SupportSpace Corporate Blog

Do Not Disturb! Working Hard at SupportSpace!!

Imagine your frustration. You are in the middle of an intense support session, after many hours of being online and serving customer after customer, and suddenly, the door opens and in flood a load of distractions!! What do you do?

Well, we have the solution to pulling your hair out!! Download Door_hanger.pdf to find a little surprise and you’ll also get to do a little bit of “Arts and Crafts” too! You will see a door hanger indicating whether you wish to be disturbed or not, for you to hang on the outside of your door.

One side makes it clear that you are happy to be interrupted – and would even like your room cleaned if you’re lucky enough to not have to clean on your own!!! The other asking not to be disturbed as you are helping another happy customer!! Simply cut them out and stick them together back to back and hey presto! Another great idea from SupportSpace.

If you are one of our tech savvy readers and wish to join our wonderful expert community, you can start the process by clicking here.

Easy ways to go green with your computer-Part 2

Save Paper when Printing

When it comes to the environment, one of the first places most offices can improve is the giant pile of discarded paper by the network printer. Aside from obvious things you can do on your own—like printing duplex, printing to PDF, previewing before printing, and not printing hundreds of copies of an email forward to plaster around the office—there are a few other tools you can use to minimize wasting paper and ink when printing.

When you're not printing from the browser, Windows users can save tons on ink and paper with GreenPrint, a freeware application that automatically identifies and removes unnecessary pages or space from your printouts before they head to the printer.

If you're regularly sending documents back and forth to other people or businesses, you can also save a few trees and save a little time in the process with a couple of office hacks. For example, rather than going through the age-old print, sign, and fax dance handed down through the generations by our forefathers, try creating a scanned signature and then sending scanned PDFs rather than faxes as detailed on LifeHacker . It's quicker and it saves on resources and costs.

At SupportSpace, we have the experts on hand to help with any printer problems, including: installation, inkjet, laser, all-in-one, and photo printers to name but a few. You are also invited to utilize our featured service on New Printer Set-Up and Printer Troubleshooting.

7 ways to manage your online reputation

Managing what's said about you and your company online (especially what a Google search says about you) is becoming increasingly important in the business world. But online reputation management services are expensive; one provider estimates $15,000 to $100,000 for a six-12 month campaign.

So what's the little guy supposed to do?

If you're an average Joe or a company with limited resources, there are techniques you can apply to manage and monitor your online reputation without spending thousands of dollars.

In fact, most of these methods are free.

1. Use free online tools. Experts recommend a variety of free online tools and information sites such as the Google WebMaster Central Blog, BlogPatrol and Technorati that can be used to gauge what people are saying about you or who is reading your content.

2. Regularly Google your name or the name of your company and see what appears.

3. Set up a Google Alert to be notified when you or your organization has been mentioned in a blog, by the media or in an online forum.

4. Create a profile of your interests and expertise using social bookmarking tools and news aggregators such as del.icio.us and Newsvine. Contribute to online forums, write an article for a user-generated knowledge base such as Squidoo or create an Amazon.com product review to demonstrate that you're somewhat of an authority on a particular topic. Create a free blog on Blogger. Once you've got them launched, cross-link them to one another.

5. Tap into social media sites such as YouTube, Facebook and MySpace to create or expand positive online content about you or your organization.

6. Buy paid links for your online content. If you're an individual, you can pay to have keywords linked to your MySpace or LinkedIn page to help improve your ranking on search results when someone launches a search of your name or a topic you're closely associated with.

7. Be aware of the online content you've created or that has been created about you. Do you really want a search on your name to bring up some distant memory of your graduation party for the world to see? If you wouldn't paste it onto a highway billboard, don't post it on your Facebook page -- and don't let your friends do it either.

Firefox Support and Updated Tools at SupportSpace

        SupportSpace website now supports Firefox and includes updated ways to choose the right expert for you based on feedback and customer testimonials.

Feedback

We have improved the Feedback pages meaning that you can now share your opinions with others and use other people’s experiences to help choose the right expert for you. Feedback is a major part of our platform and we have now made it even easier for you to contribute your thoughts and so help us make improvements. There are now 4 simple questions for you to rate your expert on a scale of 1–5 in the areas of knowledge, efficiency, communication and overall help. We have also added the all important question: Would you recommend this expert? With all these improvements, we hope the answer is yes!

Expert Profile Page

There is now even more information about the expert available on their profile pages. You can see all the service history plus comments and testimonials giving you better tools when choosing the right expert for you. You can bookmark your preferred expert ensuring you spread the word and there is a sharing button on the homepage for you to recommend your expert to friends and family.

Using Our Tools

For those of you who have visited us in the past, you may have had some problems with pop-up blocks. Therefore, we have been working really hard to overcome this situation and have eliminated all pop-ups meaning that chatting with the expert is now instantaneous, easy, and requires no installation. If you agree with your expert that you need to use one of our tools, you will be asked to download software, a new window will open and the expert can then take control of the support session.

Firefox

And now to finish on a really high note! Following several customer requests, we now support Firefox!! Thank you all for your fantastic feedback and please keep those comments coming – it just means that SupportSpace keeps getting better.

How to Put Music on Your MP3 Player

By SupportSpace Expert Ryan Bell

When setting up your MP3 Player to your computer in order to download music, it is recommended in the instructions to insert the MP3 Players' CD and run it, following the directions.  However in most cases the simplest way to place music on your MP3 Player is to:

Step 1 - Hook it up to the computer via a USB Cord.

Step 2 - Click on "My Computer"(for windows XP) or "Computer"(for vista).

Step 3 - Click on the MP3 Players' drive.  This will open the folder for the MP3 Player.

Step 4 - Simply go into your music folder on your computer and drag and drop your music

              into your MP3 Players' folder.

Step 5 - When you're ready to listen to it, click the “Safely Remove Hardware” button on   the right side of your screen by the clock and when it says it's ready, unplug the MP3 Player and plug in the head phones turn it on and listen away.

Ryan~RepairGuy~ is a four and a half star rated SupportSpace expert. You can contact him for support on the above issue, for the following SupportSpace Featured Services: MP3 Player Set-up, Software Installation and removal, PC Diagnostics and many more.

Respond to end-user bloopers with professionalism

Work retail PC repair and you’ll see some pretty wacky end-user “fixes”.

        So says Bill Detwiller, Head Technology Editor at TechRepublic

I have just been reading his eye-opening article all about how to give the best service possible, even when faced with some pretty original customer solutions to their technical problems. As Bill says, “Successfully handling end-user bloopers requires technical know-how, finesse, and above all professionalism.” Click on the link to the article to read his top 10 tips on how you can turn your customers’ mistakes into positive solutions and to ensure that they keep coming back to you.

Here at SupportSpace, we support this theory and have added a link here to a recent blog post all about how we enjoy giving service with a smile. We are committed to being the best at online tech support and invite you to register for free so that you too can experience the caring and professional help from the SupportSpace expert community.