We were sure busy. We rolled out our new website and pushed our integration of fast tech support and 24/7 IT monitoring in GoToManage. Delivered on a free GoToAssist Express iPad app that’s a crowd pleaser. Issued a new app integrating Salesforce, the leading CRM solution, with GoToAssist Corporate. We upgraded GoToAssist Express with a beta version of unattended access to Mac® computers. And, we expanded GoToAssist Corporate with new functionality to support mobile devices.

However, before we dive into 2012, we thought we all ought to take a few moments to reflect, relax and laugh. To help you, here’s some amusing videos thought up by witty and prolific IT blogger Brian Madden. Enjoy!

Best wishes for 2012 from the GoToAssist crew.

Rich Gallagher

How to Hire, Lead and Motivate Your All-Star Support Team

In this three-part webinar series, industry expert Rich Gallagher will discuss the key (and often unspoken) steps to successfully hiring, leading and motivating your team of support professionals. Rich presents a creative and highly effective process that will dramatically increase your odds of hiring the right person every time.

Rich will also show why support leaders succeed or fail in fast-paced customer contact environments and how you can harness the diverse personalities of your support team for better performance.

Attend this interactive webinar series to learn:
• How to screen, attract and retain top support talent
• How to lead your support teams
• Team building in a support center
Registering for one or all of the events is easy – see below for detailed information on each of these webinars.
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Webinar Part I: Hiring for Great Service: How to Screen, Attract and Retain Top Support Talent
Thursday, October 13, 2011 – 11 AM (PT) / 2 PM (ET)

How do you select top support professionals and avoid hiring mistakes – and, more important, how do you create a repeatable process that consistently chooses the best people?

Join SupportIndustry.com as we present a creative and highly effective process that will dramatically increase your odds of hiring the right person every time.

Attend this interactive webinar to learn:
• How to implement a team interview process
• Creative ways to assess problem-solving skills and attitude
• How to build your “brand” as an employer
• Keys to retention ‒ hiring well and hiring less

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Webinar Part II: Leading Support Teams: The Mechanics
Thursday, November 3, 2011 – 11 AM (PT) / 2 PM (ET)

If you lead a support team, your day-to-day practices as a leader are likely to have the single biggest impact on the morale, turnover and performance of your support team.

Join SupportIndustry.com as we share the many important and, at times, surprising ways that support leaders succeed or fail in fast-paced customer contact environments.

Attend this interactive webinar to learn:
• Good metrics, bad metrics – how to measure performance
• How to make your team part of a greater whole
• Training that works – creating an environment for collaboration & learning
• Benefits of leadership on the team level

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Webinar Part III: Your Cast of Characters: Team Building in a Support Center
Thursday, December 8, 2011 – 11 AM (PT) / 2 PM (ET)

Your support team is like a family – in every good and bad sense of the word! And understanding its “family” dynamics is often the hidden key to reducing conflict and improving performance.

Join SupportIndustry.com as we present how to understand the interpersonal forces that drive your support team and how to harness its diverse personalities for better performance.

Attend this interactive webinar to learn:
• How conflicts arise and how to short circuit them
• Front line/back line relationships
• How to speak everyone’s “language”
• Tips and traps for managing different personalities

John Ragsdale, VP of Tech Research at TSIA

Download this free webinar with John Ragsdale, TSIA’s VP of technology research, as he reveals for the first time the new TSIA 2011 survey results, including rate of adoption of web-collaboration tools, satisfaction levels and spending numbers.

View this webinar to discover:

• The ROI of web collaboration for technical support, including metrics impacted
• Key areas of product differentiation
• Why “freeware” increases risk for your organization
• And more…

Learn more about additional webinars from Citrix Online.

#1 CRM Tool + #1 Support Tool

Now support representatives everywhere can launch support sessions right from their favorite CRM service. With the GoToAssist for Salesforce app, you can start a GoToAssist support session with just one-click from your Saleforce case record. In addition, all session details are automatically captured as Activity History in Salesforce.

The free GoToAssist for Salesforce app is available for your test driving and deployment at the Salesforce AppExchange.

Key benefits:
• Streamline support operations
• Deliver quick, seamless remote support
• Eliminate duplicate data entry – remote-support session log and survey results are automatically saved in Case Activity History

On-Demand Webinar: Watch Demo of GoToAssist for Salesforce

To learn more, download the fact sheet or watch a special recorded webinar with GoToAssist product line director Barry Dacus. Barry demos GoToAssist for Salesforce and answers the audience’s questions in a lively Q and A.

But as Valerie Peay, head of the customer experience team at global communications giant BT, explains in a short video, these tools shouldn’t be understood as simply interchangeable elements. The goal isn’t to simply substitute support channels with lower costs per transactions for those with higher costs.

Case in point is BT’s experimentation with the use of GoToAssist Corporate’s new web-chat support tool FastChat™. BT has been an early and enthusiastic adapter of FastChat. The point of such chat tools, Peay says, is not to replace phone service. Instead, customer contacts centers have to work towards the best dynamic combination.

FastChat interface

The rollout of FastChat was part of a targeted approach that sought to “eradicate the reasons to call in the first place,” says Peay.

FastChat, which BT branded as “eChat,” helped BT “move our customers into an e-service environment.” “If you can move them into an online environment,” Peay says, “then you can teach them using chat how to be able to self-serve.”

Of course, BT does not plan to eliminate phone support; they want to keep all communication channels open with their valued customers.

The project under Peay’s team was a smashing success. Incoming calls were cut almost in half from 20,000 a week, with eChat handling approximately 40 percent of those. BT plans to accelerate its deployment and make eChat the primary form of contact with wholesale customers over the next 3 months, in addition to expanding the use of FastChat to another 5 BT divisions.

BT’s research into customer experience also reveals an “absolutely fantastic” 20 percent boost in customer experience. As part of BT’s innovative approach to customer service, Peay and her team have continued to drill into the data to see what works by looking at customer surveys and transcripts of the chat session.

Frost & Sullivan honors Citrix Online with the 2010 Best Practices Award as Market Leader in Remote Support.

 Frost & Sullivan presents this Award to companies who demonstrate excellence in capturing the highest market share within their industry while maintaining four key performance factors:

• Factor 1 – Success of the remote support solution
• Factor 2 – Global acceptance
• Factor 3 – Resilience in a competitive environment
• Factor 4- Innovation for the future

Frost & Sullivan believes that Citrix Online has achieved the market leadership position through sound strategy and excellent implementation and delivery of their solutions. Here’s a quote from the Frost & Sullivan report: “Citrix Online’s GoToAssist solution has found favor with users, for both internal and external support. The company’s offerings are designed to be simple to use, secure, cost-effective and reliable.”

Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! Keep on providing excellent support to your customers and using GoToAssist!

Who you gonna call when rustlers, hackers and malware start hanging around your homestead?

Have you seen our new GoToAssist advertising campaign? We’re having more fun than hogs in a fresh mud slop, and we think you’re going to enjoy it too.

Our new publicity tips a giant 10-gallon hat to the spirit of the old West. Soon roughriders, bull wranglers and sharpshooters will be emblazoned across our Web banners, magazine ads and emails.

“Why the old West?” you might ask.

Because we think the mythic heroes of the old West live on in today’s support professionals. Just like those lone gunmen of yesteryear, tech professionals ride into town, delivering hope and help to desperate Americans everywhere. In these modern days, when decent folks need assistance fast, they best call an unassuming but determined and skilled troubleshooting support guy or gal who is ready to spring into action.

Feast your eyes on this pretty picture:

Now appearing in magazines everywhere.

And while you’re at it, join us in the fun of mashing up old western movie quotes into something new and sweet for tech support. Here’s a few ticklers thought up by Trey Clark, Alleah Gogley and Tom Schultz of the GoToAssist remote support posse.

“One support slinger against a world of technical problems? I like my odds.”

“Wherever he goes, he leaves a trail of slain technical issues.”

“Technical problems can run, but they can’t hide.”

“This virtual desktop ain’t big enough for both me and that virus.” [Based on “This town ain't big enough for the both of us, and I'm going to give you 24 hours to get out.” Spoken by Wheeler Oakman in The Western Code (1932)]

IT support cowboy: “In the cool of the evening, when the computer problems arise, that’s when I appear.” [Based on “In the cool of the evening, when the food and liquor and women are ready, that's when I appear." Spoken by Walter Houston in The Virginian (1929)]

Or mash up your own classic Western movie quote, and send them this way. We’d love to read them!

1. Faster problem resolution
2. Increased customer satisfaction
3. First-contact resolution

None of these are surprising, really, we’ve known the benefits of remote support for a long time now (in fact, we actually created these benefits when we launched the product 9 years ago.)  The question that remains is how much do these benefits really impact our customer’s businesses. As you know, support and IT departments are cost centers. If you can speed up the resolution of a problem, you can quickly see a reduction of costs and an increase in customer satisfaction.

Using GoToAssist Corporate tools, you’ll have real-life data that you can access and share with your managers about how you’ve make your business more profitable. We are not your average support tool!

remote support

There are lots of benefits associated with pushing transactional surveys out to your customers, here is a quick overview:

• Improving customer retention leads to improved revenues. Just read Fred Reichheld’s book, The Ultimate Question. He says “Acquiring a new customer can cost 6 to 7 times more than retaining an existing customer.”
• Measuring your performance allows you to take immediate action to improve your performance. Transactional surveys are sent just after the session. You can review all survey responses. This is an opportunity for you to turn things around for customers who had a negative experience, to praise your reps when things go well or coach them if they need improvement.
• Socialize your metrics. Share your improvement scores with your executive team and your reps. Everyone will be thrilled to hear how you improved FCR by 30% saving the company $100K or more. Or that your improved CSAT by 20%. And make sure you calculate and share your ROI.

There is alot more I could say about surveys. If you want to learn more, please contact your account manager. If you don’t know who your account manager is, call 800-549-8541 to find out.

Register Here

Web collaboration has emerged from the economic ashes of 2009 as a high-impact support technology with a compelling ROI. And it’s no surprise — the benefits of Web collaboration for technical support include improved service levels, reduced operational costs, effective team communication and enhanced customer experience.

Join us for a live Webinar with John Ragsdale, VP of the Service and Support Professionals Association (SSPA). Ragsdale will discuss the business and customer value of Web-collaboration tools and share case studies of organizations that are leveraging this technology to thrive in a tough economy.

During this 1-hour interactive Webinar, you’ll learn:

• The 9 functional modules of Web collaboration
• How business can use Web collaboration to deliver better customer support
• Which Web-collaboration modules deliver the fastest ROI
• And more…

Strategies for Developing a Hightly Collaborative Support Environment

Date: Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Time: 10am Pacific, 11am Mountain, 12pm Central, 1pm Eastern 
Speakers: John Ragsdale, VP of Research, The SSPA and Brenda Dentinger, Product Marketing Manager, Citrix Online

If you aren’t able to catch the live webinar, you can click the registration link above and view the archived webinar on-demand.