TeamSupport.com Blog

We have moved!

Eric Harrington — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:33:00 GMT

This week we decided to switch hosting providers. We have a new TeamSupport website and a new blog.

You can subscribe to our blog RSS feed here: feed://www.teamsupport.com/blog/feed

We have moved all previous posts to the new site and will keep this site up for another week.

See you on the new site!

Small Business, Big Party at SXSW 2010

Eric Harrington — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:54:00 GMT

TeamSupport and its friends at The Small Business Web are throwing a massive party this year at SXSW. There will be food, drinks, and a bunch of fun. Come meet some of your favorite web application vendors and hundreds of other small businesses just like you.

Details
4-7pm Saturday, March 13
The Pure Volume House at 504 Trinity St, Austin, TX.

You must sign up here for the party. Austin law requires us to have a guest list.

About The Small Business Web

The Small Business Web helps small businesses get the most from the Internet by encouraging their favourite web applications to integrate. At SXSW last year, the SBW had 5 members. One year later it stands at over 70 companies.

Best of SaaS Showplace Award Winners!

Eric Harrington — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:38:00 GMT

TeamSupport.com Wins Best of SaaS Showplace Award

Software-as-a-Service Customer Support, Product Management, and Bug Tracking System Encourages Better Communication and Greater Collaboration

Wellesley, Mass. - February 16, 2010. THINKstrategies, Inc., the leading strategic consulting company focused on the business implications of the on-demand services market, announced today that TeamSupport.com has been named the latest winner of theBest of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards program, which is aimed at promoting the measurable business benefits being delivered by today's Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.

The BoSS Awards program was announced in January 2009 by THINKstrategies as an initiative aimed at bringing greater attention to SaaS and cloud computing companies that are producing tangible business benefits for specific user organizations. These benefits include increased sales, lower costs, higher customer satisfaction, faster operations and greater profitability.

TeamSupport.com is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Muroc Systems, Inc., a Dallas-based holding company focused on developing productivity enhancing software products delivered via the SaaS model. TeamSupport.com's integrated SaaS-based customer service, product management, and bug tracking system allows manufacturers, their customers, and key client-focused teams to better communicate so they can reduce the time and cost to perform critical business functions.

An example of TeamSupport.com's measurable business benefits is Data Financial, Inc. which has been serving the financial systems and equipment needs of banking, retail and casino gaming industry clients since 1983. By using TeamSupport.com's on-demand customer service and help desk application, Data Financial has saved $3,200 in labor, two weeks of software development time and $1,200 in travel/lodging expenses per installation, representing over $100,000 savings over the past year. The company also saw their 'new concept to release' time reduced by as much as 40 percent, depending on the complexity of the release.

It is for these reasons that TeamSupport.com has been named a Best of SaaS Showplace Award winner. A summary of the company's winning BoSS Award submission can be found at http://www.saas-showplace.com/awardSummary.php?key=1129].

"We are extremely pleased to be recognized by THINKstrategies and the SaaS Showplace for the business value of our on-demand solution," said Robert C. Johnson, CEO of TeamSupport.com. "We recognized the need to keep everyone, customers included, in-the-loop. By breaking down the barriers between help desk and bug tracking systems, TeamSupport.com lets everyone work from the same knowledge base; that enhances internal and external communications, which translates into happier customers and a better product."

"As organizations become more dispersed and dependent on third-party relationships, they need new mechanisms to communicate and coordinate their activity," stated Jeffrey M. Kaplan, the founder of the SaaS Showplace and Managing Director ofTHINKstrategies, the strategic consulting firm which conceived and administers the Showplace."TeamSupport.com's SaaS-based solutions encourage better communication, collaboration and coordination inside and outside organizations to achieve their business objectives."

A list of previous winners of the BoSS Awards can be found at http://www.saas-showplace.com/registerforbossaward.html.

Based on the success of the BoSS Awards program which focuses on SaaS solutions, THINKstrategies has launched the Cloud Computing Business Value (CCBV) Awards program to recognize companies which are delivering Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions producing measurable business benefits for their customers. For more information regarding the CCBV Awards, go to http://www.thinkstrategies.com/cloudcomputingawards.html

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About the SaaS Showplace

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Showplace® is a service of THINKstrategies, Inc. This Showplace was established in 2006 to provide,

IT/business decision-makers a quick directory of the leading SaaS providers and a convenient source of valuable insight regarding SaaS trends.
SaaS providers a targeted tool to increase their visibility among enterprise decision-makers, and gain access to key enabling technology suppliers.
Enabling technology suppliers a specialized platform to increase industry awareness regarding their SaaS solutions.

The SaaS Showplace is now the largest and highest ranked, vendor-independent, online directory and resource center of industry best practices in the SaaS market. For more information, go to www.saas-showplace.com or www.thinksaas.com.

# # #

About the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Awards

The BoSS Award program was launched in 2009 as an ongoing initiative to identify and promote SaaS, and 'cloud computing', companies which are offering on-demand solutions which are generating measurable business benefits for their customers.

BoSS awards nominations are not only accepted on an ongoing basis, but more than one winner can be awarded in each SaaS Showplace Application, Industry and Enabling Technology Supplier category.

BoSS award winners are given special designation on the SaaS Showplace, with a summary of their award-winning solution(s) and customer success story. Award winners are also recognized in the SaaS Showplace newsletter distributed to over 12,000 subscribers, and are able to promote their award designation on their website and in pre-approved company material.

For more information or to nominate a BoSS award winner, go to http://www.saas-showplace.com/registerforbossaward.html.

# # #

About THINKstrategies, Inc.

THINKstrategies, Inc. is the only strategic consulting services company formed specifically to address the unprecedented business challenges facing IT managers, solutions providers and investors today as the technology industry shifts from a product-centric to a services orientation.

THINKstrategies' mission is to help our clients re-THINK their corporate strategies, and refocus their limited resources to achieve their business objectives. THINKstrategies helps enterprise decision-makers with their sourcing strategies, IT solutions providers with their marketing strategies, and VCs with their investment strategies.

In addition to the Software-as-a-Service Showplace, THINKstrategies is also the founder of the Managed Services Showplace, a vendor-independent, online directory and information resource center of managed service solutions.

For more information regarding THINKstrategies' unique consulting services, visit www.thinkstrategies.com, or contact us atinfo@thinkstrategies.com.

# # #

Introducing Live Chat

Robert C. Johnson — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:00:00 GMT

One of the features our users have been asking for almost since day one has been live chat, and we’re pleased to announce that we have released chat functionality today.

Today’s customers demand true multi channel support which means support by phone, e-mail, web, and chat. TeamSupport now covers all of these channels, and allows you to consolidate your communication with your customers. It no longer matters how your customers contact you – All correspondence is kept within TeamSupport so you have a complete view of your customer interactions.

Our chat implementation is extremely powerful and has several key features:

- You can upload/create your own graphics for “Chat Now” buttons to show if there is an agent available or not.

- The chat dialog is customizable with your own graphics to represent your brand.

- Each TeamSupport user can have multiple chats running simultaneously to maximize the use of their time.

- If the user requesting a chat is an existing “customer” in TeamSupport the agent can easily pull up their record and see prior interactions.

- The agent can transfer the chat and conference in other TeamSupport users easily. This way, if the issue needs to get escalated to a different group or someone with more experience, the agent can make the transition seamlessly.

- Chat transcripts can be associated with a new or existing ticket in TeamSupport. This means that multiple chats about the same issue can be stored in a single ticket, and also that chat transcripts can be searched just like another ticket in the system.

- Leave a message! If your team is offline, your customers can submit their question and TeamSupport will create a "offline chat" ticket and notify your team so they can answer the question when they are back at work.

Chat is a powerful new feature in TeamSupport that we are very excited about. We continue to differentiate our product with features like Chat, Wiki, and the WaterCooler so that TeamSupport is much more than “just another ticketing system”. TeamSupport is a true Enterprise class system which will save your organization time and money and give your customers the support they demand.

Live Chat is available immediately and is licensed on a per user basis. For more information, please contact our sales department, or just Chat With Us here:

Some screen shots:

The Chat Request screen - Put your own image on the right

This screen shows a chat request that is pending - Simply click the "Accept Chat" button to start chatting!

This screen shows an ongoing chat. You can see the buttons at the top which will let you invite other TeamSupport users into the chat session, view the customer details, and add the chat transcript to either an existing or new ticket.

Customize Your Tickets!

Eric Harrington — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:07:00 GMT

This week we added a really cool feature to TeamSupport and so far, the response has been fantastic. I usually try not to write about every little feature we add, but in this case I am really excited about this as is the rest of our team - (and our customers!)

TeamSupport customers can now create as many types of tickets and even upload a custom 16x16 icon to make their experience even more unique to their needs.

In addition, these ticket types can have their own set of custom fields and workflow. Also, tickets do not have to be just about issues and the like. You can literally create any type of ticket you need to manage.

The potential & flexibility is endless!

Here is an example of what I did in my account:

We include some stock icons to choose from of course, but be creative and have fun with your tickets!

Customer Brief - Magpie Systems

Eric Harrington — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:05:00 GMT

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with one of our customers, Edward Hofler, who operates Magpie Systems and wanted to share a little about his company and how they are using TeamSupport.

Q. Hi Ed! Thanks for taking a few minutes to talk about your company and TeamSupport today. For those who may not know, what does Magpie Systems do?

A. Hello Eric. Our primary product, Magpie Property Management Suite v2, is a cloud-based property management system designed for the short-term hospitality market (condo hotels, timeshare, boutique resorts and whole-owned hotels). We currently are the only PMS of it's kind that is fully integrated with Quickbooks Online.

Q. So how long have you been using TeamSupport?

A. We have been using TeamSupport since October of 2009.

Q. How is it helping you and your team?

A. While we have been in business for over 8 years, our focus has been on building Magpie Property Management Suite. Creating internal support systems has never gotten the attention it needs. We initially started using TeamSupport to address this, but soon discovered it does much more. We have also started using TeamSupport for customer service and moved all of our external support documentation over to the Wiki. The end result is much improved customer support.

Q. What are the key features that help the most and why?

A. The support portal is great, it allows us to embed a link in our client's application that takes them directly to their personal support area where they can view/edit/create support tickets. Tracking bugs throughout the development cycle has also been a big help. Our developers are not in the same geographic area, and TeamSupport allows us to work more as a team, shortening development time and saving money.

Q. When conducting your initial search for a solution, what was the top priority for you?

A. Issue tracking and team communication.

If you would like to learn more about Magpie Systems, you can find them at http://magpiesystems.net/

Are you a TeamSupport customer & would like to be featured in our customer brief? Contact Eric Harrington: 800.596.2820 x806

What is Multi Channel Support and Why is it Important to You?

Robert C. Johnson — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 15:00:00 GMT

Spend a few minutes reading the trade publications or blogs on line and you’ll run up against the phrase “Multi Channel Support” without trying too hard. Multi Channel Support is really just a fancy word for letting your customers work with you in the format they desire.

Customers today are a lot more technologically savvy and sophisticated than they once were, and they are also much more demanding of customer support organizations. Like it or not, we live in a 24x7 world and customers want to be able to solve their problems when they want, and on their terms. Gone are the days of offering phone only support during “standard” (whatever that is!) office hours.

Your customers want to be able to reach you via the channel they prefer – Phone, web, and e-mail are the obvious ones to start, but more and more customers are moving to other forms of online communication such as chat and even Twitter.

Customer support software should provide mechanisms for your customers to work with you in whatever channel they want – You cannot dictate to them that support is only offered in certain ways.

Of course, TeamSupport.com believes strongly in multi-channel support and we can provide the technology for you to implement it easily into your organization. TeamSupport tracks the conversation with your customers no matter which channel it comes in through, and keeps the information in an easy to find place so that multiple members of your team can work together to solve issues at the same time.

Savvy companies offer their customers’ support solutions which not only give them what they want, but also reduce costs at the same time. This is the promise of a well executed implementation of support software technology. Customers want to be able to log in and see the status of their issues, add additional information to them, and see what progress has been made. They also want to be able to search common issues and solve their own problems via a knowledge base. All of this has been proven to both increase your customers’ satisfaction and reduce the cost of providing world class service.

We at TeamSupport.com believe that a well executed Multi-Channel Support strategy that allows your customers to contact you in the way they prefer will benefit both your company and your customers, and we look forward to helping you on that journey!

My Recent Experience at a Car Dealership

Robert C. Johnson — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:12:00 GMT

Here in Dallas the name Sewell is synonymous with Customer Service.

At the tender age of 28, Carl Sewell realized he wanted to create the best brand of car dealerships in the world and he started a transformative process to do just that. Now, almost 40 years later, Mr. Sewell owns some 16 car dealerships around the Dallas area that are widely regarded as the best for service and post-sale support. Mr. Sewell realized that selling a person one car was good, but selling them every car they would ever buy during their lives was much better! His aim was to turn a onetime car buyer into a “Customer for Life”.

I purchased my car from a Sewell dealership several years ago due to their sterling reputation, and I recently took my car back in for some routine, but comprehensive, maintenance.

Since I run a company that provides customer service software, I’m always interested to watch how well (or, unfortunately, poorly in some cases) companies handle service.

True to form, the service from Sewell was excellent. As soon as I pulled up a “Service Advisor” was at my door and getting my information. As he looked over the service history of the car, we chatted about what work needed to be done this time. I ticked off several items, including some minor dent repairs, and he gave me a few other suggestions (yes, this was up selling, but he also talked me out of replacing all my tires and instead I just replaced one). After about 10 minutes he walked me over to the loaner (not rental, loaner – No charge at all) counter and I picked up my pristine current model year loan car.

Total time from drop off to driving out with a loan car was about 20 minutes – And a lot of that was because the Service Advisor and I got chatting.

The Service Advisor promised to call with updates, and he did – Long story short, but the service turned out to take about 5 days (one part took a while to get in, and then the dent repair guy had an issue). Every day I promptly got a phone call from my Service Advisor giving me an update and apologizing profusely for the delay. Frankly, it didn’t bother me that the service was delayed since I had a loaner car (which was a brand new model from this year!) and constant communication from Sewell.

I have my car back now, and it looks (almost) as good as new. A few minor issues were taken care of, and several small nicks and dents were cleaned up so well I can’t even remember where they were. The communication and attention to detail I received from Sewell was true to their reputation, and I guarantee when I’m ready to purchase a new car it will be from Sewell again.

We can all learn something about how to treat our customers as we go through our daily lives, and my experience at the Sewell car dealership set a great example to follow! Successful companies need to strive to create “customers for life” just as Mr. Sewell realized many years ago.

Introducing the WaterCooler

Robert C. Johnson — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 13:03:00 GMT

Today we released an exciting new feature in TeamSupport that we call The WaterCooler.

The landscape of help desk and customer support systems hasn't changed a lot since the concept was invented. You open a ticket, add some information to it, and (eventually) close it. Every system developed to date has been some form of this basic idea, and at its heart it is a very individualistic approach.

We believe that solving customers' (internal or external customers) problems can be accomplished better by allowing the entire team to work together, and we continue to evolve TeamSupport around this concept.

The Water Cooler is a place to gather and converse - about both support issues and other, less business related things. Just like a "real" water cooler, TeamSupport's Water Cooler can be used as a place to reach out and connect with other people in your company on a variety of topics.

Put more technically, the Water Cooler is an internal chat system similar to Twitter and the like except that only your internal teams can see the discussions.

Another way to think of the Water Cooler is a replacement for yelling over cubicle walls. Anyone who has spent much time in a support department has seen someone yell across the room for assistance on an issue ("Hey, does anyone know how to reset a flammerjammer?"). The Water Cooler can help all team members reach out across both walls and silos to get help solving a problem.

As we continue to grow TeamSupport we are reaching out into other technology areas and bringing the best ideas into the customer support and help desk departments. The Water Cooler borrows some of the great ideas from Twitter and other social networking platforms, and of course our Wiki is a great collaborative tool which allows documents to be live and always updated.

For more information on the Water Cooler, please see our documentation here.

Does Your Company Suffer From Silo Syndrome?

Eric Harrington — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:00:00 GMT

Since our inception, we have been making the case & pointing out the reasons why silos that exist within companies are bad for business. More specifically, bad for the customer service experience. I wanted to share a real experience of the problem we are trying to solve.

Here is a great example of what happens when companies suffer from silo syndrome. The message below is from Jan 3, 2010:

Support Staff Response
Dear Customer,

You have reached the certificate authority area of GoDaddy.com support. We handle the verification and issuance of secure certificates. The question you have posed would be best directed to our General Support Department. They can be contacted at 480-505-8877 or support@godaddy.com.

Let us know if we can be of further service.

To Contact Us:
Email: ra@godaddy.com
Phone: 480-505-8852
FAX: 480-393-5009

How great would it have been for them to simply transfer the ticket to the right department and just let me know as such? The data about the customer and the issue has been gathered. A ticket has been created. Now the customer (me in this case) will have to describe the problem again to the SAME company.

Hard to imagine customer service at a highly technical company suffers from silo syndrome but they do. More companies suffer from this than you might think.

To be fair, GoDaddy.com has been a good vendor otherwise. I have placed calls to them for help and they do a great job with phone support. I just wish they understood how interactions like this impact their customer service and ultimately the bottom line.

In TeamSupport, our customers can simply assign the ticket to another group. When that happens, every member of that group receives an email letting them know a ticket has been assigned to them. Now, as opposed to sending an email back to the customer and asking them to submit a request to someone else in the same company, they could have just transfered the ticket and the other team could pick it up from there and begin working the issue, like this:

With a simple mouse click, everyone is on the same page and the customer will be much happier!

The C-Level Challenge: Hearing the Voice of the Customer

Robert C. Johnson — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 15:00:00 GMT

When I was doing some research for a future post, I ran across the article below by Mikael Blaisdell of The HotLine Magazine. His words struck a cord with me as I've always been a CEO involved in the help desk process (more on that in a later post), and I wanted to share his thoughts here.

Mikael graciously granted us permission to republish his original article, and it appears below (note: Here's a link to that original article).

At TeamSupport we believe that customer service and support needs to be something the entire company is involved in. If you are a part of executive management, take Mikael's advice and head down to the help desk and see what is going on. I guarantee you will come away with a better understanding of your customers.

The C-Level Challenge: Hearing the Voice of the Customer

By Mikael Blaisdell

Part Of C-Level Briefings Series

I’ve been advising clients for years that if they want to know what’s goingon out in their market community, there is no better place to learn than in their own customer contact centers. “You hear things on that hotline that you just don’t hear anywhere else,” reported one CEO. Scott Cook, founder of Intuit, regularly took calls himself in hiscompany’s support center. A handful of other senior executives oftechnology companies have done the same. Are you one of them? Or would there be a sudden hush as you walked through the door?

There is no substitute for hearing the voice of the customer directly in your own ears, no matter where you work in the company. When I was a tech writer, I relied on that knowledge to keep the product documentation I wrote accessible to the customer. From my own shifts as a customer support rep, I knew what my readers were likely to understand — and what would prompt them to reach for the phone instead to call the support center. I used that knowledge to write accurate error messages for the development group so that both the customer and the support rep on the phone had a better chance of understanding the reason for a call. Those customer conversations taught me a lot about how the products were being used in everyday operations, and gave insight as to what the customers hoped most to see in future versions.

Unfortunately, in most technology companies, the wealth of insight and data residing in the customer contact center is wasted. Nobody asks for it, and the support center managers don’t market what they have to the rest of the company. The result is that a significant amount of potential profitability is left untapped. It doesn’t have to be that way. Take the challenge, and go find out for yourself.

Before you head down to your contact center, though, make a commitment to play by the rules. You can take calls directly if you have the necessary skills and knowledge, or just listen in — but do so as John/Jane CSR. Leave your C-Level title and all of its authority behind. Listen closely to both what the customers are saying and how they say it. Watch how John and/or Jane CSR use the center’s tools as they work to help the customer. In between calls, ask them how they deal with different types of customers, personalities, and what they focus on as they manage the process of the interaction through to resolution. Resist the temptation to take notes, or to explain; just listen.

When you get back to your office, it will be time for reflection. What did you learn about the knowledge inventory in your contact center? What was different about hearing the voice of the customer directly in your ears? How does what you saw and heard directly relate to the profitability of your company?

You aren’t likely to learn everything there is to know about your customer contact center in one visit. It will take many to gain a full understanding of the power of the resource. Ideally, you should commit yourself to a regular schedule of sessions on an ongoing basis, to develop your awareness and to keep the voice of the customer fresh in your ears.

There is another benefit to be gained from regular visitation by the CEO and the other C-Level officers to the company’s customer contact center. Each visit sends a subtle, but powerful message to the team that this is work worth the doing, important enough so that the senior management team pays personal attention to it. No amount of PR text or company meeting speeches can convey the message as well as a regular presence and direct participation.

Integrated Clinical Systems Describes Benefits of TeamSupport

Eric Harrington — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Integrated Clinical Systems, Inc. (www.i-review.com) is a major provider of data visualization and reporting software solutions to the pharmaceutical industry. The Frenchtown, NJ based company's data analysis tools – Integrated ReviewTM and JReview – are used extensively in clinical drug trials for patient profiling, reporting, graphing, ad-hoc data mining and other complex analytical tasks.

"We were looking to replace a costly existing system that had been in-place for about six years, but just was not a good fit for our business," said Bob Stephens, the company's director of professional services. "A key ICS objective for any prospective solution was to improve communications, both internally and with customers, so that issues could be jointly addressed and resolved." Among other top goals: Enhancing the software development process with greater feedback and end-user interaction, and boosting efficiency throughout the organization.

"TeamSupport really matched what we needed: It's very focused on software development, defect tracking and feature management; it has a customer portal and it's hosted – reducing our IT overhead. Plus, it's intuitive and easy to use, both for us and our customers ... it was such a nice scaled-back approach compared to some other products that need months of training just to learn the basics," said Stephens.

The ICS team worked with TeamSupport staff to extract and import data from the existing support application, "We had a lot of historical data; our biggest concern was retaining all of it so we wouldn't have to start over from scratch. The TeamSupport folks walked us through the conversion process and make it all seem easy. We have a great new system and all of our old data – the best of both worlds!"

ICS deployed their licenses across three separate, but interrelated functional groups: the customer-facing Professional Services team, Quality Assurance andSoftware Development. As is typical when anything new is introduced into the workplace, initial reactions were "Oh my gosh, how do I use this?" But after spending a few minutes with TeamSupport, they'd say "Gee, that was so easy!" related Stephens.

One critical feature before ICS could go live – a non-realtime "web conversation" capability for the self-service customer portal – was committed to and quickly implemented by TeamSupport. It enables actions to be tracked and emails linked to the record of any ongoing issue. Using the portal, end-users can interact with ICS staff, as well as monitor the status of their own issues and feature requests. "When customers get a positive response and timely feedback, then they'll like [the portal] and continue using it," said Stephens. "It's not enough for the programmer to pick-up a bug and start to work on it; the customer needs to know what's happening ... it gives them a sense that we're doing something!"

ICS has been up and running for about six months now and the improvements are perfectly obvious to Stephens, "TeamSupport has eliminated the guesswork and given us positive control over communications and issue tracking. Our people are using it to boost productivity and our customers value the interactive dialogue available through the web portal. I would definitely recommend TeamSupport to others!"

Happy Holidays!

Robert C. Johnson — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 13:36:00 GMT

As we wind up another year, I just want to take a moment to reflect on what a year it has been. Thank you to all of our customers, employees, and friends for the support you have given us this year. It's been great, and we're looking forward to an even better one next year!

May this holiday season bring you the music of laughter, the warmth of friendship and love.

Break Down Internal Silos - We’re All in This Together

Eric Harrington — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:01:00 GMT

Our very own Robert Johnson discusses the need to break down internal silos in order to yield more-satisfied customers in a guest editorial for DestinationCRM.com

Click here to read the full article on the DestinationCRM.com site.