Influence - Entries from September 2007

Crowdsourcing Customer Service - GetSatisfaction

Tuesday, September 25. 2007

A start-up called GetSatisfaction has a service that uses "crowdsourcing" to provide customer service, basically allowing the community of users of a product or service to help each other out. They write:

Satisfaction is people-powered customer service for everything. It's a Web service that uses "community-sourcing" to provide better support for products and services, with or without company involvement. Satisfaction's open discussion-based system allows companies, their customers and partners to work together to answer questions, identify problems and bugs, share great ideas for how to make products better, and connect in unexpected ways.

We're big fans of such community-powered services. And GetSatisfaction is in use by some 400+ organizations - from T-Mobile to Twitter to Linden Labs (Second Life), ZDnet and others. Some of the instances of GetSatisfaction look pretty new and do not yet have much content, but Apple is one that looks active.

For public sector focused groups, I think GetSatisfaction also looks like a great solution, for example, someone answered the question "How do I report that a streetlight is out?" in the GetSatisfaction space for the City of Ann Arbor. I can imagine that a lot of NGOs and even government agencies could tap into their communities of devoted supporters, fans, retired experts and others to provide some really valuable information using this.

You can see a more in depth reflection on GetSatisfaction by Tim O'Reilly in O'Reilly Radar.

Their own blog is at http://blog.getsatisfaction.com/

And who can't like name

?

Technorati tags:
GetSatisfaction

Posted by Chris Wolz in Collaboration at 11:01 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Live Interview with American Rivers

Monday, September 17. 2007

Today, I moderated a live interview online with Chas Offutt, Director of Strategy at American Rivers. My favorite question was "Chas, what's your favorite metric?" Find the answer to this question and others in the interview transcript.

This is the first of a series of live interviews we're going to host over the next few months. If you have ideas for future interviews, please contact me at acohen@forumone.com or Dave Witzel at dwitzel@forumone.com.

If you would like to hear Chas' speak about his redesign strategy -- live and in the flesh -- he'll be speaking at our event "Six Steps to a Successful Online Strategy" next week. It's on Wednesday, Sept. 26 at the National Press Club here in Washington.

Posted by Andrew Cohen in Events, Strategy at 14:46 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Six Steps to a Successful Online Strategy

Tuesday, September 11. 2007

Our next Web Executive Seminar is coming up soon. We've done three so far this year -- on user experience, blogging, and technology planning -- but our Sept. 26 strategy event is sure to be the best yet.

First, Tim Shaw, our own Director of Internet Strategy and recurring blogger 'round these parts, will provide a framework for how organizations can approach online strategy projects. It's a six-step recovery program, therefore our session is titled "Six Steps to a Successful Online Strategy." Tim pledges to lay out this framework in 11 minutes or less. Should be quite a show.

Next, we'll hear from a series of interesting nonprofit organizations about how these steps actually played out in their own online strategies. We're hoping that by hearing the stories of how organizations actually stepped through a mission-centric strategy will bring this framework to life. We want this discussion to be more than academic.

Our speakers will be from Planned Parenthood Federation of America, American Rivers, and Youthink! -- a 2006 Webby Award winner. By the way, Forum One didn't play a role in any of these strategy projects. We are hoping to learn something ourselves.

So what are the six steps? Well, you'll have to come to the event to find out. But for those who are busy or far-flung, as always, we'll be posting slides and audio shortly following the event. Still, there's no substitute for being there.

Also, we're trying something new this time. This Monday Sept. 17 at 2 pm EDT, we're going to be conducting a Live Interview with one of speakers -- Chas Offutt of American Rivers. The interview is free and you can ask a question in advance or during the interview. For a quick background about the redesign, read Chas' post on the River Blog.

Posted by Andrew Cohen in Events, Strategy at 23:16 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

Web Executive Seminar Recap: Internet Technology Investment Planning

Tuesday, September 11. 2007

Back in June we hosted another Web Executive Seminar at the National Press Club. This time we convened four IT leaders to talk about Internet Technology Investment planning for their nonprofit or government organizations.

Our speakers included:

Susi Alger, Information Technology Director at opensecrets.org, (2007 Webby Award Winner)

Kristofer Mathisen, Vice President of Cognitive Technologies, speaking on the Web Content Unit Program Management Office at Office of Comptroller of the Currency, U.S. Department of the Treasury.

Brian Moran, Information Technology Director at the U.S. International Trade Commission

Matt Schuttloffel, Internet Services Director at the National Wildlife Federation

Posted by Kurt Voelker in Technology at 12:02 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

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Influence covers innovations in communication, Internet technology and strategy to generate influence on important public policy issues. Chris Wolz manages this blog with the help of his colleagues at Forum One Communications, a web strategy/technology firm in the Washington DC area.