Blog

Those who have been on the site lately hopefully noticed a new, prominently placed navy blue “Feedback” widget on the right hand side of every page inside Mavenlink. While we are a seemingly safe distance away from widget overload, I still thought it important to share the team’s thoughts behind the new inclusion and how it stands to benefit our young community.

The Feedback widget brings Get Satisfaction’s “people powered customer service” technology front and center (or slightly right justified) into the Mavenlink experience. It is a powerful way for our new users, both Clients and Mavens, to engage in a dialogue with the Mavenlink team on a number of fronts.

First and foremost, the Feedback widget allows any Mavenlink user or visitor to share an idea and allow others, both Mavenlink employees and the Mavenlink community, to rate these ideas. While the Share an Idea tab within the Feedback system could be used for just about any ideas a user might have, I see it as most applicable for feature requests and usability enhancements. With the capability to rate existing Ideas, the Share an Idea tab will give employees and community members alike a chance to submit, review and vote on potential improvements to the Site.

Besides sharing ideas, the Feedback widget also provides users the opportunity to Ask a Question or Report a Problem. Central to any customer support experience, we wanted to have a centralized place where the Mavenlink team could swarm together to provide our new users with a valuable support experience, while also capturing findings and lessons learned for other users and the Mavenlink development team. We will be watching this closely, both to ensure the best possible experience for our users, and to see if the tool meets our near term needs. Please take advantage of the opportunity to ask us (and your fellow community members) anything about the Mavenlink Service or report any bugs or issues you have while working with the site.

Lastly, the Feedback widget offer the opportunity to Give Praise. At the risk of begging for a compliment, we considered making this the default tab as you launched the Feedback widget, but figured that might be a little much. Sure, everyone enjoys a little well deserved praise (hint, hint huge brownie points), but in terms of priorities, it’s tough to supplant the importance of capturing feature ideas, answering customer questions, and fixing identified issues. So for now, we’ll take what we can get, and reserve the right to beg for praise down the road.

I know we’ve said it a number of different ways, most recently through action in creating this widget, but I believe it deserves repeating. Being able to capture, track and act upon our community’s feedback is a core focus of the Mavenlink team. We are excited to begin working with the Get Satisfaction technology to make our focus a reality.