BatchBook Blog
Archive for the “Customer Service” Category
It’s 2009 and like many of you, we’re getting our virtual house in order. One of the things we’ve wanted to do for a while is provide webinars for our new customers. Oh sure, we’ve got killer screencasts and the best darn Customer On-Boarding Specialist anyone could ask for; this will be just another great tool in your arsenal for learning to better manage your contacts using BatchBook.
We know that even with the best intentions, getting started can feel overwhelming. We want to give our folks every chance to succeed. It’s fun once you get into, really! And so useful — every day I’m amazed at the cool stuff I can do with my BatchBook account.
Our first webinar is scheduled for Friday, January 16th at 2pm EST. It will cover the basics of using BatchBook, including importing, adding and editing contact information, logging communications, creating To-Dos and using Lists & Reports. Since this will be our first ever webinar, there may be a few kinks to work out. But we expect to cover a lot of ground PLUS you’ll have the undivided attention of folks who want to help you all for the low low cost of…free!
If you would like to be a part of our inaugural On-boarding webinar, please drop a quick note with your name and email address to onboarding@batchblue.com. We’ll send you a meeting invite with complete information within the next few days.
We’re very much looking forward to all that 2009 is going to bring. Thank you for being a part of it.
Tags: batchbook, contact management, webinar
Once again, social media has collided my worlds in an interesting (and hopefully beneficial) way. Last week, I was lamenting on my personal Twitter account how many children and families were going to be impacted by all of the recent lay-offs across the country. My friend responded with a story about a single mom in Providence who didn’t have enough money to buy her hungry kids snacks. Within minutes another friend, T.J. Sondermann, had proposed that we use the next Providence Geeks meeting as a venue where we could collect food for our local food bank.
I contacted Jack Templin, who with Brian Jepson runs the monthly Providence Geeks meeting, and pitched the idea via email. Always supportive of local efforts, Jack and Brian were quickly on-board. BatchBlue president Pamela O’Hara then contacted a friend who works at the Rhode Island Food Bank and worked out the logistics of what was most needed and how we would collect it.
Jack requested an image for the newsletter he was sending out announcing the event, so Adam and I decided to have a little fun with it. We spent some time working up a couple quick logo ideas, then posted the results on Flickr and asked people on Twitter to vote for their favorites. We got a lot of great feedback and ended up combining two designs for the final logo used on the webpage announcing the first offical Geeks for Good project: tomorrow’s food drive at Providence Geeks. Thanks largely to social media and our people network, this was all organized in about three days.
Here are a few of the takeaways from this experience:
- Your social network is filled with people who are ready, willing and able to pitch in.
- Don’t be afraid to propose your ideas to folks who can help. They just might say yes!
- Try and do good where and when you can. The world can benefit for your unique skills and talents, whatever they may be.
We look forward to Providence Geeks tomorrow night, where our friends from Tizra are presenting and we’ll also be helping out some folks in need. Hope to see some of you there!
Tags: Community, food drive, geeks4good, providence geeks, Social Media
Ho ho holy macaroni, it’s December already! If you’re like me, walking the fine line between “why are all these holiday decorations up in August?” and “Only how many shopping days until Christmas?!”, now is the perfect time to get your holiday mailings out.
In an effort to do the same, we’ve put together a few tips that you might find helpful in using BatchBook to help manage your holiday mailings.
- Use a tag for all the people you want to send holiday cards to (i.e. “xmas08″ or “holiday cards”). Then create a list from that tag. Voila! Everyone is grouped together very nicely. Even if they aren’t in real life.
- Use “Advanced search” to quickly find a group of folks (all with same last name, all with “Realtor” in their title etc.) and tag them for the holiday list.
- Print mailing labels from your list, stick them on your cards, get ‘em in the mail this week. Your friends and relations will be amazed.
- Don’t want to do physical cards? Send your list over to MailChimp, who’ve given their users the gift of free holiday email templates. Aw…it’s perfect!
- Convert last year’s holiday tag (or any other tag) into this year’s tag by clicking on the tag name, choosing “select all” and then choosing to “tag or SuperTag” them all (but use the new tag name!). Two tags, two lists, too cool!
- If you run into duplicate records for some folks as you are building your list, you can easily merge them.
- If you want to import your list into MS Word for a personalized holiday letter, open up a blank Word doc and follow these steps.
- If you’re sending to multiple people at the same address, use the company name field for the family name (i.e. “The Ransom Family”) and choose to display “company name only” when printing labels (or sending e-mails)
- Need to know which mailing labels to buy before printing? Check our handy FAQ on the subject.
- Remember, a clean contact list is a happy contact list. Getting your contacts in order for the holidays will mean you’re in good shape for the new year. Nothing like getting a jump on getting organized.
Tags: christmas, christmas cards, holiday cards, holiday mailing, holiday mailing labels, holidays, mailing labels, mailings
With the imminent demise of several prominent Software as a Service (SaaS) businesses recently announced, I’m sure folks are wondering about the reliability of this “cloud computing”. People who are trusting their relationships, their daily routines and their future fortunes to an unknown, unseen geek posse at the other end of the Internet deserve more respect. Honestly, I think these trusting folks have taken it on the chin this week.
As SaaS developers, we’re not building tools that people pick up, use, and put down again when they are done. Our code isn’t burned on a disk, packaged up and then sent off to be sold at some superstore. We can’t just walk away when we’re tired of playing the game, or get a better offer from a cooler friend.
That’s not how it works when selling software as a SERVICE. We are building a relationship with every single person using our product and we have an obligation to take care of them. Not to legally cover our butts, but to really take care of our customers; to listen to how they are using our product, involve them in the implementation of our vision, to give ample warning if something unforeseen does happen, and do everything in our power to make sure they will be okay without us.
With this goal in mind, we at BatchBlue make the following pledge to our users:
- We value the information that you are trusting to our care.
- We will do all in our power to educate you on how to best use our system to manage your information.
- We understand that the information belongs to you and that you should have easy access to it at any time from anywhere.
- We will give you the time and tools to export your data, for whatever the reason.
- We keep service to you as our highest priority.
- We will keep improving our product.
We are in this for the long haul. We have big plans for our product and for anyone gracious enough to subscribe to our service. Thank you for your business; we continue to be honored to support you.
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As User Experience Designer here at BatchBlue, one of my (favorite) roles is moderating the BatchBlue Forums.
For a little bit of background, my job before this one was with an R&D company that worked on a lot of Department of Defense contracts. There was some cool technology being developed, but one thing I craved was interaction with end users. At that stage of the game there just wasn’t enough (if any). One of the main things that attracted me to BatchBlue was the opportunity to work closely with users of BatchBook.
So, imagine the feeling in my little heart when I read this comment on the forum the other day:
This support forum is beginning to turn into a little bit of a community, which is always a good thing.
Recently, the forum has taken on a life of its own. Not only do we get the usual feature requests and bug reports, but forumgoers have taken to posting detailed examples of their workflow, trying to give us an idea of EXACTLY how they are using BatchBook. We’re not taking this for granted. These folks have been a huge help for us—and me in particular.
For this reason, I wanted to give a shoutout to the five folks that have been SuperActive on the forums lately. Stewart, my new Twitter buddy, has already posted 67 times. Kenny, who I believe started the 3-page workflow meme, is up to 68 posts. BatchBook veteran Scott—who has had an account since May of 2007!!!—has 89 posts. ARMGPaul is another longtime user and has contributed a staggering 93 times!
And then there’s HansD. What more can you ask than someone contributing 164 posts on your forum, all in an attempt to help you build a better product? In my last job, it required a three-day trip, flight to Louisiana, and security clearances to get an hour of somebody’s time. And here are these people helping me do my job every single day.
I’m not sure what else to say besides thank you to these folks so…
Thank you!
Tags: Customer Service, forums, User Experience
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