Terms of Use

CustomerThink is a global community of business professionals. The information on this site, and interaction with other members, can help you create a successful customer-centric business.

Please keep in mind that when you contribute content to CustomerThink, it affects our community. By adding content of any kind, you are agreeing to these Terms of Use.

Always be meaningful and professional in your interactions on this site. Personal attacks, inappropriate language and commercial promotions are not permitted. News items may be posted regarding announcements for a company or its products and services, provided such news is relevant to our site mission and audience.

Copyright Policy

CustomerThink respects the intellectual property rights of others. Don’t post content that is the copyright property of others unless you have their written permission. If copyright infringement is reported to CustomerThink (see below), the alleged infringement will be promptly removed pending resolution per the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Accordingly, we have a policy of removing user submissions that violate copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property law, suspending access to all or any portion of CustomerThink.com and our community sites (collectively the “Sites”) to any user who uses the Sites in violation of any such law, and/or terminating in appropriate circumstances the account (if any) of any user who uses the Sites in violation of any such law.

How to Notify CustomerThink of Copyright Infringement

Pursuant to Title 17 of the United States Code, Section 512, we have implemented procedures for receiving written notification of claimed copyright infringement and for processing such claims in accordance with such law.

If you believe your copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property right is being infringed by a user of CustomerThink.com, please provide written notice to the following agent for notice of claims of infringement:

Robert Thompson
CustomerThink Corp.
1220 1st Street #204
Coronado, CA 92118
619-319-5183
[email protected]

Your written notice must:
(i) contain your physical or electronic signature;
(ii) identify the copyrighted work, trademark, or other intellectual property alleged to have been infringed;
(iii) identify the allegedly infringing material in a sufficiently precise manner to allow us to locate that material;
(iv) contain adequate information by which we can contact you (including postal address, telephone number, and e-mail address);
(v) contain a statement that you have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted material, trademark, or other intellectual property is not authorized by the owner, the owner’s agent, or the law;
(vi) contain a statement that the information in the written notice is accurate; and
(vii) contain a statement, under penalty of perjury, that you are authorized to act on behalf of the copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property right owner.

The CustomerThink editorial staff reserves the right to delete contributed content that violates our Terms of Use. Repeated offenses of Terms of Use may lead to suspension of posting privileges, blocking account, or other actions deemed necessary by CustomerThink management to maintain the culture, quality, and integrity of the site.

Publishing Guidelines for Blog Posts

CustomerThink has over 4,000 registered authors and publishes several thousand blog posts each year. All authors must follow these guidelines.

General Policy

All CustomerThink authors must blog under their real names. We do not allow accounts under pseudonyms, anonymous, group or company names. Authors must register with their own business email address and be approved by the site manager before posting any content.

Blog posts on CustomerThink should be:

  1. relevant to CustomerThink’s mission and its community of business managers.
  2. educational, not containing excessive promotional content, inappropriate language or personal attacks.

“Relevant” means appropriate for a business audience and can be categorized on the site in one of our key topics.

“Excessive promotional content” means the blog post content is primarily intended to:

  • directly market products, services, programs, etc. for the author’s company or an affiliated business partner, or
  • redirect the user to another site to access content, without providing substantial educational content within the body of the post.

Promotional Content

Minor promotional content (such as “call to action”) in text format (images or graphic content not permitted) is allowed provided it is related to the post and is a relatively small portion (lesser of 50 words or 10% of post) of the post content which otherwise qualifies. Posts may include a reasonable number of:

  • objective references to the author’s company, products, services, methodologies, etc. (text, links or graphics)
  • links to other web resources for additional information (including free, paid or registration-required resources)

Posts will not be published if they appear designed to generate clicks or leads, such as:

  • “How to pick a solution or service provider,” when the author of the post provides the products/services discussed in the post. Such content is likely to be viewed as self-serving or promotional by readers.
  • Teaser content or a list of questions, followed by a “click to learn more.” Posts should deliver substantial educational content without requiring the reader to click or register to get important details.
  • Content is primarily a list of features, functions, and benefits of a solution provided by the author’s company, regardless of whether the author’s company is specifically listed or linked in the content.

CustomerThink does not permit paid backlinks of any kind, for any reason. Authors found to be selling backlinks on CustomerThink.com will be terminated from the community, and all the author’s content will be removed.

Moderation Process

All blog posts, regardless of whether directly posted by the author or syndicated, are “moderated”—held in an unpublished status for review by the CustomerThink community moderator or manager. Each post is first reviewed for compliance with our publishing standards. Un-credited images, advertising, and header/footer information is removed (see below for details). Qualifying images may be resized and repositioned to fit the site design. Finally, posts are categorized and published in a first-in, first-out basis.

Moderator will edit post as follows:

  • Remove Extraneous header/footer information, such as share links, author bio, related content, or any other standard content automatically inserted by the author’s blogging system.
  • Remove images, if the image owner has not been given explicit credit in the blog post. This is to protect the author and CustomerThink from potential copyright infringement claims.
  • Remove advertising, including graphic images, lead generation widgets, blocks of text, etc. that promote products, services or content. A call-to-action in text format is allowed, provided it’s a natural part of the post content, to enable the reader to explore the post topic more deeply.
  • Add “nofollow” status to links when needed to comply with Google guidelines. Direct links to companies, products or services are nofollowed because Google may flag as “unnatural” links intended to influence the search engine. Links to educational content such as blog posts and articles are generally ok, if they help the reader dig deeper into a topic.

Blog Guidelines and Approval Process

Again, as a general guideline, posts will not be published if they are less than 500 words and/or lack substantial educational value that is relevant for our community mission: customer-centric business. All posts are reviewed in a two-step process:

1. Moderator reviews to ensure post meets our minimum standards. Content must be relevant to our community (fits one of our main topics) and not contain excessive promotional content (see below for details). Specifically, posts will not be approved under these conditions:

  • doesn’t fit one of our major site topics
  • mainly serves to promote clicks to other web resources
  • too technical, not suitable for a business audience
  • uses marketing language like “best,” “leading,” etc.
  • includes graphics or illustrations to promote author’s company or its products/services
  • compares the author’s products or services to competitors
  • seems designed to manipulate search engines by keyword stuffing, excessive or inappropriate backlinks, etc.
  • violates CustomerThink minimum terms of use (e.g. personal attacks, bad language)
  • authored under a pseudonym, group or anonymous account; each post must be published for a individual author with a valid profile
  • written by a “guest” author; each post must belong to the registered author’s account
  • written by someone else; republishing content is ok provided the author wrote the original content and it was published under the author’s byline elsewhere

2. Moderator-approved posts are then candidates for selection and publication by the Managing Editor. Posts will be approved that add value to our community and potentially spark discussion. Posts are likely to get cut during during this step if they are:

  • too short (less than 500 words), especially if they restate or rehash basic issues that have already been covered extensively by our community
  • mainly contain infographics, videos and other graphic content without value-adding commentary
  • curate lists of posts and other resources.

User Feedback

Contact Bob Thompson, CustomerThink’s Founder and Community Manager, if you have questions about Terms of Use, blog post guidelines, or concerns about a specific post or blogger. Please do not contact authors directly or add public comments to the site.