Over the last couple of weeks we have been thinking a lot about customer support vs. customer success. For the purposes of this article and several follow-up articles I plan on writing I am going to the define these two terms as follows:

• Customer support: Helping your customers solve problems they encounter when using your product. This includes addressing bugs as well as providing information about how to accomplish specific tasks with your product.

• Customer success: Helping your customers improve their business, their organization or their lives by using your product.

Customer support deals with small, focussed issues. Customer success deals with the macro application of your product to achieve larger goals. To create real evangelists of your product or service you need to have great systems in place for supporting your customers, but you also need to have systems in place to ensure their success with your product or services.

We are really good at customer support. We have great systems in place that help us address support issues quickly and consistently. But our results with ensuring customer success are more mixed. We have some customers who are fantastically successful with ScreenSteps and ScreenSteps Live and who evangelize it regularly while other are simply satisfied customers that are happy with the product.

To a small company like ours the value of a thrilled customer who shouts our name from the roof tops vs. a satisfied customer who occasionally uses ScreenSteps is huge. If we were to put a monetary value on those customers the difference would be literally thousands of dollars vs. a one time $40 or $80 purchase.

What is the main difference between these two types of customers? Our “satisfied” customers just use ScreenSteps to create documentation. They are using it to complete one of the tasks that need to get done in the course of running their business or organization. Our passionate users use ScreenSteps to change the way they run their business or organization. ScreenSteps and/or ScreenSteps Live don’t just change their documentation. They change their business.

(more…)

Category: Keywords: ScreenSteps.me, customer support, marketing, screenshots, ScreenSteps Desktop Status: draft

We just launched our public beta of ScreenSteps.me last week and the response has been pretty exciting. I have to say that I haven’t been this excited about a new feature in ScreenSteps since we released our integration with ScreenSteps Live and ScreenSteps Desktop. ScreenSteps Live solved a huge problem for me as a business owner. It let me support more customers with less time and effort. During the two weeks I have been using ScreenSteps.me, it has saved me hours time. Here are just a few of the ways I have been using ScreenSteps.me.

1. Communicating with virtual workers

We recently started working with a freelancer on Elance. She is doing some CSS work for some new templates we have coming to ScreenSteps Live. Elance has a message board where I can give job descriptions and provide feedback on the work provided. I have been using ScreenSteps.me to do two things:

• Describe the work I want done
• Provide feedback on the the work that has been submitted

The whole process has gone very smoothly. I have never had to send follow up messages to clarify what I need. Almost all of the “back and forth” that is usually involved in trying to describe how I want a job done has been eliminated. I ask for something and a day or two later I get a message that it is completed. It is wonderful.

View an example of one of our Elance posts

2. Bug reports

I use a lot of software products everyday in my business. Invariably I find bugs in the products I use (including the ones we develop). But describing bugs in an online chat or email can be tedious and usually involves a lot of back and forth communication as the company tries to understand the problem I am having.

(more…)

Tech support is often looked down upon as a cost center as opposed to a money maker. This is a shame because tech support is an easy way to do some very inexpensive customer research. What you learn in tech support can help you improve your product, your marketing and your business.

Marketers often have a tough time finding customers who will talk to them. Your tech support team has people that are begging to talk to them. Treat tech support a little more like market research and you can get some great information while at the same time doing a better job at helping your customers.

Here are 4 simple things you can learn from your customers who contact tech support:

1. Who they are

One of the biggest questions marketers try to answer is who their target market is. When someone contacts tech support take a moment to ask them what they do. You may find that they fit the description that your marketing plan has drawn up. But you may find that they are someone completely different. This may be a new group you haven’t considered before that you should be marketing to.

2. What they want to do

People contact support when they are stuck. They are trying to accomplish something with your product and something happened along the way that kept them from reaching that goal. Don’t just find out where they are stuck. Find out what they were trying to accomplish. Is this a workflow you could optimize? If so, could it open a new market for your product?

3. When and Why they are using your product

I am grouping these together because in our case they are really the same question. Asking your user when and why they are using their software will help you understand what outside stimulus prompted them to open your application or go to your website.

When we initially launched ScreenSteps we saw it more as a software documentation tool. As we talked to customers who contacted us for support we discovered that many of them were using ScreenSteps and especially ScreenSteps Live for customer support. We updated our marketing message accordingly.

4. Where (or on what company) are they using your product

For some businesses, the physical location where the product is being used might be important. For us it is important to understand what other products are being used around ScreenSteps. We want to know where in the workflow ScreenSteps is being used. What products are the user trying to integrate ScreenSteps or ScreenSteps Live with? What products are they trying to support?

Recently we discovered, through tech support, that we had several customers that were trying to integrate their ScreenSteps Live content with Salesforce. A few tweeks to how ScreenSteps Live worked made this much easier for users and is once again opening a whole new type of user to both ScreenSteps Desktop and ScreenSteps Live. Our integrations with Mindtouch, Confluence, Blogger, and Google Sites came about in a similar fashion.

Conclusion

Next time you are in a support chat, email exchange or phone call, ask a few questions. You’ll get valuable information that will help you improve your customer support and your marketing.

In our webinar Video, Screencasts and Still Images – Using the Right Tool at the Right Time we talk about four stages of person being introduced to a new technology or product for the first time:

1. Stage 1: Awareness (Video, Blogs)
2. Stage 2: Interest (Video, Screencast)
3. Stage 3: Investigation (Screencast)
4. Stage 4: Implementation (ScreenSteps)

If you have watched the webinar then you will remember that we felt like we had some good media for stages 2 and 4, but we have been missing a lot in stage 3. In preparing for our ScreenSteps 2.8 update we realized that our media for stage 2 wasn’t that great either. It was a little too specific. It focused on one aspect of the program but didn’t expose users to all that the product could do.

Since we were already working on updating our site for the 2.8 release we decided to redo all of our media as well. You might be interested in what we did.

Stage 2 Video – Interest

The goal of stage 2 is to create a video or screencast that moves the prospective customer to stage 3. That is all it needs to do. It shouldn’t be instructional in nature. It doesn’t need to be a support tool. It just has to generate enough interest that the customer wants to investigate the product in more detail. To do this the video needs to meet the following criteria:

• It needs to be short
• It needs to give a broad overview of the application (large scope, low detail)

To create our stage 2 video we used Screenflow, Keynote, Garageband and YouTube. The video shows up on the main ScreenSteps landing page. You can see an example of it here:

This was the hardest video to create. It took several days with a lot of edits and a lot of revisions.

Stage 3 Screencasts – Investigation

After watching the video we want to allow the visitor to investigate the product. To do this we set up a separate “Features” section of our website. On the left there is a menu that lists the features we are looking to highlight. For most of the features we include a short screencast highlighting that feature.

The purpose of this material is to make the visitor want to implement the feature. We aren’t worried about giving them enough information at this stage that they could implement the feature. Just enough to make them want to.

These videos need to meet the following criteria:

• One video per feature (more detail, less scope)
• It still needs to be short

These videos were actually very easy to create. By focusing on individual features the scripts are easy to write and the video is relatively straight-forward to record.

Here are a couple of examples of our feature videos:

• Capturing Images
• Annotating Images
• Replacing Images
• Creating Manuals

Stage 4 ScreenSteps Docs – Implementation

Finally, if the visitor has arrived to stage 4, we need to give them the tools they need to implement the vision we sold to them in stages 2 and 3. We didn’t change what we were doing here. We use ScreenSteps and ScreenSteps Live which work great for us and for our customers (see our documentation center).

But we did have to update almost every single lesson since the majority of the ScreenSteps user interface had changed. This meant replacing literally hundreds of screenshots in over 100 lessons. We will write a separate post on this process, but suffice it to say that it was much easier than we imagined. We had over 100 lessons updated in less time than it took us to record one video.

So, what do you think of the media we have prepared for stages 2 through 4? Are they effective? We’ll let you know what the results are in a couple of months, but we would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Is your marketing a bait and switch? When customers purchase your product or service are they receiving what thought they were buying? If they can’t implement the vision that you have been selling them then they are going to feel cheated.

I am always amazed when companies will invest significant marketing dollars to get users to try or buy a product, but then scrimp on the amount of money, time or effort they allocate for helping that user be successful in implementing the product. Once the sale is complete, the company’s investment is done. Training and support are cost centers that are viewed as burdens instead of opportunities.

This view is short sighted and demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of what the customer was buying when they purchased your product.

You may have been selling them a website authoring tool. They were buying the ability to create web sites.

You may have been selling them a marketing analytics program. They were buying a method for driving more traffic to their site.

You may have been selling application development tools. They were buying the ability to create applications.

You may have been selling a CRM. They were buying a way to improve their customer communications.

If your company doesn’t get this then you are leaving a lot of money on the table.

The most expensive marketing is marketing targeted at users who know nothing about you. The most effective marketing is the word of mouth you get from customers who are able to accomplish great things with your product.

Once a customer purchases your product your main goal needs to be this: help them be as successful as possible in their implementation of your product. If you don’t talk about this in your company or you don’t have a concrete strategy for addressing this issue you will have disappointed customers. You will have customers who feel like they have been “duped”. They thought they were buying an outcome and weren’t able to realize it. And your marketing costs will go up. Those customers who were never able to realize their goals will actually create a negative effect on your marketing efforts as they tell others of their lack of success.

Take a hard look at what you are selling. Is it what your customers think they are buying? Are you helping them achieve their goals through the use of your product? Are you providing your customers with materials that will help them realize those goals? If not, get started. Write a blog post, record a screencast, do a webinar or write some ScreenSteps lessons. Just do a little each week. You will be amazed at the results.

(more…)

I read a blog post this morning by Rebecca Corliss at Hubspot talking about how they are no longer going to be exhibiting at events. If you are planning on exhibiting at an upcoming event you might want to take a glance at it. They point out some very good reasons for not spending your marketing dollars on a booth.

We don’t exhibit at many events, mainly because of the high cost in dollars and time. And as Rebecca says in her post, “Event marketing yields the the highest cost per lead of all of our marketing.”

But I think that at a certain stage in the growth of your company an event can be very valuable, not for the leads you generate, but for the real-time market research you can perform. It becomes even more valuable if you then apply what you learn to your web presence.

Your booth at an exhibit functions much like your website should. You want passers by to not only glance at your booth, but to step in and engage with you. Let’s look at the stages of interaction an attendee goes through in relation to your booth:

1. They Decide Wether or Not To Approach the Booth
2. The Commit to a Short Engagement
3. They Commit to a Demo
4. They Want to Know Everything

1. The Event Attendee Decides Whether or Not to Engage You

Attendees will wander by your booth and decide if they want to learn more. Here is where you find out how effective your initial messaging is. When we attended our first conference our message for ScreenSteps was “Snap, Snap, Type, Type, Lesson Done!” That proved to be somewhat ineffective as it made people think we were just selling a tool for teachers. (We were fortunate that we have a great company name. I would say well over half of the people who approached our booth wanted to know about the name of our company, Blue Mango Learning Systems.)

Lesson learned: Company name is great. Product tag line stinks.

This is equivalent to someone who lands on a page at your website. As a marketer you want them to engage you rather than instantly moving on. You want them to get to the next stage. On the web you can’t really tell why a user arrives at your site and then almost instantly leaves. At a conference you can see it in people’s eyes. You can tell how close you are to getting it right. If they pause and look at your booth for a second and then move on you are close. If they don’t even give you a second glance then you have a long way to go.

2. The Attendee Engages You

At this point the attendee has decided that they want to get more information, but they aren’t sure how much. They are still deciding how long they want to stay. It is important to layer the information you are giving to the attendee. You want to give them, in less than 20 seconds, an overview that covers everything important about your product – what it is and what it can help them do. The sole purpose of this engagement is to get them to want to view a demo. Think of this as the first paragraph or two of text or the bullet points a user sees when they first come to your site.

This is an area where you can do a lot of experimentation. Throughout the day Trevor and I would discuss what phrases people were responding to. By interacting with one person after another and trying out small changes in our messaging, we began to figure out what descriptions helped people “get” what we were doing with ScreenSteps and ScreenSteps Live as well as which ones made them want to learn more.

3. The Attendee Watches a Demo

(more…)