UserVoice Offers A Better Way To Take Customer Suggestions
UserVoice offers a hosted way to harness the innovation and ideas of customers and potential customers that replaces email.
San Francisco based UserVoice improves the signal-to-noise of user opinion by allowing the moderation of the ideas of one person against the opinions of the many. UserVoice allows users to voice opinions, suggestions, and complaints. The video above demonstrates how it works (it’s difficult to pigeon hole) but think focus groups for companies that can’t afford focus groups, with elements of a forum and even Digg style voting thrown in for good measure.
For companies, UserVoice offers an open and transparent process for customer feedback to any company. The system also allows site owners to ask the community more directed questions (e.g. by a poll) about how users like a new feature or what they think of a specific idea.
I first saw UserVoice when I interviewed Guy King for CushyCMS (post here), King loves the service and although I didn’t video it, he spent 5 minutes showing me how they were using it. It’s always a good sign when people not involved with the company spontaneously evangelize a product. CushyCMS’s UserVoice page here and the official demo page for UserVoice can be viewed here.
The service is completely free during the public beta. UserVoice competes with SalesForce (IdeaExchange) and GetSatisfaction.
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CushyCMS Beta Launch: Free Invites For TechCrunch Readers
Stateless Systems (RetailMeNot, BugMeNot) has launched a closed beta test of hosted service CushyCMS.
CushyCMS is a fast, simple and free content management system that aims to make life easier for web designers by simplifying content management. Using CushyCMS, web designers can give content editors (for example a client) access to part, full or many pages at a granular level (headings, images, sidebars, etc), enabling them to update or create standards-compliant content directly from a browser without messing with the sites coding.
I sat down with CEO Guy King Monday (Sunday PST) for a demo of the service. The key for CushyCMS is that it’s not a WordPress or similar CMS replacement, it’s a content management interface in the simplest meaning of the term that can be applied to any sort of site. The video walkthrough above or there’s a demo video on the CushyCMS site.
The service opens to the public April 15, but if you want to try it now we have 150 invites for TechCrunch readers. Visit the CushyCMS site here and enter the code TECHCRUNCH to sign up.
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