articulatefreak.com

I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to work with the awesome team at Articulate for almost 3 years now.  Throughout that time, I’ve learned a lot about why Articulate wins award after award for its customer service.  It’s not a big secret…it simply boils down to common sense and treating people how you would want to be treated (just in the digital world).

1.  Internal Communication

If you’re only using email and instant messaging to communicate within your company, then you’re way behind the game.  We’ve been using Yammer for a few years now and it’s almost become an email-killer.  Anytime I need to contact our purchasing department, I simply Yammer a question and get a response within a few moments.  The awesome thing about Yammer is that the answer can come from anyone within the company that knows the answer instead of just the 3 people that I would have specified in an email.  With Yammer, all of the communication is archived and searchable….no more worrying about whether or not Outlook archived or deleted the information that I need.

2.  Set Expectations High and Overdeliver

When you submit a support case to Articulate, you’ll receive an emailed response stating that we’ve received your case.  Although this is very typical for companies, you’d be surprised at how many forget to email this type of confirmation.  Whether automated or not, sending a confirmation within minutes of the submission sets the customer at ease and removes any doubts as to whether the question or comment was received.

In the confirmation email, Articulate also states that you should receive a response within a single business day, but “note that you will likely receive a reply in the next couple of hours.”  With this single statement, Articulate is not only setting the bar really high, but also challenging itself to provide the best support possible.  How many confirmation emails do you receive stating that you should expect a response within 24 to 48 hours only to get an email a week later?  Challenge yourself to be awesome and you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish.

3.  If you have official forums, then use them.

Official company forums are much more than just a place for your customers to discuss your products and help each other.  Rather, it should be treated like the front line of your support.  At Articulate, we have at least 1 person that is dedicated to browsing the technical forums and responding to inquiries.  If they don’t know the answer, then they find someone in the company that does & ask them to respond.  We also have community managers like Jeanette Brooks and David Anderson that browse the “Building Better Courses” section of the site.  Our goal is to ensure that there’s never a post that goes unread with 0 replies.  In some posts, that means that we ask the end-user to submit a feature request or simply submit a support case so that we can take a closer look at the issue.  If a support case is submitted, we’ll add a follow-up message in the forums in case anyone finds that post and has the same issue.  Keep in mind that your customers will likely try to Google their question before contacting you directly.  Thus, if they find a forum post with 0 replies, then they’ll likely ignore the problem or just assume that it’s an issue with your product.

4.  Social Media is fast and you should be, too.

If you use Twitter, Facebook, or any other social media platform to communicate with your customers, you should be able to respond within minutes (or at least within an hour) during typical business hours.  You should also respond to questions outside of regular hours when possible.  I use Tweetdeck on my iPhone throughout the day and evening to keep my eyes on any comments related to Articulate and respond appropriately.  Remember, social media platforms are a real-time feedback system that can make or break a purchase for a potential customer.  Make sure that any questions, comments, or feedback for your hashtags and searches have been replied to.  There’s nothing worse than a company that responds only to positive feedback and is unwilling to tackle negative comments.

5.  Outlook is not a case management system

I really shouldn’t have to bring this up, but I know that a lot of companies (big and small) use Outlook as their primary support tool.  While Outlook is great at sending and receiving emails, there’s no possible way to legitimately manage your customers using it.  How do you see the case history of a specific user?  How do you see the case history of their entire company?  How do you escalate the case to another person and verify that they responded to it?  Whether you choose to use Zendesk, Salesforce, or another support tool, it doesn’t matter to me…just don’t use Outlook.

6.  Humanize your cut and paste solutions

There’s nothing wrong with using cut and paste solutions as long as they’re tweaked to sound like a human response.  Don’t reply to a complicated question from your customers by just throwing a link to them.  Rather, use some of the same terminology that your customer uses to tweak your cut and paste solution.  You’ll also want to verify that you’re actually addressing every question that has been asked.  From a customer perspective, there’s nothing worse than getting a reply that requires another series of back-and-forth emails.

7.  Hack your own products

At Articulate, we actively invite our customers to hack our products via skins, Engage community interactions, the Presenter SDK, the Articulate Online API, and much more.  Some of my co-workers like David Fair and David Burton are always coming up with creative solutions that are considered unsupported. In fact, the main reason why I got the job at Articulate was due to my “Email Results with PHP” solution that I created when I was still an Articulate customer. Good things come to those that hack!

To check out some of David Burton’s hacks (like the infamous web object fix), click here.

8.  The right tools are great…the right people are better.

While its important to have the right tools in place, it’s more important to have the right people in place.  Every employee at Articulate is extremely passionate about the products that they support.  We believe that our products not only help make our customers’ jobs easier, but also make the world a better place.  If your co-workers don’t believe in your product, how do you expect your customers to become fanatics?

One of the more challenging parts of being an elearning designer and developer is attempting to understand the communication between your content and the Learning Management System.  When the content works as expected, life is full of double rainbows and leprechauns in trees.  However, as soon as you run into problems, you realize that the specifications used to communicate with your LMS are about as easy to understand as Charlie Sheen on his webcam at 3AM after a weekend binge.

Fortunately, Microsoft’s operating systems have been around long enough that most people understand the difference between Windows 95 and Windows Vista.  Thus, we’ll be using that analogy to explain the difference between AICC, SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004 2nd Edition, SCORM 2004 3rd Edition, and the future of SCORM known as Project Tincan.

AICC = Windows 3.1

AICC is regarded as the first specification for Learning Management Systems. Although the initial release of the AICC specification (1993) only focused on CD-ROM based training, support for web based training was added in 1998.  AICC communicates with the LMS by sending HTTP messages to the LMS and then interpreting the responses from the LMS.  Uploading published content to an LMS using AICC is typically a multiple step process.

If your LMS only supports AICC, then you’re using dinosaur technology and may want to consider looking into more modern alternatives.

SCORM 1.2 = Windows 95

Released in 2001, SCORM 1.2 is probably the most commonly used specification in the industry.  The biggest advantage of SCORM 1.2 over AICC is that the uploading content to the LMS is as simple as uploading a ZIP file.  SCORM 1.2 supports 4,096 characters of suspend data (resume data).

Unfortunately, SCORM 1.2 contains several ambiguities and lacks many of the features of the more modern specifications.

SCORM 2004 2nd Edition = Windows 98

While not as widely in use as SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004 2nd Edition (released in July 2004) is known for its sequencing and navigation improvements.  Content vendors now have the ability to prevent access to certain course elements based upon earlier results.  The biggest downside of SCORM 2004 2nd Edition is that it only supports 4,000 characters of suspend data.  That’s 96 characters less than SCORM 1.2.

If you have the choice between SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004 2nd Edition in your LMS, I’d recommend using SCORM 2004 2nd Edition.

SCORM 2004 3rd Edition = Windows XP

Released in 2006, SCORM 2004 3rd Edition provides even greater support for sequencing and navigation.  In fact, LMS’s are now required to provide certain user interface elements to make sequencing and navigation function properly across systems.  Regarding suspend data, this specification finally got it right by allowing 64,000 characters.  That’s over 15 times more suspend data than previous specifications.

If you’re publishing with Articulate and your LMS supports SCORM 2004 3rd Edition, this is the preferred specification to publish to.

Project Tincan = (Windows 8 + Mac OS X Lion) * #Tigerblood

Project Tincan, currently being researched by Rustici Software, could be the next big thing in the elearning world.  The current specifications used in the elearning industry are not only confusing, but may not be able to scale with our needs.  Thus, I’m glad to see that ADL has entrusted the team at Rustici Software to investigate this modernization.

Will Project Tincan be SCORM 2.0 or a completely separate specification from SCORM?  Could Project Tincan get courses out of the LMS and integrated into social networks like Facebook and Twitter?  Only time will tell.  You can get involved in its future here.

Note:

SCORM 2004 4th Edition was not covered in this article since Articulate does not currently publish to this standard.

Main source of information for this article was from www.scorm.com.

In the fast-paced world of smartphones, cloud computing, and social media, techfreaks like myself are not only working more hours, but are also increasing their efficiency.  We have learned to wear more than one hat due to the economical hardships of the past few years.  As business has steadily increased, however, we are required to continually maximize our efforts and keep the head count as lean as possible.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t change the fact that other aspects of our lives have taken the back-seat to our employment.  Whether it’s family time, exercise, church events, recreation, or volunteering, we simply don’t have time to that we used to.

Fortunately, creative uses of technology have enabled us to change the world with minimal effort.  Here’s a few free options that you can utilize to make a difference:

World Community Grid

The World Community Grid enables you to donate your unused computer time to many research projects.  Simply by installing a free program on your computer, you can help conquer cancer, fight hunger,  cure Muscular Dystrophy, and more.

The best thing about the software is that you can tune it so that it only runs whenever your computer is idle or at certain times of the day or night.  Are you one of those people that constantly leaves their machine running overnight?  Why not use the World Community Gird to put that idle time to use?

You can join the World Community Grid by using this link.  If you’re interested in joining the “Articulate Community Users” group, you can join by using this link.

For more information on the World Community Grid, check out the informational video below:

CauseWorld

CauseWorld is a free application that is available for both the iPhone and android that enables you to donate “karmas” to support a cause of your choice.  The causes range from offsetting carbon to donating a book to children in Southeast Asia, India, Afraid, and more.

To earn “karmas”, simply walk into a store, launch the app, click on the “check-in” button, and select a store.

While the application doesn’t have a leaderboard to compare your karmas and donations to other users, you can earn badges and “level-up” as you donate to various causes.  You can also check your own stats right from the application.

For more information on CauseWorld, check out this link.

gazelle.com

Do you have an old gadget sitting around the office or your house that you simply don’t know what to do with?  Why not recycle it with gazelle?  Not only will they send you a box and pay for the shipping, you may actually receive cash for your old gadget.

Whether you need to get rid of an old personal printer or your business needs to recycle some old laptops, gazelle.com is the free, green, and easy choice.

For more information, check out their website here.

Google Chrome is quickly gaining speed as the browser of choice among people that aren’t stuck with IE due to corporate restrictions.  Not only is it fast, but it’s also expanding quickly due to the vast number of extensions that are already available.  If you’re one of “those people” that haven’t made the switch to Chrome, I suggest doing it now before you read this article and become insanely jealous.

Session Manager

Session Manager is an extension that enables you to save a session that contains every tab that is currently open in the browser.  So, if you have 3 or 4 websites that you immediately open when you start your day, you can have this extension automatically open these sites for you with just a few clicks.  For more information on Session Manager, check out the screencast below:

You can download the Session Manager extension here.

Bit.ly Sidebar

If you’re into social media like Twitter and Facebook, you already know how much time you can save by using the Bit.ly Sidebar.  No longer do you have to actually go to a URL shortening site, copy and paste the URL, and then generate the short URL.  With this extension, simply go to the site that you want to shorten, click on the Bit.ly Sidebar extension in Chrome, and you’ll automatically have the shortened URL ready for you.

How many clicks and keystrokes will this save you in an average day?  Probably a bunch.

You can download the Bit.ly Sidebar extension here.

IE Tab

IE Tab is one of those add-ons that you don’t think about until you run into a website like this:

With Office Outlook Web Access, if you aren’t using IE 6 or later, then you’re stuck with a “light” version of email.  Here’s what the same page looks like in Chrome with the IE Tab applied:

Just by opening the website with an IE tab, you have access to the full-blown version instead of the “light” version of the email client.

If using the IE Tab extension doesn’t excite you, then you’re likely not stuck in a corporate environment.  For whatever reason, a lot of IT departments require their intranets and other local resources to be accessed with Internet Explorer.  This extension will allow you to access those resources without any issues.  I highly recommend installing this extension even if you don’t have an immediate use for it.  You’ll likely find a website to use it on after installing it.

You can download the IE Tab extension here.

PageShot

PageShot is an extension that enables you to screen capture a webpage and then crop it as necessary.  Before PageShot, I would hit the PrintScreen button on my keyboard, open Microsoft Paint, paste the image, crop it, and then either save it or copy it to my clipboard.  With PageShot, I can simply click on the extension, crop the image, and then right-click the resulting image to save it or copy it to my clipboard.  This extension saves me a lot of time in a typical day.  The only downside to this extension is that the functionality isn’t what I expected.  Personally, I would like to see the cropping tool drop onto my current screen instead of opening the page into a new window.

You can download the PageShot extension here.

An un-honorable mention:  Roboform

Amongst all of the great extensions available for Chrome, there are a few that shine about as nicely as your toilet.  Unfortunately, no matter how clean or white your toilet looks, it’s still a toilet.  Out of all of the extensions mentioned in this article, none of them excited me as much as Roboform.  I’ve literally been waiting months for Roboform to come out on Chrome so that I can finally get rid of Firefox.  To my dismay, Roboform for Chrome is about as intuitive as installing Ubuntu on a PS3 (yes, I said it).  To the developers of Roboform, I ask that you take a look at the Bit.ly Sidebar extension & copy it EXACTLY.  Until then, Roboform wins my award for the saddest implementation of an extension for Chrome.

You can download the Roboform extension here.

Have a recommendation for a Google Chrome Extension that wasn’t mentioned here?  Leave a reply below and I’ll check it out.