Excellent service givers pay attention to the person and situation at hand.
They listen for the things that the client isn’t saying.
- Linda Byars Swindling

Can you remember an instance when you experienced exceptional customer service? When the end result made you feel really good and left you with a long-lasting positive impression?

You know when you have had an excellent customer experience and you know when you haven’t. Providing excellent products and services at competitive prices are expected in today’s marketplace, but this is only one part of the equation. The deciding factor between using one company over another tends to rely on the relationships that have been established and how the business makes the customer feel. This is the differentiator when providing high quality customer service.

How do you make your customers feel good?

1. Listen to their needs. Hear what they are saying and understand what they need.
2. Be genuine, honest and sincere. When customers are upset, they need to know that you care.
3. Only promise what you can deliver. If you tell customers that you will follow up with them, then do it. Set the expectation and follow through.

We all know what it’s like to be a customer and how it feels when we experience great customer service. We want more of it. Do your customers feel good?

We’ve gotten together with our friends from Autotask to put together a webinar about how solution providers and MSPs of all sizes can automate their IT services fulfillment and increase margins.

Panelists include: Don Anderson, Knowledge Manager from OnForce; Brian Sherman, Director of Industry Alliance from Autotask; and Steve Noel, Senior Engineer from Autotask. All OnForce buyers and pros are invited to this one-hour event.

Date: Wedneday, July 16th
Time: 1pm – 2pm ET
Registration: Join us for this discussion of best practices and proven methods to reduce overhead, improve response times and scale your services business.

It’s a great time to be an IT service provider, but there are many questions you face each day such as: How do I expand my geographic reach effectively without adding personnel? Or…How can I improve my customer service levels without additional overhead? Join Autotask and OnForce for answers to these questions and a discussion on automation and outsource management.

This one-hour event will cover:
-Market and technology trends for IT outsourcing
-Automating mission-critical IT processes, including billing, managed services, time entry, SLA management, and lead generation
-Best practices for growing geographic coverage, accessing specialized skill sets, or backing up your bench of W-2 techs with contract IT service pros
-How easy it is to use the Autotask and OnForce combination – Yes, they can be integrated, with powerful results.

Register today

Didn’t have time to participate in the Microsoft/HP webinar? Participate but want a refresher on the basics of Microsoft certifications?

The webinar is now accessible through the provider Online Office (it’s the first link under “what’s new”)

Many, many thanks to all that participated – and a round of special thanks to our colleagues at Microsoft and HP who spend a great deal of time and energy helping us put this together.

Six or eight guys working late, yelling at each other, sweating… for a whole month. And, visibly, there’s not much difference to the OnForce platform. OK, so maybe the part about yelling and sweating was a lie, but, believe it or not, we’ve gotten a lot done in 3.4 — behind the scenes.

You may notice some snappier performance; we’ve reorganized some of our key data to be more responsive and scalable. Our new hierarchical menu is also faster and smarter; the old one was adding a few unseemly milliseconds to page loads, so we ditched it.

It’s a little jealousy-inducing to see the guy who sits behind you at work signing copies of his book after giving a talk at a major nerd conference. Scott’s presentation, ”Consuming Web Services with PHP-GTK 2”, was a success. Attendees asked a number of questions, and the collective OnForce ego swelled as a swarm of admirers and interested PHP tinkerers overtook Scott as he came off the stage.

My own take on the presentation was: I can’t believe how easy it is to make desktop applications with PHP-GTK. Scott pointed to a number of reasons why the desktop might be a better environment than the web for some applications, notably the fact that a desktop application doesn’t come with all the “distractions of the web”. I see his point! Especially when a task is repetitive, doing that task in a web browser environment inevitably leads to Friendster or a web mail inbox. A desktop application provides a little extra “focus” for your workers. Plus, since all of the GUI elements on the desktop are standardized, you can actually build more functionality in less time with PHP-GTK. You can view the slides of Scott’s presentation and learn a lot more about PHP-GTK at “Scott’s blog”:1.

[1]http://crisscott.com/2006/11/02/zendcon-06/