The bar none best way to improve a product or service is to talk with the customers who use them. Satisfaction Unlimited is a company who is taking advantage of this knowledge base and using it to help new companies. Crowdsourcing is the technical term for using customers to get feedback and support. This site works by setting up networks of forums and corporate discussion boards and inviting clients to share their opinions. The customers can use the forums to ask suggest changes, ask questions, complain and discuss whatever is on their mind. The boards and forums are open which means that questions can be answered by other customers or by the people responsible in the company itself. So far, over 200 companies are increasing their customer satisfaction with getsatisfaction.com. This system is a great way to tap into the real needs of the customers and is more helpful than hiring a consultant to guess what the problems might be.
"Find the company that makes the product you want to talk about and click it. Ask a question or start a topic in the box near the top of the page. If there's a similar topic already, you can join the conversation in progress. We'll notify you via email whenever people reply to the topic you posted."
Customers are the best source to find out what works and what doesn't work about your product or service. If you fix the problems and concerns of the clients they will continue to pay for the product and thus revenue will increase. Customers want to complain and suggest so use them as the great resource they are.
