Tag: customer service

FreshBooks roadtrip: a great example of getting personal with customers

April 11, 2008 Becky at the Customers Rock! blog recently detailed the FreshBooks roadtrip, which is a great example of how a company can stay connected with its customers. I love this: This was not a product roadshow. This was a listening tour. I also really like how they're using face-to-face conversations, but also expanding their conversations using a company blog, a roadtrip blog, and Twitter. Awesome.

Don't force the customer into working how we want them to work

March 20, 2008 I've run into two scenarios this week where co-workers asked me how they should handle certain requests. How these questions get answered shows how much you're in a customer-centric mindset.Customer requests a new version of a productWithin our SelfService application, we allow customers to request product upgrades. Rather than using this mechanism, a customer simply created a new support case asking to receive the latest version of one of our products that they have licensed. One of my co-workers asked me: Should we tell him to go into SelfService and request the upgrade using the mechanism we've setup?Customer requests SelfService logins for his new co-workersFrom our SelfService login page, we have a link that allows you to register for SelfService. If a customer doesn't already have a login, then can fill out the form in order to get login access.…

SLA Monitoring

August 31, 2007 One of the common tasks for a support/call center manager is making sure the team is living up to its service level agreements (SLAs). Pretty much every customer I've ever dealt with has different SLAs. As you can imagine, there's a zillion ways for companies to setup and track their SLAs. Example SLAs: All cases must be responded to within 2 business hours All Urgent priority cases must be responded to within 1 hour regardless of business hours All cases must be responded to within the phone response time as stated on the contract All cases must be closed within 5 days. All subcases of type "Hardware Upgrade" must have a technician onsite within 36 hours. All new cases for a Gold level customer must get a call back from a senior tech within 1 hour. An initial response…

A great example of usability improving the customer support experience

August 22, 2007 The 37signals guys point us towards Twitter's use of HelpSpot's Help Desk software: How do you help your helpdesk/support team give you the best support? Give them the information they need right from the start. I really like the simple, clear, and concise labels: This is what I DIDThis is what I EXPECTED to happenThis is what ACTUALLY happened I'm sure this greatly helps the support team resolve more requests on the first go-round, as opposed to the all-too-common first response having to ask the customer for more information. It's good for the support team, and good for the customer. Nicely done.

A simple blog comment turns around a customer experience

July 23, 2007 I've blogged in the past about turning blog entries into customer experiences. Here's a recent real-world example of that. Adam Esterline reviewed Watir as part of a web application testing comparison. In his own words, "I did not give Watir very high marks." Bret Pettichord, our Test Architect here at Dovetail, and a core contributor to the open-source Watir project, left a comment on Adam's blog, simply asking for more info about Adam's experience using Watir. Bret's comment was a pretty simple one, but it engaged Adam. Enough so to prompt Adam to revisit Watir, and try again, this time with much better results. Even more so, it was enough to get Adam to post a follow-up praising Bret: This is great customer service. Bret saw that our team was having problems and responded thoughtfully. There's no fancy CRM software involved…

Who's the concierge at your company?

June 19, 2007 The Customers Rock! blog points us to Chad, the web concierge at Element Fusion (formerly www.speaklight.com/your-web-concierge). From the Customers Rock! blog: Chad’s job as concierge is to hand-hold the customers as they take their first steps with Light and make the who experience quick and easy. He gives out his direct line or clients can email him directly as well in order to contact him with questions about the first 2-3 sites they bring on board. What I found the most interesting about Chad (who is a real person, by the way - that’s his picture up above!) is that he is a high-level director of IT at the company, not a low-level employee. Being a true concierge, as in a hotel, is a part of Chad’s job. Tim explained to me that they felt it was important to show the…

Manually setup Dovetail WebServices on Windows 2003 Server

January 30, 2007 We had a customer who needs to be able to manually setup our WebServices under IIS6 so I thought it would be best to share this with everyone. This guide will take you through setting up a virtual web directory under IIS version 6 on Windows Server 2003. It will also show you how to set the security on your files to make sure the web service will work. You will need to have Dovetail SDK installed on the target machine. Note: The installer can automatically setup WebServices. The goal of this post is to outline the manually steps that will reproduce what the installer does automatically. You will also need to have the web application role setup on the Windows 2003 server. Bring up IIS Manager. Right click on Default Web Site Click on New and select the Virtual…

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