Got Dissatisfaction

Published on 17th February, 2010 by Stephen Lewis

Get Satisfaction bills itself as “People-Powered Customer Service.” From their “About” page:

Get Satisfaction is a direct connection between people and companies that fosters problem-solving, promotes sharing, and builds up relationships.

Get Satisfaction is open, transparent, and free. Tens of thousands of companies use this neutral space to support customers, exchange ideas, and get feedback about their products and services. Everyone is invited and encouraged to participate.

Over the past few months, I’ve been (very) gradually shifting my EE add-on support over to Get Satisfaction.

Handling support requests via the ExpressionEngine forums has become increasingly cumbersome, and whilst not perfect, Get Satisfaction is certainly more suited to the question-answer format of most support enquiries (as opposed to the ongoing discussion format of a forum thread).

This morning I received an email from Get Satisfaction that forced me to reconsider the wisdom of this transition. Shrouded in some rather empty gushing about “exciting changes to our plans”, here’s the money quote:

As a part of this shift we are making some changes to the free service. While hosting a Get Satisfaction community will continue to be free, all moderation actions will require upgrading to a paid plan.

So what’s my objection to this rather innocuous statement?

It’s certainly not the money – I already pay a monthly subscription for Basecamp, GitHub, and several other products, and have no problem with a business charging for its services.

The introduction of a new $19/month plan also makes Get Satisfaction a more easily-justified expense than it was previously.

No, my concern is rather that the Get Satisfaction team decided that the best way to get people to upgrade to a paid plan was not to add new, compelling features to the paid accounts, but rather to remove features from the existing free account.

It’s not a decision that inspires confidence, or indeed trust.

According to the CTO’s letter, there are “some exciting updates to the Get Satisfaction service” on the horizon. Perfect: use those “exciting updates” to make upgrading a compelling proposition.

Improve the paid plans to the point where I actually want to upgrade. Don’t coerce me into giving you money every month, by removing previously-free features on which I now depend.

Long-term, it’s a lot better to have 10 customers happily handing over their money ever month, spreading the word about how great your product is, than to have 20 customers begrudgingly forking over some cash, moaning to everyone who’ll listen that you screwed them over.