Business is booming here at BatchBlue and as such, we’re looking to add a few fine folks to our staff. If you like working with fun people, having a flexible schedule, helping small businesses and building something cool that, well, hasn’t really been done before, please take a look at our BatchBlue Jobs page.
We’re currently in need of some stellar Customer Service help and a kickin’ Ruby on Rails developer. Both jobs would be part-time to possible full-time and would involve in-person as well as remote work (so local to the Rhode Island area is preferred). Can-do attitude and a “That’s the ticket!” sensibility a must!
Sure working at BatchBlue is not ALL mustaches, cookie parties and donut cakes, but it is pretty fun. If you’d like to join our merry blue band, drop us a line and tell us why.
Tags: batchblue, jobs
Jeremiah Owyang recently wrote an article for CRM Magazine Social CRM Vendors Don’t Walk The Talk where he puts a number of CRM vendors through the spreadsheet grinder to see how their social media engagement measures up to the social media features their products espouse. BatchBook was not included in the analysis, though BatchFriend and customer Paul Mabray from Vintank.com was kind enough to mention us in the comments.
I agree with Jeremiah, but I think there is a clear distinction between the CRM companies that are now making a social media play versus the social media upstarts who are incorporating some traditional CRM features such as sales and customer service management into their products as they build them. Jeremiah highlighted a number of products that were developed around older (phone, e-mail, direct mail) marketing tools and are now working to add social media as an additional sales channel. Alternately, there are newer products like Jive, Gist and our own BatchBook that really began as social media communication tools and have added sales features as another layer.
Not surprisingly, those with Web 2.0 roots have more integration with social media throughout our products and throughout our company cultures, as well. As he mentions, social media is not a linear channel that can be “added on” in the same way previous channels have been. It is an intricate web of blogs, comments, tweets, direct messages, friend requests, recommendations, favorites and hashtags each with their own sub-culture and mini-dialect that together shape the direction of a conversation. Whether it’s sales, customer service, or project management, this new dialogue is not fully represented unless you can track all aspects of the conversation, and more importantly, understand their meaning in context with your relationships.
I applaud Jeremiah for calling companies out for more engagement. He makes great points about not only supporting customer and developer discussions, but also showcasing those communities as a vibrant component of the product. He’s also given us a few ideas for pushing our community into a more prominent part of the product. And isn’t that what social media is about? Using a public kick in the pants to move your efforts forward.
While it’s certainly interesting to watch how the older, more established companies work to fit social media into their product offerings, I think it’s even more interesting to build a product around the new tools as they are being developed.
Tags: batchblue, batchbook, crm, social crm, Social Media
As small business owners, we work hard to best support our customers by quickly and efficiently answering questions and responding to issues. Now that most folks are online, our customers are contacting us in a variety of ways: through email, on the phones, in forums and even on Twitter.
Our latest integration partner, Zendesk, allows us to provide a huge step in better keeping track of your customer base and their communications with your company. Zendesk is a complete support site for your customers that allows you to collect and organize customer requests in one place. See a tour of Zendesk’s features in action.
With the BatchBook and Zendesk integration, you can view Zendesk tickets right from your BatchBook Dashboard. Once you’ve created a Zendesk account, head over to the Sync tab in your BatchBook account, select “Zendesk”, and add your Zendesk login information when prompted. Voila! The accounts will be integrated. This means that in BatchBook you’ll see:
- A dashboard widget that shows all open Zendesk tickets assigned to you.
- An activity log widget on each contact record that will show any Zendesk tickets that contact has submitted.
We hope that this new partnership will make it even easier for you to manage and grow your business and create lots of blissful customers along the way.
Tags: batchbook, contact management, Customer Service, small business CRM, zendesk
It’s September and back-to-school fever has hit the On-Boarding desk hard as my calendar is being flooded with appointments. It just seems natural as the kids are heading back to school that the rest of us decide to buckle down and take the time to really get organized.
Our On-Boarding program gives me the opportunity to talk with customers, listen to their needs and do a fair amount of problem-solving. I’ve been helping customers for over two years now and I find there are a few tips that I’m always giving out to those who are just getting started with BatchBook. I thought I’d share them here to make it easier for other new customers to start using BatchBook.
1) Download the Import Template. Importing is probably the first step you will take when setting up your new BatchBook account. We provide a BatchBook Import Template to help make this process as easy as possible. You’ll find the Import Template in the right-hand column of your Contacts tab page within BatchBook. Simply download the template to your desktop, fill it in and import away.
If you need to import data that does not fit under our template headers, you can do that, too. First, create custom fields (or as we call them, SuperTags) for your specific information. Once your SuperTags are created, download the template. You’ll now see columns for your SuperTag data. View a screencast. (Note that if you have created a multiple choice field type for your SuperTag, the data you are importing has to be an exact match or you will get an error. See more detailed template instructions here.)
2) Take a tour of our SuperTag Library. BatchBook is all about customization, but where do you start when thinking about creating your own, unique SuperTags? Answer: the SuperTag library on the Tags & SuperTags tab! We’ve also compiled some industry specific examples for you (Marketing, Real Estate, Design, Social Media) Give them a look; perhaps you can use them or maybe they will inspire you to create some of your own. You can edit or delete your tags or SuperTags at any time on your Tags & SuperTags tab.
3) Think about the reports you will want to create from your contacts. Another tip I like to give people is to think about the reports they will want to generate and to create their SuperTags based on that. It’s easy to create a quick report based on the data in your SuperTags. Want to know how many customer’s in the month of August took their summer vacations by car? No problem; done!
4) Use our support resources. We make it our mission to provide you with a high level of customer support and have included a great deal of helpful information on our website. Be sure to check out our screencasts and FAQs.
We also provide free bi-weekly webinars on getting started with BatchBook. Something I always tell folks is to be sure to check out our Forums. We have an active, super-smart community of BatchBook users who are always happy to help out, give tips, or talk about how they are using BatchBook. I learn a lot by reading the Forum posts; I’m sure you’ll find them helpful as well.
5) Learn more about our integration partners. BatchBook integrates with other applications in an effort to make your life easier. Take the time to learn more about any of our partners to take your BatchBook up a notch.
For more tips on organizing your data, our president Pamela O’Hara has written a helpful Blue Paper called Managing Your Contacts: The Business of Personal Relationships. Feel free to download it, share with your team and send us your feedback.
While most back-to-school talk these days revolves around first day jitters and uncomfortable new school shoes, I’m hoping that my back-to-BatchBook tips make the idea of contact management less scary and will even help you get an “A” in organization!
Tags: contact management, crm, Customer Service, On-Boarding
Tomorrow (Thursday September 10 at 2:00 ET), we’ll take a break from our regularly scheduled webinar to bring you a special one. This webinar, called The Small Business Webinar: Using BatchBook’s Integration Partners to Achieve Contact Management Bliss, will focus on how you can enhance your BatchBook experience through our integration partners.
The webinar description:
Join Stephanie Sweeney and Adam Darowski of BatchBlue Software as they demonstrate how to use BatchBook’s integration partners to achieve contact management bliss! You’ll see how easy it is to send emails to your customers, keep track of outstanding client invoices, import business card and other contact data, even monitor support questions all from the comfort of your BatchBook account.
With our integration partners, we’ve made it easier to manage your contacts, your way.
Stephanie and I will cover BatchBook’s integration with Google Contacts, MailChimp, FreshBooks, Shoeboxed — and a sneak peek at the newest addition to our small business arsenal — Zendesk! We hope to see you there!
Register Now!
(it’s free)
Tags: freshbooks, gmail, google contacts, mailchimp, shoeboxed, zendesk
