BatchBook Blog
Archive for the “Technology” Category
You may have noticed our big announcement yesterday that BatchBook is now listed in the Google Apps Marketplace. We’ve since gotten a number of people (including reporters, other SaaS companies and even a few customers) asking us simply, “Why did you join?” So I thought I would share my response with you all.
As I explained to Mike Pearson who wrote an article about the new Marketplace for the E-Commerce Times, it just felt like the right thing to do. Let me explain why.
Google understands the value of giving customers control of their own information. All of the Google Apps business products have a publicly available API. You may think this is only important to tech addicts and uber geeks. But THIS IS HUGE for every entrepreneur who cares about growing their business. You see, this is Google’s way of saying (and something BatchBook says as well), “the business information that you trust to our care is yours – do what you need to do with it to succeed.” Yes, Google Apps let you send e-mails, schedule events and create spreadsheets. But they’ve just increased 20 fold what else you can easily do with YOUR information including tracking deals, sending newsletters, generating invoices, scheduling appointments, managing your projects, sending surveys and so much more.
And they were able to do that because a few years ago they made the decision to make their API, the gateway to the data stored within the Google applications, available to anyone their customers chose to grant access to it. They did it in a smart way, in a secure way and honestly, in a pretty gusty way. They knew customers might take their data and run. They knew competitors would have a peek at their inner workings. But they focused on empowering their users to take control of their own data, whether through a geeky friend, a trusted reseller, or another SaaS product. And their users are now benefiting immensely.
This idea is a founding principle of the Small Business Web, a movement we co-founded a year ago to bring together like-minded, customer-obsessed software companies to integrate our respective products and make life easier for small businesses. With more than 70 companies now participating, many of which are part of the new Google Apps Marketplace, we feel that the growing trend towards open integrations can only benefit small businesses.
So yes, the decision to join the new Google Apps Marketplace was a no brainer. They’ve made it easier for their users to access the growing number of applications they can use to run their business. We, of course, wanted BatchBook to be the first in line.
We are in this to help small businesses. And we know this is the right way to do it.
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Tags: api, batchblue, batchbook, google apps marketplace, small business web
We’ve put together a new program here at BatchBlue. You see, as we’ve grown our product and our relationships with the folks who are using it, we came to realize there are some very smart people out there who are coming up with some ingenious ways to set up and use BatchBook for their various CRM needs.
We wanted to introduce you to the folks who we know from their involvement in our forums or with our customer service team as expert BatchBook users. They each have experience setting up BatchBook accounts for themselves and their own clients, and are now available to help our users with some of the more advanced functions in BatchBook such as:
- Prepping database and spreadsheet files and importing them into BatchBook.
- Setting up custom fields using SuperTags and importing custom data from other systems.
- Developing custom reports and lists.
- Writing scripts to connect the BatchBook API to other products such as e-commerce forms, blog site, etc.
- Using the BatchBook API to migrate data from other CRM systems
We borrowed this idea (with their blessing) from our friends at MailChimp.com, who have had their own successful experts program in place for a while now. Also — special thanks to our Lead Expert Scott Blitstein from eSeMBe.com for helping us put this program together.
Please check out our newly vetted experts. If you’d like some help with your own BatchBook account, feel free to contact them directly for more information on their services and rates. And, if you think you have what it takes to guide our users through the wonderful world of BatchBook, you can learn more about the Experts program and apply here. Whooo knows? One day you could be BatchBook Expert, too!
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Tags: batchbook, crm, Customer Service, customers, experts, small business CRM
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.
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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.
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Tags: batchblue, batchbook, crm, social crm, Social Media
This past week, I was at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York City. Since we launched BatchBlue Software just over three years ago, I’ve been to quite a few conferences. In tandem with the growth of our company has been the rise of social media, which has been great for us in many ways since our product, BatchBook, is an online contact organizer that grabs feeds from social media sites and lets you read them in one place.
But something seems to be changing in the conference world. In the past, they’ve been great places not only to learn from the leaders in your industry but to make connections, spark new friendships and form potential new partnerships. That sense of the hallway conversations being as important as the sessions themselves seems to be receding, largely because the conversations…aren’t really happening.
At Web 2.0, people were heads-down on their various electronic devices during breaks, not engaging with each other but seeking frenetically to connect with people not actually at the conference. I don’t mean to just specifically call out the Web 2.0 Expo because this is certainly happening in other places as well. And the conference panels were very good, in fact from a business-level some of the most useful that I’ve attended. But that’s another post.
Having recently attended the PopTech conference, which is a place where people connect instantly and constantly to share ideas, discuss sessions, start projects, I was particularily struck by the lack of attendee interaction. Even at the Web 2.0 “Power Up” station (Web 2.0’s version of the Blogger’s Lounge at another highly social conference, SXSW) it felt like we were in a cavernous office, with people quickly clicking and scrolling away in solitude rather than talking about the sessions that they had just attended.
Admittedly, people still have their daily work to do and as someone who liveblogs, I’m guilty of having my laptop up and running most of the time during sessions. But another thing that’s changing is what people are doing while they are online during the sessions. The Keynote speakers had an enormous screen behind them that was at first broadcasting their Twitterstream (hashtagged #w2e) behind the speakers. As an attendee, I found it enormously distracting. danah boyd from Microsoft Research New England, presenting on (ironically) “Streams of Content”, found it so unnerving that the audience was laughing at criticisms of her presentation that she later stated on her blog that she “closed down”.
I’m all for the back-channel and having a spirited conversation about a presentation, but I can tell you that as a presenter, to have it broadcasted while you are presenting sucks, especially once the spammers and the trolls join in. There’s even a term now, “harshtag”, which is when people start tagging their related tweets with something insulting in order to get it to trend.
(more…)
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Tags: chris brogan, Social Media, twitter, web 2.0 expo
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