Could A Help Desk System Save Your Business?

When I recently downloaded my email, and there were 13,000+ messages that had made it past my filters, I knew that I had to do something. It's simply impossible to work through that many messages in less than a few days... which is what my team and I did. In the process, I'm sure that we deleted more than a few that we didn't really intend to.

Before working through that PILE, I realized that I needed a better solution immediately! After discussions with many advisors and close friends, I settled upon using a help desk. Now I force many contacts to go through that system rather than emailing me. I has reduced the sheer volume by about 90%.

In researching help desk options, I asked a lot of friends what they used. I also posted to several popular discussion boards. What I discovered was that there are many different excellent options. They range in price from free to very expensive. I delayed the decision on a final option, but implemented a temporary one that may turn into a permanent one. I simply had to give myself and my assistants some breathing room :-)

The advantages of setting up a help desk, and encouraging your customers to contact you through it, are countless. Let me share with you just a few:

1) It can completely eliminate the barrage of spam sent to random email addresses. Depending upon how you configure your help desk, you can allow customers to file a help ticket via email. However, it has to be sent to a very specific email address. So you could theoretically shut down all other email addresses on that domain.

Many web hosts allow you to delete or "black hole" all email not sent to legitimate addresses. This is a life saver. The host that I've set up numerous accounts with, and have my help ticket system set up on, allows this. Not only that, but this host is so gracious that I'm using 1000 meg of disk space and 120gig of monthly bandwidth and it's free. Actually it's not totally free. It's part of a monthly membership site that I belong to where members get unlimited free hosting.

I'm getting slightly sidetracked here, so if you want to know more about how I get unlimited free web hosting, check out: http://MassiveCashFromArticles.com.

2) A help ticket system can organize those numerous email dialogues that many of us have going at the same time. Often, I'll respond to 30 different people about consulting or various projects/ proposals that we are contemplating. A few hours or days later, some of them might respond. In the past, the problem was that the response was often something like "Yes, let's do option 2"... and they would have not included the body of the original message.

That use to drive me crazy - because I had to try to reconstruct what specific conversations they were responding to. Please don't YOU do that. If you're replying to someone, be sure to include at least enough of the original message to confirm what the conversation is about.

With the help desk, the system allow you to keep a running record of the conversation, all in one window on your computer screen. It's wonderful!

3) It allows enhanced teamwork. You can set it up so that "trouble tickets" are broken down into various categories. Then you can allow assistants access to certain assigned categories. That way, anyone on your team with the proper authority can take care of problems, questions, etc.

This also allows team members to see what transpired on a particular issue or help ticket. It provides a running record.

4) There is no hazard of communications being totally blocked by filters. Certain ISP's are notorious for blocking email. This is especially a problem if you send out email in any quantity... as in... if you publish an ezine.

I've had customers send me 8-10 emails on a problem or concern - and NONE of them get through. I've also received emails from certain customers and responded half a dozen times, but not have them receive any of the responses. I've sometimes had to phone to resolve such issues.

My trouble ticket system does send an email notice telling me and/or customers when a response has been posted to a given ticket number. So, there is still the danger of that notice not getting through. However, if it's a pressing issue, the person is more likely simply to log back in and check on a given ticket number.

5) I've found it at-least three times faster to log in and respond to trouble tickets than it is to deal with the same issue via email. It depends upon how cumbersome your trouble ticket system is, and what email client you use, but to me it just take a fraction of the time to coordinate issues. That makes a trouble ticket system a MAJOR productivity booster.

Those are just a few of the reasons that I absolutely LOVE my new trouble ticket system. I'm sure that once you start using one, you'll probably feel the same. If you?re drowning in a sea of email, it may very well save your business.

The system I'm using temporarily... and may turn into a permanent solution, is one that was pre-loaded into the Fantastico control panel on my hosting account. Installing it was just a matter of selecting that option, following on-screen prompts through a few steps ,and the basic trouble ticket system was ready. Then you can log in to your admin panel and customize things for your preferred options, look and feel, etc.

Your web hosting account probably comes with one or two trouble ticket systems already available to you as free options. If not, check out my host and save yourself some dough. They're called Content Desk, and they're at: http://MassiveCashFromArticles.com. This is a membership site designed to teach you how to grow your business through building high quality content sites. It's a great site, and the free hosting is just icing on the cake. Tell them Willie sent you ;-)

By the way if you need to contact me for any reason, the easiest way to do it is via my trouble ticket system at: http://WeddingFireSale.com/helpdesk/.

Willie Crawford serves as a consultant, mentor, and confidant to some of Internet marketing's top income earners. You can tap into his 9 years of online experience and million-dollar, success-creating advice at http://BlueprintToInternetMarketingSuccess.com

How to Deliver Technical Support That Delights the End User

"Technology, like art, is a soaring exercise of the human imagination.", according to sociologist Daniel Bell in his 1980 book, The Winding Passage. The art of what we do, as information technologists, lies in how we deliver creative solutions to workplace problems. The truth of the matter is that our jobs, in information systems and technology, are not really about technology at all. Our jobs, instead, are about solving workplace problems. Technology is merely the vehicle we use to accomplish our true objective. Increasingly, the help wanted ads in our industry require not only technical skills, but also skills in dealing with people. People are, after all, our customers. The old jokes about the I.T. guys commenting about how great their jobs would be if only it weren't for the end-users can no longer apply. The few I.T. people who still believe that are at risk of being outsourced out of a job, automated out of their jobs, or otherwise replaced in the modern workplace.

Are people skills becoming more important than technical skills in today's workplace? Absolutely not! Are people skills as important as technical skills in today's workplace? Quite possibly, depending on the job. For example, most of us are not overly concerned with an airline pilot's human skills, but we're very concerned with her skills as a pilot. The commercial pilot, however, who doesn't consider the comfort of his passengers in how he flies the plane may soon find himself flying freight instead of people. Even the freighter pilot who fails to practice good customer service skills with her employer and her employer's clients may soon find herself replaced by another pilot who values human relationships. There may always be a place for the rare individual whose extremely high level of technical competence makes him so valuable that his absence of human skills is overlooked, but don't count on that for your long term career growth. The reality is that, if people like you, they're a lot more forgiving of human error and when they don't like you, they look for ways to get rid of you.

What are the skills that can help you in today's workplace? You can break them down into five fundamental skill sets:

-Dependable and Reliable Service
-Responsiveness
-Competence
-Empathy
-Professionalism

Dependable and Reliable Service means providing reliable and accurate service - consistently accurate answers and follow-through on your promises. Your users should get the same courteous, pleasant and knowledgeable service every time they contact the Help Desk. In part two of this series, I'll show you practical tips to make sure your end-users say you provide dependable and reliable service.

Responsiveness is the willingness to respond to customer needs by answering their phone or email requests quickly, and being willing to do what it takes to respond effectively to a service request. In part three of this series, I'll show you how to prioritize requests to ensure that the most important requests get the fastest response while still servicing the lower priority requests.

Competence means providing correct, knowledgeable service, performed with accuracy and confidence. Technical competence goes without saying, but how can you maintain your technical competence even if your employer doesn't pay for training? In part four of this series, I'll share with you realistic techniques to use to demonstrate your competence and some practical tips on maintaining your competence on your own.

Empathy means providing caring and personal service. You can convey empathy when you listen for the hidden meaning in what a user is saying, acknowledge the emotion, and offer caring assistance. In part five of this series, you'll learn key phrases to use to demonstrate empathy and techniques for conveying your empathy to the upset end user.

Professionalism means that how you speak and act and the emails or other materials you send reflect a high level of training and expertise. This becomes the professional image that you project to your end users. In the sixth and final part of this series, you'll learn five powerful, yet simple techniques for conveying professionalism in your dealings with end-users.

Delighting your user is really easy most of the time. When you find ways to help your users be more productive and creative in their jobs, you'll find your job is more satisfying and more rewarding. As a support desk professional, you have tremendous opportunities for personal growth and you have daily opportunities to make a positive difference in people's lives. That's powerful!

Visit soundtraining.net to learn more about soundtraining.net's business skills training programs for IT professionals, plus accelerated technical training programs for IT professionals in the areas of Cisco, Microsoft, and Linux products. For a free copy of Don's article, "Ten Ways to Delight Your End-User", visit the soundtraining.net resource library.

A New Type of Customer Support

We all know getting into some of the major stores such as Barney's, Saks and Neimans new Cusp stores can be great exposure, volume and really express the legitimacy of your brand.

But now more than ever you'll see smaller pointedly stylish local boutiques are becoming the new barometer for what's golden in the contemporary market.

My advice...see what retailers tickle your brand's fancy and start your sales efforts at the top of the boutique food chain. If you don't...hence deciding to let your sales efforts run themselves you'll find yourself placed in a lot of stores that are less than......and manage to make yourself a little less desirable.

Example: Think after school special...new girl in school decides to go out with every guy that asks for her phone number. Well she probably will never be able to date the captain of the football team. Unfortunately she lost her appeal.

But lets take it the other way around....New girl, lands the captain of the football team, notwithstanding him being totally blind she's instantly branded as the most beautiful thing walking... resulting in a lot more options if they should ever should every break up.

Excuse me for my teenybopper example but the point is to have a strategy and realize that it is in fact one of the most important parts of your brand launch. You'll want to be able to proudly publicize your store list and have your sales in essence do some marketing for you.

So where are these stores? There are boutiques all over the country you'll find are mentioned again and again in the press. Browse through the pages of US Weekly, Life and Style, Vogue, Elle, InStyle....you'll quickly see who is making a name for themselves and are creating a new definition of customer support.

Here are a few of my favorites.....

Mini Majors:
Scoop NYC and Intermix

LA Local Legends:
Fred Segal, Lisa Kline, Kitson

Other Fresh Faces:
Milk, Presse, Diavolina, Madison

Web Masters:
Shop Bop, Active Endeavors

Ralinda Harvey is the owner of Gloss Marketing, marketing and merchandising firm specializing in contemporary fashion companies. Ralinda has worked in merchandising and marketing for Michael Stars as well as Gap Inc. brands Gap and Old Navy. She has also served as an adjunct marketing instructor at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising.

She currently consults a network of clients while conducting fashion marketing seminars with organizations such as Fashion Business Inc.

Website: http://www.glossmarketing.com
Blog: http://www.glossmarketing.com/blog/

The Importance Of Customer Support In Hosting

 

So why is customer support all that important in a hosting service? Simple! Imagine your self working hard on a site and you finally get a quite popular one with an impressive amount of daily visitors. Let's say it's a very popular forum. And all of a sudden system gets crash. So you have to come up with silly reasons to tell to the visitors, why is the site down and why can't they access their accounts. Most importantly you don't know if it's permanent or is it just some temporary down time. And believe me, by the experience that I have, when that happens you are in quite a pickle. All of that can be avoided if you have customer service. They will tell you what is wrong, when will the server be up again etc.

So how do I find a hosting service with customer service?

Well just search the web for a bit. Now a day almost every hosting website has that already in the cheapest hosting package. After all you wouldn't want to be stranded all alone in a situation like that. Because of such technological advancement and lots of researches, there are many sites and companies, which promise you everything. The customer service can even serve you like a critic. If the company doesn't provide it to all of the packages, than that means it's not a too good company, now is it? How can they host servers for people and sites if they can't even manage some customer service and support?

Usually sites with a lot of money and a big capital have such things installed because the consulting staff is not cheap at all, as a result to that we can conclude that companies with customer support care about their clients. The consulting staff is paid like normal workers, even more if they have good knowledge and that's how you know that you won't be left down. So what does it cost you to search the web for a new and better service with some consulting involved in it, having help when you need it and finding a good hosting company just for you?

But don't be fooled. All customer services aren't all that good. A quick response and resolution time of the crew is a must when talking about quality. When you talk to the staff they have to make you feel good, and can communicate fast, clear and without complications.

Still don't understand the benefits of the whole thing?

Think of it in this way. The Customer service is actually like a hand that guides you, so you can't actually make mistakes. The only mistake that you can do is at the very beginning. That is choosing a wrong hosting service or a free package, that doesn't include the support. So just don't be lazy and search for a better company, a company with pizzazz, a company WITH CUSTOMER SERVICE that won't let you down.

Abdul Vasi is a Marketing Expert specialized in Internet Marketing, His Bangalore Windows Hosting Company Web Hosting Bangalore provides you with reliable but affordable web hosting solution for your online business