Get Satisfaction's Lane Becker on Web 2.0-style Customer Service

At least one startup is using Web 2.0 technology to do something more ambitious than tossing virtual sheep: Get Satisfaction uses social networking to provide customer service to companies.

"We help companies lower the costs associated with customer service while also fostering more engaged, more satisfied customers by using social tools," says Get Satisfaction co-founder and president Lane Becker in a Behind the Money video interview.

The idea behind Get Satisfaction is to set up a "third-party space" where customers can talk about different products and services. Companies can choose whether or not they want to participate in the discussion. Currently, 7,000 companies are being discussed on Getsatisfaction.com, with half the companies actively participating, according to Becker.

" Depending on the type of company, their customer support e-mail drops overnight 20% to 85 percent," he says. "At the same time they're building up their community."

Get Satisfaction is moving faster to monetize its service than it had originally planned, charging companies for premium services.

"Our business model, as it's developing in that startup-y kind of a way, is to give companies more moderation, more control over the environment, better reporting tools to understand how they're doing, and we're going to be charging for that on a self-service basis," Becker explains. "We're also working with some companies to do deeper integrations with their own systems to get some of that Get Satisfaction mojo in their own services and to pull their customers back in."

The two-year-old company has raised $2 million from First Round Capital (with Rob Hayes as the lead), O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (Bryce Roberts) and SoftTechVC (Jeff Clavier) and is beginning to talk to venture investors about raising more capital. Not surprisingly, Becker says VCs are insisting that Web 2.0 firms have solid business models these days.


We spoke with Becker at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York last week. For video interviews with other attendees, see our talks with Union Square Ventures co-founder Fred Wilson, conference organizer Tim O'Reilly and Lonelygirl15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried.