Parature Service Desk Widgets

Service Desk Widgets allow you to have contextually relevant content from outside systems integrated into the Ticket Details page. With a widget, you can pass Ticket, Customer, or Account fields as URL parameters to the third-party system, allowing data specific to the ticket being viewed to be displayed in the customizable-size widget.

Custom Service Desk Widgets pull contextual data about your Tickets, Customers, or Accounts and insert them in a special frame in a ticket. You may only have one active widget at a time, but as many inactive widgets as you wish. Custom Service Desk Widgets currently only work with Parature Ticket. We suggest first trying out widgets on your Parature Sandbox as a best practice.

To get started on creating widgets:

1. Click on the Setup tab
2. Expand the Customization menu
3. Click Service Desk Widgets; the Service Desk Widgets Overview window will open in the right frame
4. Click New Service Desk Widget; the Create Service Desk Widget window will open
5. Enter Name and Display Name in the fields provided; the Name field is what the widget will be known as internally and in list views, and the Display Name will be what your CSR(s) see when they log in to the Service Desk
6. Check the Active box if you want the widget to be visible to your CSR(s)
7. Select the type of Custom Service Desk Widget from the drop-down menu; at this time, the only available option is URL
8. Adjust the height and width from the drop-down menu
9. Enter the URL in the URL box; the widget variables section will explain how to construct a URL that allows you to draw contextual information into the widget
10. Click Save to save your widget, or cancel to discard

The following is a sample of what a widget could look like:

Service Desk Widgets - Sample

The use of widgets can be very helpful in your Tickets. For more information on Widgets, please see the following Knowledgebase articles in the Parature Support Center, or contact Parature Support at support@parature.com

Setting Up a Service Desk Widget

Leveraging Parature Email Templates

Email Templates is one of the new features Parature introduced in the Parature ‘10 Release. Parature’s Email Templates can be used to improve readability of emails, enhance branding of email messages, and provide more control over the support experience. Check out the points below to see how you can improve the customer experience with the Email Templates feature:

Email Styling
Customize the design of the email notifications received by your customers and CSRs. These customizations can range from including a company logo or custom fonts, colors, and layouts. This feature also provides the ability to include applicable text, such as disclaimers, contact information, or department links.

Contextual Variables
Modify email notifications with information specific to the ticket of your customer. This feature enables you to include any ticket, customer, or account fields in the email. Any relevant information can be personalized to the account or customer. This will allow for more consistency in email responses, as well as an improved customer experience.

Email Template - Sample

Customize Email Subject, Sender, Reply-to
In addition to the email body content, this feature provides you with the ability to customize other specific items including your email subject and senders. This feature can be used to provide more helpful content in the email subject and improve readability of emails.

Different Templates for Customers and CSRs
Defining different content for internal and external email templates allows you to personalize the email appropriately for your audience-a CSR versus a Customer. Creating different templates will let you present personalized emails to customers and include extra issue details in a CSR email.

Email Template - Sample

Create HTML and Plain Text Versions
Generate emails in either HTML or Plain Text versions to make content appropriate for any email client.

Preview Email Template
Preview Email Templates in HTML style and formatting as they will appear to customers. The Edit and Preview features will make it easier for you to develop an effective Email Template and allow you to eliminate errors in email template customization.

Variable Inserter
Utilize an intuitive control to pick contextual email template variables. This includes all customer, account, and ticket fields.

Email Template - Sample

To find out more about Email Templates and additional features offered in the Parature ‘10 release, be sure to navigate to the Parature Support Portal and check out the articles located in the “Parature ’10-Latest Release” folder!

Parature for Facebook

Newly Available Parature for Facebook Helps Companies Increase “Face-Time” while Keeping Support and New Customer Acquisition Costs Low

Today we announced the general availability of Parature for Facebook, the industry’s first and only customer service application that enables direct customer engagement through Facebook. The Parature for Facebook application, delivered on-demand through Parature’s software-as-a-service model, helps companies, educational institutions and government associations directly engage with their Facebook fans to resolve service issues, answer pre-sales questions and conduct one-to-one customer interactions, all within Facebook and accessible through an easily installed Support Tab on a Facebook page.

Several new and existing Parature customers have signed on as users of Parature for Facebook, but language learning software giant Rosetta Stone Inc. (NYSE: RST) made history today when it became the very first company in the world to unveil support and service through Facebook to its more than 6,000 fans.

“We are excited to be the first company, ever, to provide live support through Facebook. Our Facebook presence is key to our customer acquisition and retention strategies, and we knew we needed a way to foster stronger relationships and resolve any questions or issues encountered by our growing Facebook fan base,” said Jay Topper, senior vice-president of customer success, Rosetta Stone. “Parature for Facebook empowers us to do just that, while fully integrating Facebook as an additional channel into our customer success operations.”

Parature for Facebook is designed to meet the market’s increasing demand to provide rich and meaningful communication, service and support through the world’s most popular social media platform, Facebook. Recently surpassing Google as the most visited website according to Hitwise and announcing it reached its 500 million member milestone, Facebook is a cultural force that is changing how and with whom people communicate. Companies desiring stronger and more profitable customer relationships need to figure out how to use social media to build their brand and drive more business through the emerging channel.

“Social Media has taken over several business functions over the past few years, and most organizations are beginning to understand how Twitter and Communities work for Customer Service,” said Esteban Kolsky of ThinkJar, LLC. “The continued migration from several social networks, as well as the rise of Facebook as the destination for more and more customers has put organizations in a particular uncomfortable situation – most of them are not even sure whether Facebook can or should be treated as a channel for Customer Service, or what to do if they decide to move into it. As a result, most of the implementations we are seeing are escalation recommendations for clients. Research has shown that companies that engage customers in the channels of the customer choice are going to have higher customer satisfaction. It is time for companies to consider how to engage customers across all social channels seamlessly, as they have done for email, chat, and other customer service channels.”

Prior to Parature for Facebook, companies had to manually monitor and respond to individual posts. Now, organizations can take advantage of a fully integrated solution that automates and streamlines the service and support process within Facebook. By offering customers direct access to service teams through Wall posts, private chat sessions or tickets, the application enables one-to-one engagement in a very social forum.

Faster and Lower Cost Issue Resolution with Live Chat, Ticket Submission, Knowledgebase Access and More

Parature for Facebook includes several features all directly accessible through a Facebook page and designed to help customers gain access to sales, service representatives and tools that help rapidly resolve service issues and answer questions while keeping support and new customer acquisition costs low for companies. Parature for Facebook features are accessible through the application’s Facebook Support Tab, which is easily installed on any corporate Facebook page, and include:

Real-time Facebook Wall Monitoring for Quick Customer Response
Via the ‘Parature Page Monitor’ all relevant posts containing chosen keywords will be read from the wall and sent to the Parature Service Desk as a ticket, enabling service representatives to easily monitor and respond to otherwise unmanageable wall posts and comments without ever leaving their Parature software;

Knowledgebase Search Right from Facebook The ‘Find an Answer’ feature enables customers visiting a page to enter a search term and receive the relevant answer directly from the organization’s knowledgebase without ever leaving Facebook. Additionally, the customer can use the ‘Ask a Question’ feature for resolution if their question wasn’t answered via the aforementioned method;

Live Chat Direct from a Fan Page
A customer visiting a page can ‘Chat with an Agent’ to discuss a service problem, issue, or to ask a question directly from Facebook. The representative will respond to the Facebook user via Parature Chat™ for quick issue resolution and a rich one-to-one interaction;

Sharing a Customer Service Experience
Using the ‘Share’ feature, a customer who uses the support functionality within Facebook can share their answers and service experiences on their personal wall; attracting new customers and building positive brand perception for organizations

Parature for Facebook is available as a stand-alone application, or as a component of the complete Parature Customer Service™ software suite. All Parature software support solutions are delivered on-demand in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) environment.

“With today’s release of Parature for Facebook, Parature becomes the first software company, ever, to provide organizations the ability to extend their sales, support and marketing operations to Facebook and provide direct engagement,” said Duke Chung, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Parature. “We are extremely proud to be the first to market and to, once again, demonstrate our commitment to innovation by delivering a cutting-edge product that addresses evolving business issues for our customers.”

Webinar - Facebook for Business: How to Engage and Support Your Customers Directly on Your Facebook Page

In the beginning, Facebook was viewed as a personal-focused networking tool. Now users outnumber the entire population of the United States.

Clearly, Facebook can be a powerful tool for brands, businesses, and non-profits. This webinar will help you maximize your business to get the most out of being on Facebook.

You will also learn how you can add the Parature for Facebook customer support application directly to your Facebook Page to ensure your customers’ experience is optimized.

Taking part in this webinar provides the opportunity to hear about the latest stats and changes on Facebook, as well as discover some unexpected surprises that can happen on your page when you are able to support customers directly from your Facebook Page.

This webinar is essential for anyone who wants to gain a better understanding of what Social CRM on Facebook really means and learn about the new Parature for Facebook product.

Attend this webinar to:

• Discover the benefits of social customer relationship management
• Get business results through connecting and engaging with fans on Facebook
• Learn how you can offer customer support directly from your business page
• See the benefits of monitoring, listening, and engaging with your customers on your Facebook Page

A copy of this presentation is available in our SlideShare profile.

If you missed the webinar, the recorded version will be available here. Share your thoughts and continue the discussion here.

ParaConnect for Salesforce

Does Salesforce keep the most up-to-date information about your Accounts? Do you limit access to your Portal for only ‘active’ Accounts? If you answer YES to both questions, then you’ll be interested in this tip.

In Salesforce, the status of an Account is typically stored in a custom field on the Account record. That status is then reflected in Parature by an SLA or custom field. When an Account becomes inactive or canceled, the Salesforce record is updated. By default, ParaConnect for Salesforce only updates the Parature Account and Customer records if the corresponding Salesforce record was updated since the last sync. So how can translate the status change to the Customer records in Parature? The answer comes in the form of Salesforce Triggers.

The trigger for this scenario is will execute when a Salesfoce Account record is saved. It will proceed to “update” all Customer records that are associated to the Account record that was modified without actually making any changes to the Customer records.

To create this trigger, you must be logged into your Salesforce Account as an Admin. Go to the Account Triggers page located under Setup, and hit New.

Replace any existing code with the following:

trigger UpdateContact on Account (after insert, after update)
{
   for (Account account : Trigger.new)
   {
      List<Contact> contacts = new List</Contacts>();
      contacts = [SELECT Id FROM Contact WHERE AccountId = :account.ID];

      for(Contact c: contacts)
      {
         update contacts;
      }
   }
}

Make sure the Is Active checkbox selected and hit Save.

Now whenever a Saleforce Account record is saved, all associated Customer records will be “updated” without any changes. The next time your Parature/Salesforce integration is set to run, the Account and all associated Customers will be synced.

To create a Portal Tab, you must be logged in as an Admin. Go to the Portal Tabs page located under the Setup tab. Hit New Portal Tab, and fill out the form.

Setting up a new Portal tab

You should now see an extra tab appear on your Portal.

Setting up a new Portal tab

Improving Search Techniques on Your Knowledgebase

Having difficulty finding what you want in the Parature Knowledgebase? The following tips are meant to provide enhanced techniques to improve search results. Also provided, are a few ideas on how to leverage your own knowledgebase to improve the satisfaction of your end users.

Searching the Parature Knowledgebase™

Search keywords rather than entire phrases. Let’s say you are looking for a video tutorial on how to submit a ticket. Your first thought may be to search “video tutorial how to submit a ticket” as your phrase, but this may not render the desired results because there are so many combined words that the search engine is looking for. Begin with something simpler like “submit a ticket” or “video submit ticket”. This kind of search may return more than one result, but it should be easier to find the article you are looking for.

Always sign into the portal before you search. When you are signed into the portal, your Service Level Agreement is recognized by the Parature system, which allows you more knowledgebase articles than the default screen. If you are searching the knowledgebase on the portal without being signed in, a search may render fewer results.

Utilize Parature Advanced Search. Advanced search allows you to customize your search results, finding specific phrases or words. If you happen to know the ID of the article you are looking for, you can type it in here as well.

Be careful with abbreviations. Often, terms like “Knowledgebase” and “Service Level Agreement” are abbreviated to “KB” and “SLA.” When you are performing a search, always spell out the entire term first, as the search may not catch the abbreviations if there are none in the article.

Leveraging your Knowledgebase for Customer Search

Use tag words. Feel free to add tag words at the end of your knowledgebase articles. Adding tag words will allow for a search to grab any of the tag words you choose, which will help in pulling more articles. You could specify these by adding a line at the end of your article titled “Tag:”, and then adding your tag words after the colon.

Get specific with your article questions. Try not to detail your questions too much. Making the question long and complicated will make it more difficult for your customer to find it. Article Question construction is important because customers who cannot find their answer are more likely to give up. By optimizing your knowledgebase questions to mirror the experience of your customers, you can increase knowledgebase satisfaction.

Don’t abbreviate or confuse with complicated terminology. Always spell out your terms. Use terms as your customers know and understand them, not as inter-office jargon. It makes the experience of looking for an article that much easier.

Please share your best practices thoughts and tips with our Parature community.

Knowledge for Your Knowledgebase

Often times, companies fall short of having the appropriate resources for managing their Knowledgebase, such as a Technical Writer or Administrator. Sometimes knowledgebases are even managed by more than one individual. With this mix of resources, it can frequently be difficult to collaborate and maintain a clean and informational knowledgebase. These obstacles shouldn’t deter you from striving for a robust knowledgebase though. Implementing specific practices and procedures can help improve your knowledgebase and maintain its prime condition.

Let’s start with the basics-what are the best steps in reviewing a knowledgebase article and its location? Begin by considering folder structure and layout. What questions do your users ask the most? What items are they most likely to look for when navigating to the knowledgebase? Organize your folders based on the needs of your end user, whether this is structuring them for beginners to experts or starter information to advanced techniques. Start with analyzing how your customers will read the knowledgebase; this will be your most helpful tool in folder layout.

Once you are ready to review an article, you will need to read over it more than one time. Begin by checking to make sure that your article is in the proper folder and doing a grammar and spelling assessment. Then, review your content-does your content answer the question in its entirety? Is your content user-friendly? Does the terminology make sense to your customers? Be careful not to use “office jargon” in your articles, as it may confuse your customers. Lastly, make sure your terms are consistent, meaning that you are not using different terms to refer to the same thing.

Aside from these best practices, the following tips may be helpful in maintaining your knowledgebase:

• Take note of articles that receive the most subscriptions. You should be tracking the amount of subscriptions that each of your articles receives. These articles should be edited to be as close to perfect as you can get them.
• Set expirations on your KB articles. If you open an article, scroll down, and check the “Advanced Options” check box, you will see that you can set an expiration date. If you have a product that changes often and rapidly, you may want to set an expiration date for every three months. If your product changes from time to time but there are often updates, you may want to set an expiration date for every six months. The amount of time you wish to set expiration dates on is really based on the needs of your customers and the changes within your product.
• Pay attention to the amount of views or ratings an article receives. If an article is continuously receiving negative feedback, you should consider updating and cleaning it. Ratings are important to your knowledgebase because without improvement, customers are more likely to submit tickets instead of looking for their answer. Build a knowledgebase that your customers trust. You should also track the amount of views each article collects. Articles that receive the highest amount of views should be reviewed often; they should be in prime condition.
• Review support tickets for new knowledgebase content. By reviewing tickets that are submitted to your support team daily, you may be able to find valuable knowledge to add to your knowledgebase. Support tickets track the issues your customers are having and give you the chance to document the solutions to their issues.
• Consider screenshots in areas where they would be helpful. While screenshots are not necessary for every article, customers often prefer visual learning. Adding screenshots will help them further understand the concept of the article.

Please share your best practices thoughts and tips with our Parature community.

Parature Day with "I Wear Your Shirt"

This blog was originally posted by “I Wear Your Shirt” Thanks to our friends Jason and Evan! Great videos guys!

Good customer service is the best marketing you can do. Parature offers software for customer service including customer support help desk software, knowledge base, case management, and trouble ticket helpdesk software. So what does that mean?

Parature gives your company the ability to reduce the cost of supporting your customers through software and support. Their on-demand software is custom tailored to your website and your customers will never know the difference. Join companies and organizations like Citrix, Rosetta Stone, IGN.com, Colorado State and many more that use Parature’s software.

You can also follow @Parature on Twitter,  like Parature on Facebook,  and see how Parature integrates with Facebook. Have a great Sunday everyone!

Photos | View All Video Clip | Watch on YouTube | View All Live Video | Watch on UStream | View All

Photos | View All Video Clip | Watch on YouTube | View All Live Video | Watch on UStream | View All

ParaFest Panel: Support as a Differentiator - Bringing Customers to the Forefront

This morning ParaFest ‘10 started off with a strong line-up of customer panelists weighing in on everything from how to best integrate Chat into your support mix to establishing a “customer happiness index.”

Panelists Tammy Woodruff (Coremetrics, and one of this year’s Legend Maker award winners), Scott Montgomery (e-MDs), Doug Young, (finalsite), Hugh Ujhazy (Hitachi Data System) and Jon Landau (Huddle.net) offered plenty of practical advice and predictions.

As far as making customer support a competitive differentiator, Doug Young probably said it best: “In our business there are lots of lower-priced options, but our support is a big selling point and justifies our price point. For us, customer support is not a cost, but a real part of the product.”

The session wrapped up with each panelist asked to give just one parting piece of advice for fellow Paraturians. Some good stuff we’ll share in a future post.