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Active Directory Replicator

2009-05-21T16:11:11-04:00

bigWebApps is taking new initiatives to open up its web based help desk software to supporting and complimentary technologies. We are enabling the HelpDesk platform to work with many layers across an organization’s business units from accounting to project management. One of the newest advancement is integration using Microsoft Active Directory to allow single sign-on for all user account access. We call this AD Replicator and this function will copy users in the local Active Directory groups to map to your HelpDesk Roles (e.g. Administrators, Technicians, Users, Super Users).

To read more about this feature, the install process and requirements please check out our HelpDesk manual or contact us at 866.996.1200 ext 701.

Client Value to Acquisition Cost Calculator

2009-05-19T15:27:22-04:00

Inspired by Peter Cohen’s blog post about How Much Marketing Spend is Enough, the calculator below will help you determine what your client acquisition cost is compared to their lifetime value.

For business owners, this tiny piece of data is one of the most critical bits of information that you should track on a consistent basis. If you don’t know this number already, check your performance below.

If you are in early stages of starting a business, this is definitely worth the time. It is also imperative that you are brutally honest about your numbers. This is not the time to present the hopes & dreams numbers that you used with your potential investors.

If you have not started your business yet, use the calculator below with honest projections. This will help you get a feel for where your price needs to be to survive IF you are able to deliver the number of clients that you hope.

Tips for using the calculator:
-Type numbers in the BLUE fields only
-If this is your first year, the first two sets of numbers (New, ALL) will be the same
-If you are not a recurring revenue model, the Avg. lifetime of clients will be 1
-Include salaries, commissions, and marketing spend in the Sales/Mktg Costs
-This is not an end-all to all costs. You must also have solid budgets for R&D, Operations, and other important aspects of your business worked out.

After using this calculator on bigWebApps’ 2008 numbers, I was very pleased to see a 2.40 score. Due to a few big deals early in 2009, our number is an unsustainable 6.78 which should correct over the course of the year.

What’s your score? Have any feedback?

The Four R Process Record

2009-05-11T13:44:21-04:00

This is the first post in a series of tips for companies who are looking to increase their customer satisfaction and retention. The first post of the series will address the process of creating and managing an effective documentation process of any customer interactions whether they are questions, comments, or complaints.

Without customers there is no reason for your job or your organization to exist. The term “customer” can be defined very broadly including: people/companies who pay you money for a product or service; co-workers who rely on you and your team to provide a reliable service; or generous donors keeping your not-for-profit running.

“Customers First” has been a mantra since the beginning of business, but many organizations’ actions and results do not reflect this idea.

All of the well-intended effort in the world cannot cultivate true client fulfillment without the proper tools and processes. Achieving a Zen state of ultimate client fulfillment can only be achieved when you combine the right intentions with the right people and processes; then provide them with the proper tools to execute.

A successful support process always starts with the same step: Record

If your customers do not have a consistent and reliable method of contacting you that they trust will be followed through with, you have already lost. Recording the communication between you and your customer is the cornerstone for the rest of your support process. Without this step, your customers are not only is left confused as to what will happen next but your team is given the unnecessary task of remembering the details of multiple conversations at once.

Interactions between you and your customers typically centers on three key areas: Questions, Comments, and Complaints. The variation in how you handle each of these is not great but very important.

Questions

Questions from your customers are often easier to just quickly answer then to take the time to record. This is a trap you really want to avoid with the main reason being pretty simple. If one customer has a question then there is a good chance another customer will have the exact same question. You need to need to optimize your staff and having them continually provide answers to similar questions creates more time then it would be for them to actually record the questions and responses. Maintaining a list of these questions and answers is most commonly done with a knowledgebase system. You can display the information from your KB system via a FAQ, Q&A page, or a user-friendly searchable KB, but ultimately it needs to be a living process. As your organization grows so will it’s products, offerings, and services. The knowledgebase system needs to be easily accessible, it needs to be intuitive for the customers to use and search, and it needs to be current with up to date information with the ability to comment and edit. Recording questions is a great way to give your customers the ability to learn more about your offerings as well as show the depth in your offerings.

Comments

Comments are the most overlooked communication from your clients. Comments can be as simple as a “your product rocks” or “I didn’t know I could do that here.” Multiple instances of the first add up to a great list of mini-testimonials for credibility on your site and other marketing material. Instances of the latter are a great resource for Quality Assurance and User Experience teams for future product development.

Successfully recording these key pieces of information comes down to training the staff who interacts with the customer to listen to what they are saying. People who are on the front line of your organization need to learn to garnish as much as they can when they are working with your customers as the customer’s time is valuable and you get very few moments when their time is dedicated to you and your organization.

Complaints

Ah! Complaints! Too often support personnel loath when a complaint is being registered. This should only be the case when complaints are consistently repeated or are stemmed from poor ethics and improper business tactics. Other then a few random reasons complaints should be embraced. Complaints are a special gift your customer is presenting to you and allows a window on where your organization can improve your product offering or service. When a customer takes the time to let you know that your product/service is not living up to their expectation. This can be due to improperly setting expectations, not delivering a satisfactory product, or simply a mistake made by your team. The key, though, is how your team handles that complaint.

A help desk system can serve as the backbone of your team’s ability to record the complaint and deliver it to the person in your organization best suited to resolve the issue. Proven help desk applications provide you a process to begin recording complaints as they are received and help move these complaints through to resolution (we will discuss this further in the future post ‘Resolve’). It is very important to have many ways for your customers to contact you and record their complaint. Nothing is worse when you have an irritated customer who gets trapped in a phone tree, who doesn’t have access to a computer and fill out a web request, or who doesn’t use email (there are people out there who still don’t). Once complaints have been recorded then it becomes easy for the organization to begin getting visibility on what their customers are saying. The worse thing to experience is complaints being said about your organization without any knowledge about the complaint.

To be continued…

Time Tracking and Projects

2009-05-07T16:57:23-04:00

In an effort to expand the ability to track technicians’ time and specify particular projects they work on we have upgraded our web based helpdesk software to support projects and types of work units performed. Tickets can now be assigned to projects and sub projects in order to group tickets, time, and task types into an easier report for visibility.

Technicians now have the added ability to create projects to the accounts they support. (NOTE: If you only use HelpDesk as an internal support tool then you will only have one account in your Account Manager listed as your Internal Account.)

Within each project Technicians are able to track the total amount of hours spent by each technician and the different tasks types which they are assigned.

Administrators are able to easily run reports to get total visibility into the type of work their support technicians are providing and on which projects they have worked on over a period of time.

Entering time logs is done through a calendar style interface allowing technicians to assign time and task types to projects outside of individual tickets. This could be anything from research, to idle time, to training.

These new feature set will be the foundation of allowing your support team better visibility and accountability in managing projects in your organization or across multiple organizations. We will be expanding the routing and reporting aspects of these features and will soon allow your data to be easily exported to various invoicing solutions. We are excited about this upgrade and would always be interested in your feedback and comments!

Be Heard

2009-04-29T12:31:41-04:00

We are currently looking at some new tools and better ways to get more and more feedback from customers and community members. We recently rolled our our online community Town Square which will eventually help create positive discussion on what our users are interested in and what they would like to see from us. We are now looking to add a ‘Feedback’ button on our web based helpdesk software solution encourage our members to vote and be heard on what they need in their solution.

The ‘Feedback’ tab will be dynamically displayed once it’s been clicked. It will show the top 5 most requested features and give you the opportunity to write comments on the features, vote on other features you would like to see as well as create your own new feature request.

We intend for this to be another level of communication where we can connect with our customers. Please let us know your thoughts! We have set up a HelpDesk forum on our Town Square site for feedback.

Admitting to Mistakes

2009-04-28T10:25:41-04:00

Making mistakes is sometimes unavoidable. It would be almost impossible for a company to think they have never or will never make a mistake. Obviously the more successful companies make far fewer mistakes then the less successful companies, but this is beside the point. The point is how does a company handle itself and the relationships it has built over time when an error is made. The number one thing is acceptance. Accepting the error, rather than avoiding the responsibility, limits the potential damage and sets organizations on the right course. Companies are operated by human beings, imperfect and prone to making mistakes. Most of our growth come from learning from our past mistakes and implementing processes and changes to see those same mistakes are not repeated in the future. Admitting to mistakes is not easy, but admitting to them early and providing honest and direct feedback is great way to show character and over all good business ethics. Admitting to your error puts you one step closer to dealing with it, and can be the first step towards a successful turn-around. Taking responsibility, being sympathetic and sincere, and making a plan to ensure these types of issues don’t happen again in the future will go a long way with your employees, your customers, and your partners.

These are policies of bigWebApps. We keep the lines of communication open at all times when we experience issues with our applications or services. Being open, honest, and direct with our customers is a part of our companies culture and we will see it remains as one of our cornerstones as we continue to grow and expand.

Cartoon: Life in Hell by Matt Groening

Taking a Step Back

2009-04-16T10:46:15-04:00

We just finished our Q2 meeting and came up with a lot of really great ideas. The main idea was to take a step back and really evaluate the technology we have now and let’s see how can we make it work better. We have spent a lot of time developing a lot of great and useful features based on our clients’ feedback, however, now it is time to revisit these features. We need to determine what would make these functions easier to use and more effective. The main areas we will concentrate on over the next few months with be Assets and Locations. The first one we will be addressing is Assets.

Merging of Duplicate Assets – We now support a more flexible system in allowing organizations to import their assets into the Asset Manager. In the past we had some pretty strict guidelines and it was causing issues on getting data into the system. With the newer setup it will allow for easier importation of data, however, there will now be a need to merge duplicate assets into a parent record.

Imports and Exports - We will be looking to continual improve and refine the import and export routines in order for it to be easily self served and self managed.

Assigning Assets During Ticket Creation – We will be streamlining the process on searching and assigning assets to a ticket during the ticket creation phase. Less clicks!

UI – We will be looking to do improvements and upgrades to the design and layout of most of the elements of the Asset Manager.

Asset Search
Setup Type/Make/Model
Asset Profile Page

Delete Assets – We will soon be supporting the functionality of totally deleting and removing assets from the Asset Manager database.

Custom Fields - Improve the use of custom fields so these values can be set at other levels then just Type.

Asset Filters - We will be looking at ways to put asset filters on technicians in order to restrict their view on what assets they will be able to view and edit.

If you have any comments or ideas then please share. We are always open to hearing your feedback! You can also go to our web site to learn more about our web based helpdesk software at www.bigwebapps.com

Recent Speed Issues

2009-04-15T11:21:46-04:00

We have had several clients reporting major speed issues in recent days and a degradation of speed over the last few months. According to all of the reports that we have been monitoring, there is not a bandwidth issue, but it is now clear to us that the real world reports coming from you, our clients, are in contrast to these.

We have implemented some short-term fixes today, so you should experience a speed increase immediately.

We are also working on more long-term fixes that will take some time to fully get in place but will have a greater impact on getting the HelpDesk back to the speed that you are accustomed.

If you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact me directly.

We apologize for negatively impacting your ability to perform your job to the best of your ability.

Jason Moore
866.996.1200 x 702
jason.moore@bigwebapps.com

Or create a ticket for us by sending an email to support@bigwebapps.com

Continual Improvement Status Quo

2009-04-08T11:32:40-04:00

One of the great things about being in technology and especially catering to service management and customer support is the desire for continual improvement. It is a part of our company’s DNA to always be looking for the next best feature for our solutions and figure out how we can improve what we are providing to our customers. One of the main things we look to reference is the ITIL framework in handling continual improvement as well as constantly talk to our customers. Improvements must focus on increasing efficiency as well as maximizing effectiveness and optimizing costs of services. Thanks to an article, How to Conduct an ITSM Process Assessment, provided to us by Matthew Frederickson of Council Rock School District it helps define the beginning phase how to conduct an assessment for gathering data for continual improvement.

The goal of an assessment is to effectively collect the data, analyze this data, and turn it into some useable sense of judgment. The Pink Elephant team break information into 4 parts:

• Data – a set of discrete facts about events
• Information – comes from providing context to data (who, what, when, where?)
• Knowledge – composed of the tacit experiences, ideas, insights, values and
judgments of individuals, used to facilitate decision making (how?)
• Wisdom – the application and contextual awareness to provide a strong common
sense judgment (why?)

There are some best practices out there on how to adequately go about gathering data, but the key is to always ensure the data you are collecting is quality data. Once you understand what the data is telling you then being able able to effectively make sound decisions which are in-line with your business objectives. Of course everything will then tie back to to measure, measure, measure the results.

bigWebApps Town Square

2009-04-06T11:06:36-04:00

If anyone has followed bigWebApps closely enough you will know customer experience and satisfaction are some of the things we talk most passionately about around here. Now we are looking to take the customer experience a little deeper and enable our clients to interact with each other to share tips, advice, and information not just on bigWebApps solutions, but also with what is going on in their industry or their profession. We have started an on-line ning community site called Town Square (http://bigwebapps.ning.com/) where you can log in and start talking to like-minded folks. We are looking to get quality discussions led by the community and not by us. We feel this will be a great way for us to learn what you really need and how we can better assist. Log in and get setup. We look forward to your hearing from you!

To watch a quick demo on how to get started check out this short video

bigWebApps Town Square