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For those of you that have not seen, Seesmic is a new player in the social software tools space. Led by Frenchman Loic Lemeur, Seesmic became available to a small group of alpha testers in late 2007. it has steadily opened up to larger and larger numbers of users since then and while still in alpha now, it is available to anyone who signs up for an invitation code.

Seesmic enables users to quickly record video posts and have them appear in a timeline so that others can respond and organically create a “conversation” thread. Seesmic’s tagline is ‘join the conversation’ and that is what seesmic’s users are doing all the time and in many languages.

For a look at Seesmic’s recent PR efforts, read this by Seesmic user Annie Boccio.

What is most interesting for Seesmic’s “users” is not so much the technical hurdles in doing video seamlessly but rather how Seesmic has chosen to interact with it’s customers.

A Seemsic post recently created by the Seesmic Team including
Johann Romefort, Seesmic’s CTO [with large hair] and Vin Vin a co-founder of Seesmic.

The video above begs the question: when was the last time you ever saw a company’s executives interacting with users face to face and asking for questions?

A better question to ask: why aren’t more key players at a company made available to users to interact this way? Why have we endured the ‘wizard of oz’ schtick from companies that do not have the capital or chops to play it?

Social media oenophile, Gary Vanyerchuk also a Seesmic user asks whether social media tools such as Seesmic will help good triumph evil in the below video.

While there may be some debate over that, there’s nothing tenuous about how easy Seesmic makes it for users to reach out. Let’s look at Seesmic’s GUI.

At the bottom of Seesmic’s interface are menu options: ‘report a bug‘, ‘feature request’, and ‘ask a question.’ These links point to another web service called Getsatisfaction.com. Getsatisfaction.com’s mission is to make interactions between users and companies fully transparent and accessible. People can report bugs and ask questions thus enabling others to ‘follow’ along and be notified when responses are made.

By fully embracing Getsatisfaction.com as a customer service platform, Seesmic is making it’s alpha testing a shared experience with its customers while raising the bar for what users can expect a company to do in ensuring customer satisfaction.

I’ll share my recent experience. After using Seesmic for about a week, i had reported a few questions and issues. One example posting on Getsatisfaction.com is shown below.

Almost immediately, I got responses not only from a number of Seesmic’s 13 employees assigned to monitor getsatisfaction.com but from Seesmic CEO, Loic Lemeur. In between his jetsetting, podcasting, and windsurfing, the CEO of a company found the time to respond to a new member of his service’s growing community.

In marked contrast, another web service, of which i am a paid ‘lifetime member’ for over 7 years is sadly typical of what one finds is customer service in the world of web services.

This competing site (to remain un-named) has a basic help request form that is buried beneath layers of FAQs and is responded to by non-technical employees. Actually, getting any responses at all is a relatively new development as this company has now made customer service a priority.

When I tried using their newly charged help form, I was disappointed to find I was offered little more than defensive double talk when asked whether they would consider implementing getsatisfaction.com to improve their customer service and consider adding a feature that is standard at other blogging sites.

Their justification for not embracing Getsatisfaction.com?

“We do not want to outsource our customer service.”

We need to ask ourselves….

Q: Can a company justify making weak customer service, confounding secrecy, and unreliable performance its core competencies?

A: Yes it can. We’ve seen a lot of that lately. Sometimes with integral services that we’ve grown to rely on daily.

Q: Will companies like this survive while some others are making visible efforts at being transparent and truly partnering with customers to provide the best offering possible?

A: They shouldn’t. Let’s make sure they don’t.

Seesmic.com is leading by example by leveraging tools like Getsatisfaction.com as a companies should. Let’s make sure that other services follow their lead.

Technorati Tags: customer service, social media, software