All posts by John Paul Narowski

I’ve been hacking at various business ideas since I was 16. I’m a full stack developer and love crafting user experiences. I’ve been nose deep in code since I put the legos down, and built several successful businesses in the process. I’ve lost some hair, gained some experience and throughly enjoyed the journey.

Server Migration Update #2

This is an update regarding our server migration which took place last night (Thursday, April 3rd, from 9pm to 1am Eastern Time [US]).  The migration is still underway, and although data might appear to be missing, it is safe and in the process of being restored as we speak.

We wanted to keep you in the loop and informed on the latest information pertaining to the migration so that you are up-to-date on where we stand currently.

Below, please find some of the more frequently asked questions we have been receiving concerning the server migration, along with answers from our Founder, our developers, and our Support Team.  

FAQs

Q.  It appears that some data is missing from our account.  Is that correct?
A.  Rest assured that no data is missing; during the migration, we experienced a technical issue revolving around indexing all of the data.  Indexing allows karma to optimize speed and performance in finding relevant documents and data when performing a search query (including filtering).  For example, a sequential scan of every word in a database could take hours, but if indexed, that time would be reduced to just a few milliseconds.  This is why it appears that your data is “missing” when, in fact, it is not.  

Essentially, the migration is taking longer than we had originally anticipated because some of our scripts missed retrieving some of the data.  The data is safely stored – just not fully indexed yet.  

Q. Does this issue affect all karma users?
A. No. Only some users will experience this delay in accessing data.

Q.  What is the ETA for resolution of the indexing issue?
A.  Currently, our entire team is working on restoring all of your data. Once again, please be assured that no data was lost and simply just needs to be re-indexed. Our goal is to have everything restored within a few hours. 

Q.  Anything else I need to know?
A.  We appreciate your patience as we work through this issue, and we want to reiterate the many benefits this migration will bring you as a user of karma in terms of enhancements to security, scalability, redundancy, updates, and reduction in downtime.  You can read more about these enhancements on our blog.

We apologize for this inconvenience and know that we’ll be working hard until all of your data is completely restored.  In the meantime, please feel free to reach out to our Support Team if you have any additional questions or concerns.  We are happy to help!

I’ve been hacking at various business ideas since I was 16. I’m a full stack developer and love crafting user experiences. I’ve been nose deep in code since I put the legos down, and built several successful businesses in the process. I’ve lost some hair, gained some experience and throughly enjoyed the journey.

Server Migration Update

UPDATE: NEW MIGRATION DATE

We are thrilled to announce that on April 3rd, we will be migrating our servers to a much more robust and scalable platform. These new servers will bring added scalability, redundancy, and security to our platform.

When?

NEW DATE: Thursday, April 3, 2014, from 9pm to 1am Eastern Time (US). There will be a 4-hour downtime window to allow for testing to ensure all systems are running properly.

How It Affects You

The migration will be seamless, and nothing is required on your part. During the migration, there will be downtime from 9pm to 1am (Eastern Time [US]) on Thursday, April 3rd. Aside from that, just sit back and get ready to enjoy new servers!

Why?

As karmaCRM grows, we want to make sure our servers can easily handle the increasing data load. From a capacity perspective, with our new servers, we’re moving from an apartment to a mansion. We’re certainly not going to need every room right away, but they’ll be there when we do.

Enhancements

Below is a list of the enhancements that will be made to our internal data management process with the changeover to the new platform.

Security

Our new systems will have ongoing, independent security audits, which we will likely be publishing (at least some aspect of) for you all to see. This will give you the added peace of mind that all of your data will continue to be well-protected, safe, and sound.

Scalability

Our new systems have been rebuilt from the ground up, to scale. It’s going to be easy to expand our resources to keep your CRM experience smooth and seamless.

Redundancy

While we currently have redundancy built in, the new system takes this redundancy to a whole new level, ensuring that you can keep doing business, even if something on our end fails. Think: backups on backups on backups!

Updates & Downtime

As some of you have noticed, there is currently some downtime that is experienced each time we push updates (lasting a few minutes). Our new system will have zero downtime deployments, so this should enhance the deployment process. The only exception to this would be if we’re updating the database (which happens infrequently).

I’ve been hacking at various business ideas since I was 16. I’m a full stack developer and love crafting user experiences. I’ve been nose deep in code since I put the legos down, and built several successful businesses in the process. I’ve lost some hair, gained some experience and throughly enjoyed the journey.

User System Updates

Karma is pleased to announce some great new changes we have recently implemented in order to provide our users with an improved and more stable experience. We have listened intently to your suggestions and recommendations, and we’ve put control of users’ passwords and settings back in the hands of administrators! Below you’ll find a breakdown of the changes we’ve made to karma.

Login As

We now have a brand new feature that lets administrators login to karma as someone from their organization! This will make it much easier for karma administrators to set up and configure new users by letting them actually log in to karma as that user.

Login As A

Now, you can easily toggle between users and get back to your own account when you’re done.

Switch to Another User B

Adding a New User

In addition, we have made the process of adding a new user to karma as quick and easy as possible for administrators.
Users A

Quick Add Option

You can quickly add a new user by entering their name and email address in the field next to Add User, or you can add users via bulk import from a CSV file.
Add Users A

Advanced Form

Clicking on the Show Advanced Options link will expand it to show options that you can set for a user you are adding, which include setting a Role for the user, setting their Permissions, and assigning them to Groups. Here, you will also find the option for setting or resetting their password. These functions apply only to karma administrators.
Show Advanced Options A

Manage Accounts

Administrators now have the ability to manage your accounts in karma directly from within the initial Settings menu. In addition to creating a new account and associating it with your existing login, you can also switch to a new organization that you have added, or you can leave an organization entirely. In this section, you are also able to view any disabled accounts. Having all of these functionalities available in one convenient area will make your account management process in karma an absolute breeze!

Settings Manage Accounts A

Managing Accounts A

We hope you enjoy these new features and that they help you to better and more easily manage your users!

I’ve been hacking at various business ideas since I was 16. I’m a full stack developer and love crafting user experiences. I’ve been nose deep in code since I put the legos down, and built several successful businesses in the process. I’ve lost some hair, gained some experience and throughly enjoyed the journey.

Meet Kimi Gray!

Kimi color

This week, we’re thrilled to feature another one of our Support Team members, Kimi Gray. Hailing from Westland, Michigan (about a half hour west of Detroit by car), Kimi also serves as a Project Manager at karmaCRM and is responsible for checking in on everyone to ensure all of our projects are being completed in a timely manner.

Kimi completed her education at the University of Michigan (go Wolverines!), where she obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Administration. Before coming on board with karmaCRM, Kimi was a Store Manager in Training for Blockbuster. In her free time, she enjoys watching zombie flicks, quilting, teaching sign language to babies, rescuing pitbulls (she has five dogs and one cat), and chasing her grandson, Cody, around the house. Kimi is an avid fan of “The Walking Dead” series on AMC, and her favorite movie is “Zombieland”. That being said, it’s no surprise at all that one of her other obsessions is preparing for the zombie Apocalypse!

Zombies aside, one of Kimi’s dreams is to one day visit the Land Down Under; going to Australia has been her wish for about a decade now. Admittedly, she would love to check out the sites around the Australian states of Queensland and South Australia where the sleeper hit movie “Pitch Black” (starring Vin Diesel) was filmed. Did we mention Kimi is fascinated with zombies?

Want to get on Kimi’s good side? Just shower her with mint chocolate chip ice cream or Twizzlers!

As a member of our Support Team, Kimi is always ready and eager to answer all of your questions as they relate to your support needs.

Please take a moment to say hi to Kimi!

I’ve been hacking at various business ideas since I was 16. I’m a full stack developer and love crafting user experiences. I’ve been nose deep in code since I put the legos down, and built several successful businesses in the process. I’ve lost some hair, gained some experience and throughly enjoyed the journey.

Top 10 Apps for karmaCRM, Pt. 2

Top 10 Image

Part 2 of 2

In continuation of our Top 10 Apps for karmaCRM blog post last week, below you’ll find the remaining five applications to round out our Top 10 list!

Clicky

clicky resized
Visit Clicky’s website and one of the first things you’ll see is “Real Time Web Analytics” – and that’s exactly what you get. Clicky allows you to easily view all of the actions that all of the users take on your website, and you’re also able to pull report on individual actions as well as more general reports. With features like on-site analytics, heatmaps, and uptime monitoring (among many others), you’re able to get a birds-eye view on what your site visitors are up to when they head your way.

Using Clicky has proven invaluable to karma by helping us solidify our emphasis on metrics measurement and analytics. We love the graphs that you can quickly create with just a click or two, showing visitor information as well as searches and referrers – and the fact that we can go back to analyze several months’ worth of data. Whether we’re needing to look at visitor data in terms of campaigns, content, countries, searches, or sources, Clicky shows us exactly what we need to know, every single time.

Learn More About Clicky

Wistia

wistia resized
Wistia is definitely among the easiest apps to use that we’ve had experience with at karma thus far, providing a video hosting service that helps you easily engage (and impress) your prospects and customers. They offer a variety of features, including engagement graphs and trends, integrations with email platforms, and social sharing buttons, as well as some unexpected bonuses like video heat maps and video SEO. And, as they mention on their features page, their videos contain no ads. Ever. As a side note, one of the neatest things we’ve learned about Wistia is that they have a Customer Happiness team. How cool is that?!

At karma, we use Wistia a few times every week to help us with managing our webinar recordings, which we send out post-webinar to attendees. We can also easily customize the thumbnail for each video we upload as well as quickly set its privacy/sharing settings. Wistia really takes the guesswork out of the video management process for us; without a doubt, their Customer Happiness team can add us to the list of happy customers!

Learn More About Wistia
Wistia Free Account

Chargify

chargify resized
Chargify is a comprehensive billing system that does so much more than just help you with your billing process. Besides allowing you to charge either one-time or recurring payments, Chargify also helps you manage trial periods as well as those everyday customer service tasks of issuing refunds and credits, entering support notes, and changing products for your customers.

Among our favorite Chargify features at karma are the ease of setting up new subscription plans as well as modifying users’ subscriptions – Chargify really makes these a breeze. We also heavily use the Dashboard so that we know where we stand with our transactions throughout the day, every day.

Learn More About Chargify
Chargify Free Test Account

UserVoice

uservoice new
One of the ways in which we keep a pulse on the heartbeat of what our customers are saying is through UserVoice. Launched in 2008, this multi-faceted app makes it easy to track and respond to customers’ requests for help, as well as keep tabs on customer feedback via forums while providing those customers with a knowledge base so that common questions can be answered and information can be found right when they need it.

UserVoice helps karma immensely by letting us see, at a glance, the most popular feature suggestions that our customers are requesting and the general feedback that they’re wanting us to know of. Suggestions are neatly ranked by others in the community who access the forums, letting us easily see which of those suggestions are most popular with the majority of our customer base. This helps us immensely in prioritizing and managing upcoming changes to our product.

Learn More About UserVoice
UserVoice Free Account

Mockflow

mockflow resized
For those who have a need to create pre-implementation mock-up designs of a website, look no further than Mockflow! This app helps with your wireframing needs, making it a cinch to not only design, but also collaborate on app and website concepts from a user interface perspective. Whether you need to focus on the design or layout of banners, websites, images, or brochures, Mockflow takes the guesswork out of the process and helps you quickly bring your ideas to life, from conception to reality, in no time at all. It is truly a fantastic platform to use for planning, building, and sharing your design work with others.

Whenever one of our site pages is up for redesign, or when a new page needs to be created altogether, our team collaborates on Mockflow to collectively come up with the best solutions. Because their interface is very easy to use, we come up with designs in no time at all. Thanks to Mockflow, we were able to make a smooth transition last November when we completely redesigned our website – and we couldn’t be happier with the results!

Learn More About Mockflow
Mockflow Free Account

Do you use any of the apps on our Top 10 list? What has your experience been with them? What other apps would you recommend? We welcome all of your comments below!

I’ve been hacking at various business ideas since I was 16. I’m a full stack developer and love crafting user experiences. I’ve been nose deep in code since I put the legos down, and built several successful businesses in the process. I’ve lost some hair, gained some experience and throughly enjoyed the journey.

Top 10 Apps for karmaCRM

Top 10 Image

Part 1 of 2

In the spirit of recognizing the apps that have helped our company grow and get it to where it is today, we would like to present to you our Top 10 Apps list!

Here they are, in no particular order:

Mixpanel

Mixpanel New

Launching in July of 2009 and based out of San Francisco, Mixpanel offers an array of data and analytics tracking tools that are both easy to use and quick to set up. By simply using lines of code that are provided to a company’s developers (essentially, it is a repository of statistic tracking functions), the company is then able to gain a deep insight into their customers’ – and potential customers’ – actions. The development costs alone that a company could save by using Mixpanel vs. creating their own analytics set-up make it more than worthwhile to look into as an option for analytics measurement. Not to mention, the level of support we have received from Mixpanel has been second to none!

Prior to using Mixpanel, we had to rely heavily on pulling data manually and were limited in the scope of what we were able to see in terms of analytics for our company. But by using their tools in the areas of Segmentation, Funnels, Retention, People, and Notifications, we’re now able to get a far more in-depth as well as expansive view on areas we didn’t track before until Mixpanel came along.

Learn More About Mixpanel
Mixpanel Free Trial

SurveyGizmo

SurveyGizmo new

Providing online survey software and based in Boulder, Colorado, we were happy to discover this company right in our own proverbial backyard (as karma is headquartered in Denver). Besides being thrilled at a chance to support a local business, SurveyGizmo has also impressed by helping us design surveys that are incredibly functional as well as visually appealing. In addition to providing excellent reporting capabilities that are a breeze to set up and figure out, we’ve also been able to easily gather valuable data that we have used in a number of ways – from helping us refine our marketing approach to helping us see the whys behind the whats.

SurveyGizmo also offers excellent onboarding as you are first getting started with them; they truly want you to take advantage of everything they have to offer so that you can become well-versed in their product. We’re glad to have a local friend to help us with our survey, online form, and evaluation needs!

Learn More About SurveyGizmo
SurveyGizmo’s Free Trial form is located on their homepage

GoToWebinar

citrix new

Another app that has helped take karma to new heights is GoToWebinar, by Citrix. We initially began to host six webinars per month at the end of 2013 and were using GoToMeeting (another Citrix product). As our responsibilities changed and interest in our webinars grew, we were seeking a more automated solution to our internal webinar process – enter GoToWebinar. They make it almost effortless to set up and schedule ongoing webinars and they care of it all for you – from providing you with a registration page where your webinar attendees can self-register, to automated reports covering attendance, registration, performance, and survey results – all of which we use on a regular basis here at karma. Talk about a HUGE timesaver!

GoToWebinar also offers mobile apps to help you increase your mobility as well as video conferencing and built-in audio options.

Learn More About GoToWebinar
GoToWebinar Free Trial

MailChimp

MailChimp new

Mosey on over to MailChimp’s website (the About section) and one of the first things you’ll read is that, “More than 5 million people use MailChimp to create, send, and track email newsletters.” Along the bottom of the page, you’ll observe that MailChimp is used to send about 6 billion emails every month. We at karma are happy and proud to be one of the companies that uses MailChimp for its newsletter!

And we do so because MailChimp not only makes it simple for us to create an attractive newsletter (offering a wide range of templates and designs to fit nearly every occasion), but also because they help us with segmenting our audience while letting us view important newsletter- and email-related metrics – such as Open Rates, Click Rates, and Subscribes. This has proven invaluable in helping us create better content for our newsletter’s readership.

Learn More About MailChimp
MailChimp Free Trial

Zendesk

Zendesk New Logo

To say that support is an important business area of karmaCRM would be an understatement. Recognizing this fact early on in our company’s history led us to discover Zendesk, an incredibly powerful, web-based support ticketing system that we rely on heavily to help us through the day, every day. Zendesk was formed from an idea that had its origins in København (Copenhagen), Denmark, as a web-based solution to on-premise customer support software.

Also headquartered in San Francisco, Zendesk is incredibly simple to set up, use, and manage on a daily basis. When the customer service process can easily and quickly get out of hand for so many companies, Zendesk is there to the rescue to help you manage your support/trouble tickets while helping you maintain high customer satisfaction ratings. Our entire Support Team relies heavily on the open communication that the Zendesk tool provides for our company; we are all easily able to see what it is that our customers need help with at any given moment as well as to answer their questions and address their concerns expeditiously. In and of itself, that is a priceless commodity for us not only from a support standpoint, but also in looking at it through the lens of Customer Experience.

Learn More About Zendesk
Zendesk Free Trial

Stay tuned! Next week we will round out our Top 10 Apps with the remaining five on our list.

What apps does YOUR company use that you can’t live without? Any of these listed above? We’d love to hear your favorites, so please leave us a comment below!








Ebook-How-to-Grow-Your-Small-Business-with-the-Right-CRM




I’ve been hacking at various business ideas since I was 16. I’m a full stack developer and love crafting user experiences. I’ve been nose deep in code since I put the legos down, and built several successful businesses in the process. I’ve lost some hair, gained some experience and throughly enjoyed the journey.

Features: A Common CRM Misconception

Ask any business person familiar with CRMs – or, even better, one who actually uses a CRM on a daily basis – to give you their opinion on it, and chances are relatively high that they will either go on and on about it, praising it effusively, or that they will immediately spout off a diatribe covering all of its misgivings. Why are users so passionate in their evaluations of their Customer Relationship Management systems?

The answer is pretty straightforward: because, where it is utilized, a CRM is such an integral part of business operations. It is essentially the business’s backbone, the glue that keeps its internal processes flowing. The passion stems from the fact that whenever CRM successes are experienced, those successes give the business’s CRM decision-maker the sense that they made the right choice in choosing that particular CRM. On the flip side, when failures are experienced, especially if they are repeated, the decision-maker may think twice about either renewing their contract or will choose to go with another CRM altogether (at times even immediately) in order to alleviate those pain points.

Everything, Including the Kitchen Sink

kitchen sink

You may be able to relate to the very common (and understandable) expectation that CRM users feel that their CRM should do almost everything for them. Well, if it can integrate with Google Calendar on a 2-way sync basis, and if it can integrate with Wufoo or Formstack, why can’t it also make me breakfast? The answer is pretty simple.

While there certainly are CRMs out there that do have quite an impressive array of features and integrations, the truth is that they are just not for everyone. Take a mom and pop business, for example. Their business management needs may most certainly extend beyond Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and Post-It Notes, but they definitely won’t require the gargantuan feature bloat that you’ll find with some CRM systems. This is where your smaller CRMs enter to fill the relatively simple needs that these smaller businesses have. They tend to be designed with simplicity in mind based on their uncomplicated business needs. For this reason, many of the simpler CRMs who cater specifically to these smaller businesses tend to shy away from adding the proverbial kitchen sink.

The Jenga Effect

Take a minute to consider that at the very heart of a simple CRM’s existence in the first place, there could well be a company core value that is driving the continuation of its simplicity. While it would be very easy to appease every single customer request for add-on features, the reality is that this is nearly impossible for a smaller CRM to do so, because not only does it go directly against a potential core value of simplicity, but in doing so, a CRM will sooner than later reach that critical mass point anyway – where it becomes far more cumbersome than the problems it’s supposed to solve in the first place.

jenga

Consider a wooden Jenga tower, which eventually comes crashing down at the exact moment that its structure is compromised. When it comes to simpler CRMs, adding feature after feature after feature will ultimately have the same detrimental effect. The Jenga tower serves as a great reminder that, for many businesses, less is definitely more – and it’s important to remember that, in the CRM world, one size certainly does not fit all.

Considering the wide array of CRMs available in the market to choose from, selecting the appropriate one is essential to ensuring a long, healthy, and mutually beneficial relationship between business and CRM.








Ebook-How-to-Grow-Your-Small-Business-with-the-Right-CRM




I’ve been hacking at various business ideas since I was 16. I’m a full stack developer and love crafting user experiences. I’ve been nose deep in code since I put the legos down, and built several successful businesses in the process. I’ve lost some hair, gained some experience and throughly enjoyed the journey.

New Calendar Updates…and an Apology

Yesterday, February 10th, we launched something we’ve been hard at work on for quite some time now: improving calendar functionality. Unfortunately, this resulted in an undiscovered technical issue that caused multiple event reminders to be sent to some of our customers in duplicate.

We were hard at work throughout the day, mitigating the impact that this bug had on our customers. Essentially, the reason this technical issue occurred is because standard reminders were being treated as recurring.

You can rest assured that your data is safe, and we are going to be conducting a full audit of any code that messages our customers, so that there are additional stop measures taken in the future. This means that even if there is another bug of this nature, the notifications won’t reach you, our customers.

We are the first to admit and realize that downtime is always stressful from a data management perspective. Because we will always take full accountability for our successes as well as our failures, we hope that you will please accept our sincerest apologies for this error.

Now that the not-so-good news is out of the way, we are incredibly thrilled to roll out a new and improved calendar! If you’ve clicked on the Calendar tab, you may have noticed the All Events tab.

New Agenda View with Filtering

By clicking on the All Events tab within the Calendar tab, you’ll now be able to view all of the events you’ve added for the current day, week, and/or month (you can also choose to enter a custom date range). Consider this an agenda view, with the ability to filter your events down like you can in other sections of karma.

All Events Good

In the All Events view, you can click on the Expand All link at upper left if you need to view the details for all of your events, which will then give you the options of viewing and/or editing them.

Events View Best

You can also click on the plus sign in front of the subject of an individual event to expand its view individually.

While in the All Events view, you will be able to use the filters on the right to narrow down the exact event(s) you are looking for.

Filters

Better Handling of Multi-Day Events

Also, events that span multiple days will now show up for each day they span in both the all events view, as well as the print view

New Sharing Options

Many of our awesome customers have asked to make calendar sharing simpler, and here’s our response. You can now have a private personal calendar, or a public calendar that everyone sees!

Because you now have the ability to make your calendar public, this eliminates the need to add new users to it (as was the case prior to this update). Similarly, you can now also make your calendar private if you choose.

Private Public Settings

Speed

We’ve focused heavily on speeding up the loading of events so you don’t have to wait. This is most noticeable on calendars containing many events.

I’ve been hacking at various business ideas since I was 16. I’m a full stack developer and love crafting user experiences. I’ve been nose deep in code since I put the legos down, and built several successful businesses in the process. I’ve lost some hair, gained some experience and throughly enjoyed the journey.

Being Customer-Centric in a Digital World

Imagine it’s the middle of summer and you find yourself unequivocally lost in Death Valley, California – the hottest place in the world. And imagine that it happened through no fault of your own but simply because of a faulty GPS system that you had otherwise used many times beforehand with no issues. This is exactly what happened to three California travelers in 2011 when they were led astray in 120-degree heat by their once-trusted GPS system.

What it Means

Being customer-centric means possessing a deep understanding of your customers, and realizing that, ultimately, those very customers should be the key reason behind business decisions.

To illustrate this point, let’s turn to Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post. In some of his meetings, Bezos will sometimes leave one seat open at a conference table and will go on to let all of the meeting’s attendees know that they should look at that seat as being occupied by their customer, “the most important person in the room.” Imagine how different your meetings would be if your company did the same!

Being customer-centric also means paying attention to the smallest details that can sometimes have the largest impact on your customers – and even on their lives – as in the case of Donna Cooper in her Death Valley incident as portrayed in the video above.

Why it Matters

Customer centricity relies not only on this deep understanding of your customers themselves, but it also depends on an awareness of what their intrinsic needs are. Taking it a step further, many customer-centric businesses understand that their own needs, as well as their goals, are directly intertwined with those of their customers.

In this day and age, it may mean taking a step back from traditional approaches to gaining customer insight and feedback and really uncovering what works best for them. For example, do the residents of an apartment complex really read those flyers people post on the bulletin boards above their mailboxes, or would it perhaps be more effective to get the message across to them via a social network if one was set up for them?

Customer centricity matters because your customers’ perceptions of your business – including their experiences with all of your sales, marketing, service, and support channels (to name a few) – ultimately become their reality as far as your business is concerned. It also adds a great deal of value to your business while simultaneously building loyalty, if executed properly. Perhaps best of all, it helps you to more clearly understand how your business can grow.

The Pitfall

Providing your organization with all of the tools it needs in order to make your customers happy is just one piece of the customer centricity pie. Consider, too, the impact that such an initiative may have on your business – especially in terms of reputation in the connected world we live in today.

Because of this, there is a very fine line between empowering employees with all of the necessary tools to respond to customer inquiries/complaints to reach mutual satisfaction without implementing initiatives that end up hurting the business.

A perfect case in point here is nicely outlined in an excellent article written by Gregory Ciotti at Help Scout titled, “How to Build a Truly Customer-Centric Company”. In his article, Ciotti references an initiative put forth by a retail bank that ended up creating a steep decline in fee revenue while increasing customer satisfaction only slightly – all in the spirit of customer centricity.

The Digital Difference

Some of you may remember the story of how United Airlines once broke Canadian musician passenger Dave Carroll’s Taylor guitar, priced at $3,500, during a trip Carroll took when he flew on United back in 2008. After the incident, Carroll tried for 9 months – unsuccessfully – to file a complaint with the airline (United claimed that he had waited longer than their 24-hour policy to file his complaint). When he later suggested that United provide him with $1,200 in flight vouchers to at least cover the cost of repairing the guitar, he was flatly refused. Being the songwriter that he is, Carroll decided to write a song about the incident, creating a music video that went viral.

The ensuing public relations disaster that the fallout caused for the airline ended up not only costing United heavily in terms of views of the video on YouTube (currently at 13,733,939 as of the writing of this post), but also in terms of social media backlash in general.

The example above highlights just one of countless cases on how an incident gone awry and not handled with customer centricity in mind can lead to an unnecessary nightmare for a company in this digital age we live in. Thanks to social media, no longer can a company safely or simply use the antiquated “it’s policy” argument. Just visit any company’s Facebook page, for starters, and you are very likely to see customer complaints on their Wall out in the open for the whole world to see. These complaints, once kept relatively private in days past and usually always handled by a very small group of people at the company in question, are now cause for an entire company to turn into a PR damage control machine on a moment’s notice.

With all of this in mind, it’s a given that being customer-centric is important for any company doing business today; in fact, it is an absolute understatement to say so. In the end, let’s not forget that day after day, we are all really in it for just one person: the customer.









Ebook-How-to-Grow-Your-Small-Business-with-the-Right-CRM




I’ve been hacking at various business ideas since I was 16. I’m a full stack developer and love crafting user experiences. I’ve been nose deep in code since I put the legos down, and built several successful businesses in the process. I’ve lost some hair, gained some experience and throughly enjoyed the journey.

New karma Website!

KarmaCRM is happy to announce a brand new, redesigned website!  We’ve entirely changed the look and feel of our site and hope that you enjoy the new one.

We’ve narrowed down some of our sections and added a fantastic new About Us area on the site, where you’ll have a chance to meet your karma team and become better acquainted with the faces behind the program and the service.

And, yes – our fluffy karma clouds are still around.  Check it out!

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We are also pleased to reveal a completely revamped Support Center for all of our customers!  We hope you agree that the new interface and article design are much more user-friendly and inviting.

To help with ease of finding the relevant articles and information you need, we have created new Categories for our articles so that the layout of our Knowledge Base is more streamlined and intuitive.  In addition, we have a Popular Articles section to show you the most popular article searches as conducted by other users of karma.

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We’ve also enhanced the images embedded into our articles to make it easier for you to understand the explanations of the various processes and items we cover in karma as they relate to your visual experience.

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We want you to know that we’re not just an email address, so you’ll also notice that we’ve added pictures of our Support Team along the right-hand side column – to remind you that Shirley, Joe, and Kimi are with you every step of the way.

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Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we have defined clearly and would like to share with you our Core Values. We have worked tirelessly as a team to set the tone for our company’s operating culture, which will serve as the guiding principles by which we will live as we continuously strive to provide you with the best product in the industry, matched with unparalleled customer service. It is our promise to you.

As always, we would love to hear your thoughts on the new Support Center, and please let us know if there are any articles you don’t see that you feel would be a good addition to our Knowledge Base.

Thank you for helping us make the karma experience the best it can be for everyone!

I’ve been hacking at various business ideas since I was 16. I’m a full stack developer and love crafting user experiences. I’ve been nose deep in code since I put the legos down, and built several successful businesses in the process. I’ve lost some hair, gained some experience and throughly enjoyed the journey.