Archive for the ‘Remote Support Market’ Category
September 17, 2009
Many of you already know Chris Pirillo, for those of you who don’t, he is a very funny geek, technology enthusiast, and host of both internet and tv technolgoy shows – among many other things (click on his name to learn more).
Yesterday, Chris wrote a blog called Grow Your Business Using GoToAssist Express. It is a great introduction to why companies need GoToAssist Express for their remote support solution. “Save yourself a whole lot of time, headaches and money by using a piece of software that will pay for itself in a matter of days. It’s simple to use, and a very powerful tool to have.” says Chris Pirillo.
Thanks Chris!
Tags:remote support, GoToAssist Express, chris pirillo, blog
Posted in Product Info - Express, Remote Support Market | Leave a Comment »
September 14, 2009
This Tuesday, September 15 at 10am Pacific time, we are hosting a webinar with the SSPA on using collaboration as part of your remote support environment. Here are the details for from the webinar invite. If you aren’t able to join live, you can still register (before or after the webinar) and an archived webinar link will be sent to you.
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.
Tags:remote support, webinar, sspa, collaboration
Posted in Links / Resources, Product Info - Corporate, Remote Support Market, Training & Guides, Webinars | Leave a Comment »
September 11, 2009
“Beware of freeway” writes John Ragsdale, VP of Technology Research a the SSPA in his recent report called Market Overview: Web Collaboration. Ten Distint Modules Comprise this Popular Support Technology.
The following is a quote from John’s report, which defines how collaboration works in remote support tools:
Beware of freeware. Basic Web chat and desktop sharing can be had for free and is often bundled into e-commerce servers and other IT and support tools. But keep in mind, you get what you pay for. Lower-end and freeware products offer less security, little or no audit trail, and integration to an incident management or knowledgebase system may be nearly impossible.
You can read more from John in his blog: http://jragsdale.wordpress.com/
If you are member of the SSPA you can access the report as a part of your membership. Otherwise, you can contact them to purchase it.
Tags:remote support, sspa, freeware, ragsdale
Posted in Remote Support Market, Security | Leave a Comment »
August 19, 2009
…GoToAssist Express radio interview that is 
And it was great, thanks for taking the time and for sharing your love of our remote support product.
If you would like to hear Dave’s Aug 14, 2009 show called “Into Tomorrow”, you can listen by clicking here: Into Tomorrow with Dave Graveline. (I recommend it, he is wonderfully entertaining.) I’m in hour 2, about twenty minutes into the segment.
You can sign-up for Dave’s FREE once-a-week TechNewsLetter and keep an eye on what else “Into Tomorrow” is doing! Just type your Email address in the red box on the right at http://www.graveline.com/.
Tags:express, radio, dave graveline
Posted in Links / Resources, Product Info - Express, Remote Support Market | Leave a Comment »
August 17, 2009
Join us for a live Webinar to hear John Hamilton, president of Service Strategies, discuss how
technical organizations are adopting industry performance standards and remote-collaboration
technologies to deliver world-class service.
You will hear firsthand how Ultimate Software uses Service Capability & Performance (SCP)
Standards as a foundation for achieving near-perfect customer satisfaction, increased
loyalty and recurring revenue streams using remote support technology.
Attend this Webinar to learn best practices for:
- Understanding and measuring service excellence
- Driving support efficiency and productivity
- Leveraging remote-support technologies
Date: August 20, 2009
Time:
10:00am Pacific
11:00am Mountain
12:00pm Central
1:00pm Eastern
Tags:webinar, support center
Posted in Events, Links / Resources, Remote Support Market, Trends, Webinars | Leave a Comment »
August 11, 2009
Business Week’s (BW) article Telecommuting: Once a Perk, Now Necessity highlights the benefits of working remotely. In fact, some companies are mandating that employees work from home vs spending hours in the car each way for the daily commute. “The flexibility will cut costs and at the same time accommodate both loud talkers and hermits.” writes BW author Michelle Conlin.
Yet, HRRecruitingAlert.com reported that execs are resistant to the idea even though people are often more productive when working from home. A telecommuter, BW highlights in their article, Eve Gleb, said she inititally didn’t know what to do with her extra time but now she goes for a walk and is more productive then when she is at the office. Another BW telecommuter, Grace Renteria, said “I only go into the office when I don’t have a lot going on.” (How that for a shift in perceptions about web commuting!)
According, HRRecruitingAlert.com 21% of employees would take a pay cut to telecommute. Yet, Eve Gleb’s company actually gave her more money to telecommute and Grace Renteria saves $70 on gas a week, $15 a day on lunch + wear and tear on her car. (hum….there just might be something to this.) Some other findings from their report:
- 75% of employees want the freedom to work remotely.
- 56% have never been able to telecommute.
- Managers’ most common arguments against telecommuting include: Job duties demand office attendance (cited by 38% of managers), remote work hurts relationship-building (19%) and productivity will decline if employees work from home (15%).
Now, internal IT managers and help desks need to provide remote support to these web commuters, aka, mobile workers. Many times companies will set up a VPN but when that fails, you still need a way to support your mobile workers and that is where GoToAssist comes in.
Are you seeing your remote workers on the rise in your companies?? Tell us your story. (My story is that I’m writing this post from home and love the flexibiliy of being able to work from anywhere using Citrix Online products!)
Photo credit: wrumsby
Tags:remote support, remote workers, web commuting, trend
Posted in Remote Support Market, Trends | Leave a Comment »
August 6, 2009
With pride in my heart and a huge shout out to our product and engineering teams, I’m thrilled to tell you all that GoToAssist Express received the coveted Editor’s Choice Award from PCMag.com. Reviewer and editor, Mario Morejon gave GoToAssist Express 4 out of 5 stars for remote support and said the product is “well deserving of our Editors’ Choice designation.”
Mario also said: “The current business climate is ripe for inexpensive, reliable remote IT support, and GoToAssist Express certainly offers both. Its cost and ease of use truly set it apart in its field; I can’t think of any other technical support solution as effective as this one.”
You can read the full review here: http://tinyurl.com/nn95qv
Tags:award, pcmag.com
Posted in Product Info - Express, Remote Support Market | Leave a Comment »
July 30, 2009
I am hearing more and more from customers about the growing need for their IT Helpdesk to support remote workers. This is adding to their support burden as the remote workers typically are operating in heterogeneous computing environments that vastly differ from what their internal helpdesk has been tasked with supporting in the past. Also, the tools the help desk has relied upon in the past to support employees cannot handle the challenges introduced by these remote worker environments especially when it comes to accessing their desktop remotely.
Remote workers can operate from many different types of locations – each having their own challenges for IT personnel trying to provide support. You may have workers that work from one location all the time – like their homes; workers that may be working from remote/branch offices – which often do not have IT staff on site; workers that may be working from customer sites, hotels, or even an Internet café. These workers will most-likely be using PCs with configurations differing from than those found on your LAN including multiple flavors of operating systems and browser – each bringing their own challenges. To top it off, all of them will likely be protected by a multitude of firewalls, proxies, or anti-malware software – all designed to keep you from gaining access to their PC.
Also, you may be one of the many companies that are rolling out VoIP telephony solutions for your remote workers. Many companies are choosing “soft phones” for their remote phone solution and you may have the need to remotely connect to their PC to configure and troubleshoot issues with these telephony solutions.
In the past, IT organizations could get away with using legacy solutions, like RDP, to remotely access and support employees. As more of the employees are becoming geographically dispersed, these legacy tools cannot be relied upon. It is burdensome for IT staff to use one tool for internal support and another for external support. So, as the lines continue to blur between what is deemed as internal and external remote support, I believe we will continue to see a rise in companies coming to us looking for one solution that can handle all their support needs.
The bottom line is that these remote workers need reliable access to internal applications and data on your network to complete work and stay productive. In the eyes of many company executives, the success of remote worker programs will be based on the productivity of these workers. Ultimately, the burden for maintaining this timely and consistent access to network resources for these workers falls on the shoulders of the IT help desk.
Photos by Markusram and Kai Hendry
Tags:remote worker
Posted in Remote Support Market, Trends | 1 Comment »
July 24, 2009
I’ve returned (and recovered) from my vacation back east to visit family. Upstate NY had 40 days of rain and my idyllic vacation with toddlers splashing in an Adirondack Lake didn’t work out the way I planned. I’m suddenly grateful for libraries and Chuckie Cheese (never thought I’d write those words).
The blog has been somewhat quiet these last couple of weeks. I think my colleagues were all very busy while I was away– and trying to enjoy the summer which finally shed the coastal fog we always see in Santa Barbara in June. I am fortunate that I didn’t have to bring my computer, nor did I check in (much anyway) while I was out. It was a nice break in spite of the rain.
Do you have any fun vacations planned this summer? If so, do you have to bring your computer along and stay in touch to support your clients / staff? I’d love to hear!
Posted in Remote Support Market | Leave a Comment »
