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BatchBook Experts Program: Words (and more) from the Wise

Screen shot 2009-12-21 at 8.04.38 PM

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

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Zendesk and the Art of Contact Management

Zendesk Buddah

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: (more…)

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New to BatchBook? Tips for New Customers from our On-Boarding Specialist

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.

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BatchBlue in the News

Here’s a quick round-up of some posts from users and reviewers of BatchBook.

Adam & Cheap Trick: A match made in CS heaven
If you’ve ever spent any time in the BatchBlue Forums, you’ve probably experienced the magic that is Adam Darowski. Adam is our User Experience designer known for his passion for good design, our customers and music. So the fact that he crafted an email to someone who was considering BatchBook that included a link to a Cheap Trick song came as no surprise to any of us. But the (potential) customer was so impressed, he wrote up a blog post about it, which was tweeted all around the socialsphere. And the best thing is that we have a new customer who appreciates our sense of humor.

Bedazzled by BatchBook brilliance
Robert Mattar wrote up a nice piece over at Posterous about his experience searching for a CRM that would work well for small businesses. His conclusion? He calls BatchBook “one of the most versatile and affordable applications” out there and even calls us “brilliant” in the post’s title. Thanks, Robert, we’re so glad BatchBook is working out for you since we think small businesses are where it’s at!

We love lists
People love lists and so do we, especially when we are on them! So here goes:

  1. Our friend (and frequent @sbbuzz participant) Bradford Shimp posted this cool list of 9 Businesses to Follow and Get to Know on Twitter. He has fabulous things to say about BatchBlue, our @sbbuzz weekly chat session, and our own Queen Bee, Pamela!
  2. One of our favorite small business marketing gurus, John Jantsch from Duct Tape Marketing, mentioned us as a way to keep track of your customers’ social media activities.
  3. And last but never least, social media pirate Chris Brogan reveals what’s in his software booty chest (including BatchBook) in his recent post entitled A Quick and Inconclusive List of Software I Like.

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Our Users Are So Smart: The List View Dashboard Widget

Last week, I posted about our recent flurry of updates to BatchBook. After a weekend to play with some of the new changes, there’s one I really love. It’s the List widget on the Dashboard.

And we love to give props where props are due. So, yet again, that was a recommendation that came from the forums. In this case, forum user Barbara Ballard asked:

Inspired by the Marketing dashboard widget … I created “Barbara’s list”. It’s all current clients, alumni, leads, projects assigned to me. It’s who I should be thinking about this week, who I should pay attention to. … Now I want it on my dashboard.

We had been talking about doing a saved search widget. But when Barbara recommended putting Lists on the Dashboard, an bell went off in my head. First of all, Lists are already part of BatchBook. This would put something on the Dashboard that just about everybody is already using in their account. Nothing new to learn. Instant gratification. Secondly, a saved search is best handled as a list anyway. That way it will always update, always be accessible, always be exportable, etc.

It was the perfect solution.

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