Social networking is one of my most favorite things to do online. I love looking through people’s profiles, and visiting their blogs. Some of the best blogs I read I found on Blog Catalog or MyBlogLog . I also love looking through people’s pictures on Flickr and reading all the hot stories on Digg .

Something really fun happened yesterday, and I felt so damn happy and important! LOL! One of my Flickr pictures got Dugg. When I last looked at my popular Flickr picture I had 51,596 views! When I last looked at the Digg page I had 976 Diggs . That was so cool to me!

The picture is one I snapped of the TV with my camera phone while watching Wheel of Fortune.

What was interesting was the Digg haters in the comments, or the ones that just didn’t get the picture. The comments on Flickr were just about the same. The picture is so self explanatory, that I didn’t even think it was necessary to add a description, but apparently there are a lot of tards on these sites. Anyway………Go see , it’s pretty funny!

Digg, Flickr, Wheel of Fortune, funny picture

It’s a company’s worst nightmare: a client or customer calls, unhappy with the product or service they have received. An unhappy customer should always be taken seriously. Research has suggested that unhappy customers are very likely to pass on their happiness to their friends and family. In fact, a disgruntled customer can quickly tell many other people about the bad service or product they have received from your business. This is a negative marketing message, counteracting all the positive promotion you have been trying to drum up for your company. This post will tell you how you can deal with unhappy customers using your CRM software

Dealing with disgruntled customers

If you have a customer who is unhappy, the most important thing to do is not to panic and not ignore the situation. Many businesses either sweep aside any critiques of their business, or displace the blame onto an employee, making that employee feel terrible. Neither is the correct approach. It is important to approach the situation calmly and to keep communication with the unhappy customer open. Ideally, it is important that you take for responsibility for the problem — even if you think the customer or client was partly at fault. Next, you must sincerely apologize for the problem directly to the customer in a personalized way. Then, you must try to make amends so the customer remains satisfied. Making amends can be as simple as asking the customer or client “what can we do to make this right?” and following through on the action the customer has recommended. Of course, some customers will make unreasonable demands, or demands the company cannot meet. However, by continuing to communicate and by continually expressing a desire to correct the situation, you can often come up with some sort of compromise that will leave the customer satisfied as to the level of service they’re getting.

Relenta CRM and disgruntled customers

Relenta CRM can help your company deal with unsatisfied customers. Many customers initially make their complaints or concerns known via e-mail. If this is the case, your Relenta CRM system allows you to quickly access to the customer’s complaint in the correct department. This allows someone from the right department to quickly deal with the problem. At the same time, since Relenta CRM does not hide individual e-mails within individual e-mail inboxes, it is far less likely that customer complaints can be lost and ignored. Administrators and other members of the team can see that a customer has written in with a complaint, and this can help ensure that several team members are aware of the problem and are prepared to act on the problem. Relenta CRM also allows your company to keep a history of e-mails for each contact and plan forward using a shared calendar. This allows you to see exactly how a complaint has been handled, how often a particular customer has made complaints in the past, and what a customer’s order history is with the company. This allows the company to quickly pinpoint potentially problematic clients and customers, and allows team members to quickly gather information about a specific order or request, in order to pinpoint what went wrong. Relenta CRM can even allow your team to prepare canned emails that can be personalized. This allows your team to respond to customer complaints automatically.

CRM, shared calender, CRM software

Security and encryption for your companies desktops has always been important, and you’ve probably gone to great lengths to keep all your data and applications safe. But what about your employees laptops? All your data and applications are walking out the door every evening at 5:00PM. How are you making sure that is secure?

With AlertSec software you can secure all your company laptops. They even have Encryption for Vista powered laptops. The last thing you want is to have one of your laptops stolen, and have all your private data leaked out. Make sure it’s secure using AlertSec software.

AlertSec software, encryption, Vista

Technology has sure changed the way we do business. As it grows and becomes more sophisticated, so does the business world. When we have meetings at work, we use conference calling mostly. It’s still effective, but not as hi-tech as a TANDBERG Experia Telepresence system.

It comes with 50” plasma screens, TANDBERG’s Precision HD cameras and directional CD-quality audio to take your business meetings to a whole new level. Not only can you see each other, but you can also share applications through the system like PC presentations, DVDs, and other business documents.

Pretty fancy stuff here!

Telepresence, TANDBERG

I have no idea why or how the TechnoViking got so popular. I mean the original video isn’t even that funny. But the creative masses ran with it, and turned it into this giant comical ball of laughter for me today. You might not think so, but follow along…

Free your mind of the days events…

Let go of all the things you think are right…

Inhale…1.2.3…

Exhale…1.2.3…

Okay……just be on painkillers…it will all make sense.

The Original

TechnoViking Pirate

TechnoViking HammerTime

TechnoViking, YouTube, rave, love parade

You don’t want your sales floor having to learn complicated software just to get their leads. The leads should come down the pipeline with ease, so they can get on the phones and start selling. AIMPromote is the leader in CRM, customer relationship management software, with a very small learning curve. They’ve just added new features and upgrades to their software, and you can read it about it below in their press release.

Traverse City, MI October 19th 2007 — AIMpromote, provider of lead management and customer relationship management software, has launched a significant upgrade to their CRM offering. The newly added white-label CRM software feature enhances the value that lead aggregators can offer to their lead purchasing customers. The enhanced reselling functionality provides an intuitive interface to completely manage the selling of a privately labeled CRM as their own.

Lead aggregators operate in the highly competitive B2B space, and need ways to add value to their offerings. Michael Myles, President and CEO of AIMpromote said “The significant added value provided by the AIMpromote white-label customer relationship software gives lead aggregators a way to differentiate themselves in what has become a highly commoditized market.” He went on to say that “this product also provides an easy way to leverage existing client bases to more rapidly increase sales.”

The close tie-in between the selling of leads and the powerful sales management functionality of the AIMpromote customer relationship software enables the end-users of the system to easily purchase leads that are then available to be worked directly in the system. There is no importing necessary. Billing is also consolidated, providing an easy way for the end-user to manage their funds and billing profile. The system has been designed from the ground-up to offer high levels of customizability and advanced functionality for everyone involved, while requiring little investment in time.

The CRM reselling and lead sales functions functionality includes the ability for lead aggregators and CRM software resellers to completely customize pricing, including setup fees, discounts, and free trials. This flexibility empowers the resellers of the system to enhance their profit margins as they see fit. The CRM reselling system allows lead aggregators and consultants the ability to brand their system with their own logo and contact information. Integrated Authorize.Net payment processing gives an interface to take credit cards automatically, and have the funds deposited directly into their bank accounts. The advanced accounting and reporting pages in the AIMpromote system give a top-down view of the business as a whole, as well as for each individual account.

The tiered approach that AIMpromote has taken to the reselling of their powerful customer relationship management software gives even the end-user clients the ability to also resell the system. The billing and accounting system automatically takes care of everything for them, even automatically setting up accounts. “The ease of use and flexibility of the AIMpromote CRM for those providing business-to-business consultation services and those selling leads has created an opportunity to significantly improve the bottom line, with very little time or expense,” said Matt Wolfe, Vice President of Operations for AIMpromote. Wolfe added, “The service and functionality of the system is unique in that customers are supported through an integrated support ticket system by their parent account. The end-users of the system will never know that the service they are using is being resold, or that the company from which they are licensing the software are not the actual manufacturers of the software. To them, it won’t be AIMpromote at all, it will be ‘ABC Software Company CRM’, or whatever name the company reselling the software chooses.”

About AIMpromote

AIMpromote leads the market in growth and technology for on-demand lead management and CRM reselling solutions. AIMpromotes enterprise lead management software empowers companies in any industry to more effectively generate, delegate, and report on leads and the teams that manage them. AIMpromote is the only solution that integrates detailed web analytics with sales and marketing analytics to provide a complete closed-loop view of the sales process. The AIMpromote lead management software offers a completely customized solution that can be tailored to fit any organization’s customer acquisition workflow. The unique combination of having the most functionality, and the lowest total cost of ownership, AIMpromote is the most cost effective solution for improving close rates and marketing efficiency.

CRM, AIMPromote, lead management, software

So who’s working on some cool applications for MySpace? With the release of the MySpace API I can only imagine developers are jumping all over the chance to make something cool. I know my husband is gearing up to make some type of cool application like they have on Facebook. MySpace has some catching up to do, and this was a step in the right direction for them.

Myspace, API, web development

Online stores are hot right now, especially the drop shipment style stores. Even hotter are the affiliate stores, but that’s for another post. These types of stores seem to be popping up all over the place lately, and it’s really easy to get in on the action. With www.BuyStoresOnlinePro.com you can have a fully functional eCommerce store up and running in just one day. StoresOnline Pro allows you to create and maintain an eCommerce-enabled website with simplicity and ease. All you need to do is gather content, design your site, publish your website to the Internet, and allow customers to shop and order products.

Stores Online Pro, eCommerce

While doing my daily internet surfing, I came across this short and sweet funny of Meredith Vieira mixing up her words while interviewing Jake Gyllenhaal on the Today Show.

Today Show, Jake Gyllenhaal, Meredith Vieira, Brokeback Mountain

YouTube has launched it’s first ever film competition, and it’s also it’s first international contest as well. It’s called YouTube Project: Direct and it’s for all you budding directors out there to get your films seen!

Direct an original film using specific elements outlined by award-winning filmmaker, Jason Reitman, and you could get the exposure you need to turn your craft into a career.

If you win, you’re going to a major international film festival where you’ll attend surprise industry events, meet with executives from Fox Searchlight Pictures, and show your film at a private event. You’ll also see your winning short broadcast on the home page of YouTube in countries all over the world, and you’ll win a $5000 debit card.

THE DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS IS NOVEMBER 9TH, SO START ROLLING!

And be sure to check out Fox Searchlight Picture’s community for aspiring filmmakers at my.foxsearchlight.com!

Deadlines for entries is November 9th, so get those cameras rolling and start filming for your chance to become famous!

YouTube, YouTube Project: Direct