We pitched in to help the kids at Bryant Elementary

As a new member of the Salesforce.com family, we’ve admired what the parent organization is doing to build community and give back with the Salesforce 1/1/1 model. Yesterday, the Sales and Customer Wow teams at Desk.com spent the day working alongside facilitators from Playworks SF to make the playground at a school in San Francisco a little brighter.

Here’s what it looked like when we started:

painting a foursquare grid

readying the basketball court

And here’s some of what we were able to share with the kids at Bryant:

a play circle with shapes

a new foursquare grid, ready for play

We made some new friends, gave back to the community, and learned a bit more about working together as a team. And the most important thing that we all saw, heard, and felt was when the students walked by and said “Thank You!” Thank you, Bryant Elementary – we were glad to make your day (and your games) a little brighter.

On March 15th, salesforce.com will be rocking San Francisco with its biggest event of 2012 so far:

Cloudforce: The Social Enterprise Global Tour with Cloudstock 2012 Developers Conference!

It’s a day packed with all-new sessions and breakthrough technologies—plus Cloudstock, the largest cloud developer event ever! Bring your whole team to experience:

• 40 specialized breakout sessions
• Keynote and new announcements from Marc Benioff and special guests
• 100′s of solutions in the Social Enterprise Expo
• Lessons from Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Accenture, Burberry, and other leading companies
• Networking with 10,000 peers and experts
• Deep-dive learning for sales, marketing, service & support, IT, developers, and more
• Fun and surprises

Now is the time to ask your customers and prospects to come to San Francisco for this important event!

Here’s how they can register!

 The Agenda

A few of the eco-friendly entrepreneurs at EthicalCommunity.com

The Beginning

Liam Patterson and Jason Dainter are the two co-founders with the vision. Their idea was born from their pleasure in receiving gift items themselves–gifts where they had a personal note from the seller and felt a human connection. They thought: Why not give these producers a marketplace, a place to sell their products, use blogs to share their experiences and growth, and where they could participate in a strong community for learning and sharing with other sellers?

Now that community is 850 strong, with over 7000 eco-friendly products. This video tells their story:

The company recently went through a funding round, and is now focused on rebranding and revamping the site. Lots of exciting changes are ahead, but the sellers and products will continue at center stage.

Building a Library of Tools

Jason is making sure that the fledgling enterprise has the right pieces in place to meet growth head on:

“Gradually we’re forming a collection of great tools that allow us to work remotely. We’ve started with Desk.com for customer service, Olark for live chat,  Basecamp to keep us organized, Indinero for finances, and Pipedrive for sales. We’re also using Desk.com at the moment to build a bespoke knowledge base.  All the tools support the marketplace behind the scenes.

At first it was tempting to try to do everything for everybody who joined up. But then we realized that our core is the marketplace and the infrastructure around that. We’re concentrating on community, the stories of our sellers and the content that surrounds them. Customers seem hungry for an opportunity to purchase ethically from real people, and to read about the journeys.

Additionally, our sellers are hungry for how to do things like social media, search engine optimization, photography, and marketing. That’s where the Desk.com knowledge base permits us  to convert our web geeky knowledge into information we can give to them. Our goal is to become so useful as mentors that sellers will come to us and know that we’ll help them succeed.”

Eco-friendly Butterfly Backpack

On Customer Service

“We thought it was crucial to get customer service right. We wanted it to be easy and smooth to get answers to our customers. We also wanted to take our fast growth into account, and find a tool that would scale with the huge support demand we expect.

Desk.com just ticked so many boxes. We could see that it had everything we needed. We tested it thoroughly and were blown away. It’s easy to set up and easy to use. We’re mega-impressed with the Desk.com support team. They are truly responsive. We couldn’t be happier.”

A bassinet from The Little Green Sheep

Desk.com: A Power Tool

“Desk.com is a hugely powerful tool, and we love how it brings all our support issues right to one place. We’re very social, and Desk is social to the core. We have gotten our first Flex Agent on board, and he was delivering instant customer service that very day. It’s also inexpensive. Desk.com keeps track of his time, and we pay only $1 an hour. That’s affordable even for a startup.

Another great feature is the macros. You can take a complicated multiple-step process and make it into one macro. Then we just tell the staff—look at that macro list, select what you want to do and click. Easy peasy.”

Customers are really happy with Ethical Community’s emphasis on customer service. Here’s an excerpt from a pretty typical letter:

My recent experience with your company fills me with great hope that it is the right platform for my business and I am confident more than ever now that if anything goes wrong I know you guys are there to quickly listen to my problem and then come up with solutions to fix them.

I can’t praise your service and systems highly enough and would certainly not hesitate to recommend your site to others … once again thank you for your very speedy resolution to my situation, it is very much appreciated. Let’s hope the bigger companies take a leaf out of your customer service book.

Philip Woolley, http://www.ethicalcommunity.com/soap-deluxe

“Desk.com makes it possible for us to offer this high level of service. We intend to make is a competitive advantage as we grow.”

Take charge of your customer service with Desk.com

Improved case spacing for smaller laptop screens

You let us know that especially on 13″ laptops, you could only view 2 or 3 cases in Bulk View; we’ve increased that spacing to show you 5 cases in Bulk View.

Changed color of Macro-affected fields from Red to a Cooler Color

Many of you told us that you’d like a different color to alert you to macro-affected text, so we’ve changed that color to a calmer tone.

Fixed an issue downloading Office Documents from a case

We also resolved an issue that caused  Word, Excel, and Powerpoint attachments to be downloaded as zip files.  Documents received prior to the fix will still download as zip, and will need to be renamed with the proper extension to open.

Editor’s Note: Zach Steindler is the co-founder of Olark. Visit the Olark blog for more great customer service insights, or watch Zach’s video at the end of this post!

More and more companies are asking the question: how do we provide excellent support?

We can tell you, it’s not easy. But the payoff can be enormous- the better you understand your customers, the easier it is to build something to delight them. Many of our ideas (for everything from new features to slight tweaks) came from talking with you. And by being responsive to customer requests, you start building a relationship so in turn customers will be responsive to your requests for feedback.

Please hold for the next service representative....

So how do you do it? Here are some of the things we’ve learned along the way:

- Spend your goodwill wisely. Every support request has a limited attention span before they give up and go away. Make sure you do the most work reasonable before e-mailing them back. Did you check the debuglogs for errors associated with their account? Did you run experiments to try to reproduce the issue? Did you check their account configuration? Don’t leave debugging up to your users.

- Drive the issue through the R’s: research, request more information, re-assign, and (hopefully) resolution. Can’t understand what they’re asking for? Do some research, and if necessary, spend some of that goodwill to request more information. If the issue is beyond you, make sure it gets re-assigned to someone what can handle it. And of course the end goal is always resolution.

- Use a tool! If you’re just starting out, an e-mail inbox works okay, but most people outgrow it quickly. We just switched to Desk.com and have been loving it; they really nailed what it means to have a good support workflow. It’s set up so multiple operators can easily work on inbound requests at the same time without conflict, you can assign issues to specific operators, and you can easily set up specific rules to get custom behavior that works for your organization.

We’re far from perfect, but with these guidelines we think we’re on the right track. Let us know anything we missed in the comments.

Oh, and if you’re an Olark and Desk.com user, be sure to check out our killer integration with them.

Lock in Customer Wow with an Instant Social Help Desk – Sign up now at Desk.com and your first full-time Agent is FREE!

Editor’s Note: Walter Chen is the co-founder of iDoneThis, the easiest way to write down and celebrate your daily accomplishments. They’ve used social news to get to tens of thousands of users in only a few months.

Get stuff done with iDoneThis, the daily email that asks, “What’d you get done today?” Just reply and we keep track. Use your progress from yesterday to motivate you today.

Get started with Desk.com today!

In addition, we have started to incorporate your feedback, and have made initial changes to the Agent desktop:

• Removed “Customer Card” on left hand case pane for better use of vertical space.
• Changed background color of viewed cases in filter view to distinguish from cases that are currently been worked on.

On Friday February 10th at 11PM Pacific, we will be updating the system for this change.  The update is planned for <15 minutes.  After the update you and your customers will be able to access your Desk.com site at yoursite.desk.com.

To make the transition easy, we will be redirecting your assistly.com address for at least 6 months.  After the update your new address will be yoursitename.desk.com (unless you have a custom SSL certificate with us, in which case there will be no change for you).

• Your customers can still find you at your assistly.com address, although this is a great opportunity to set up your own address for your help center.  You should also transition links to the new desk.com address as you have time.
• Your employees will be redirected to their desk.com site from the assistly address, but you should begin using the new address to avoid the redirect.  After the update, agents who have chosen to be remembered will need to login.

For more detail check out our knowledge base article,  What’s changing with Desk.com?.

Mark Otto and Jacob Thornton have done the community an amazing service with Twitter’s Bootstrap toolkit. They may not be the first to open source a design pattern library, but due to its massive popularity, masterful execution, and thorough documentation, they’ve established the benchmark for creating a living style guide.

In his “A List Apart” article Building Twitter Bootstrap, Mark explains that the core philosophy that guided their efforts was “Help awesome people do awesome stuff.” Empowering awesome people is a great thing, and we have a lot of awesome people. But for those awesome people whose job it is to build and maintain Desk.com, the path is sometimes winding. Inspired by what @mdo and @fat have achieved, we have a similar initiative to straighten that path out. We’re calling it Core UI, and it’s going to be a major improvement in the way we build our product.

Goals

In thinking about Core UI we had some goals in mind. We needed a system that would:

• Improve overall UI and code consistency
• Create less markup and modularize everything possible
• Enable designers to have a prototype running within hours, not days
• Allow designers to publish new features and expand the library
• Give us a high-level view of UI for gradual improvements
• Help new employees learn our UI lingo
• Provide a path to retrofit older parts of the app

Implementation

Framework

The first step was to create a project framework that was easy to understand. We already use Serve for prototyping, so our UI designers are familiar with it. Serve includes Sass and Compass which are key in making the system modular (I’ve had my concerns with Compass in the past but have recently begun to embrace its library of CSS3 mixins — big time-saver). Now all we needed was a way to bundle the Javascript. There are several Ruby libraries out there that will do this for you. We ended up using something called Sprockets. I won’t go into details on how it works (feel free to follow the link and nerd out), but the goal was to have all of our Javascript modules combined into one file.

Organization

For organization, the guidelines and supporting files follow the same outline. We created partial views for each major section and paired them with supporting Sass and Javascript files of the same name. For example, in the guide we may have a section describing a dropdown component. That section, no matter how small, will be a partial view. So the folder structure looks something like:

Of course it’s a little deeper than that, but it gives you the basic idea. This way the guidelines act as a reference for related styles and code, making it easy to find and update anything. To create additions to the guide a designer just adds two or three files and updates an index.

Now we have a framework for style and behavior guidelines that are self referencing and easy to update.

UI Sync

The benefit to having a living style guide is that the same project that hosts the guidelines also generates the CSS and Javascript files that are used everywhere. To use Core UI, one simply adds two lines of markup to their HTML. Having one code base for style and behavior means different parts of the app, new feature prototypes, and anything else related now stay in sync. If a new component is required, a designer or developer can simply fork the Github repo and make the necessary updates (at the same time creating a stub for documentation at the project’s end). When the new feature is finished and tested, a pull request is issued making its components automatically available everywhere.

This Core UI library will be invaluable as we move into a faster pace this year with a ton of new features in the pipeline. We know there will a learning curve as we start to use the new approach. But it’s bound to make us more efficient so we can respond to customer requests faster.

Editor’s Note: It’s my pleasure to introduce Brad Smith, an online marketing consultant and founder of FixCourse. He helps businesses grow by creating internet marketing strategies to generate more traffic, leads and customers. Today’s post is a cautionary tale about how to avoid a social media fail that will damage your brand.

The day began innocently enough.

On the morning of January 3rd 2012, Volkswagen updated its Facebook page.

The firm asked users to to list their New Year’s resolutions, and make suggestions about what people would like to see the company achieve in 2012.

But that’s when things went downhill…

One by one, angry comments started trickling in.

They had nothing to do with the company’s question or social media activitiy.

They were upset about something else entirely.

So Volkswagen tried taking down comments and deleting angry posts.

But then it spun out of control.

Volkswagen’s Social Media Fail

Not long after Volkswagen started deleting posts, people became irate.

The comments flooded in, and they became too much to handle.

How did the company respond?

They didn’t.

Over 1000 negative comments poured in without one response from the company.

Because on the outside, it looks like they don’t care.

Even though Volkswagen might be scrambling and trying to figure out how to address the issue.

People only see the exterior. And from that point-of-view, things don’t look good.

Before you know it, they had an uncontrollable mob taking over their public appearance. No one can afford that.

Obviously this isn’t the first issue like this.

Unfortunately they happen all the time.

Falling Victim to a Social Media Shakedown

Most social media problems start somewhere else.

People are upset with a company policy, or how the firm responds to negative press.

People were mad that Volkswagen was spending millions on lobbying groups to stop the European Union from increasing its commitment to greenhouse gas reductions from 20% to 30% by 2020. They’re trying to avoid paying more to help the environment.

When your brand promise doesn’t align with your company’s actions, people get mad. That’s why you need clear social media goals before you start.

Customers now have a powerful tool at their disposal.

Social media allows people to work together and voice their opinion. We’ve seen it time and time again.

But that same power can be abused. It’s similar to cyber bullying, where people adopt a mob-mentality and act much differently.

Sometimes it’s appropriate. But a lot of the time, the company doesn’t address the situation… until it boils over and becomes uncontrollable.

This is a perfect example of a social media fail. A company can’t control the problem, and word spreads like wildfire.

That could be disastrous for your brand, because social media is the new PR.

Unfortunately this happens all the time.

But the actual magnitude of each shakedown depends a lot on how the company handles it.

Remember Domino’s?

In 2009, two Domino’s workers uploaded a short video clip on YouTube.

They were doing disgusting things with people’s food, and laughing the entire time.

As you can imagine, this story caught spread quickly.

But then, the company responded.

Then President, Patrick Doyle, recorded a video apology and released it on the same platform that brought his company so much grief.

It was a sincere apology. You could tell he cared deeply.

Mr. Doyle outlined steps to make sure a situation like this would never happen again. The workers were fired and felony charges were brought against them. And the actual store was shut down and sanitized.

And they provided a valuable lesson on how to react to a social media fail.

How to Avoid a Social Media Shakedown

Whether we like it or not, customer service is now front and center.

Companies have to learn how to address negative pressure in the public eye. But you can take clear steps to make sure you minimize it’s effects.

Contantly Monitor Your Brand

Say goodbye to 9-5. True customer service is now 24/7.

That also includes nights and weekends.

People will have questions, comments, and feedback at all hours of the day and night.

You don’t have to post someone on Twitter 24 hours a day. But you do need a create systems to monitor and manage inbound requests in real time.

Always Start By Apologizing

When customers are upset, it’s always your fault… even when it isn’t.

So reach out to them, tell them you’re sorry. And truly mean it.

People don’t always care about your response… they care about being heard.

Show them empathy, and let them know you understand their frustration.

Then take the conversation private as soon as possible. You want to sort out the details privately so your responses aren’t subject to public pressure.

But … Remember Who’s Boss

Sometimes people are inappropriate and off topic. So don’t hesitate to warn them.

When a few people get together and feed off each others negative energy, things could go downhill quickly.

You can’t let a situation spin out of control like Volkswagen did. Try to get it under control fast.

And despite what “social media gurus” say, sometimes that means banning people completely.

Be fair, but firm and consistent.

Outline a Clear Solution and Action Steps

If things get bad, then you should publicly outline how you’re going to correct the situation.

Domino’s did a great job with this. After acknowledging the terrible situation, Mr. Doyle clearly explained action steps to correct the issue and make sure that something like this will never happen again.

This puts people at ease. They will feel better because you’re listening, acknowledging, and addressing their concerns.

The will see that you actually care about them.

Create an Internal Feedback Loop

Mistakes happen. They’re part of the territory.

But you should avoid making the same chronic mistakes.

The best way to stop repeat mistakes is by creating a feedback loop between the people who receive the complaint, and the people who originally committed the mistake.

The good news is that you’re on the front lines. You’ll know when something goes wrong.

It’s not a matter of if, but of when.

And if you create systems ahead of time, then you’ll be able to learn from the mistakes of others and stop problems before they start.

Sign up for your FREE agent at Desk.com, The Social Help Desk