Archive for the ‘Trends’ Category
November 10, 2009
Two weeks have passed since the Oct. 22 retail release of Microsoft Windows 7, and we’re wondering how installation efforts are going out there. In particular, we’re curious if any of you have used GoToAssist or GoToAssist Express to migrate your company – or even your family and friends – to the new operating system. Or perhaps you’ve used GoToAssist following a recent installation to provide remote support. If so, we’d like to hear all about it. And we might even share your story with the world.
Here are a few questions to get you started:
- What Windows 7 challenges were you facing that led you to consider and use GoToAssist?
- What happened? How did it go?
- What is the name of your company, how big is it, and what industry is it in?
- What is your job title, and what are your responsibilities?
We’ll post some of the responses here on the blog, and may even contact you about sharing your story with the media.
Thanks!
Tags:win7, Windows 7
Posted in Remote Support Market, Trends | Leave a Comment »
November 3, 2009
One of the concerns I’ve heard from the consultants I’ve met is they don’t always want to solve problems more quickly. Consultants often bill by the hour so the longer it takes to solve a problem, the more billable hours they can add to their invoice. I get it. Everyone needs to protect their income.
I’ve also heard from consultants that they can actually make more money if they solve problems faster. Their productivity skyrockets (literally) and they are able to take on more business, manage different types of projects, and charge more for their services. They can remotely serve multiple customers off hours simultaneously for monthly maintenance or updates, increasing their billable hours. They can improve their customer’s satisfaction.
I’ll never forget the conversation I had with a customer (we’ll call her Lori) at a conference who told me this story: Lori was in her car and received a call from a customer. She was about 45 minutes away from her office so she thought she would try to trouble-shoot the problem over the phone. Lori could use the software in her sleep so she thought she would easily be able visualize what her customer was seeing and explaining. She spent the entire 45 minutes on the phone with her customer and never solved the problem. Once at her desk, she booted up her computer, launched a session and solved the problem in 5 minutes. 45 minutes vs 5 minutes.
No doubt, seeing the problem and remotely supporting customers will lead to faster problem resolution. But that is a GOOD thing not a bad one. Consultants can improve customer satisfaction which leads to making more money and they can simply fit more into their days – which, depending on the type of person you are, could also general much more money for you. I’d love to hear your concerns or stories about using remote support in your business.
Photo Credit: Darrren Hester
Tags:consultants, money
Posted in Remote Support Market, Trends | Leave a Comment »
October 30, 2009
A profound development is underway in today’s business environment. Leading organizations are discovering how to boost the visibility of their support centers and cultivate the backing they need from the broader organization. The compelling payoff? Services that are more consistent and effective, delivering higher value to customers and the organization.
Join us for a live, interactive Webinar with guest speaker Brad Cleveland, senior advisor to International Customer Management Institute (ICMI). Cleveland will lay out the concrete steps you can and must take now to elevate your services and prepare for what’s coming.
Attend this interactive Webinar to learn:
- Trends in today’s business environment and what customers expect
- The three dimensions of value
- Key metrics: measuring progress and success in customer support
- The processes, technologies and team that can get you there
Date: November 5, 2009
Time: 11am Pacific, 12pm Mountain, 1pm Central, 2pm Eastern
If you can’t attend the live webinar, you can still sign up to view the recorded version on demand. Just click the regisration button above.
Tags:support center, webinar
Posted in Trends, Webinars | Leave a Comment »
October 23, 2009
Recently, Frost & Sullivan published a new report called: World Web-based Clientless Remote Support Software Market. In this report, they identify market challenges, drivers and growth opportunities.
There are 3 major points from this report that I will share with you in this post.
- The need for remote support is growing because “Businesses are being compelled to ‘do more with less’ and improve service and support internally for employees and for customer.” says Frost & Sullivan.
- Internal IT and support departments are growing at a faster clip than external support departments. Why? In the past, internal support has made things work with free or legacy tools. IT is a cost center and they haven’t always had the budget for more sophisticated tools that required a fee. Now, “as businesses grow remote employees and mobile users, free tools are not powerful enough to meet the needs of the tech support proffessionals.” says Frost & Sullivan.
- GoToAssist Corporate is noted by Frost & Sullivan as “the worldwide market leader.” Yay!
You can read more about our leadership in this press release.
Tags:forst and sullivan, leadership
Posted in Remote Support Market, Trends | Leave a Comment »
October 16, 2009
Today’s workforce is eager for flexibility and is embracing mobility. Firms across all industries are allowing, even encouraging, workers to telecommute and connect to headquarters from the road. With the workforce going mobile, IT faces the challenge of providing reliable, fast tech support while managing costs and productivity. Join us for a live, interactive Webinar with guest speaker Matt Healey, senior research analyst at IDC. Healey will share proven strategies for driving the delivery of reliable and cost-effective remote support for 2010 and beyond.
Register here.
Attend this interactive Webinar to learn:
- How advances in remote-support technology can optimize help desk support
- How to improve internal customer-satisfaction levels while lowering operating costs
- Ways to leverage remote-support technology to close IT tickets faster
- And more…
Date: Thursday, October 22
Time: 11 AM PDT / 2 PM EDT
Speakers:
Matt Healey, IDC senior research analyst
Barry Dacus, Senior Product Line Manager, Citrix Online
Michael Krieger, Moderator
If you can’t make the live webinar, use the registration link above to watch the recorded webinar on-demand.
Tags:mobile workforce, webinar
Posted in Events, Trends, Webinars | Leave a Comment »
October 14, 2009
I recently conducted a survey in which I asked about the benefits of using GoToAssist Corporate. I thought I’d share some results. Here are the top 3 business benefits of using our software:
- Faster problem resolution
- Increased customer satisfaction
- First-contact resolution
None of these are surprising, really, we’ve known the benefits of remtoe 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!
Posted in Product Info - Corporate, Trends | 2 Comments »
September 22, 2009
A colleague recently asked me what my plans are if our kids school closes this winter due to HINI penetrating our community. I looked at him blankly and sighed. In spite of all the hype around the upcoming flu season, I hadn’t really thought of it actually. Being a working mom, I sometimes filter all the data (meaning I don’t have time to watch the news) or I just stay in denial and hope my carefully crafted balancing act won’t be disrupted by things outside of my control (yeah right.)
Well, Eric, you brought up a really good point, and it got me thinking. Fortunately, I work at Citrix Online and we have lots of tools that enable me to work remotely from home, using GoToMyPC I can log into my work PC, I can collaborate online with my colleagues using GoToMeeting, and get support remotely from my IT HelpDesk with GoToAssist. Heck, I can even present in a webinar from home (assuming I’m well enough and don’t have screaming children in the background) using GoToWebinar. I know this seems like a shameless plug for all Citrix Online products but these products have enabled me to have flexiblity in my crazy-busy life.
So like last year, I know that I will work from home when my kids are sick or if their school closes – but I hope they dont’ get too sick (fingers crossed really tightly) and I certainly hope the school doesn’t close. But if it does, there will be lots of families looking for ways to stay connected to their work and some of those people will even be in IT.
The beauty of using GoToAssist is that you can use it from anywhere. You can remotely support your employees from home just as easily as if you are in the office or on the road. Everyone in IT and business should be thinking about business continuity for their companies, see this article from Business Week: Small Business Urged to Prepare for Swine Flu. But have you also thought about business continuity for yourself? How will you support all those employees who have to stay home due to school closures? What will you do if your school closes?
Photo: Collin Anderson
Tags:business continuity, remote support, working remotely
Posted in Remote Support Market, Trends | 2 Comments »
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:support center, webinar
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, trend, web commuting
Posted in Remote Support Market, Trends | 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 | Leave a Comment »
