Web Operations Manual

OTHER IMPORTANT SUBJECTS - COVERED IN DEPTH

This section deals with a variety of other important subjects, that you will need to know. They are listed in no particular order.

CUSTOMER SUPPORT TUTORIALS:

Anytime a situtation occurs repeatedly that requires you provide support, such as a customer informing you they are having problems downloading your product, or completing the order form, you will want to create a short, visual tutorial that you can offer them. This is a great time saver, and is VERY helpful to the customers. It also reduces the time you need to spend responding in depth to the same customer problems over and over.

As time goes by, your list of much needed tutorials will increase. They will probably end up covering the following areas:

  • Downloading your products in .exe and/or .pdf format


    •
  • Printing your products in either format


    •
  • Completing your order form for credit card orders


    •
  • Completing the order form for checking account orders


    •
  • Logging in to your password protected sites


    •
  • Overcoming "declined" purchase error messages

Of course, depending on your product/service, your tutorials may vary. Create them at your own discretion.

In order to create a customer tutorial, you will need to be able to create a .html page to place on your website server. You then provide the web site address to the customer, for the specific tutorial they will benefit from.

Since pretty much all tutorials are made to include visual screen shot images, you will need a SCREEN CAPTURE program to use.

There are many screen capture programs you can choose from. If you don't want to pay for the screen capture software just to take a few screen shots, there are always freeware versions you can use, but they will provide you with less options.

Some of the more popular Screen Capture programs include:

Screen Print Gold

Snag-It

Capture Express

Grabbit

Capture Eze

You may want to download a few of them, and try each separate one, then keep the one you find easiest to use! Most of them allow you thirty days with which to evaluate the product.

SAVING TIME BY USING PERFECT KEYBOARD:

One of the best programs I have found to use when providing customer support is Perfect Keyboard. http://www.softwareutilities.com

When you repeatedly type the same phrase, email address, or web site address over and over again during the day, you are doing one of two things.

  • Causing extra stress on your wrists from typing too much
  • Using your time that could be better spent on other things

It's simply not necessary to type the more common items more than once to record it as a macro in Perfect Keyboard, so that you can use them over, and over again.

For instance, throughout the day, I find myself having to provide the company url many times. Instead of typing: http://www.amazingformula.com all I have to do when Perfect Keyboard is on (if you set it to launch on start up of your computer, it will sit in your system tray, using very little resources) is this:

.af

That's it!

Since it requires that you type the period key before the short phrase, you don't accidentally trigger it when you don't mean to.

I've used many of these keyboard shortcut programs before, and they all require that you do things like hit CTRL+SHIFT+F8 or whatever it may be, in order to launch the macro. That is way too difficult. Plus, it's not easy to remember them when they are that difficult.

With perfect keyboard, your biggest worry is not to make two macros that start out with the same characters.

When Perfect Keyboard is on, sitting nicely in my system tray, and I type .af it expands to this: http://www.amazingformula.com

When I type this:

.vm1

It expands to this:

Here are the new voice mail messages:

==============================

Message #1

Time:
Name:
Phone:
Email:

Comments:

===============================

Everything is formatted exactly as it was when you recorded the macro into the program, so all you have to do in the case of the voice mail messages is fill in the blanks.

There are many things you can use this for, such as:

  • email addresses
  • web site addresses
  • form letters (templates)
  • letter introductions
  • product names
  • signature files
  • filling out forms
  • hard to remember passwords
  • launching other programs, ( Example: when I type .note, Windows Notepad automatically opens!)
  • pre-written HTML code for page templates
  • inserting date and time
  • and just about anything else you can think of.

Instead of writing:

In the event you are in need of further assistance, do not hesitate to respond to this email message.

We type:

.in

As I mentioned above, it's a great time saver!

HERE IS HOW YOU USE PERFECT KEYBOARD:

When you've downloaded Perfect Keyboard to your computer, you will need to specify your macros. This is really easy. Simply open the program by clicking the icon from your system tray, as shown below with the red arrow:

Doing so will bring up the program, like this:

Move your mouse over to the "Shortcut Items View" area, and RIGHT CLICK. Doing so will bring up a small menu, like this:

Click on "Add Item", and a box will appear, that looks like the following screen shot. Before taking the screen shot for this example, I included some instructions in the text box below, so you can see what fields you need to complete.

The first thing is the "Text Shortcut" field. This is where you enter your .whatever that will launch your text when needed.

The second thing you need to do is to type in the "Macro (text to expand)" into the larger form area, as shown above. Simply type the sentence, letter, product name, or whatever you want, exactly as you want it to appear when activated.

When you've written your text, the next thing you need to do is to click the OPTIONS tab from across the top, and check off "Auto-Expand" as shown below.

You can also have it launch as part of a word, if you like.

There is one last thing to do before you're done, and that is to click the "Description" tab across the top, and enter a proper description for the macro.

Example: typing .af expands to be "The Amazing Formula", therefore, I have used exactly that, for the description. When you're done, click FILE, then SAVE. That's it!

Next time you find you're about to type the same text over again, for which you've already created the macro, simply type your .whatever, and it will expand immediately, saving you lots of time!