folks lined up. Now I'll have to add SXSW panel picker to the "myriad of" places we track conversations. Thanks for joining in this one.
on 8/8/08
Hey Pamela, thanks for inviting me to be on the panel. I'd loooove to be part of it. I can tell you a thousand stories.

For instance, I recently flew to San Francisco to take 30 of our customers out to dinner (the best way to meet them face to face). One customer made some feature requests to solve some major pains he had. I wrote down his requests on his business card, got back to Toronto, and followed up with him that we were now tracking his requests.

That's what Software as a **Service** means to me.
on 12/8/08
Oops, I forgot to mention, I'm a marketing nerd at FreshBooks.
on 8/9/08
This sounds like a great panel idea, I work with Linden Lab (creators of Second Life) and if you're looking for another panelist, I'd love to talk about the challenges of moving from an audience of early adopters to more mainstream users and how to best incorporate all types of users into your feedback loops as you grow.

Drop me a line if you want to talk more :)
on 27/12/08
Very helpful, thanks!!
on 8/8/09
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on 16/10/09
Sounds like a great talk!
on 25/11/09
Thanks for the excellent tutorial. I will refer friends to your site.
Developed for SXSW by Lindsey Simon