B2B Connection

Password management software creates the bridge between security and convenience needed in a modern technology environment. The flurry of sign-on information that individuals and organizations need to remember can be overwhelming. Many resort to the extremely unsafe method of using one simple password across multiple accounts and devices. This leaves you vulnerable to a variety of security threats. Free password managers offer a solution to this risk at a no-cost option. Free options usually have some limitations to their functionality and scope, and working within these is vital to getting the most benefit for your use case. Remembear LastPass Avira KeePass LogMeOnce RememBear – Easy-to-Use Password Manager For One Device The website strapline for the RememBear homepage is “the easiest way to remember passwords”. This is pretty accurate. RememBear is software for those with limited technology experience, and perhaps are a little anxious using it. With the essential nature of services like email and even social media, passwords are not used exclusively by the tech-savvy. RememBear offers a charming, friendly user interface to take some of the stress off of password management.  This system is something of a vault for basic, secure info. It is limited to one device, but […]

There are many different levels of shopping cart software, offering varying degrees of complexity. You may need a simple page for a few products. Others may want inventory management and a full online store as in an eCommerce platform. Free shopping cart software will often have limitations restricting functionality or scope. Another potential option is going for open-source software. Working within criteria that do not harm your use case is the best way to get shopping cart software at no cost to you. The shopping cart software covered in this piece are: WooCommerce Ecwid Magento Loaded Commerce Square eCommerce Which Shopping Cart Software is Right For You? Below are the 5 best free shopping cart software and eCommerce platforms. Each is very different and will be suited to different types of users.  WooCommerce- eCommerce Solution for WordPress Users WooCommerce is the perfect, easy-to-use choice for those who use the popular website building platform, WordPress. This extension offers a simple way to create a functional store within your company website. With this tool, you’ll be able to accept a variety of payment options and quickly set up a store page. The extension supports many integrations for payment acceptance, marketing, and social […]

Success doesn’t end with simply coming up with a product that solves a problem and then getting a customer or client in the door. Rather, both acquiring and retaining your customers are necessary for success. This means making sure your marketing plan is good at getting the right people to buy into your product. This also means ensuring you keep the clients that you’ve already acquired. In fact, once you’ve developed a client base, retention is much more valuable than acquisition. According to the Harvard Business Review, acquiring a new customer costs 5% to 25% more than retaining an existing one. This is why more and more companies are hiring client advocates. So, what’s a client advocate? A client advocate is broadly an employee or a centralized office which advocates for the client’s wants and needs, whatever they may be. Client advocates are a little different from client reps, although, in theory, client reps should become client advocates. They are also different from product managers, who also have an advocacy role. They represent the customer and market view of the product to internal stakeholders.  Advocacy exists in many industries. Healthcare systems, product-focus fields, finance, and many related fields are popular […]

The inclusion of video content can drive traffic, sales, and interest for almost any type of organization. Video can be self-produced or outsourced, posted to a third party, or directly on your website. No matter the method, following search engine optimization guidelines for video will help you improve your rankings and achieve better results. Gone are the days of keyword stuffing, SEO for video relies on accessibility, audience targeting, and content optimization. Below is a guide on how to make video content work for you. This piece includes General Video SEO tips Self-Hosting versus Youtube Self-Hosting Pros and Cons Youtube Hosting Pros and Cons Self-Hosting Specific SEO Youtube Specific SEO How to Optimize Video for SEO Many methods of SEO for video content can be implemented easily and without a substantial increase in production costs. Abiding by the following best practices will help you use video in an effective, more reliable way for your organization. The following advice will change in implementation somewhat, depending on if you are producing the video yourself, or including outside content. To start, we will focus on broader tips that apply to all video content, then get more specific to different use-cases. Target the Right […]

Voice search is exploding in popularity, and this trend presents an opportunity for those with a  calculated online presence. Understanding how search engines generate their rankings will help you get your content higher on SERPs and drive business results. From mobile devices using Siri to Amazon’s Alexa, more people search hands-free than ever before. The voice search optimization tips we will cover in this guide are Understanding your audience Keep content readable Make information accessible Use voice search specific keywords Take advantage of Structured Data Markup Helper Voice Search Has Exploded in Popularity The convenience of voice search is obvious, and this hands-free inquiry method has taken off in recent years. A third of the US population uses voice search features. This is projected to increase by nearly 10% in the next year. Online marketing groups are publishing headlines about the “voice search revolution”. E-commerce groups have seen this coming for a while, and the technology and environmental trends are reaching a critical mass in 2021.  With this increase in popularity comes the new potential for SEO strategy. Optimizing content for voice search has key similarities and differences to more traditional input methods. By following the advice below, you can position […]

Businesses run on software, and software runs on hardware. Everyone is familiar with software, but hardware is foreign to most users.  Despite this, the interplay between hardware and software is essential to an organization’s operations. The primary difference between the two is that hardware is the physical components of a computer. In contrast, software is the programs and applications that run on your devices. Most devices use a mixture of hardware and software. For example, your computer’s monitor and mouse are hardware, and your internet browser is software. For a quick video explanation, check out the link below: What is Hardware, and What can it do? Every physical component of a device is hardware. You can reach out and touch hardware, you cannot touch software. Hardware includes all of the physical devices in a computer, like a motherboard, RAM, or processors. For devices like computers, hardware has a heavy influence on performance. Higher performance hardware tends to cost more and requires more resources. Powerful video cards or a CPU, for example, may require a lot of electricity and more cooling than weaker internal components. Most computer components perform better at cooler temperatures Hardware is limited in what it can do […]

Remote work is a long-lasting change from the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 10% of the B2B community we surveyed for the 2021 B2B Buying Disconnect said that they would prefer to never return to the office. Recent studies have identified remote work as “an overwhelming success” in terms of productivity and positivity towards remote work.  Fortunately, there are 7 core tips and best practices that will help manage any remote team. In this article, we’ll be discussing how to: Have a Daily Check-In Communicate With Remote Workers. A Lot. Use Technology to Enable Remote Teams Manage Expectations Focusing on Outcomes, Not Activity Provisioning and Funding Employees’ Remote Workplaces Being Flexible This article will provide guidance for managers who are either entirely new to the role or inexperienced managing remote employees. It can also help managers looking to improve their existing practices. The guide includes some guiding principles behind successful remote teams and management. It also highlights common challenges to be aware of and best practices that can improve any distributed team, any time.  Challenges in Managing Remote Teams “Know thy enemy” may be overused to the point of “buzzword” status, but it’s also not wrong. Understanding the challenges that your […]

Enhancing customer retention in the B2B marketplace involves more than just building relationships. Vendors have the opportunity to earn more money by keeping loyal customers. A survey conducted by Invesp revealed that increasing customer retention rates by only 5% can boost profits by 25%-95%. Successful B2B companies recognize the importance of feedback and use it to re-evaluate the needs of their industry.  Finding the right customer retention strategies involves working on a tight budget. This is especially true for B2B companies. According to this post by Earnest, B2B product companies only allocate about 8.6% of their total budget to marketing efforts. Customer marketing programs typically get only a fraction of that spend. It takes a village, with marketing, sales, and support teams working together to retain customers. Customer Retention Strategy Who Owns It Software Tools Medium Example Resolve customer support issues quickly Customer Support Help Desk Software Email, Live Chat, Forums Customer Service Ideas Worth Stealing Get customers to subscribe to your blog Marketing Content Management Software Website/Blog User-Generated Content to Inspire Your Campaign Send promotional offers via email to loyal customers Marketing Marketing Automation Software Email, Social BetterSpaces Campaign Track customer contacts, interactions, and contracts in one place Sales […]

*This article was updated on February 26th, 2021 based on new research by the TrustRadius Team Zendesk is a leader in customer service software. While a great product, such an important aspect of any business shouldn’t have only one choice. We have combined reviews and pricing information to create a list of the best Zendesk alternatives. Each of these will suit a different use case. By having this information, you will be able to make a more informed decision for company needs. Customer Service Software Like Zendesk, But Different 7.9/10 $49/mo. to $215/mo, Per Agent Popular, Trusted Platform Overwhelming for Some, Less Flexibility 9.5/10 $0/mo. to $39/mo Per User Simplified for Small-to-Mid Size, Great Live Chat Reviewers Wanted Whatsapp Integration, More Attractive UI                                                                        8.7/10 $15/mo. to $99/mo. Per Agent Great User Experience, Fewer Integrations, Pricier than Some Alternatives 8.7/10 FREE It’s Free! Ease of use Fewer Features than Zendesk, Tailored for IT 8.6/10 Pricing on Request Focus on Social Customer Service Reviewers Want More Analytics Tools 8.6/10 $0/mo, to $26.95/mo. Per User […]

The Customer Support Software category for the Best Of Awards includes software products that help companies centralize, streamline, and hone their own product support. These software address Customer Success Management, Customer Experience Management, and Customer Support Teams’ needs for holistic customer profiles. Products in this category often offer single-sources for customer profiles & communication tracking or offer more specialized software that integrate into an existing software stack. Best of Feature Set Winners in these customer support categories streamline business operations and provide tailored features that address their unique breadth of challenges. The Best Customer Service Award honors products that provide above-and-beyond resources in the form of responsive support teams and online documentation. Winners of the Best of Usability Award offer well-integrated, customizable products that maintain high ease of use for a wide range of user levels. B2B Industry software must meet high standards in order to compete for the Best Of Awards categories. They must have 10 recent ratings from within the last year to ensure that the product’s score is accurate. They must also have an aggregate attribute rating of 8.0 or higher in the categories they compete in. This year, the Best Of Customer Support winners are: Best […]

Not so long ago, the majority of contact center products were primarily on-premise installations (like most other types of business software). But nowadays, cloud-based software has taken center stage and all the major vendors in the market have online offerings. However, a handful of large players in the market still have on-premise versions available too.  For example, Avaya has both an on-premise deployment of their IX Contact Center and a cloud-based ‘Contact Center as a Service’ (CCaaS) platform. Cisco* also offers cloud-based on-premise contact center deployment options. There are also still several companies hanging onto on-premise deployments or considering adopting one. This post will walk through the 7 biggest benefits of transitioning to cloud-based contact center software to help you convince any on-prem stalwarts that cloud is the way to go.  These benefits include:  Reduced costs Faster implementation Increased scalability  Greater Security  Ease of Remote Working Improved Customer Experiences Increased in agent productivity  Why Switch to a Cloud-based Contact Center Solution? #1 Reduced Costs One big benefit of deploying a cloud-based contact center is cost savings. On-premise products typically have large, upfront licensing fees, as well as additional maintenance and upgrade costs. Lack of these fees helps make cloud-based contact […]

It is easy to get lost in the abundance of information that comes with identifying and understanding the most important contact center software features. Some features may appear very similar to others, while others may appear highly complex and unclear.  Dozens of features make up a strong contact-center solution. It is important to cover all of your bases before choosing the best tool for your company; so that is why we have provided the top 15 most essential features for your contact center’s success. This post will help guide you in your call-center software selection process or help to shed light on fundamental features for new managers or agents to familiarize themselves with.    Necessary Contact Center Software Capabilities #1 Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) is the most crucial tool when trying to maximize your call center operations. ACD works with Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems to allow you to easily route inbound calls to agents or the appropriate recipient. It operates as the primary terminal for many call center features, such as skills-based routing, language-based routing, call monitoring and more.  #2 Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Interactive Voice Response (IVR) interacts with inbound […]

Customer success management software (CSM) is a vital component of many CS teams’ successes. Customer success management software is designed to provide tools to ensure that customers achieve their desired outcomes with a product. Typical customer success software provides features such as customer engagement analytics, product usage tracking and adoption, renewals dashboards, NPS surveys, and other customer-centric insights. Customer success software should not be confused with customer relationship management software (CRM). CRM software focuses on managing business data pertaining to customers and ensuring positive customer support experiences. CSM software on the other hand, enables customer success managers to help their clients attain their goals. Customer success software is less about tracking customer data and tickets, more about managing the ongoing delivery of value and the assessment of client outcomes. On TrustRadius, leading Customer Success platforms are ChurnZero, Intercom, ClientSuccess, Gainsight, and Totango. These tools stand out from the crowd on TrustRadius by having high overall star ratings (their trScore) and research frequencies (how many buyers are checking out these tools). In this blog post, we’ll highlight these popular tools and what their current users like about them. ChurnZero ChurnZero is a customer success platform designed to help SaaS companies prevent […]

Integration always sounds like a good thing for businesses. Who wouldn’t want their data, apps, and contact info to be more “integrated”? But what does that mean in practice? What problems can Integration Platforms as a Service (iPaaS) solve for people who aren’t already tech wizards or software developers? When it comes to technology in business, experience speaks louder than theory. With this in mind, I sat down with a Zapier user to see what impact a small-scale iPaaS can make for business professionals’ lives. Enter Ariana. Meet Ariana Ariana is a Customer Success Manager here at TrustRadius. She makes sure that clients get the most out of their partnership with our company. This means she works with many clients at different stages, from onboarding to scaling their use of the platform, and she plays a role in delegating and managing the workflow of her entire team. To do so, she’s usually neck-deep in Salesforce, Airtable, and Slack, among a host of other apps. Her Pain Like any informed business professional, Ariana knew that there had to be a way for these apps to work together. Unfortunately, her many of her apps didn’t have native integrations with each other, resulting […]

Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Social Media Customer Service Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Here are the winners: Bold360  Bold360 is a customer service solution that enables users to provide personalized customer interactions at scale and helps managers assess agent performance . Bold360’s AI-powered chatbot can engage prospects and customers in conversations customized to their own experience and connect these conversations across channels. These channels include live chat, email, Facebook Messenger, website self-service, SMS, Twitter, and video chat. Features such as the current queue status, canned messages, open chats, and new message alert pop-ups help agents manage their workload, and filter and respond to messages with ease.  One key feature of Bold360 is its real-time messaging, and quick responses. In turn, this also enables simple, cross-departmental communication.  Bold 360 users on TrustRadius primarily hail from enterprises (74%). Reviewers on TrustRadius praise Bold360 for […]

Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Webinar Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Here are the winners: BlueJeans BlueJeans is a web conferencing and video calling platform that supplies a complete webinar solution. BlueJeans’ plans provide a low cost option for users hosting 50 person meetings, but scale to support events with up to 15,000 remote viewers. Webinars conducted via BlueJeans Events can be viewed in device agnostic HD video and include user interactivity tools like polling, surveys, and  moderated chat.  Beyond the live experience, BlueJeans provides cloud storage and sharing of events, a calendar integration, and social sharing capabilities.  On TrustRadius, the majority of BlueJeans reviewers come from either small businesses  (35%)  or enterprises (30%). Users praise BlueJeans’ sound and video quality for all situations, the easy-to-use session sign-on experience, and its versatility for use in both small conferences and huddles as well as […]

Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Consumer Ratings & Reviews Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Here are the winners: SmileBack SmileBack is a consumer ratings & reviews software that  collects and analyzes customer feedback, focusing on simple, easy to fill out customer satisfaction surveys. SmileBack provides fast, visual (e.g. smiley face v angry face) feedback forms, customizable alerts, and customer journey analytics for locating problem spots in the customer experience. SmileBack is designed to help increase customer response rate and therefore provide greater insight into the customer experience. Smileback integrates with a company’s ticketing,support, and help desk systems to alert the support team  of new customer feedback and provide access to customer details and data. On TrustRadius, SmileBack is reviewed primarily by users from small businesses (80%). Users of SmileBack on TrustRadius appreciate its fast setup and integration with existing systems, easy to fill […]

Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Live Chat Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Here are the winners: LiveChat LiveChat is a web-based customer service app and chat tool that integrates with a wide variety of third-party apps to provide a live conversation alternative to a phone call. LiveChat features automated greetings, canned responses, as well as a ticketing system and group management features on higher priced tiers.  LiveChat is used primarily by service and sales agents across companies of all sizes and industries, and is priced on a per-agent basis.  Users on TrustRadius praise its simplicity and reliability, making it quite useful for large centers that need an easy to use, straightforward live chat tool that requires very little training for successful agent onboarding. “LiveChat is the most suitable Helpdesk solution for teams. Be it small startup teams, medium-sized organizations, and large organizations; the […]

Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Customer Experience Management Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Here are the winners: Pendo.io Pendo is used by developers, product managers, and customer success managers to drive improved customer experience with enterprise applications through its product analytic capabilities. Pendo’s analytics are used to provide instant user feedback to application developers for building user guides and tutorials, as well as user journey and funnel analytics. Pendo is also used to directly conduct polls and customer satisfaction surveys (e.g. NPS surveys) and can deploy guides and provide other targeted in-app messaging (e.g. new feature alerts, promotions, etc.). ‘ On TrustRadius, Pendo users tend to work in the computer software industry (58%), and a majority of users work in midsized companies  (66%). Reviewers on TrustRadius give high praise to Pendo’s UI analytics and in-app NPS surveys, and appreciate the ease with which […]

TrustRadius Top Rated Today, we awarded the 2019 TrustRadius Top Rated badges for Help Desk Software. The TrustRadius Top Rated awards are the most trusted in the industry because they are an unbiased reflection of customer sentiment, based solely on user feedback and satisfaction scores. Top Rated awards are the voice of the market and are not influenced by analyst opinion, the vendor’s company size, popularity, or status as a TrustRadius customer. Help Desk Software Help desk software assists customer support teams in managing and automating their processes. Customer service representatives and managers use help desk software to communicate with customers, organize and route support tickets, and create self-help knowledge bases. These products may also include social media integration, which helps organize customer service responses to direct messages, Tweets, and Facebook posts. Other common features include customer self-help portals, public Q&A boards, internal knowledge bases for agents, and customer polling. When evaluating help desk software options, buyers should consider their customers’ expectations and how well those expectations are currently being met. Are they comfortable using self-help options, or would many of them prefer to speak to an agent first? Are customers consistently frustrated or happy with their experience in certain […]