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What is the number one way of aquiring customers for most businesses – whether you're a cafe, a dentist or a software company?
The big driver is word of mouth. It can make or break the success of many different kinds of organizations. Recently I heard a story that illustrates one way you can tell if you're on the right track.
A co-worker of mine, Kelley Smith, was competing in the Santa Barbara Triathlon last weekend. She was doing the challenging and highly competitive long course last Saturday (1m swim, 34m bike, 10m run) wearing her Citrix Online cycling jersey. She was almost 1/2 way through the bike portion heading up a steep canyon road when a fellow racer caught up to her and said, "Hey, you work for Citrix Online? I LOVE your products!" He then slowed down to keep pace with her so he could tell her a story about a recent situation where he was not going to be able to make a meeting on time and decided to use GoToMeeting instead. He went on to say he was going to start using GoToMeeting more since it was so convenient. Then presumably he sped back up and continued the race.
This is a great product/customer experience test which I'll call the Tri Test: Would someone slow down mid-race to tell you about their experience with your business?
In this case, the two main drivers for his enthusiasm were the following:
1. The product was convenient and easy to use – it worked as it was supposed to.
2. The product was a "life-saver" – it solved a real problem for him.
Having analyzed a lot of customer data, I can tell you that these are consistent drivers of word of mouth across different products and industries. This is why these kind of anecdotes are so revealing. When I bring up Citrix in conversations, I listen carefully to the reactions. If they have heard of one of our products and use words like "easy" and tell "life-saver" stories, I know we're on the right track. Conversely, if they haven't heard anything or mention some other solution, that is equally revealing.
A formal way of measuring this phenomenon is NPS or net promoter score. This is a survey where you ask your customers how likely they are to recommend your products and you subtract the detractors (very low scores) from the promotors (high scores) to measure how you are doing. Research shows that companies with higher scores tend to do better.
The nice thing about the "Tri Test" is that you could use it hypothetically to think about a potential market. For instance, if you're thinking about a new product, can you imagine someone slowing down to rave about their experience with it? If not everyone, is there a particular market segment or target that would be more likely to find it "convenient" and "life-saving" enough they would stop mid-race to tell you about it?
Kelley pointed out that triathaletes themselves represent a valuable market. Statisticly there are a high percentage of business professionals that participate in the sport with a mean income of $126,000/year. Many of these athletes train hours upon hours each week and travel long distances for races, thus flexibility within their work environment and the need for tools to support this lifestyle is huge.
Hence, a web conferencing tool like GoToMeeting is particularly good for the Tri Test. If your product was targeted to a different type of person, you could replace the Tri with another sport or activity that person would be passionate about. The goal is the same: to really think about who would be a passionate advocate for your product. Finding those people and making it easy for them to use and really benefit from your service is the key to growth.
Photo by jimmyharris
So what do you do if you are called to fix someone's computer and you just KNOW that this person is going to need your help later?
GoToAssist Express just added the capability to easily set up unattended support while at a customer's computer.
For instance, say you make a site visit to a customer to help install a program, and you don't quite finish. You'd love to be able to log in and finish up remotely later. Now you can. Just add their computer to your account and you can finish at your leisure at a time convenient for you and your customer. This has been the #1 request from GoToAssist Express customers, so I guess it's a common scenario!
By way of background, GoToAssist Express includes unlimited live remote support (tell your customer to enter a remote support ID and then take over the computer on the spot) as well as the ability to add and connect to an unlimited number of "unattended" computers, that is, computers you add to your account so you can log in and work on them when your customers are not using them.
This July 09 release has a number of other cool and useful enhancements such being able to reboot and reconnect to a Windows computer from a Mac. Also, if you're on a Mac, you can request diagnostic information from a Mac or Windows computer.
For all the details, check out the release notes on the GoToAssist blog.
photo by marstheinfomage.
We recently challenged people to create the next GoToMeeting commercial. We received a total of 44 entries for the contest and narrowed them down to the five best. The winner will receive $30,000.
A Citrix Online group had a great time picking the top 5 entries from the many clever funny submissions received, and are now opening it up to you. Check out www.gotomeetingtv.com to view the 5 top entries and vote for your favorite. (You have to register to vote.)
Cast a 5-star vote for your favorite of the five semifinalists. The video that receives the most votes will be the winner. The last day to vote is July 31, 2009 - so get your vote in today!
GoToMyPC is adding support for Mac OS X!
I've been been anxiously waiting for "GoToMyMac" since I converted to Macs, and recently Citrix Online made one of my "Mac-user wishes" come true, "GoToMyMac" err GoToMyPC for Mac beta was privately rolled out to some existing customers, aka beta testers.
The official GA date is not available yet, however the development team keeps cranking out awesome features, nearly matching the ones already available on the PC today. In the meantime allow me to share a brief demo video showcasing the new Mac support feature.
best,
Gus
twitter.com/guspinto
There are many security issues with remote workers. One in ten laptops is stolen. USB flash drives or memory sticks can hold large amounts of sensitive data and are easily lost, misplaced or stolen. One estimate was that 1,985 USB drives are stolen from the average major corporation every year. Home computers are unsecured and out of your control. Public wi-fi can be hacked. People can email themselves documents that can be misdirected.
However, the reality is remote work is only going to continue to grow. From a security perspective, perhaps it would be easier if you could keep everyone behind locked and secured doors working offline, but the world of work is going mobile whether we like it or not. People travel. They use iphones and blackberries. They work on their home computers. They use public wi-fi networks. They carry laptops and flash drives. Technology and the internet is enabling increased work mobility. People want that work flexibility. And business benefits incredibly from the increased productivity, not to mention employee retention and the other benefits of enabling remote work.
How do you reconcile the two?
You can look at the security issues above and decide not to allow people to work remotely at all. The problem is it's like trying to reverse the tide. People will do it anyway. Consider the case of the government worker who copied the entire veteran's database on their laptop, which was then stolen.
Or, you could look at the security issues and determine the most prudent course is to provide every tool you can to enable remote workers to do it safely. GoToMyPC is one such tool. GoToMyPC performance and reliability is such that it's easy for people to work on documents and programs directly on their office computer – from home or while traveling. Traveling users know that they can get to a file back on their computer if they need it, so are far less likely to carry everything with them. That means workers more often leave data on a secured office computer and view it remotely and only when needed. This greatly reduces the risk that employees will carry that data out of the office where it could be lost or stolen.
GoToMyPC doesn't make the home computer or laptop part of the Corporate network. You are just using any Internet connection as a portal back to view the secured and protected office PC. That means you don't need to worry about the home computer and home security just to enable occasional after-hours remote work from home.
Because all connections are encrypted end-to-end, you can safely use public wi-fi networks, and GoToMyPC will encrypt everything you do. It's more secure to use GoToMyPC to work remotely on an office PC from a relatively blank laptop at an airport, than to be working directly from that laptop using local documents and public wi-fi.
If you think about it, GoToMyPC is no riskier than giving workers a key to the office. They can't do anything with GoToMyPC they can't do by walking into the office every day and turning on their computer. In fact, in some ways it is a lesser exposure since their access is restricted to their computer only. (You can't steal office supplies if you're working remotely.)
GoToMyPC has many built-in security features that greatly reduce the risk of connecting to a computer remotely. As with most things, the biggest risk is password exposure. Unlike some other products, GoToMyPC requires two passwords with strong requirements, an account password and a computer access code that resides on the computer and is never transmitted or stored on GoToMyPC servers. These can be used in conjunction with a separate windows password so there are many levels of safeguards. Limited log-in attempts also offer protection, and it's easy to change passwords at any time. You can also choose (or require) people to use a new password for every log in with the one-time password feature. The Corporate version can also integrate with RSA SecurID.
Other security features include automatic disconnection after inactivity, screen blanking and keyboard and mouse lockout protection, HIPAA and GLBA compliance, VeriSign, SSL, 128-bit AES encryption, etc.
GoToMyPC Pro and GoToMyPC Corporate let you administer access for your entire company. You can add, remove and manage users, even report on exactly when they were working. Best of all, it's incredibly simple to roll out and administer so it won't tap your IT resources – and you can save money by not supplying and maintaining as many laptops to remote workers.
The next time an employee asks if they can use GoToMyPC, consider – do you want a more productive employee safely connecting to their office computer from home or while traveling? Or do you want them copying your customer database or product roadmap to a flash drive and carrying it around in their pocket?
The idea of allowing people to connect in to your office from anywhere may seem risky, but not allowing it may actually prove riskier.
For additional IT questions about GoToMyPC, call 888-646-0016.
Inside tip from Citrix Online: Check out www.goview.com. This is an easy way to record, edit and share content, available as a free limited beta. (If you register and it's full, just wait until they allow more people in.) We're finding tons of ways to use it.
First, How It Works:
- Click "record" and it starts recording audio and everything on your screen.
- Click "stop" and it provides a URL you can use to share your recording.
- If desired, you can edit your recording, add title slides, or export it.
10 Cool Ways to Use it:
1. Training: Create short training videos. It's so simple, anyone can create a fast recorded training explaining how to do something on your computer and send it out to customers, co-workers or customize for an individual customer.
2. Marketing Demos: This is an easy way to create demos highlighting product functionality for use on web sites or wherever.
3. Sales: Answer prospect questions. If you have frequent questions that require detailed explanation - show, don't just tell. Record the answer on your screen and send the link to your prospect.
4. Customer Service: Answer questions faster. Record snippets answering frequent questions and send those out to people. If you can't reach someone, send them a video answer.
5. QA, Catch Bugs: Use it to record funky or malfunctioning behavior and report it.
6. Collaboration: An employee recently sent me a screen recording of proposed survey functionality so I could approve it. This is great. You can show how something might work on your computer and send out a link to get other people's feedback.
7. Record a presentation: Record and talk through your presentation then share it.
8. Side-by-Side Comparisons: I recently recorded a comparison of myself using GoToMyPC to work remotely vs. a competitor and shared it in an internal meeting. It helped drive home my point which was how fast and easy GoToMyPC is for after-hours remote work.
9. IT, Help Desk and Support: Tired of answering the same questions? Record the on-screen steps to take and refer people to those.
10. Usability: You could record someone interacting with your web site or product and then share that with others.
What have I missed? I'd love to hear how other people are using GoView.
Citrix online group released a beta version of new product called GoView this week.
Here is my first look at this product. I would like to share a short demo recording I created using GoView and some tips and tricks I learned from this first try.
Install:
I signed up at goview.com web site
I got it up and running with a few clicks and under a minute. Time may vary depending on your network and compute speed.
Record my first screen cast:
I didn't have to read any document and I was able to create my first test screen cast without any trouble. And the performance is good. Please see my test recording.
Things I like and things that differentiate this product:
- Simplicity. I've used other similar products. This product doesn't have all the bells and whistles. But it is definitely the simplest and easiest one to use I've seen.
- Video is uploaded while I am recording. I don't have to perform an additional upload step.
- Ability to protect shared video with a password.
- Easy and intuitive editing tool to cut out the unwanted portion. The tool also allows a slide show to be inserted which is useful for transition into another sequence.
- Ability to download your recordings as MPEG-4 files.
Things I would like to see added:
- Ability to embed views in my blog
- Ability to zoom in and out of an area while recording.
I was told that the GoView product team has these features on their list for future development consideration already.
Additional demo videos that may be helpful:
These videos include audios.
Tips and Tricks:
- If you use dual monitors, you may want to move your desktop icons and windows task bar to your secondary monitor, so that your primary monitor has a clean background for recording.
- You can pause recording when you need to prepare the screen for the next sequence and resume when you are ready.
Your turn:
GoView is free during the beta testing. Give it a try yourself at http://goview.com
Send your feedback via the feedback link on help page. I got my response back in an hour. The team is listening.
I'd love to hear your experience and see your own cool demos.
Ray (Ruiguo) Yang
Check out my other blogs
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Citrix Online is going to host a series of three training webinars on GoToAssist Express, register to attend one of the following:
Tuesday, July 15 at 11 AM PDT
Click here to register
Wednesday, July 23 at 4 PM PDT
Click here to register
Thursday, July 31 at 9 AM PDT
Click here to register
During each of these Webinars, they will hold a drawing for a pocket camcorder, here are the details:
- 5.0 Megapixel Video Pocket Camcorder Value: $175
- DXG-567V HD
- 1280 x 720 Video Pocket Camcorder
- Flip USB Connector
Citrix Online is continuing this popular free beta until later this year. However, beta users have asked Citrix how GoToAssist Express will be priced once the free beta ends.
After the free beta, GoToAssist Express will be priced as follows:
•Monthly Plan: $69 per month
•Annual Plan: $660 per year (Save 20% off the Monthly Plan!)
•Day Pass: $9.95 per 24-hour period
Plus, everyone (including beta testers) will be eligible for a 30-day free trial.
Beta users will receive a 30% discount - that's $48 a month or $462 a year.
Again, GoToAssist Express is still absolutely free for now, and these prices will not apply until the official launch of GoToAssist Express later this year. Citrix will give plenty of advance notice to users before ending the beta.
All plans will include:
•Unlimited product usage
•One-click session entry and remote diagnostics
•Live Chat and file transfer
•Session reporting (tracks billable hours)
•24/7 support and unlimited product upgrades
Monthly and Annual Plans will include the ability to set up Unattended Support on an unlimited number of client computers. Day Passes do not include Unattended Support capability.
If you have any questions you can also contact the GoToAssist Express team on: 1-888-521-0542 or customercare@gotoassistexpress.com
In the mean time check out: GoToAssistExpress.com and sign-up for the free beta.
cheers,
Gus
From: blog.gotoassist.com
Here is a video of Nat Kunes, Product Manager for GoToAssist Express, doing a product demo. If you would like to learn more about individual features, you can sign up for one of our GoToWebinar trainings - we usually send out email invites two weeks ahead of time.
If you would like to comment on this post, please log in to the Beta Forum at forums.gotoassist.com.
GoToAssist Express Beta was just updated to a new version, the current build is now 8.0, and there are some new features addded and bug fixes included in this release.
New features that were just added to the product are:
Notes - You can now take notes during a session and have them saved for reporting purposes.
Reverse Screen Sharing - An expert can now share their screen with their customer.
Performance Improvements - We added a lot of performance improvements which should be noticeable right away.
Performace Settings - We added the ability to change your performance settings for optimal screen refresh rates.
Bug Fixes - As always, we fixed a lot of bugs. As beta testers, your feedback on these has been extremely valuable!
More features are coming soon and will posted on the blog, so keep checking back!
Continue at Source: GoToAssist Express Beta Blog
You are invited to join us for a training Webinar on Wednesday, April 30, 2008. Come and learn how to use GoToAssist Express and see how it can benefit your business.
Attend this one-hour training session and find out how to:
• Quickly launch remote-support sessions with both PC and Mac users.
• Use key GoToAssist Express features such as Chat and File Transfer.
• Provide unattended remote support (work when your customers are away from their computers).
Title: GoToAssist Express New User Training
Date: Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Time: 10 AM PDT (1 PM EDT)
Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www.gotomeeting.com/register/816176572
For those who know what a SlingBox is then you know what I mean when I say that it ranks up there with Tivo as being one of the all time media gadgets.
For those of you who do not know what a SlingBox is or who SlingMedia is, I suggest you experience it for yourself, they have a great demo of their products on their site, SlingMedia.
My purpose in this post is to not only convey my bummed out-ness that the SlingCatcher has been delayed, but it is also to let you know how I think about how their products align with what we do here at Citrix.
We are all about application delivery, virtualization, and some could argue even content delivery. Take for example the WanScalar and LanScalar products, I think they easily fit into the content delivery space as well as they do in application delivery. This is where I also think SlingMedia fits into the content delivery space. They currently have the SlingBox which you attach to your choice of television tuners, and you can then stream that content in real time to either a PC or Mobile device. There soon to be released, I so want one, SlingCatcher is going to be a standalone device that you can connect to your choice of displays to watch streamed content from a SlingBox. This is starting to sound like what we at Citrix do for applications and desktop, hmmm!
Now all we have to do is wait for them to release the SlingCatcher, to see what their Thin Client can really do, as I would really love to be able to GoToMyTV or GoToMyMedia =)
Check it out for yourself:
SlingMedia
Also Check out:
Frameworkx Community Blog - SlingCatcher - When are we going to be able to tune in
If you don't know, GoToAssist is Citrix's web-hosted solution for Remote Support and as they are getting ready to release the express version of the product, they have invited everyone to join their beta program.
Beta testers will get unlimited free use of GoToAssist Express Beta in exchange for tracking bugs, making feature requests and sharing their opinions on the product.I have taken a few screenshots to let you drool all over them...
Now pick up your jaw off the floor and create an account to start using it today!
Sign-up here: https://express.gotoassist.com/
On a site note, I found out that the guys from GoToAssist have a slick blog separate from the official Citrix community site.
Check it out: http://blog.gotoassist.com/
regards,
Gus Pinto - Technology Evangelist
Microsoft MVP | Gus.Pinto@citrix.com