We talk a lot about the importance of customer service here at ReadyTalk. We wanted to spotlight the team that delivers that amazing customer service. For the next few weeks, we’ll be highlighting members of the customer care team and giving you a chance to get to know them better.
Name: Keith Title: Customer Care Representative
Favorite sports team: Chicago Cubs Hobbies: If Keith isn’t at the office, you will likely find him fishing, hiking, enjoying poetry, dancing or reading. Interesting fact about Keith: He once performed in Carnegie Hall.
Longest customer care call:To date, Keith’s longest customer care call was over an hour long, but he was able to solve the issue. Favorite customer request: Keith loves requests for basic product training and walk-thrus. Favorite thing about working at ReadyTalk: Great relationship with the people he works with.
Have a question for Keith? Think you can stump him with a technical issue? Tell us in the comments section.
Check out Keith's catch from a recent fishing trip!
In my second post about ReadyTalk’s new website, I’m going to look at how the redesign will affect our customers, and what we’re doing to improve the ReadyTalk experience, and what you can expect from our website blog posts. If you haven’t heard, we’ll be working hard in the coming months to move to a new website that should offer some great features to our visitors and make life easier for our marketing team.
Why are we making the move? In my previous post, I explored our reasoning for moving the site to a content management system called Drupal, and how that will make content creation and management a fast and simple process for ReadyTalk. That’s just one of the reasons for our redesign. We’ve also been conducting a lot of user testing to make sure that our site direction meets the needs of customers. For instance, our navigation will be changing to make finding important information easier for our customers and prospects. Our new design has also been tailored to ensure that any changes are comfortable for our current users. As always, logging in to ReadyTalk will be a one-step process, and it will still be the first thing you see on the front page.
In addition to the practical side of a redesign, we also recognize the opportunity to have a little fun, too. Expect to see our culture represented in new and different ways on the website. We love what we do, and we want to make sure the world knows it! If you need any proof, just see JC’s post about our engineering department.
In the coming weeks, you can expect to hear a lot about the website. We’ll be exploring our processes and discoveries along the way. Here are some topics you can expect from ReadyTalk:
Usability testing
Design and mockup processes
Improving SEO with Drupal
Integrating a jQuery carousel in to Drupal
The power of Drupal and views
Are there other topics of our redesign that you would like to see us cover? Do you have questions about how we are implementing Drupal? If you have best practices or some favorite resources, please share in the comments.
Does your marketing department have a service-level agreement (SLA) with the sales department? Does marketing know the type of leads the sales team wants delivered?
We are currently revamping our lead hand-off process and nurture programs. As part of the process, I am having the sales team re-define what a qualified lead looks and feels like.
First, I made a distinction between a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) and a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL). I believe this is important because marketing very rarely has a live conversation with a prospect. Rather, we collect information through forms, registration pages and other avenues. As a result, it is hard for us to collect Budget, Authority to buy, Need, Timeline for purchase (BANT), and related information on a form. Things like BANT are much better left to a phone discovery call. We may be able to collect one of those but the accuracy will be low.
For our purposes, we have defined a MQL as a lead that is ready for sales to call upon. We broke MQLs up into two different categories. The first category we loosely call “trigger events.” These are events and actions that a prospect could take that would immediately qualify them; a great deal of these trigger events revolve around BANT criteria. For example, if a prospect indicates they are ready to buy in the next one to six months, the sales team wants to engage the prospect with a phone call (we do some more sorting based upon number of employees as well on the back-end). Another example of a trigger event is if a prospect indicates they recently experienced pain with their current provider (conference failed, bad service, poor quality, lack of support).
The second category is a catchall for prospects that failed to meet a trigger event but based upon their profile and behavior warrant a call from a sales person. This is where the real conversations happen. What is the demographic profile of an MQL? What are their behavior patterns?
Our sales team is 15 people so we chose a subset of the 15 to participate in the MQL discussion to define this catchall category. After defining the MQL, the next step was to get affirmation from the entire sales team. Once completed, we need to define the level of effort that the sales team will put towards an MQL. I will discuss this in my next blog post. I would love to hear how you have defined qualified leads for your sales team and what your SLA process has been like. What roadblocks should I expect?
Hey there! Let me introduce myself. I am Jason Collins (aka. “JC” around the office), and I am a member of the Engineering Team here at ReadyTalk. We’ve recently been recruited by the Marketing folks to contribute material to the ReadyTalk blog, so you’ll be seeing us here from time to time. We’ve got a lot to contribute to the blog that we hope will help give people an understanding of the culture here at ReadyTalk, and more specifically in the engineering cave. Topics will range from how we’ve implemented and succeeded at SCRUM to how we’ve built our own Java Virtual Machine. But before we get on to blogging, let me tell you a little bit about who we are…
We are the practical jokers. We are funny and hilarious. We are incredibly intelligent. We are brewmasters. We are triathletes and marathoners. We are recent college graduates. We are fathers and we are mothers. We are aunts and uncles. We are married and we are single. We are Broncos fans and Rockies fans. We are musicians. We are artists. We are builders, and we create things. We are the guys who grew mutton chops and wore kilts to the company holiday party. We’re active in DJUG. We have a nerd book club, where we have dialog about nerdy things like programming theory and the tenets of agile development practices. We have tattoos and wear horn-rimmed glasses. We have hip style. We do push-ups every hour. We race our own cars at Bandimere Speedway, and brag about our quarter mile times.
We are video game players. We are video game programmers. We’ve built MAME cabinets and Rube Goldberg machines. We are agile evangelists. We love fine wines, Martinis and a dram of expensive Scotch. We are world travelers. We are zero carbon footprint. We are authors and we’ve been published. We are continuous integration and we are constantly improving. We still read comic books. We ride bicycles. We run. A lot. We are bilingual. We are great cooks. We love dogs. We wear idea helmets around the office. We laugh and we cry. We debate, we argue, and we learn from one another. We are the team that cooked bacon into waffles and built the most creative mini-golf hole. We have a mannequin and we occasionally dress it up for laughs. We are Ironman. We listen to classical and speed metal and everything in between. We are fascinated by anything having to do with pirates or ninjas.
We are Open-Source Software and we are GitHub. We are honest and we are loyal. We love Salt & Vinegar chips. We own ShameDonuts.com and we look for excuses to update it. We watch out for one another, and we’re always ready to lend a hand. We build houses for humanity and wrap gifts for underprivileged kids. We are iPad developers. We are Linux lovers and Apple fanboys. We are a PC and Windows 7 was NOT our idea. We strive to always do the right thing. We are contributors and we are problem solvers.
We are ReadyTalk Engineering. The difficult we do right away…the impossible will take a little longer.
Jason Collins (aka JC) is the VP of Engineering at ReadyTalk and the self-appointed Chief Happiness Officer. He’s been either writing code or managing engineers for nearly 15 years and has a passion for technology and agile development practices. The happiness of the engineering team is his top priority and he can usually be found wearing a ReadyTalk cape and the infamous “idea helmet” around the office to help keep people entertained. When he’s not hanging out with his work family, he’s at home with his wife and four boys doing all sorts of geeky things, like playing video games and watching campy Sci-Fi and Action flicks.
How are Facebook ads different than other forms of advertising and what should you do to capitalize upon that?
What are the 5 most effective techniques in managing your Facebook page so that it gets traffic and conversions?
How do you measure the ROI of your Facebook marketing efforts and justify this to others within your marketing organization?
What are the first critical steps you must take in setting up your Facebook page if you don’t already have one?
Dennis Yu of BlitzLocal and Justin Kistner of Webtrends will cover these questions, as well as questions from the audience in a free 60 minute seminar on Wednesday, October 27th. Register here for Facebook Marketing Secrets:
At ReadyTalk, we take customer experience very seriously. We are extremely fortunate to have very loyal users who participate in user testing, send us feedback and try out pre-release versions of our software. In fact, much of the customer accolades we receive are about the simplicity of entering, conducting and/or participating in a meeting. So, when I recently read a competitor’s blog post about how more often than not users who tweet “bad WebEx” are probably referring to the quality of the presenter rather than the service, I had to cringe.
Our marketing group monitors tweets relating to conferencing and providers every day. We see a lot of users of competitive platforms tweeting about their inability to get into a meeting, getting kicked out during a meeting or challenges in simply figuring out what buttons to press. We take every tweet about our service very seriously. We send gifts to customers who tweet positively about their experience and quickly contact customers who don’t so we can improve.
By doing this we know, for a fact, that one of the top reasons our customers love our platform is that it is easy to use.
Our product team is extremely disciplined in their approach to ensuring a great customer experience:
Customer interviews and observations – Our product marketing team spends hours interviewing customers and listening to what problems they are trying to solve. They also make it a point to observe users in their environment while they are trying to conduct an online meeting or a large web event. The team shares these observations in product planning meetings to ensure good usability of our products during development.
Tracking specific feature requests – Every customer-facing employee at ReadyTalk logs feature requests into Salesforce.com after talking to customers. We monitor these feature requests regularly to determine feature prioritization and perform more in-depth interviews with customers requesting the features.
User testing – During the development process, we recruit customers to review the user interface we’ve designed and take them through usability testing. After we receive their feedback, we’ll often go back and iterate on the interface and design.
Beta testing – Prior to launch we recruit customers for alpha, beta and preview testing. These are pre-roll out phases, which allow us to work out any bugs, collect real-time user feedback, continue to iterate on development and test specific use cases.
Three types of free training – ReadyTalk also offers live training sessions, pre-recorded sessions and a self-service resource center so users can learn at their own pace. They are able to learn the basics; dive into enhanced meetings and events to customize and set up our advanced features; or learn best practices on planning a meeting or event, creating a podcast and using polling and chat to engage their audience during a meeting. So even if don’t have the greatest presentation skills out there, we can help you with that too.
Our service allows you to focus on the content and delivery of your message, and not the technology behind it. Remember if you can’t use our product it’s our fault, not yours – no matter the level of your expertise.
There’s a lot going on in the audio and web conferencing space and even more going on in social media, marketing and sales. Here’s what the ReadyTalk marketing team is reading this week:
13 tips for using Facebook events instead of pages, groups or apps, http://bit.ly/cAOTXB
In a former life, I ran a sponsored webinar program for an analyst firm and we relied on extensive promotion of on-demand recordings to meet our lead generation targets. So, I could feel the pain and frustration of Webinar Success’ Ken Molay when I read his recent blog post that described his first-hand experience with a recording vulnerability in GoToWebinar that resulted in the unrecoverable loss of an important webinar recording.
Since Ken’s post, we’ve fielded a lot of questions about our own recording functionality. ReadyTalk users can rest assured that (as always) their recorded content is safe and accessible. I also wanted to take this opportunity to highlight a few things that make ReadyTalk’s recording and playback functionality unique:
Immediate Access – With a few clicks of the mouse or commands on the telephone keypad, your ReadyTalk recording is initiated and stored to our servers. As soon as your conference ends, you can immediately access your recording file through the Manage Recordings interface in Conference Center. No waiting around for your conferencing vendor to make the recording available for use.
Easy (and Undo-able) Editing– With our easy-to-use recording editor, you can quickly cut out unwanted content from the beginning, middle, or end of your recording to create a polished and professional playback. Uh oh … made a mistake? Don’t worry – it happens! We always keep the original version of your recording so you can undo one or more edits with the push of a button.
Industry-Standard File Formats – What good is a conference recording if it’s locked away in a proprietary file format? At any time, you can download your ReadyTalk recordings in up to four industry-standard formats (Flash, high-resolution .MP4, .MP3, and .WAV). Once you download, you can edit your recordings using your favorite third-party editing tool, store them on your own servers, and distribute them as you wish.
No Downloads for Viewers – Unlike some conferencing services, ReadyTalk doesn’t make your audience download a special player to view your recordings. Whether you embed your ReadyTalk recording in a blog, social media site, or other website or simply share the playback link, viewers can watch a high-quality replay of your recording with a single click. No downloads required (as long as they have Flash 9.0.28 or higher).
ReadyTalk knows how important your recordings are and we’ll make sure they are always there where, when, and how you need them. We’re also committed to making our recording and playback features even better. Tell us what else would you like to do with your ReadyTalk recordings …
The recording interface makes it easy to edit and share recordings immediately after a webinar.
As Director of Product Marketing, Anita is focused on talking to customers about their needs and translating these into priorities for the ReadyTalk product roadmap. Before joining ReadyTalk, she gained first-hand experience with the challenges of running a webinar program while serving as director of marketing at an IT analyst firm. When she’s not thinking about conferencing, she likes to do yoga and spend time with her dogs.
“Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they’re here to stay
Oh, I believe in yesterday”
I have to agree with the middle stanza of this Beatles’ hit. It does seem that troubles overstay their welcome; however, I’d go out on a limb and say that if Paul and Ringo had a glimpse of what today’s technology can accomplish, they’d be singing an entirely different tune. Technology is definitely making it easier to deal with challenges and move on to the next more quickly.
Imagine all the people…collaborating in real-time, creating content, removing roadblocks even from remote locations.
We certainly don’t have to imagine. We’ve moved from fax machines and switch boards to multi-bridge conference lines and web conferencing platforms with application and desktop sharing. And, these technologies have now become the norm. Today, our ‘troubles’ may simply stem from trying to keep pace with emerging technologies.
You say you want a revolution? We’d tell you that it’s evolution, and we’ve got a real solution. When it comes to conferencing capabilities, there has been a continual stream of advances from web controls for audio conferences, one-click recording and editing tools to content syndication and real-time social media sharing capabilities.
But not all conferencing providers are evolving like ReadyTalk. Here is a list of items we think you ought to consider when comparing different platforms:
Is it flexible enough to be utilized across departments?
Can it be used for various types of online meetings (marketing webinars, sales demos, remote office collaboration, training…)?
Is it able to integrate with other technology platforms you use? (CRM, social media networks, email…)?
Does it provide campaign tracking capabilities and metrics – planning, engagement, and follow-up tools to share your meetings?
So consider how your provider’s product has evolved (or not) to meet your business collaboration needs. And if it appears as though its time for a change, I’d offer you one last suggestion:
“Come together, right now over…ReadyTalk.” You get the idea.
Evolution of Conferencing (Part I)
Evolution of Conferencing (Part II): The 21st Century Marketer
Evolution of Conferencing (Part III): Lessons Learned from a Pro
ReadyTalk first started looking at our ongoing web redesign about a year ago as a way to increase the organization of, and access to, an increasing number of resources provided to our customers. At first we were looking at minor updates and a visual refresh, but as more requests for features and content changes came from across the company, it became apparent that we would need a major overhaul. We decided that a Content Management System (CMS) would be ideal and allow for quick content creation and publishing by the entire marketing team. What is Drupal?
Drupal is a free and open-source CMS with a huge community of developers making sure it is always up to date and secure. Upon learning about how many high-profile sites run Drupal (www.whitehouse.gov, www.ubuntu.com, and research.yahoo.com to name a few), it was easy to get excited about the possibilities. With the thousands of modules available for everything from automated search engine optimization to automated image resizing, Drupal fits nearly every use case. Using modules, we can quickly add à la carte site functionality and create a site specifically tailored to our users’ needs. Anything that is not already available can be created as a custom module.
Why Drupal?
ReadyTalk uses WordPress for our blog and newsroom, our own CMS for the Webinar Series, and hand coding for most other pages. To unify our site maintenance practices and to reduce the overhead involved in making changes and updates, we began looking to unify the site under a single CMS. We evaluated a number of CMS options, and Drupal came out on top because of its great extensibility and ability to accept custom code, as well as modules that will help us automate search engine optimization (SEO) and improve organic search rankings.
Our dependence upon PHP was a major factor for choosing Drupal. Drupal is written in PHP and handles user-submitted PHP code wonderfully, making it easy to port scripts from our current site. If, down the road, we decide to rewrite these scripts as Drupal modules, this will greatly increase the possibilities for adding additional functionality to our site.
Drupal’s theming possibilities are also extensive. In most cases, all that is needed to make a theme is a few images and some CSS. There is little difference between theming Drupal and theming a hand-coded site. In our case, we’ll also be making a few changes to how Drupal structures pages. One of the more exciting features will be a front page carousel that uses jQuery to asynchronously load nodes into a slideshow. This will keep load times down on the front page and will make updating the carousel’s content amazingly easy.
Major Features
Relevant information and documents can be dynamically displayed on any page
WYSIWYG editor enables ReadyTalk’s marketing team to quickly change and publish new data without the need for a web developer
Automated editorial process for new content ensures it is reviewed by stakeholders before it goes live
Front page will have more dynamic content, including a carousel that loads slides asynchronously via jQuery and caches them.
Resource Center and Webinar Series will be sort-able, searchable and easily updated
New, updated look and UI
Future improvements
We will continue enhancing the website by introducing new features.
Simplified forms
Asynchronous loading and submission of forms
Conversion of several scripts to modules to improve functionality and integration
HTML 5 and CSS3 support
Eventual upgrade to Drupal 7
As a part of our web development process, we will be featuring articles written by our website team on topics such as usability, user testing, design and web development. Stay tuned!
