The sheep will guide you home if you're lost (they're generally known as
followers but this one's obviously the black sheep of the family)
or....
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Page purpose: OK, so I can't lay claim to all of the ideas displayed in this website, so here's a few
pointers to my inspiration sites and useful tools. |
Some
good articles that should be basic reading on CRM:
For
inspiration on Customer Service and CRM:
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CRM Guru: a
great source of current trends and interesting articles/case studies.
when you sign up to their free (and useful) newsletter they also provide you
with an informative CRM primer article.
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CRM-forum:
Another good source for ideas and reviews on new CRM
products/tools
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Customer marketing:
A good site for online marketing trends
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| CIO.com:
Very good on all issues relating to business, whether it be market
changes or what to do and not do when firing employees!
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For inspiration on site design and client interaction try
the following:
| ESC
Grenoble's E-business Intranet: The site I used to work on. Bear
in mind that the site is designed as a Lotus Notes Intranet and not
entirely for extranet use. Pages that I worked heavily on were the setting
up of the FAQ page ("Questions?" button), the Mini CV
("Employer? Click here" button) and the articles page
("Press"). My general idea in the time I had was to tidy up
the site and make it more accessible and easier to use, and of course to
turn it into a more client (the student in this case) centred site.
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| ScrewFix
Direct: This is the company I recently worked for.
Their site is functional, easy to use and quick to load and once you
have that your customer is very likely to stick around for a
while. You never know you may want to buy something!
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| FlyingSheep.com:
I love this site, it's dynamic, simple to use and fun. It keeps me
coming back time and time again, and if they were to ever sell anything they
would do incredibly well. The site also self-develops: i.e. the
webmaster can just sit back and watch the creative abilities of the
visitors, click and you'll see what I mean.
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| Barclaycard:
I like their simple interaction with the user ("what do you want to
do?", "how much time do you have?" fields). Though occasionally
it seems to take me on random journeys.
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| Despair
Inc: A company with a very "open" policy regarding
their employees, but the produce some very funny posters and office
memorabilia, don't take it too personally if you're a manager.
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| My
site!: Last but not least, hopefully you'll be able to take
some inspiration from this site, either on how to create an
interactive CV or approach those fickle people called customers by
using the web.
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As
a random extra, to
self-assess your personality, try the following sites:
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Belbin:
Dr Meridith Belbin was the first to really develop a method of
assessing peoples team roles. He is frequently referred to in
management schools across the world. On the site there is the
option of following the free, but condensed version of their test available
in .pdf format, or ordering the complete test.
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HumanMetrics:
Psychometric tests based on the Jung-Myers-Briggs typology.
Either complete the online free test or try one of the more specific
tests such as Risk Attitude Profiler or Marriage Profiler!
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QueenDom:
A site full of psychometric tests and other interesting tools.
Well worth having a look round.
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Below is a selection of meta search engines to find further
inspiration:
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Lexibot:
This meta- search engine uses over 200 different engines in one session,
free for 2 months and claims to search the "deep-web". |
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Glooton:
A Shareware meta-search engine that's simple to use and productive |
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Search
Expert: Accesses over 60 search engines in one session and is also
labelled as shareware. |
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If
you want to increase client interaction and your website's effectiveness,
try the following software tools:
| LivePerson:
The free version allows you to interact with your visitors (try it here!),
and allows them to leave a message when you're not online. The free
version allows customer navigation tracking, proactive contact and of course
real-time chat. The full version allows the storage of customer data
to provide you with customer profiles but also allowing the critical assessment of your website
layout (pages visited etc). You can also guide visitors to the page
with the information they are looking for (push marketing). |
| Groove:
A groupware similar to Lotus Notes but more compact and useful for small
teams working over the internet and not an intranet. It allows a
common project calendar, documents, whiteboards, voice-over IP and shared
browsing. This would be very useful
if you are working with a client over a couple of weeks or more on a particular
product/service implementation. The basic version is free. |
| Search Engine
Monitor: A small program that can quickly check the search engine rating
(google and altavista) of
your website based on given search word(s). |
| ThruCam:
With this program a video conference can be set up quickly and simply with
the only requirement being a web cam for each participant. The program
uses the ThruCam server, meaning you don't have to worry about the
technical side of the videolinks. |
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Babylon:
A translator, not just for country languages, but also computer and business
languages. I found it very useful for the odd word when reading
technical articles for example. All you have to do is point at the
word and right click. It also contains a foreign exchange
calculator. It may help you gain some customers overseas, and help you
understand the more in-depth business articles! |
| TrafficPro:
This program will manage your search engine site registration details
and register you in their files. The trial version allows a few
submissions, and the full one a lot more. |
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For
more tools try the File
Library in the professional section. here you can find lots
of small programs useful to small businesses. |
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