There is something that’s been bothering me recently. Maybe it’s been bothering you too. Or maybe it used to bother you and now you don’t care anymore. Anyway…

The turn-around time and support responsiveness from Electrotap has been inconsistent the past couple of years. How did we get here?

Electrotap is structured somewhat like a small co-op with five or six individuals contributing time and energy in an adjunct capacity. As we’ve grown-up, added children to our families, and transitioned through different jobs and towns, we’ve continued to love Electrotap and believe in what it’s doing. But how do we provide a better more responsive support experience and also free ourselves up to do some much needed new product development?

The first part comes directly from us: recommitting ourselves to a positive and fulfilling support experience. The people who have been our customers have produced some really amazing art, music, and research over the last 6 years and we want that to keep happening. The second part of the equation comes from an upgrade in technology. Last month we opened the doors on http://community.electrotap.com — our new support site, forum, and knowledge base.

The new site is powered by GetSatisfaction, an effective and high-powered service that helps customers and their companies get quick answers to questions and keep from drowning in overwhelming numbers of queries. Especially when it’s the same kinds of question that occur over and over again. Through this change we are aiming to improve our responsiveness, make answers easier to find, increase our accountability by making these dialogs public, and foster community by providing a forum where community members can help each other instead of being solely dependent upon us.

Through this change we also are able to expand our coverage of support issues as they come up because there are now tentacles reaching out from http://community.electrotap.com to Facebook and Twitter as well as our main site. Also as a bonus: answer someone else’s question on community.electrotap.com, and we’ll give you 10% off on your next order!