Everybody Helps

CrossLoop 2.10 and 2.11

Some of you might not have noticed it so here is a little post on the quick release of our 2 new versions.

CrossLoop 2.10

1. We added a new account login and creation page on the client for users. There were multiple reasons for this:

a) We saw a lot of people requesting the need to track their sessions. This enables them to build a reputation with each minute they engaged with CrossLoop to leverage their expertise (not very different from an airline pilot who logs every minute of his flight to enhance his credentials).

Furthermore, users who were being helped, wanted to support their vendors with ratings and customer testimonials. which without an account were not considered towards the overall reputation of the person helping them. Customer testimonials are a huge asset for any business - we show  off ours here and so we wanted to make sure you could easily capture and market it even more easily.

Very very importantly, there is study that strongly recommends collection of ratings and reviews. Mediapost reports here about a study that
(i) 68% of online shoppers read reviews before buying
(ii) 64% of consumers surveyed by Forrester said that user ratings and reviews were the kinds of features that they wanted to see on Web sites

CrossLoop is enabling that for all ....so bringing ratings and reviews done by your customers to potentially news ones, makes it extremely powerful! So make sure you capture them (on your profile) and use your Public URL in your signature, for example, to market those.

b) The two editable fields of our UI - Computer Name and Access Code - confused people and created a bigger learning curve. Now with a quick one-time only account creation, we only have the Access Code that can still be edited.
Many have asked for a regular password that comes along with an account to connect easily with their trusted contacts for example, instead of an editable Access Code field

Make sure to confirm your account (an email is sent to confirm the validity of the email submitted while creating the account) since the ratings are 'escrowed' until you do.

c) Furthermore, we are working on some more exciting stuff coming soon that will make it a more seamless and compelling experience. Stay close to this blog!

2. Optimization of our software to avoid the many frequent false-positives caused by anti-virus softwares. This will always continue to be a work-in-progress for a small company like ours. Thank you for all the feedback on this.

3. A two step download since the pop-up blockers were confusing users when they couldn't see the instruction box to click through and install the software

The details of V2.10 are here

CrossLoop 2.11

1) This was a biggie - Many Vista users wrote in with the issues they faced while connecting due to UAC that is built into Vista. We have significantly made it a better experience. The step by step explanation is here   

Again - as I said before - I genuinely believe I am a marketer first for you!

Finally, let me end this post and head home with this neat mention here in PC Magazine that recognizes our product as one of "91 Utilities to Supercharge Windows"

Download v2.11 here

Good Afternoon, Good Luck and have a great weekend!

Your Success First Leads to Ours

Once in a while I will see a question from a user or a comment on a blog post wondering how we will make money or will we charge for the use of CrossLoop down the road.

I had addressed it here (the product, as is, will always be free and we plan to add premium services) before but let me do it again for the benefit of the hundreds of thousands of new users since then and with more insight into the team, its philosophy and culture which is all around a term I call "collateral success".

Generally all corporations are built around the core objective of maximizing shareholder wealth/value. I argue that it does not focus on users first. Our philosophy of collateral success focuses on our users first - make you successful first and we are confident, we will be successful. Think personal professions - would you choose to follow your passion and incidentally make money or would you prefer to do something and devote a significant amount of your life focused on your paycheck first?

There are business models that can measure and monetize this but more as we move along our product roadmap and make some exciting new releases soon.

Based on that philosophy, our last  big release was all around providing experts and professionals in anything computers - technical support, training, etc. - tools to be able to quantify and personalize, market and monetize their reputation. Here are some good examples of some of our CrossLoop professionals who are leveraging it:

OnClick Tech Support:
1) They provide remote support with CrossLoop and here is their CrossLoop badge: http://www.onclicktechsupport.com/remotedownload.htm
2) They are using Craigslist to advertise their service with their custom URL (click on the CrossLoop logo): http://duluth.craigslist.org/cps/604835940.html

When you click on his profile here (or through his Badges on the above links), you will notice the number of sessions he has logged now with different individual clients - he is building up a very impressive reputation with some good customer testimonials that aid in getting them more business.

Robert Plumer
1) CrossLoop Badge on his blog here
2) His profile and custom URL on CrossLoop: http://www.crossloop.com/RobertPlumer   

I intend to feature creative technical support and training CrossLoop professionals here on our blog. If you have an active profile with our Badge on social networking sites, classifieds, your blog etc. - email me at least two links, like above, at mrinal [at] crossloop.com. I will work on getting them up here and again - hope to get you some more promotion.

Think of me as your marketer and if you really like what I do - I welcome tips through the small widget on the left sidebar below :)

Good Afternoon and Good Luck!