This week has been an off week for my NetWorks! Boise Valley groups and this has given me a needed opportunity to get geared up to provide remote training and assistance on Nimble Social CRM. Once again, I find myself entering uncharted territory which has meant a ton of research in areas that I have little to no experience. As a solo operator, these are not the kinds of tasks that I can assign to one of my elves. I’m the only elf in the workshop. So, away I went. Specifically, I was needing and wanting …
- An application which will allow me to log onto a client’s computer in order to assist them with Nimble set-up if needed. Part of this would also be to assist me in providing them with remote training .
- An additional separate application to allow me to do remote training only. This would be something more geared toward walking folks through Nimble or any other application while on my desktop rather than on theirs.
- I want something that is web-based.
- I’m also on a budget. A tiny one. That being said, I have always been willing to invest in the right tool for the job and I do have fairly high standards and expectations. I will not scrimp where the results will not provide the necessary benefits for my customers. In most cases, they would not even notice the difference if I went the “bargain route” but, I would.
Looking at each application separately …
Remote Assistance – Good grief! Way out of my comfort level! I was introduced to Team Viewer the other week and have actually used it once with a colleague. What I have is the free version and that is not intended, or allowed, for commercial use. I’m a rule follower so I investigated their paid platform. Very nice but it is also $749.00 up front and it appears to be a desktop application. I could be wrong about that but, I don’t think so. I did learn something else interesting while looking at this and that is that Team Viewer can also be used for remote (webinar) training. Hmmm. This presents a whole new ballgame. Can webinar (remote training) software also be used for remote assistance? It turns out that, in some cases, it can and this can be done if the application has the ability to swap mouse control. This should not be confused with swap presenters. GoToMeeting has this capability and, for much less money, so does LogMeIn using their Join.me application which is actually a webinar application and is available for free or as their Pro version for as little as $19.00/month or $149.00/year. On top of that, Join.me will allow for up to 250 attendees which, at that price point, is huge! Now I find myself simultaneously looking at remote assistance applications as well as remote training as my search has been modified to find the perfect all-in-one. I’m not sure if it even exists. Read on to hear about my solution.
Remote Training – Once again, tons of options and many are free. From free to quite expensive. I did have several criteria. While I did not need to allow for a large number of attendees, I did want something easy to use and flexible. I also wanted to be able to record sessions so that I might leave those with the customer. It turns out that recording is typically only found in fairly expensive applications like GoToMeeting. I did look at a promising new application called SalesCrunch and it is VERY competitively priced but, the recording is audio only. That won’t work. Team Viewer also has recording but, it is on remote assistance only and it is video only. Groan. I did look at a bunch of others but they either did not meet my spec, my budget, or both. However, last week I attended an open webinar that was put on by a friend and colleague, Neal Schaffer, and Neal was using a product called MeetingBurner. It appeared to be very nice and I also noticed that it provided the ability for folks to register for the webinar and that it also sent out reminders. I had attempted to do webinars about a year ago and had failed miserably at that attempt. They’re not that much fun when you are the only one in the room! But, now I am thinking … why not try again? This would be a good way to promote Nimble. Going to MeetingBurner, I am blown away by their pricing which includes up to 15 attendees and even includes the registration capabilities (no recording) and this is all for FREE!? For only $39.95/month you get 50 attendees and audio and video recording! I registered for the free version to test it out. I did have several questions before I even did that and used their support site to email those in and was astounded by the response times which were never in excess of a few hours. I even got one response on a Sunday evening! I’m a sucker for great service and the hook was already in my mouth and then … even before I had actually tested the application, they email me an offer that I can’t refuse and the next thing I know, I’m a paying customer. Two down, one to go.
The Final Outcome – Unfortunately, MeetingBurner does not yet offer swap mouse control which means that I will not be able to use it solo for remote assistance, remote training, and webinars. They do tell me that this feature is on their radar but, who knows if and when. I am leaning toward using Zoho Assist for the remote assistant. I am familiar with Zoho’s offerings and my experience is that they work well and that they also offer excellent service. The application is also available for either $12.00/month or $115.00/year. Budget score! I also believe that I may have a workaround for my remote assistance recording dilemma and I did ask the folks over at MeetingBurner about this. I don’t see any reason why I can’t take my clients to MeetingBurner, have Zoho Assist running at the same time, and then record the whole darn thing. He shoots! He scores! He thinks! 🙂
Certainly, I could continue my search in both areas, and there is little question but that I probably missed a large number of quality applications but, hey, I’m a man. We don’t shop. We buy. Speaking of buying, I topped off my day with a new Magic Jack Plus so that I could have a dedicated office line and not rely solely on my cell phone. $70.00 and that includes local and long distance for a year and comes with all the goodies like voice mail, caller ID, and call forwarding! Gotta’ love it!
What other applications should I have looked at or might you be able to add to this list?
Craig M. Jamieson
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