SupportSpace Corporate Blog

$15 Coupon for Your Friends and Family

Due to the amazing feedback you have given us, we are happy to continue this fantastic discount offer for your friends and family! As of March 24^th, friends invited by customers or experts will receive a $15 coupon to use on SupportSpace for the session of their choice.

The coupon is available for the customers’ selection under the “Available Coupons” field in the payment page. You can find more details on how to use coupons in our blog post here.

We look forward to meeting your friends at SupportSpace where they too will enjoy the caring and professional attention of our tech experts.

SupportSpace wins Judges Choice Award at Under the Radar

Just thought we’d give you a quick update following on from our previous post about the Under the Radar conference.

SupportSpace won the Judges Choice award in the “Happy Customer” category, prompting company CEO, Yair Grindlinger, to say, “We are excited and honored to receive this award and look forward to continuing success”.

To see the video footage taken by Vator.tv of Yair's presentation look below and to post your vote click here.

SupportSpace excel at the Under the Radar Conference 2008

By Yair Grindlinger, SupportSpace Co-Founder and CEO

I presented this week at Under the Radar.  It was the second time I presented at this event (first time I presented Port Authority Technology - it was called Vidius at the time).  I like UTR because it’s in the Bay Area and it’s inexpensive to participate.  This lets many Start Up’s participate, and lets the organizers select the companies that they find most interesting (thanks Shay :-) ).  They set up the event in sections, so several companies present in each category.  I think this gives the audience a really good perspective.  We were part of a category called Happy Customers (Jessica Dolcourt called it “The customer is always right” in her post on Webware - I think it’s a great name).   It’s a really exciting trend to have a new category focused on making customers happy without treating customer support as an afterthought.  We are all customers and in way too many cases, I think we all feel we should be getting much better service.  Is that really too much to ask?

The companies that presented in our section have each tried to address and improve different parts of the service and support process.

FeedbackFX is helping companies with research surveys by organizing customer feedback, and giving people better tools to express their opinion.

GetSatisfaction has built a really beautiful destination site for customers to review, critique and praise vendors.   They let vendors respond and build virtual relationships with their customer base. Their site is kind of a retro 30’s look, reminiscent of the good old local store that had personal relationships with its customers.

HiveLive lets companies build Facebook style community sites and then communicate and build relationships with customers (and also lets their customers communicate with each other).

I think these are exceptionally cool companies, because they really help vendors and retailers improve their “listening skills”.  Even without great listening skills, most vendors, SaaS companies, retailers, telecoms and other technology companies know that people are really unhappy with the current state of tech support. 

And that’s where we come in.

SupportSpace receives accreditation at BBB

We are delighted to announce that SupportSpace has been honored with accreditation at BBB, the Better Business Bureau.

Tom LeNoble, SupportSpace Chief Support Officer, has also been appointed to the Board of the Better Business Bureau as of March 19^th, specifically, the Chapter serving the San Francisco Bay Area and Northern California. Tom served on the San Mateo Better Business Board in the past.

According to Sherrill Paul, President of BBB “Accreditation is an honor – and not every company is eligible. Businesses that meet our high standards are invited to join BBB. Businesses meeting BBB standards are presented to local Boards of Directors (or designees) for review and acceptance as a BBB Accredited Business”. To read more about the BBB Accreditation Standards, click here.

BBB credits itself as being “An ethical marketplace where buyers and sellers can trust each other”, and sees trust as a function of two primary factors – integrity and performance. Integrity includes respect, ethics and intent. Performance speaks to a business’s track record of delivering results in accordance with BBB standards and/or addressing customer concerns in a timely, satisfactory manner.

SupportSpace is a unique online service dedicated to providing consumers and small businesses with a new standard of tech support and in doing so, provides a level of choice, quality and transparency unmatched in the industry today. SupportSpace fits into the BBB strategy by ensuring that all experts are certified and they are only allowed to become part of the SupportSpace expert community once they pass a rigorous serviceability test, system training program, phone interview and background check.

The experts are empowered to deliver the best support experience with workbench applications that include customer relationship management and communication tools, collaboration, call transfer, desktop sharing, diagnostic tools and additional applications.

SupportSpace – Work full time or part time and maximize your potential

h mBy Don Brown, SupportSpace expert.

First, welcome and congrats on getting started! Be sure to ask for help if needed as this is great community and everyone is helpful.

To give a general answer about income potential, I'll repeat some of what has been mentioned before: A lot really depends on how dedicated and creative you are in terms of marketing yourself and the SupportSpace concept.

Looking at other expert case numbers you can see that some experts get terrific traffic and probably many repeat customers. I guarantee that they are not just "passively" waiting for customers to connect. They are proactively seeking new business. It’s hard to know if anyone is doing this as true FULL TIME or not. I suspect most do it on the side for the experience and / or for supplemental income.

Marketing yourself takes all shapes and forms and getting started can be quite easy.... You might be very surprised how well social networking can work for you. Be sure to tell ALL of your family and ALL of your friends about SupportSpace. Repeat the SupportSpace brand name to them. Make sure they get the concept and show your enthusiasm. Go to your local print shop and have some business cards created with YOUR SupportSpace URL.

So when you are at your next dinner party, etc. - now you've got something cool to talk about. Be sure to reinforce the "brand" of SupportSpace. Don't just say that you've got this "online support thing" going on... talk specifically about SupportSpace and how it works. In my experience, there is almost always immediate interest. Some will be interested enough to ask for more information (hand out those cards!) and SOME of those will become your first "direct marketing" customers! Ask about specific issues they may have had recently. How did it affect them? Was it resolved? What did they do to resolve it? How long did it take? What did it cost? Now let them know how SupportSpace can work for them. Tell them how you could have solved it online for them. Discuss your service guarantee, and your ability to consult with other experts. Make sure you discuss the widget features available to experts and how they can help you resolve issues. Discuss the overall VALUE of what that SupportSpace service would be for them. Let them know what your current rate is. I think this does a couple things:

1) It lets people know that you are part of something new, part of something potentially very big. It also helps people better understand how SupportSpace works.

2) The majority of your potential customers will also feel some excitement at being part of something new and interesting. They WANT better support and they truly need people like you to better solve problems and they will want to be a part of this.

Important: Welcome every customer to the SupportSpace experience and thank EVERY customer as you finish up your sessions. Thank them for choosing SupportSpace and remind them to tell everyone that THEY know about SupportSpace. Have them bookmark your page. Your 1st level "direct marketing" customers will soon expand into an "indirect" 2nd level and so on. Now you have some real momentum going and your customer list will build. Best part? Your "cost" was some biz cards and some interesting conversation you probably wanted to have any way! Of course, you can then expand your marketing with free and paid ads, a web site, promotions at school or work, flyers at local business parks (with permission of course), join (and speak or present at) local small business events and chamber of commerce, and so on.

Back to your initial question: I think that if you are effective with your social marketing campaign(s), you will be pretty pleased at the income you can generate. Personally, I still own and operate a conventional consulting company but have the occasional slow day or a string of slow days... These are the times I like to put in as much SupportSpace time as possible. I also use this time to do general office work, marketing work, invoicing, emails, etc. in between support sessions.

Of course nothing comes free, and your real cost is your TIME. You will spend time at your desk waiting for, and helping customers. (You should only sign on when you truly can commit to taking customer calls of course) Be prepared to stay at or near your computer. Take breaks of course (important) but treat the time seriously.

Also realize that most customers come to you only if / when they have an issue. Be patient. If you have done your job letting them know what SupportSpace is about and that you will be there for them, they will contact you when you are most needed. You want your SupportSpace page to be the first thing they think of when they have a question. As an alternative, try promoting yourself as a distance instructor! You can give remote lessons on an application, file management, basic tutorials and the like. You might be able to win over some first time customers this way and they will return to you when they have a real problem.

By the way and in case you're wondering - I need to take my own advice as well! For many years if someone asked what I was up to, I would pretty much gloss over it - feeling I could not specifically relate what I do in my consulting to a non-technical group. This is different. I (we all) need to remember that the SupportSpace concept of support is something that just about everyone can relate to! So talk it up! Get people excited!

Best of luck!
Don

Welcome to another upgrade at SupportSpace

On February 25^th SupportSpace introduced its official and public version, meaning that SupportSpace is no longer in its beta period. This version introduced the following changes:

1)    Site was accredited with BBB certification (for a seperate post about this click here)

2)    New Affiliate program

3)    New and improved Payment pages

Customers with Complementary First Session Free coupon

Customers registering to SupportSpace during its beta phase or through its affiliates have a Complementary First Session Free coupon. All SupportSpace Complementary First Session Free coupons can be used once you are connected to an expert. Once you have described your issue to the expert, the expert will send you a Job Offer that includes the scope of work. Once you agree, your coupon page will be available for selection. Use the “Click to Redeem now” button to use the coupon and continue the session with your expert.

Customers with discount coupons

Customers registering to SupportSpace through its affiliates may collect discount coupons.

To use these coupons, connect to your expert. Once you have described your issue to the expert, the expert will send you a Job Offer that includes the scope of work and the costs involved. Once you agree, the Billing Details window will open. If you have a discount or complementary coupon, it will be available for selection under the “available coupons” field.

Session Receipt

Once you have chosen to pay or use your discount coupon, another window will open with your receipt and a breakdown of exactly what you have agreed with the expert (session plan, date of purchase etc.). This information is also emailed to the address you entered upon registration to SupportSpace.

This receipt also gives you the option to navigate to the FAQs page and to contact us if the need be.

We feel sure that this will make the whole payment process a lot easier to use in a fraction of the time.

We will be bringing you news of more updates as they happen so don’t forget to bookmark this blog!

Days of the call center are numbered as SupportSpace set a new standard in Tech Support

Ever wondered just how SupportSpace was born? Well, one night before a particularly important business meeting in New York City, Yair Grindlinger and Doron Elgressy were incredibly frustrated. “A wireless link we were trying to establish between two computers in different hotel rooms failed and Yair’s entire email system crashed,” they explain. “We had backups, but could not figure out how to convert the file format to work with Outlook.”

So, as most of us have at one time or another, they searched online for a tech support company that could help. After more than an hour searching, and after a useless consult from a local tech service, they ended up totally frustrated -- to say the least. These two guys then spent the rest of the night, researching the problem and eventually, they came up with a solution of their own - SupportSpace.

Most of us when we have a technical problem with either our home or work computer, want to get it fixed right away. We don’t want to be put on hold for thirty minutes or be passed around from agent to agent and told “your call is very important to us,” and then wait for an eternity to eventually speak to someone who may or may not be able to help.

Well, now you can get help instantly through a unique online tech support service called SupportSpace, a company started by Grindlinger and Elgressy in the aftermath of their ordeal. “When we started the company, we had one very simple, but not easy-to-achieve objective. We wanted to raise the bar and deliver a better and different kind of tech support,” says Grindlinger. “I like to think we’ve done it.”

“What makes SupportSpace special is that we offer the consumer something that has been entirely missing in the world of tech support – we give customers immediate access to certified experts who solve problems immediately. And, we created an easy-to-use online customer experience that is far superior to any other tech support alternative,” says Elgressy.

You can get immediate live help 24/7 by logging onto www.supportspace.com. On the home page, you simply type a little bit of information about your problem into the search bar and a list of qualified experts will pop up. You can immediately see if experts are online (offline or busy) and then simply scroll through the names, read about their areas of expertise, see feedback from other customers, and then click “Connect Now” to start a session. It’s that simple. No waiting on hold. No recorded messages. No language issues.

Experts also go through a background check to prove they are trustworthy. “We’re so confident in the abilities of our experts, we offer a money back guarantee on all services,” says Grindlinger.

Want to test the service out? The next time you have a technical problem, log on to www.supportspace.com and find the expert who is right for you.

“The days of the call center are numbered. We are setting a new standard for tech support,” says Grindlinger.