Screencasts can make the life of a customer support agent a breeze. Well, almost. The most common customer support call by far is the forgotten login credentials. Almost all websites that require a login have an automatic but safe way for the user to get their login credentials. Screencasts will help you with another common customer support task: Teaching your customers how to use what they bought.

One of The Most Common Customer Support needs.

As a customer support agent, I often get messages or calls like this: “RJ, I love the site, and especially the [name of feature]. But how do I ____________”? Much of customer support is teaching people how to use what they’ve bought. Sometimes their message is very direct like this one. But as a customer service agent have you noticed that a lot of support communication goes something like this below?

Customer: “Your website is broke”

Agent: “I can help you with that. Tell me what’s going on.”

Customer: “I’m trying to do X and the Y isn’t showing up.”

Agent (In his or her private thoughts): “Ah ha! This customer doesn’t know that they need to activate the W for X to show the Y.”

I bet if this happens to you, you simply help the customer step-by-step to activate W. Sometimes they realize they forgot a step or didn’t know one. Other times they think you fixed what was broken. Either way, if the customer is happy and continues to be a customer, your goal is reached. Sometimes you can do this live without any screencasts or screen-sharing software. What if I showed you how to create a video that shows your customer how to do the things they ask you to teach? I can help you with that: Screencasts. How Can Screencasts Improve My Bottom Line?

Imagine a customer support event that lasts a fraction of the time as your average? And it not only helps your customer, it WOWs them? Do a better job in less time, and you’ll have savings and increased revenue. That’s the idea anyay. Create screencasts of the tasks you most commonly teach your customers. Then when you realize the customer needs to learn how to activate W, you can quickly send them the link to watch your screencast. Some customers will still want their hands held, but they will be fewer than the total who need the learning.

How Does Screen Sharing Help?

Remember when Windows was new and you often helped people find the Start button? How often do you need a customer to click an icon in their system tray but they say they don’t see it? I can help you with that: Screen Sharing.

If you have a customer with a problem (most important customer-right?), and you just plain need to see their screen, have them share their screen with you. You immediately see what they don’t know is right in front of them. You tactfully tell them where to look. “See the spot where it shows the time? Next to that is a blue icon with a happy face. Click that with your rigt mouse button.”

Or better yet, some screen-sharing software lets you take control of their mouse or draw on their screen. It is very effective to say on the phone, “Click here,” and draw a circle over the spot. Customers will love you … and come back.

If you have a high customer support load, screen-sharing and screencasts will make a significant difference.

My Recommended Screencasting and Screen-Sharing Tools

http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/
Screencast-O-Matic will capture screen video and your audio. It’s free and it just works from your browser. Easy and free, a great combination.

http://camstudio.org/
CamStudio is an open-source screen capturing software. CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)

http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate/
Adobe Captivate is the screen capturing leading software. It is specifically taylored to creating educational screencasts. If you are doing high-volume profesional instructional design, you’ll need this one.

http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp
TechSmith Camtasia creates videos that train, teach, sell, and more. It is one of the most well-known screencapture software programs.

https://www.gotomypc.com
GoToMyPC is primarily to access your PC from anywhere. I include it here because some of my customers have it and use it to invite me to view their screen.

http://www.gotoassist.com
GoToAssist is the easiest and most secure customer support screen-sharing software I have found so far. Your customer calls you on the phone, and you easily connect to view their screen without any vulnerablility to them. If security is a common concern in your customer base, this one will do the trick.

Some of the popular instant messangers support screen sharing. If that works for you that’s great, but again consider whether your customers will be comfortable with that. Make your life easier by reaching out to your customers either by giving them a video to learn what they need (Screencasts) or by helping them while you view their screen (Screen Sharing).

      

Does a 4-hour work week seem like a pie in the sky to you? Not to me. After reading The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss, I’m convinced it’s possible. Ferris’ unique journey is a compelling read. More importantly, it has increased my efficiency and therefore… profits.

4HWW Principles

Timothy Ferris found four basic principles that when combined will help you escape the doldrums of every-day life, create success and prosperity without long hours, difficult bosses, commuting, or a time clock. Change your world by riding this roller-coaster to efficiency.

One of these four principles, Elimination, has left me without the ton of bricks I used to carry around for no reason. I’ve removed my least profitable projects, stopped commuting, simplified my processes, found my inefficiencies and dropped them, found my strengths and mulitplied them.

Elimination

Elimination is removing those things in your life or business that drag you down, tie up your time, cause errors or distractions. If you change your paradigm and see your day in terms of “what do I have or what do I do that really doesn’t help?” then you can eliminate and simplify – getting more done in less time. And I don’t mean more in quantity – volume isn’t the key. How you reach your goals is the key. Any activity, customer, or project that is really a time-waster should be considered for elimination.

My Personal Elimination Tools

• StayFocused by Transfusion Media is an extension to the Google Chrome browser that lives up to its name. It helps you stay focused by limiting the time you can browse websites you have designated as time-wasters. Track your time on websites and then configure them into StayFocusd. Like an automatic diet you’ll soon spend less time surfing and more time working.
• Other Inbox is a tool that analyzes your incoming email and places low-priority emails out of the way so you easily focus on what is truly important, not what appears to be urgent. This works great with Gmail.
• Google Voice gives you more control over your voice messages. Screen calls, read voicemail (which is quicker than listening), and customize your greeting based on who is calling you.
• Gmail removes spam better than an any other email client I have every used. Spam is growing; I get over 1,000 spam emails a day. Gmail has the best filter, and it lets me add my own filters. Combined with Other Inbox, and you will never waste time in email again.

Don’t misunderstand me. The 4-Hour Work Week is not a proposal to do more in less time. It teaches you how to identify and do what is most beneficial and leave out the rest. If the most important work is only a fraction of the time you are currently spending, wouldn’t you want to know? Wouldn’t you change your activities to maximize your profit or reach other goals? Get your copy of The 4-Hour Workweek now.

Tell Me

Now it’s your turn to help me. What tools do you use to eliminate wasting time?

      

Spammers are tricky. Spammers pay for the development of “crawlers” that will go through your site (and everyone else’s site) looking for email addresses. Once they find your email address on a page, you’re on their list forever.

Check this site out to protect your email address.

Note: This technique is not by any means a foolproof solution. But this technique will still certainly go a long way towards minimizing your exposure to less capable automated email harvesters.

      

We’ve been getting tons of local (Little Rock) requests for search engine marketing services. We’ve been providing search engine marketing for years but our customers were always large ecommerce web sites. Our customers targeted anyone, anywhere. Our customers didn’t care if you were in New York or Little Rock; if you were looking for widgets, they wanted you to come to their sites.

Internet Marketing for Local Services

But, local companies that only serviced Little Rock Arkansas seemed uninterested. They understood that they needed a web site but didn’t want to spend any money on internet marketing. Slapping the site at the bottom of their business card was “Good Enough.”

Over the last few years, that has changed. They’ve realized that research (whether local or worldwide) starts on the internet google. And we’ve had a lot of luck placing top results for local companies! I think it’s safe to say that it’s easier getting top results for local companies.

The Local Internet Marketing List

Below, I’ve compiled a list of sites that will assist your local internet marketing efforts. Google loves these sites and values their entries. This means that in addition to your information being placed on other sites, your site actually gets ranked higher!

Before you just start submitting your site, do some keyword research, write some optimized descriptions that utilizes those keywords. Good luck and if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Local Directories

1. Google Local
2. Yahoo Local
3. Bing Local

Important Directory Sites

1. Dmoz.org
2. Botw.org
3. MerchantCircle.com
4. HotFrog.com

Important Yellow Page Sites

1. YellowPages.com
2. Superpages.com
3. Yellowbook.com
4. DexKnows.com
5. Local.com
6. ZoomInfo.com

Important Review Sites

1. Yelp.com
2. RateItAll.com
3. InsiderPages.com
4. ServiceMagic.com

Important Database Sites

1. InfoUsa
2. Localeze

      

This weekend was special… not just because it was easter.

It was also special because I got engaged!

      

I just purchased a new laptop… and NO, it is not a Mac. It’s a Dell E6500.

I have always used a checklist to install new software but recently I have modified it since I’m using more web apps than ever before (namely mint.com and gmail as opposed to quicken and outlook, respectively).

I thought you might be interested in reviewing the software that I personally install and compare/contrast to your installed software.

Required Software – Even If I Wasn’t a Tech Guy

1. Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and OneNote)
2. Notepad++
3. Mozilla Firefox
4. Skype
5. Picasa 3
6. FileZilla (client)
7. Adobe Reader
8. Flash Player
9. 7-Zip
10. AVG
11. Latest Windows Updates

Optional Software

1. PuTTY
2. TortoiseSVN
3. KeePass
4. QuickBooks
5. Adobe Acrobat
6. iTunes
7. KeePass
8. Hulu Desktop
9. Google Chrome
10. uTorrent

Required Firefox Add-ons

1. Delicious Bookmarks
2. Firebug
3. Fullerscreen
4. LastPass
5. LogMeIn Remote Access Plugin
6. StumbleUpon

I didn’t waste your time explaining the application or why I use it, but if you have any questions, comments, complaints or recommendations then just leave a comment.

      

As you all know, I recently created an AMI which allows a user to instantly launch a Magento ecommerce site using Amazon’s Cloud Computing Technology. So that brings me to two very different points (I should probably break this into two posts):

Point 1: Magento Rules the Ecommerce World

Magento is now more popular (at least more visited/searched) than other major open source ecommerce web applications (Checkout Google, Compete). Currently, I believe Magento is leaps and bounds above any other ecommerce system out. If you don’t agree, I urge you to show me a more fully featured, open source ecommerce system.

Point 2: My Personal Backup is still Jungledisk

I’ve been developing with Amazon’s AWS services for about a year. They’ve really been leading the development of “cloud computing” applications. Their API’s are pretty straight forward and although I have a few complaints, it’s a pretty nice system.

The Amazon S3 Network (which allows you to store data on Amazon’s cloud) has been my latest love. Amazon’s “pay as you go” pricing model makes it competitive even when you compare it to a DIY project.

After checking this out, I wanted to start running my personal backups onto Amazon’s S3 network. I thought I’d have to develop something but then I found JungleDisk. JungleDisk is a Windows and Mac backup system that stores all of your data on Amazon’s S3 network. That means, if someone steals my laptop, all of my data would still be safe. JungleDisk currently costs $20 (one time fee) and Amazon’s S3 network costs me about $6 per month for around 40GB worth of a data.

I’m real happy with JungleDisk and I’m proud to recommend them. Its automated, fast, reliable, and cost-effective. But, they have a few things that they should be worried about… They were recently bought out by Rackspace (Amazon’s cloud computing competitor). Although you can choose to use either Amazon or Rackspace, I’m usually scared to commit to a vendor unless I know their future intentions. I hope things aren’t going to change (JungleDisk claims nothing will change), but you never know. Also, JungleDisk has a very strong competitor in Mozy (Bought by EMC which also claims nothing to will change due to their buyout). Although I have used the mozy system, I stuck with JunlgeDisk b/c of it’s performance and the Amazon’s S3 network. But now, Mozy only costs $5.00 per month! For $5.00, its definitely worth trying. I’d love to hear your thoughts on Mozy and Jungledisk.

My recommendation: personally, I don’t care which backup system you use. You can continue to use 3.5″ floppy disks… but please… please… PLEASE BACKUP. I once had a client pay $10,000 for data recovery. Seriously.

      

Check Out the Original Magento Amazon AMI Here!

I wanted to setup a magento store and compare it to a number of competitors. But, to get the thing launched, you need to customize your server. I didn’t want to modify our server because I wasn’t sure if I was going to like magento and I didn’t want to make unneeded changes to the server.

So, I decided to make a new instance on my amazon EC2 account and build a new server.

I spent a ton of time looking for an existing AMI for Magento. After I didn’t find one, I set out to build one. I built an AMI that has Magento 1.2.1.1, CentOS 5.2, PHP 5.2.9, mysql 5.1.

If you want to check it out: download The Original Magento Amazon AMI.

Good luck and let me know if you need anything.

      

“Crisis Boosts the Learning Curve” on 12/31/2008 by Tom Keene on Bloomberg Radio

Tom was discussing the popularity of news coverage. He discussed that due to the the financial crisis, more people are interested in the news.

After hearing Tom’s statement I really thought about how much I learn during any crisis. I came to the conclusion that this is why so many people say you learn more from failure than success.

In the year and half of law school, I’ve learned (and remembered) more about law when there is some type of crisis than I have in class. In the 7 years of running my own business, I’ve learned more during our “times of crisis” than I ever did by reading a great book or college course.

I learn more about my friends and family when we disagree than when we agree.

Think about it.

      

I laid out over 18 goals for last year. I accomplished less than half. I tell you that just to let you know that I’ve laid out even more goals for this year. Just because you do not reach your goals, doesn’t mean that you should not make goals.