Communication is the key to any healthy relationship. You wouldn’t expect your loved ones to read your mind, would you? (Ahem..at least not all of the time) So why should your customers and employees have to do all of the guesswork? The single biggest mistake most companies make is the failure to communicate, losing their customers’ interest, and sometimes even their trust. And without internal communication with their team, businesses would simply cease to exist.

Experiencing a PR faux pas is inevitable no matter how hard you try to avoid it for your brand. The risk of making an embarrassing mistake is all the more heightened because customers are constantly engaged with your brand through digital channels. A small mistake can be overblown and become viral on the web within an hour. “Even the best intentions can be misread by customers, and oftentimes it takes a lot of work to undo even a simple error,” explains Dan Fries, PR adviser at BlueTree.

Building a user community is one of the most valuable things a business can do for both its brand and its customers. When you bring customers together to learn from each other, everyone wins. Creating an online community space is one thing, but actually getting people to show up and use it regularly is the harder part. Badges are a powerful tool for increasing engagement in an online community.

Some time ago, a group of Mattermost contributors sat down to think about how to improve the installation and maintenance flow of the platform. Managing a Mattermost install is quite straightforward already thanks to its binary distribution, but you still need to install and manage the different components that surround the application itself: the database, the web proxy, and the SSL certificate.

Does your small business have remote workers? Or are you allowing your employees to work from home owing to the pandemic? You are not alone. In fact, 57% of small business owners are considering allowing their employees to work from home post-pandemic. While doing remote work is achievable and more productive, according to studies, you need to implement some effective brainstorming tools to facilitate creativity and improve teamwork.

The post-purchase period is a critical transition time for customers. Often, they need guidance on how to get the most value out of your products. In fact, 88% of buyers in a 2020 Wyzowl report said they’re more likely to remain loyal to a business that provides welcoming, educational onboarding content. Customer onboarding is something you have to get right—every time.

Transform how you collaborate with clients using Teamwork’s innovative new Client User role. Give your clients the full power of Teamwork for better collaboration, greater visibility, and a more productive client experience, at no extra cost. As an agency or professional services firm, clients are at the heart of everything you do.

If you google “project management tools”, there are a number of them that will show up in every review, comparison, discussion, and post in general. One of them is Asana, a great project management app created by a Facebook co-founder and ex-Google engineer. Besides its features, there is another thing that a lot of people are interested in: Asana pricing. In companies with a lot of employees, every additional seat means more money to spend every month.

Let’s face it: being a call center agent is a tough job. And being a hiring manager tasked with finding people who have call center skills is no walk in the park, either. A wrong decision made during the hiring process can have far-reaching effects, and not the good kind.

As the technology gets better, the criminal minds also upgrade their hacking efforts to exploit the new security system. The cost of damages due to cybercrime and system security breaches is projected to cost over $6 trillion by 2021. The sad truth is, when sophisticated attackers want to get access to your data, they leave no stone unturned to find a way.

In Part 1 of this blog series on how to use reports from your B2B customer support software solution to interpret key data and implement strategies as a result. Next, we explore how to use reporting to determine how happy your customers are and what to do if they’re not. Why?

As the COVID-19 crisis was escalating in the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) found itself in the midst of a crisis. Some 40% of key NHS healthcare workers had been forced to self-isolate with unconfirmed coronavirus symptoms in their homes, leaving a colossal gap in the workforce at a time when they needed to operate at full capacity. And since the virus was unconfirmed, many of those isolations were completely unnecessary – the result of runny noses from allergies or common cold symptoms.

Need more repeat customers? You’re not alone. Businesses of all sizes struggle to win over new shoppers and to inspire brand loyalty in the ones they already have. Pulling off both at the same time is even harder. These repeat customers are known as your customer base.

Providing excellent customer service is a necessity for any e-commerce store. No matter how good your online storefront is, you will always have some customers who have questions or concerns regarding the payment or refund process. And when your customers need you, you need to be around to provide assistance. However, this does not necessarily mean that you need to have a round-the-clock staff of agents online for 24/7 support.

A sitemap is a special file that contains all the website content information: website pages, video files and other files on the website and the relationships between them for the search engines to correctly crawl the website.

Customer relations are the basis for forming loyal customers. Strong customer relations strategies will ensure a strong emotional connection from the customer to a brand, making them brand advocates. This is why ensuring great experiences with customers is vital to any business. So, how do you strengthen customer relations? What does “customer relations” entail?

Everyone loves apps. They can be fun, useful, or simply automate tasks, making life easier. As users might not be aware of the awesome Rocket.Chat apps offered by our growing Marketplace, we’ve decided to create a list of our favorite apps, tested and used by our internal team and community. Check it out!

We are happy to announce that we are selected as one of the 20 most promising conversational platforms by CIOReview. For the uninitiated, CIO Review is a popular technology print magazine containing the latest tech news, articles, and insights from various industries. CIO Review lists articles from top CIO’s, CTO’s and CEO’s of organizations, globally. CIO Review has also selected Workativ as Company of the Year and provides more details in their interview article.

We all know that good communication is essential to strong relationships in both our work and personal lives. Communication is the glue that holds relationships, families, and friendships together. At work, it can be the difference between a project succeeding or failing – or even a business floundering or thriving. There’s also a financial incentive to get communication right.

We think it’s safe to say that no organization has made it through the peak of the pandemic easily. But COVID-19 Benchmark data tells us that some have managed to adapt to constant uncertainty and continue supporting their customers, even as the world keeps changing.

Long call queues. Frazzled customer service agents. Frustrated customers. When unexpectedly high call volume hits a company—especially smaller ones with fewer resources on hand—the effects can be far-reaching. From customer satisfaction rates dropping to an overall impact on the customer experience, high call volume can pose a significant challenge to contact centers scrambling to satisfy customer inquiries.

Here are the newest integrations from Zendesk to help your agents provide great customer experiences.

Open source companies are amazing places to work for engineers. Your work is showcased to the world through private open source companies like GitLab and HashiCorp (makers of Terraform and Vault), and through public ones like Elastic, GitHub, and RedHat—all of which have enormous impact.

We’ve all had that project. You’re juggling shifting priorities and tight schedules, and asking yourself: Did I get that done? Where did I put that note? When was I supposed to finish that? No one likes navigating tight schedules and shifting priorities—but with Asana, you can sail through those treacherous waters without worrying that tasks are getting left behind. When all of your work is in one place, you and your team have a way to effortlessly track, execute, and report on work.

Making a bad hire in any role brings a number of issues. Finding a replacement is expensive, and the quick turnover often lowers team morale. When hiring a customer success manager, making a poor choice is especially damaging. This position is critical for maintaining and nurturing long-term customer relationships. If you choose someone who is a poor fit, you're likely to see lower retention rates. In the long run, that means less revenue.

42 percent of people in the world have a smartphone, and 87 percent of smartphone owners use messaging. Let those numbers sink in for a minute... Customers overwhelmingly want to interact with businesses on the same messaging channels they use in their personal lives. Messaging already had the highest customer satisfaction score of any support channel before COVID-19, with a CSAT of 98 percent.

Do you believe your company understands the value of its customer experience (CX) programs? If not, you’re not alone. Despite the fact that CX is becoming a top business priority, 37 percent of CX professionals don’t agree with the statement “My company understands the role of CX and the value I bring.” What’s more, 24% of respondents identify “continuously proving value” as one of their top three on-the-job challenges.

Happy employees are both more productive and more likely to remain loyal to the business in the long run, so it makes sense to ensure that the workplace you run is as positive and appealing as possible. To that end, here are just 10 tips which should allow you to improve morale, keep team members satisfied, meet expectations and ensure that everyone feels fulfilled at the end of each day.

Reports. We all have to run them, and read them, and receive them, or submit them, and definitely explain them. But sometimes we get so caught up in the actions surrounding reports that we neglect to actually understand them. As a customer service professional, you have all sorts of data at your fingertips.

We’re happy to announce that Rocket.Chat, the leading open-source communication hub, was named to the Constellation ShortList™ for Enterprise Group Messaging in Q3 2020. The technology vendors and service providers included in this program deliver critical transformation initiative requirements for the early adopters and fast follower organizations.

Is your business using Okta for Identity and Access Management? Then you might know how manually provisioning and deprovisioning users can be cumbersome for your IT team. Every new hire or company exit requires timely modifications to a user’s account. As a result, IT spend inordinate amounts of time on these processes and are distracted from other priorities, and your end-users suffer delays in productivity if their accounts aren’t configured correctly.

Research shows that companies that excel at customer experience have 1.5 times more engaged employees than companies with a record of poor customer experience. It’s also clear that companies who invest in employee experience can see a higher ROI than those who don’t. So what should you exactly do to keep your employees happy? You can start by automating some of your IT processes so that employees can self-serve themselves.

In the rush to invest in tools that provide more insights about the customer journey and help provide better customer experience, businesses may have overlooked another powerful tool for improving the customer experience—the employee experience also referred to as EX. Companies that actively work to engage their employees outperform their competitors by 147%.

If you’re using JumpCloud as your business’ directory-as-a-service (DaaS) solution to authenticate, authorize, and manage users, then it’s high time you made the whole process effortless for your employees. Why? Because many a time, businesses tend to invest more on the technologies that improve the customer experience and neglect to do the same for their employees.

As a team lead, one of your most important responsibilities is to help team members prioritize the right work to support your organization’s goals. Easier said than done, we know. The fact is there are countless projects your team can be working on at any given time—not all of them high priority or impact. So how do you keep pesky low-priority work at bay and ensure everyone is using their limited time and energy effectively?

Working from home is a comparatively new trend that started to gather momentum with the advent of digital technologies. The previous five years saw a 44% surge in remote employment, which is explained by two major factors. The first is the growing mobility of the workforce, 40% of which are expected to go exceedingly mobile globally by 2022. In the developed countries, this ratio is likely to reach the astounding three-fourths. No less fundamental is the impact of COVID-19.

We’re in a world where the customer is king. We rely on them to reach out to us, tell us how they feel, tell their friends about us and, of course, to continue spending their money with us. We could just take each of these interactions at face value and continue on with our day, but gaining more actionable insights from customer support conversations helps perpetuate a pattern of customer happiness and loyalty.

Written by Jasper de Taeye, Sales Director for the Benelux market at Wire™. At the beginning of January 2020, the first people nudged me about the rise of a virus that could become a pandemic. We all know by now how it disrupted our world entirely. I was an ignorant Dutchman and I believed it would not become that dramatic. I truly believed, and mostly hoped, that this coronavirus will be nipped in the bud, like previous viruses, by the strictly regulated China.

In 2016, the financial institution used to have different communication channels to support its 100M+ customers: Skype for video calls, a mobile app, website, phone, to name a few. Having so many complex tools around is more of a hassle than a solution. Here’s why.

The global pandemic has left newly remote workers swimming in confusion and struggling to keep up. To shift from today’s state of surviving to a future where teams are thriving, we need tools that make coordinating and collaborating on work effortless. When teams aren’t clear on who is doing what by when and why they are doing it, they move slowly, miss deadlines, and fall short of their goals.

As a business grows, so does the focus on building and maintaining strong customer relationships. Businesses that aim to make a mark globally, understand the need to interact with customers from all over the world, in their native language. Engaging with customers in their preferred language helps them feel heard. The message is highly personalized, and as a result, customer satisfaction increases. However, offering multilingual customer support is easier said than done. So, where do you begin?

The ultimate goal of writing tests should be improving the user’s in-app experience and increasing developers’ confidence in shipping new or improved apps. The Mattermost team has been continuously writing different types of tests to improve the product. Such extensive automated testing has enabled them to ship a new release—with new features and improvements—every single month for the last few years. Thousands of developers contribute to the codebase.

Moving is never fun. It’s bad enough when it’s your stuff, but ten years of stuff at an office you only spent two years in can be daunting! I’m Navid, and part of my job at Basecamp the last two years has been taking care of our office in Chicago. As folks outside of Basecamp learned of our impending office closure, I began to get some questions. The most common being “what did you do with the stuff?

Team collaboration serves customers holistically. So customers become loyal. Businesses that get it will enjoy loyal customers while others struggle. In one study, 86 percent of business executives said that lack of collaboration or poor communication causes workplace failure. Employees agree more. In that study, 97 percent of employees say that lack of team alignment impacts goals and projects negatively. It doesn’t matter if you aim to win more loyal customers or double your revenue.

Customer support reps have to be knowledgeable about the products and/or services their company sells so that they can accurately answer customer questions. They also need to be aware of company policy so that they always interact with customers in brand-approved ways. But teaching new team members these things when they work outside a central office can be difficult. To do so, you need a stellar onboarding plan.

Your customers need you now more than ever. And the sooner you are able to engage with them the better as brand loyalty is built around quality customer service. Besides, good customer service can also prove to be a good marketing tool — news about good service travels far and wide and can bring in additional sales through repeat and new customers.

In July, the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) published a policy brief with some tremendous evidence-based information on potential productivity gains from teleworking in the post-COVID-19 era. First, four key themes from the piece — supported by data and evidence — are: We wanted to take a moment to give you an abbreviated synopsis of some of the more interesting, actionable findings.

Messaging has the highest customer satisfaction score of any support channel, with a CSAT of 98 percent. It makes sense: messaging is fast, personal, secure, and asynchronous—in other words; customers can pick the conversation up at their own convenience, without losing the conversation history. But providing the seamless conversational interactions customers expect requires more than simply offering messaging channels. It starts with choosing the right messaging partner.

Nimbella and Mattermost today announced that they are offering a solution that allows any enterprise using Mattermost to easily build and run custom slash commands and apps with enterprise security capabilities.

As published in business.com, June 2, 2020 There are two types of viewpoints when it comes to B2B (business-to-business) customer support. The first approaches B2B customer support as a cost center, or a necessary expense for running a business. After all, having a support team is required for your product, and it’s just something you need to have. The second thinks B2B customer support is a profit center.

At Asana, we’re big fans of helping teams collaborate to hit goals they might never have thought possible. Forms is a centerpiece of that collaboration. With Forms, you can streamline work requests, clarify expectations, and get all of the information your team needs to get started on work.

According to figures, before COVID, only 7% of workers in the U.S. had access to a “flexible workplace” benefit or telework. Now, 64% of US employees are working from home now, according to research conducted by SHRM’s COVID-19 Business Index. This swelling of remote work is spurring many organizations to reevaluate their suite of business applications and tech solutions.

For up-and-coming companies, seeing the business grow can be immensely fulfilling. Yet it can also be a bit unsettling—as customer service requests increase, it often falls on a single employee or very small team to manage them all. And for a business that’s working overtime to get a foothold in the market, going on a hiring spree doesn’t make much financial sense—and even if it did, that team likely wouldn’t have sufficient tools in place.

Businesses often narrowly focus on growth and what it takes to acquire a new customer. But the investment into nourishing existing customers and showing them appreciation pays dividends. In fact, acquiring a new customer is 5 to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one and increasing customer retention rates by just 5 percent can increase profits by up to 95 percent.

For any business that provides a service, they are bound to be faced with support requests and inquiries. In these situations, having a helpdesk to track and manage these requests is crucial to staying on top of addressing customer needs in a timely fashion. But a good helpdesk tool is more than just a ticketing system. With this in mind, one client looked to OneDesk to meet this need, knowing that our feature set and capabilities go beyond ticket management.

At OneDesk we’ve been working on some big exciting new features, but at the same time we have been making updates to OneDesk with a few smaller, but very useful features. Here is a quick update on the latest improvements you may have missed.

Workativ’s new features are an all-round enhancement to dialogs, automations, and a big update for Slack and Teams. Take a look at the new features and enhancements this month, below.

Mattermost Release v5.26 is generally available today. The new feature release offers enhancements to member and channel management, logs, channel sidebar, help, and the mobile app. The release includes the following new features.

Last month I started working in the cybersecurity space. Cybersecurity has always been quite a mysterious word to me. I pictured cybersecurity to be a company’s security walls to protect themselves from all kind of hackers sitting in dark rooms attacking companies through the internet wearing badass eye masks.

We’re making it even easier to unlock the value of your software, with deeper integrations and new features for our shared customers

While Trello isn’t as old as some software solutions like PayPal and Basecamp — having only been around for nine years — it certainly seems like it’s been around forever. With over 50 million users, it’s clear that this task management platform is here to stay. One of the biggest selling points has always been the fact that Trello is totally free if you’re only looking to use its base features.

It’s no secret that remote work or telecommuting was gaining popularity in the United States over the past decade. According to one recent study, about 4.3 million people work remotely at least half the time — a number equivalent to about 3.2% of the entire workforce. All told, the number of people who work from home in some capacity has increased by an impressive 140% since 2005 alone — a trend that showed absolutely no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

When you think about your best customer service experience, what comes to mind? Maybe it was the barista who knew your name and just how you like your latte. Or that time you called customer service, and the agent sympathized with you, then went out of their way to fix the issue. An excellent customer experience can change the way you think about a company, and it can create real loyalty.

Time to put away that crystal ball. If anything, 2020 has taught us to embrace a certain level of unpredictability in our lives. And while a global pandemic probably didnʼt enter into most peopleʼs plans, one thing is sure: we will be feeling its impacts for the foreseeable future. No sprint to the finish line here. For support teams, this might feel a little daunting. And why not? Customers are reaching out in record numbers. Your team may still be working from home.

Leaders from Slack, Wired UK, the Financial Times, HSBC and John Lewis share how their teams are adapting to a radically different working environment

Remote teams are not new. However, they have been in the minority in most industries until recently. But due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, remote working has become the norm for millions of people across the United States and all over the world. This new status quo looks to continue for the foreseeable future. Remote working has its benefits, but also comes with a unique set of challenges. In particular, working from home can be isolating, and people can struggle with productivity.

Let’s get straight to the point - Why did you click open an article that compares Google Meet, Zoom, and Webex Meeting? You, most probably, want to know which one, out of these three, will be the perfect buy for your business. Or perhaps you have questions about their features, pros and cons, and pricing. In this article, we’ll answer the question everyone is asking in the 2020 pandemic - What’s the best online conferencing software to use for both personal and business use?

The NHSX and National Commercial and Procurement Hub has announced its Clinical Communications Procurement Framework. The initiative is aimed at helping NHS trusts phase out pagers and reduce reliance on email by the end of 2021, by adopting modern communication tools. To be included on the Framework, technologies needed to be able to demonstrate that they save time for individuals and teams, support patient transfers of care, and are scalable across the NHS.

We are excited to share great news with you: Rocket.Chat has obtained the ISO 27001 certification! As part of our ongoing efforts to always strive for excellence in everything we do, this is a testament to our commitment to security for all our users. Read more about what this means for you and what we are up to next.

The Splunk Audit API App for Slack makes it easy to identify usage trends, detect security threats and drive data-based decisions

We’re relentlessly innovating to stay ahead of cybersecurity threats. Here’s how we’re helping customers keep their information and data secure

In February of 2020 the world-renowned INSEAD business school introduced its first course in product management, designed and taught by professor Manuel Sosa and lecturer Ayman Jawhar. Unfortunately, the severity of COVID-19 became apparent shortly after the course began. Like countless universities around the world, INSEAD’s Singapore campus shut down and the new class – and its 45 students – were forced to go completely virtual.

At this point, remote work isn’t just a common part of our lives. It’s essentially a ubiquitous one, thanks to the impact of the unexpected and ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Even businesses that hadn’t embraced telecommuting in the past were forced to confront this tech-driven future sooner than expected, which has led them to turn to a wide variety of different solutions in an attempt to meet their needs.

For many of us, the way we work has changed since the start of 2020. We’ve had to adapt to the unexpected, embrace remote working, and learn to keep work going even when we’re not all in the same office space. But among all the uncertainty, one thing has become clearer than ever: even when we’re apart, we’re all in this together. And teamwork has never been more important.

They say COVID-19 has changed the world forever and business communication is no exception. Remote work is becoming a new normal making employees set up their home offices and bring all the work communication online. Whether we are communicating with our team at work or with customers and partners, nothing is the same any more. Naturally, businesses face a great set of challenges starting with the lack of human interaction to ineffective online tools that don’t cater to their needs.

You might say this is one of the worst possible times to be growing a business, but that’s not necessarily the case. On our new Sit Down Startup podcast, we talked to founders about how a customer-focused approach can help you thrive even as the world transforms before your eyes. They shared their thoughts on customer experience, empathy and hope as we look to the future. Read on for a few lessons from some inspiring founders.

Question for you: Do you know why there are so many different types of communication tools? I mean, just google the word “communication tools”, and you’ll find list upon list upon list of “best communication tools for teams and businesses” It’s because communication amongst teams is both hard AND critical to the success of every business. You would have thought we’d figured this all out by now.

In Part 1 of this blog series we suggested tools that can help your B2B customers solve issues on their own and ways to help them feel more comfortable doing so. We continued in Part 2 exploring one way that customers can speed up the time to ticket resolution with live chat. And we conclude in Part 3 with more ways to speed the time to ticket resolution, using visual support tools.

In something reminiscent of David and Goliath, the stone of Max Schrems’ landmark legal challenge has shattered the Privacy Shield that protects centralised service providers. This is a really big deal. It means that the personal data of an EU data subject (‘person’) cannot be transferred from within the EU to the US without an appropriate mechanism.

Rocket.Chat 3.5 has just arrived! To summarize its most important features and explain what has changed, we’ve come up a list with the main changes for both Community and Enterprise edition. Check them below! 🙂

The Splunk Audit API App for Slack makes it easy to identify usage trends, detect security threats and drive data-based decisions

Crisis management is essential for any business (large and small). It can provide guidance, even in the most chaotic times. And it can find ways for your company to come out victorious on the other end. However, 51% of companies admit to not having a crisis management plan in place. Is your company one of them? If it is, here’s the way to write a crisis management plan, as well as the way companies have used them to resolve crises.

We know that when teams come together, they can achieve brilliant things. But in order to get the most out of your people — and out of your project management tool — you need to make sure they’re set up correctly. With the Teams feature in Teamwork, it’s even easier to collaborate with the right people.

According to Gartner, information contributes at least 20-25% of an average organization’s value today. Studies have uncovered countless ways to use data as an asset to help improve businesses by reducing costs, improving customer satisfaction, and managing risks. Along with the paradigm shift towards valuing information as an asset, companies also need to find opportunities to maximize its worth by focusing more upon data governance.

Customer-oriented companies put consumers’ needs and expectations above the needs of the business—because customers are the business. That strategy may seem like common sense since it lines up with famous truisms like “The customer comes first” and “The customer is always right.” But many businesses still favor a sales-oriented approach, in which the needs and wants of the company are prioritized over the customer.

How well are your company’s products and services meeting your customers’ expectations? More importantly, how can you tell? The answer lies in measuring customer satisfaction. It’s a common buzzword thrown around in management and customer service meetings, but there isn't a single metric that can fully capture your customers' happiness. Instead, customer satisfaction is best quantified using multiple metrics.

Some markets are starting to get ready for an upcoming (and progressive) return to the workplace. After several weeks of adapting to a new and uncertain situation, working from home and creating new routines… How can you now prepare your team for the comeback? First and most importantly, always follow your country’s guidelines regarding businesses’ re-openings!

In Part 1 of this blog series we started exploring tools that can help your B2B customers solve issues on their own and ways to help them feel more comfortable doing so. Now in Part 2 of this series, we’ll explore one way that customers can speed up the time to ticket resolution with live chat. Let’s Chat!

It’s a no-brainer that better employee experience equals better customer service. A recent Frost & Sullivan study on Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) found that 89% of surveyed companies felt that improving contact center engagement will significantly enhance the quality of customer experience. And companies that fully adopt WEM solutions are 82% more likely to provide a better quality of customer experience and 96% more likely to achieve overall profitability.

Not getting enough ROI on your internal IT/HR support? Finding your employees constantly frustrated and unproductive? Getting regular bad feedbacks from your customers on your product support? What if I told you there is a single, cost-effective solution to all these? The solution is… wait for it… AI-powered contextual chatbots with automated workflows for business applications. Okay, that was a bit long.

When everything changes, the ability to adapt becomes the competitive advantage

Did you know you can control who sees what information in Asana? Permissions in Asana let you control which information is public or private, who can access tasks and projects, and—if you’re an Asana admin—who is a member of your Asana Organization. Whether you’re an individual contributor, a team lead, or an Asana admin, here are some tips to help you master permissions in Asana.

It’s no secret that winning organizations often find new and innovative ways to not only manage the information they’re creating on a daily basis, but to track it as well. This is true both in terms of the tools you’re using like Microsoft Teams or Outlook, and where that information is saved (like with SharePoint, Salesforce or even network folders). How can users take advantage of the communication and collaboration and still find Microsoft Teams information governance success?

2020 has been a whirlwind year, and with billions of people forced to contend with our new reality, we’ve noticed some interesting shifts in the way businesses and customers use messaging. As part of our new normal, where physical distancing and closures have changed how we work, socialize, and do business, use of messaging apps is increasing. According to our most recent Zendesk Snapshot, American smartphone users will spend 20% more of their time in messaging apps than before.

“Due to increased call volume, hold times may be longer than usual.” How many times have we heard that when calling a customer support line? It’s frustrating enough when you have an issue that you need to get resolved without waiting endlessly on hold if you’re calling, or for an e-mail response if you’ve e-mailed in.

Customer conflict is unavoidable. For many reasons, conflicts with customers will happen. And they may happen quite frequently. So you need to learn how to manage them. In this article, we’ll talk about conflict management with customers—what it is, which tactics you can use, and how to get better at it.

You might be familiar with SolarWinds Inc., the American company that develops software for businesses to help manage their networks, systems, and information technology infrastructure. You might even be using their software like SolarWinds Service Desk for IT Service Management. What if there was a way for you to improve the experience of using SolarWinds Service Desk for your employees? There is, actually. It’s called Workativ Assistant.

In May 2016, Adam Hale, now CEO of Sage People, stated that “organizations invest millions in building their customer engagement strategies, but rarely know much about their employees.” This is now more relevant than ever. It is a no-brainer that organizations that invest in employee engagement see huge improvements to their customer experience. Satisfied employees equal satisfied customers. How/where can you start with improving employee experience?

How Freshdesk integration with Workativ Assistant can help speed up workplace support Did you know that after a bad experience with a brand, consumers are four times likely to stop shopping with them? So how can you provide the experience that your customers want? By keeping your employees engaged. Because engaged employees provide better customer service. And better customer service translates to customer retention. Get it?

As of October 15, 2020, Mattermost Extended Support Release (ESR) version 5.19 will no longer be supported. If any of your servers are not on ESR 5.25 or later, we highly recommend that you upgrade immediately. With our simple upgrade steps, it takes only a few minutes. Mattermost adopts a monthly tick-tock release cycle, with a new version shipping on the 16th of each month.