UserVoice

UserVoice

250px
Type	Private
Industry	Software
Founded	2008
Key people	Richard White (CEO) Jonathan Novak (CTO) Connor Fee (COO)

UserVoice is a San Francisco based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company creating customer engagement tools.

History

In 2006, Richard White realized he needed a more efficient way to monitor feedback from software users, and he created an online forum where they could provide ideas about a project he was designing. His method was inspired by Joel Spolsky, who advocated giving programmers a finite number of votes to prioritize software development. Rather than programmers, White had users vote. White, together with Lance Ivy and Marcus Nelson, launched UserVoice in February 2008. An early adopter was Stack Overflow, run by Spolsky. By September 2011, UserVoice had 13 employees and 74,000 clients, with 23 million users participating.

Products

UserVoice Feedback collects and prioritizes suggestions from customers as they list ideas and vote on them. In addition to the original website-style product, iPhone and Facebook apps are available to allow developers to collect feedback for mobile apps.

UserVoice HelpDesk is a support tool for tracking and responding to customer issues. Customers can thank the support person who responds to their ticket by giving them "kudos." The system employs gamification techniques to motivate support teams to provide high quality service. Help teams work within a system that displays each person's kudos in real-time. UserVoice HelpDesk also directs customers to relevant answers as they type questions.

See also

• Usabilla
• Get Satisfaction
• Issue tracking system

External links

• UserVoice on Facebook
• UserVoice on Twitter

• http://techcrunch.com/2008/12/04/uservoice-drops-beta-tag-lets-you-capture-user-feedback/
• Ha, Anthony. UserVoice Aims Beyond User Feedback NYTimes. May 5, 2011.
• Finley, Klint. 3 Trends in Idea Management ReadWriteWeb. September 1, 2010.
• Empson, Rip. Uservoice, Which Powers Customer Engagement Tools for Meebo, Hootsuite & More, Raises 1 Million TechCrunch. November 18, 2011.
• Atwood, Jeff. Podcast #30. Stack Overflow. November 19, 2008.
• Hopkins, Mark. UserVoice is My[Company]Idea Mashable. August 5, 2008.
• Kirkpatrick, Marshall. Why We Love UserVoice ReadWriteWeb. December 5, 2008.
• http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/SetYourPriorities.html Set Your Priorities
• Making You Money By Helping You Delight Your Customers Shoestring Venture. April 27, 2011. Archived March 4, 2012 at the Wayback Machine
• EPISODE 5... Interview with UserVoice Co-founder, Scott Rutherford. StartupMarketing.TV. September 23, 2010. Archived March 3, 2012 at the Wayback Machine
• Wauters, Robin. Uservoice Drops Beta Tag, Lets You Capture User Feedback TechCrunch. December 4, 2008.
• Aamoth, Doug. UserVoice Offers A Better Way To Take Customer Suggestions TechCrunch. April 20, 2008.
• Catone, Josh. 9 Web Apps for Gathering Customer Feedback Mashable. March 6, 2011.
• Reisinger, Don. 10 Ingenious Tools from Google Apps Marketplace eWeek. March 12, 2010.
• Kincaid, Jason. UserVoice Brings Its Customer Feedback Service to Facebook Pages TechCrunch. December 13, 2010.
• Finley, Klint. API of the Week: UserVoice API ReadWriteWeb. December 6, 2010.
• Vandor, Mollie. HOW TO: Get Your Feedback On Social Networks Mashable. December 11, 2009.
• Finley, Klint. Can UserVoice Do What Fish! Can’t and Make Customer Service Fun ReadWriteWeb. March 2, 2011.
• Prestepino, Peter. UserVoice is Full Service-Kudos WebsiteMagazine. March 1, 2011.
• Carlson, Lauren. Gamification: The Key to Preventing Support Agent Burnout Software Advice.