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).

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?

For you WordPress and Feedburner users:

I’ve been a long time fan of Feedburner. But one day, my feed magically broke. I recreated the feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/RjMartinosWebLog) and pointed it (rjmartino.com/wp-rss2.php).

Then, as I started creating new posts, I realized that nothing was being sent to feedburner. When I viewed my feedburner page, it was BLANK. When I logged into Blogline, my feed was blank.

I checked the Original Feed Validity. It checked out just fine…

I checked the FeedBurner Feed Validity. It checked out just fine.

I even re-synced… nothing.

I searched forums and found a guy named Rajasekharan at http://www.mtherald.com. Rajasekharan had fixed the same problem but he didn’t list the fix. So I visited his medical transcription blog, found his email address, and shot him an email.

He was really helpful. He explained that when he setup his feedburner feed, he gave the URL of his original feed (ie http://mtherald.com/blog/wp-rss.php). As he later found out, that was the blunder.

After changing the RSS feed to the correct URL, http://mtherald.com/?feed=rss2. It was solved.

I did the exact same thing. I set feedburner to look at http://wwww.rjmartino.com/wp-rss.php. The feed should have been set to http://www.rjmartino.com/?feed=rss2.

After changing the setting, I “pinged” the page using http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/ping, and a few minutes later, my feeds showed back up!

For you web developers:

Finally… with all my extra time during the summer, I’ve spent more time coding.

I’ve always had a “I can do it better” coding style. I can think of hundreds of times that I’ve seen a piece of software (or code) and said, “I can do it better.” Then I go out and sure enough, I do it better

The problem is that I spend hundreds of hours doing it.

Just recently I needed a form validator. The form validator simply needed to verify that two different passwords were typed correctly. Although server-side data validation is required, its ugly. Server-side validation requires a user to hit a submit button and wait for a response. I wanted something that was real-time… So, I reminded myself how much time I waste trying to recreate the wheel and I set out to find a solution that was client side (preferably JavaScript).

And I found it… I’ve started using LiveValidation.

LiveValidation is a javascript library that provides form validation on the fly. It’s open source and completely free. You can find a ton of examples on their site. And if you can’t find an example, LiveValidation has well-written documentation (something that is hard to come by these days).

Good Luck

I’ve played with twitter for a while now and I am still trying to gather my thoughts on the product.

The Service
For those who don’t know, twitter is a web application that allows registered users to post what they are doing “right now.” They make updates pretty simple. You can update using their web site, text message 40404, and email.

You can follow other users as well. So, if I want to know what my friend Jeff Noble or Capillya is doing, I “follow” him. Once I follow someone, it text messages me an update of “what they are doing.”

The Usage
Twitter makes it easy to update what you are doing… allowing me text message what I am doing it great. In addition, there are some really nice apps that make updating really simple. For instance, Jott.com allows me to call a toll-free number and make twitter updates via voice calls.

The Review
A friend of mine (after discussing twitter), told me that it isn’t a viable service. He called it a “feature” not a product. His thought behind the statement is that this is something Facebook and most other social networking sites have built into their product.

I guess I sort of agree. My only argument is not the service itself. The twitter service is similar to Facebook status update. Facebook does allow you to update status and you can even receive mobile updates when someone updates their status (this is something I’ve had to literally show someone).

The argument is the way the service is used. Facebook users update their status as a statement of feeling while twitter users utilize updates as statements on what they are doing….

Typical Facebook updates look like “RJ Martino is bored” or “RJ Martino is lucky to have such a great friend”

Typical Twitter updates look like “RJ Martino is writing a review on twitter.com” or “RJ Martino is going to a court appearance”

This is hard to explain… but to sum it up, facebook updates tell followers how they are feeling… twitter updates tell you what people are actually doing, not what they’re feeling.

So, as a technical review, I don’t think twitter is much than Facebook. But after using it for some time, there is no doubt that they are used in two different ways.

It seems almost certain that twitter is a viable product by the number of users but I’ve stopped making predictions on product viability.

Although Talk Business Quarterly is new, Talk business has been covering Arkansas Business since 1999. Roby Brock is the host and executive producer of Talk Business and his show can be seen on Fox 16.

Check out his website at www.talkbusiness.net

In exchange for his nice article, I thought I’d give him a little exposure on my media outlet… rjmartino.com… I probably got a little more exposure than he did.

Read the article
Young Guns.pdf

Microsoft obviously wants it, Yahoo!’s stock price is too low, Yahoo! isn’t competing with Google, and the price is right.

Paul Kedrosky describes ways that the YHOO/MSFT deal could be killed, but the chances are slim… very slim.

Recently I’ve been waking up early and have really been struggling (I’ve always been a hard sleeper).

I’ve decided to move my workout to the mornings and because of that, I’ve started using N.O.-Xplode as a supplement. Every morning, I drink a cup of this stuff… it’s great. Its just like someone else drinking coffee… I need it to get going and as soon as I take it, I’m up and ready to go. I think the stuff is meth… My heart pumps a little faster and my brain works a little faster.

I’m not recommending the product or anything like that, I’m just happy that I found my morning coffee.

My last phone (the blackjack) was actually working perfect for me… it sync’d with my calendar, contacts, etc… It had email access… it had internet access… a full keyboard… played mp3s… took pictures… came with 2 batteries!!!

So, when I read all the fantastic reviews about the iPhone, I was pumped… I bought one and to my dissapointment, I’m still not happy… I actually want my money back and I want to go back to the blackjack… Here is what I hate…

1. Not a full keyboard… I have to look at my phone as I text
2. When I place it on my chin, it always puts people on hold
3. The internet is NOT faster
4. You can’t bulk delete from your emails
5. No third party applications
6. It has to sync with iTunes… I hate itunes

My GrandCentral.com phone number is: 501-859-6035. You can call me now or you can even click the “call me” link on my page.

I’ve recently started using it and I’m really impressed. It make screening phone calls (something I do a lot) easier. Here’s the short version… Once you sign up, GrandCentral.com assigns you a phone number. When someone calls your phone number it immediately asks you who you are and why you’re calling… it then starts ringing… you can play any ring back… it also gives you a list of funny ring back options.

I told GrandCentral.com my “real” number and GrandCentral.com then calls my cell phone when I get a phone call from 501-859-6035… I pick it up and it says “X is calling.” I then have the option to answer it by pressing “1″, ignore it by pressing “4.” If I press “4″ to ignore, I can listen to the message that they leave… if I feel like answering while they’re talking, I can press “*” to pickup immediately… while they’re leaving a message! I can see a list of calls that I recieved on any day… and

It records the conversations and allows online access to voice mail. I can change my “real” cell phone at any time and just redirect where GrandCentral.com calls me from… I can switch phones while I’m on a call… I can immediately block unwanted calls (telemarketers hear a “disconnected” ring)…

Its pretty cool and worth taking a look at… if you’re interested, call me and ask me for a private beta invitation (I have a few left).

PS… I think this will be heavily used with the Google Phone. As a matter of fact, my prediction is that it won’t be network specific (like the iPhone, which only works with AT&T)… it will work across any network because the features are independent of the network you’re on…