Monthly Archive for January, 2011

It’s All About Communication

Published on January 28, 2011 in Advice for MSP's and Advice for Small Business owners. 36 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Birmingham South Police Contact DetailsMy local Police force, Birmingham South Police, yesterday held a 24 Hour Tweet-a-thon to promote the fact that they were now using the social networking site, Twitter.

Tweets from Birmingham South PolicePosting Tweets throughout the day to highlight what the force was doing that day in my local area – which includes my hometown of Weoley Castle, as well as Quinton, Harborne, Edgbaston, Bournville, Cotteridge, Stirchley, Kings Heath, Kings Norton, Northfield, Longbridge and West Heath – there were reports throughout the day of crackdowns on crime including drug busts, road traffic accidents, suspicious activity reported by members of the general public and local businesses and even a lost puppy – all of which were followed up later on with news of how the incident was resolved (the puppy was found, safe and sound!).

I found the Tweets a fascinating insight into what my local Police force do on a day-to-day basis.

Birmingham South Police Facebook PageI wasn’t the only person who thought this – as the Birmingham South Police Twitter account shot up to over a 1000 followers throughout the day, and for those not familiar with Twitter, there was also a Birmingham South Police Facebook Page which also provided a mechanism to see what was happening and to provide feedback.

Now I know I’m not the only person who has at times bemoaned the fact that it “feels” there is never a Police officer around when you want one. I’ve heard this same complaint from neighbours and friends.

I’m also not the only person who doesn’t seem to find comfort in the fact that the Home Office announced that Crime figures had fallen 8% in the last Quarter. The statistic doesn’t make me “feel” safer.

Why is that? I think it’s because most people don’t relate to statistics, and instead go with how they actually “feel” based on what they observe.

I spoke to lots of friends and neighbours who had followed Birmingham South Police’s 24 hour Tweetathon yesterday, and without fail every one of them said something similar to “I had no idea of how much the Police do every day!”. From these conversations, I felt a sense of re-assurance and faith in the local Police Force that I hadn’t noticed before. These friends liked knowing what was happening locally – whether it directly affected them or not.

The bottom line is – it’s all about communication, both giving people the opportunity to engage with you if they choose to do so, acknowledging them, and keeping people “in the loop”.

When I ran an MSP, I became very aware of the fact that we’d take clients on – it was typically when they ‘d been let down by other IT providers, their Infrastructure was in a shambles due to lack of maintenance, and IT was causing lost time and money on a day-to-day basis for their business. After we’d stabilised the situation with pro-active monitoring and maintenance, within months the client would often get to the point where they rarely needed to call upon our services to resolve problems – simply because the problems had ceased to exist. It’s at this stage that they started to question why they were paying for our services at all – after all, everything is now ok, right?

So the realisation dawned that it wasn’t enough to fix problems and proactive prevent others. The business had to be made aware of what we were doing for them, and how it helped them. We sent out Daily Reports, Weekly Summaries, and decision makers received Monthly Executive Summaries. On quiet days, we sent engineers to site to resolve problems that could be dealt with remotely – so we weren’t just a voice the end of a telephone. We regularly met with clients for Business Reviews – not just when there was a problem. Changes such as upgrades and patches were notified to the client in advance, along with reasons and timescales. Requests for support were followed up with regular e-mails and phone calls, both during and after.

At times, the only complaint we got was that we “over-communicated”, and that’s a complaint a lot easier to deal with than having to to justify your continued existence to a client during a budget cut.

It doesn’t just apply to Service Delivery either. Ask yourself:-

  • Do your clients know about all the products and services you provide?
  • Do your partners and allies know about your latest successes?
  • Do your prospective clients really know that you can help them with their pain points?

Whether the regular Twitter updates are to continue from Birmingham South Police or not, I’m not sure, but based on the Tweetathon I think those involved at the Police force should consider the experiment a huge success – they’ve re-assured people, and there are around 1,000 local residents (effectively, their “clients”) who now feel connected and acknowledged by their local Police Force.

It’s an experiment that many of us in all walks of business and life could learn from.

 

How to see all the pages you Like on Facebook

Published on January 26, 2011 in How To. 36 Comments Tags: , , , .

Facebook Like ButtonI was recently asked by a fellow Facebook user on how they could view all the pages they’d hit for the “Like” button on Facebook.

Sometimes you hit “Like” on a product or service, only to become increasingly annoyed with spam-like over frequent updates – in which case you “un-like” it!

At first glance, it’s not simple to work out how to see a history of your “Likes”. Certainly, at the time of writing there was no Facebook help article on how to do this.

So here’s how you can do it.

  • Once logged into Facebook via a web-browser, click the “Profile” button in the top right hand corner.

Facebook Profile Button

 

  • Next, click the “Info” button on the left hand menu.

Facebook Info Button

 

 

 

 

  • Finally, scroll down the page to “Activities and Interests” and click the “Show other pages” link to reveal a list of all the items you’ve clicked “Like” on in the past.

 

Facebook Activities and Interests

From here you can then visit pages you no longer wish to “like”, scroll down the left hand side and hit the “Unlike” button.

 

Facebook Unlike button

 

Of course, this guide is good until Facebook change their User Interface, which seems to be a fairly regular occurrence at the moment!

 

Using Social Networking to listen to Customer Feedback

Published on January 13, 2011 in Computers and Internet. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

I recently gave a presentation on Social Networking to Software Alliance Wales and Accredit UK, talking about using channels like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to engage with both existing and potential customers.

Some participants were keen to learn more about how Social Networking can be used to listen to customer feedback. I cited some examples of hotels and restaurants who actively search Social Networking and Media channels for people mentioning their  brand-name, so they can engage with those people directly.

This interaction can vary from responding to the individual who Tweets “Looking forward to staying at the Red Lion Hotel in Devon” by making sure they had a complimentary bottle of wine waiting upon arrival with a note thanking them for the Tweet, to helping resolve the complaint of the individual visiting a restaurant who when asked at the end of their meal whether everything was to their satisfaction said “Yes”, but then got home and Tweeted “Had meal at The Hen and Chickens tonight. Was nice, but the Gravy was cold”. The opportunity here is obvious.

Interestingly, I cited the example of The Metropole Hotel in Llandrindod Wells, Wales where we were situated for the meeting. Being a “Mr. Green”, I’d really liked that the hotel had installed some environmentally friendly power-saving features in the room, but lamented the fact that I was disappointed by the shower in my bathroom not working. I had said so on Twitter early that morning, and so shared this with the delegates – stating that if I were The Metropole, I’d pick up on this Tweet and use it as an opportunity to engage with me directly about it.

(On a side-note, Vaughan Shayler of Accredit UK responded via Twitter with his thoughts, which is a lesson all IT companies should learn from.)

Twitter Feed

I gave this all no more thought until after check-out, when I received an e-mail from the hotel asking if I’d mind giving them feedback via FeeFo – a web-based system specifically tailored for Customer Feedback. Interested to see whether this was simple the hotel paying lip-service to Customer Feedback or not, I took 30 seconds to leave my comments.

FeeFo FeedbackTo my pleasant surprise, I had an e-mail in return from the Managing Director of The Metropole, who thanked me for the feedback, said he’d checked the room I’d stayed in and explained that a “non return valve” in the shower had broken, but it was now fixed with the hotels apologies.

Impressed, I naturally updated my Twitter feed to compliment the hotel on it’s dedication to customer service.

A number of things have happened here:-

  1. As a customer, I like the fact that I’d been given the opportunity to feedback my thoughts.
  2. More importantly, I felt acknowledged by the Managing Directors response – how many times have you complained about something only for it to be shrugged off or for your complaint to be heard only for you to walk away saying “They’ll not bother to do anything about that”.
  3. Other people, who I’ve never met and never will meet, may eyeball my Tweets about The Metropole (or this blog post) and decide they want to stay at a venue like that – creating favourable potential customers.

There’s a fourth positive too, and that’s that The Metropole have their FeeFo rating listed on The Metropole web-site homepage:-

FeeFo Rating

Whenever I look at other hotels web-sites, if I see a strong FeeFo Service rating, I’m going to be more inclined to stay at that hotel. A win for FeeFo and the other hotels that use the service.

Incidentally, I’d never visited The Metropole web-site (I booked my room through a 3rd party) until I was presented with the link in that FeeFo e-mail, and thanks to that link I’ve also found The Metropole on Twitter too where they are clearly doing a good job of engaging with existing and potential customers.

Bottom line – all this meant my opinion of this hotel went from passively satisfied to active fan.

This principle of seeking out feedback holds true for any brand. Do you have a Facebook Fan page to make it easy for people to tell others how they love you, or give you the opportunity to receive feedback? Are you using services such as SocialOomph and Google Alerts to keep track of what people are saying about you specifically? Additionally, why not keep an eye out for conversations where you can add value – if you’re an MSP in Banbury, a regular search on “IT Support Banbury” could yield a number of opportunities to engage with companies or individuals who are looking for a chat about the subject.

Thoughts, suggestions? Please do leave a comment or get in touch via e-mail or Twitter!

AMITPRO Meeting – Arden Hotel – 11.01.11

Published on January 11, 2011 in Events. 0 Comments

A reminder that this month’s AMITPRO meeting is held at The Arden Hotel in Solihull on Tuesday 11th January 2011.

If you’ve never visited a User Group before, or have visited and never followed up on that visit – why not make 2011 the year you take advantage of the opportunities a User Group offer?

Need persuading? Here are 3 Good Reasons to attend your local Microsoft Partner User Group Meeting that you should consider.

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AMITPRO – 11.01.11

Zen Software

Neil Perry on MailStore email archiver.

Neil is one of the technical consultants at Manchester-based distributor Zen Software. He’ll be joining us to demonstrate the latest addition to their portfolio of products aimed at small businesses, MailStore email archiver.

MailStore installs alongside any email server taking a copy of all in and outgoing mails. By storing them in a secure database and making them available to users via a text search facility in Outlook, users need only keep 6 or 12 month’s mail (typically) in Exchange, which can present significant improvements in performance.

Zen claim MailStore’s big selling point over the other products you’re likely to have come across is its simplicity and ease of use. In order to demonstrate how easy it is to install and configure, Neil’s going to be walking through a typical deployment in an Exchange/ SBS environment and giving the opportunity to ask questions as he goes along.

In addition to the walkthrough he’ll outline the licensing model and some of the key target markets for the product.

These include:-

  • users with overloaded mailboxes (and those juggling PST’s locally)
  • financial and legal organisations who need long term storage to remain compliant with industry regulation
  • companies who require the ability to search emails being sent and received across the business and specific departments or users

Information available on Zen’s Web site here:-

http://www.zensoftware.co.uk/mailstore/

Telelease

Mike Shaw will introducing Telelease and the services they provide which may be of use to AMITPRO members. TeleLease is a independent Finance Company that offers a competitive alternative for Asset Finance to Business Banking and Internet Banking. They provide Hire Purchase and Leases, Leasing on Machinery, Equipment & Vehicles.

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If you haven’t been to the AMITPRO group before then visitors are very welcome! We usually meet in the bar between 5.00 and 5.30.

If you’d like to attend – simply turn up on the night, or reach out to myself or to group lead Andy Parkes for more information!

Hope to see you at The Arden Hotel!

 

How To De-Clutter Microsoft Outlook

Published on January 6, 2011 in How To. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

A few people have e-mailed to ask me if I *really* achieved in-box zero Zen as I stated in my “2010 – Year in Review” blog post. Well, there were definitely days when it was a struggle because I ignored my own advice, but overall – yes. How? I wrote a blog post entitled “How to manage e-mail overload” back in August that you may want to review for the full brain-dump – but in short the main methods I use are:-Microsoft Outlook icon

  • un-subscribing from newsletters I never read
  • removing duplicate sources of information (i.e. You’re friends with a person/organisation on Facebook where you get their updates, you’re friends with a person/organisation on Twitter where you get their updates, you also get their e-mail newsletter, with their updates. It’s say fair to say you can safely unsubscribe to at least one of these methods)
  • If someone e-mails you with a query that’ll take more than 30 seconds to respond to in writing – encourage them to pick up the ‘phone and call you instead of writing an in-depth response
  • Only check e-mails a few times a day, and never read an e-mail without actioning it – be that replying, deleting it, filing it away for future reference (and by filing, that doesn’t mean leave in the inbox, rather move to a named sub-folder) or creating a task/appointment from it.

Plus, at the start of each year there are a few steps I take to make sure Outlook is more manageable for the year ahead.

  • I first detach all the attachments in e-mails and store them in a separate folder on my RAID-1 NAS that’s incidentally, also backed up to the Cloud on a nightly basis. Personally, I use an application called “LBE Attachment Stripper” that I bought for about $20 years ago to speed up this process. I’m sure there are other apps available to do the same thing nowadays, but the principle is to minimise the size of any .PST file you eventually create by detaching those bulky attachments first. Using this method, the actual e-mail message you’ll archive off still contains a link to the attachment at your storage location of choice (in my case, the NAS) so you don’t have to go searching for it.
  • I then run Duplicate Remover for Outlook from MAPI Labs. Again, other apps are probably available that do the same thing, but this app simply searches for duplicate Contacts, Calendar appointments and then cuts out the dupes. You may think you don’t have any duplicates, but with Active Directory, LinkedIn, ActiveSync, Backup and Restores, Plaxo and host of other sources all having access to your Outlook information – you will have duplicates somewhere.
  • Next step is to use Mike Hudson’s VBA script to search Outlook and purge any empty folders.
  • Finally, I archive off everything from the previous year to a new Outlook .PST file imaginatively entitled “Richard Tubb – 2010 Archive.PST”. In theory you *should* be able to use Outlook’s built in Auto-Archive facility, stating a date range containing the last 12 months and letting Outlook go and do the rest. In my experience though, this function leaves behind some perfectly properly dated e-mails rather than do the job properly, so simply creating the new .PST archive and then dragging and dropping those folders across is simpler. Remember to include Sent Items and the Calendar too.
  • When you’re all done, from within Microsoft Outlook right click the new Archive folder, go to Properties > Advanced Properties and click “Compact”. This will squish the file down even further, making it more manageable for backups and future use.

I’ve been following this type of “Spring Clean” process since 2003, and I’ll share something with you – I can’t remember the last time I actually went off to find one of those detached attachments, and it’s rare that I need to review old e-mails. There is a sense of satisfaction digging out that old e-mail when it’s really required though, and from a data storage perspective, better that info sitting in a reasonably sized .PST file (backed up to the Cloud, naturally) than in my main .PST or Exchange Store.

I hope these tips help you get your own Microsoft Outlook inbox into order for the New Year. Any questions, or suggestions, please leave a comment or get in touch!