Geezeo uses Campfire for live chat and customer support

Geezeo is the first web-based application that allows you to securely aggregate your checking, savings, loans, and investment accounts. They use Campfire as a live chat tool to interact with existing (and potential) customers. We talked to Geezeo's Peter Glyman about it...

How does Campfire help you provide support?
Most customers have questions that can be handled in real time and since our team is in Campfire all the time anyhow, this extra customer facing room is great for our visitors. Having this real-time interaction also creates a great opportunity to talk to visitors that might be "on the fence" about signing up. Once they get to see the team in there and we can address any questions they might have, they are very likely to have a greater comfort level about becoming a Geezeo user.

Why is it better than other options?
The ability to have  multiple members of the Geezeo team in Campfire is great when one person can't answer a question. For example, if something gets too technical for me, we can usually tap one of the other guys to jump in. It's also great for chat history and ease of use.

What did you use before and why did you switch to (or add) Campfire?
We were using [an IM application] which had two big limitations. We couldn't have multiple members of the Geezeo team. In fact if someone decided to "man" the chat and someone else on the team was in on it, it would kick the other out. Even if they were in a chat with a user. There was also no chat history.

Do you use group chat in other ways besides support?
We use Campfire daily for development and straight up team discussions. Our team (pictured to the left) is in 4 different states (MA, CT, IN, PA) so we're always in Campfire to stay connected.

Any tips or tricks for other Campfire customers?
I think it's important to keep things light. When customers come in, make them feel like part of the team. Have fun. If you have any power users you can ask them to jump in when it's convenient. They might even be able to support or evangelize to your customers. We're also going to start looking at scheduling specific events using Campfire. Great to have guest speakers or topics that users might want to plan on attending.

Geezeo explains why security is no problem to a new customer.

New in Highrise: Inline editing of notes and emails

Here's a new feature that will make editing and deleting Highrise notes and emails a lot faster: Inline editing.

Now when you hover over a note or an email in expanded view you'll see an "edit and trashcan" link appear to the left of the note. Clicking "Edit" will allow you to edit the note or email inline. This saves two page reloads and a good 10 seconds of back and forth.

Here's what it looks like after you've clicked edit

You'll see that you didn't have to leave the page to edit the note. It's a big time saver.

Watch a movie for the full effect

Watch this 20 second quicktime movie of inline editing to see how it all works together.

We hope you find this improvement as useful as we do. Thanks again for your continued support!

Happy Cog livens up Basecamp with cool avatars

In Avatar Icebreaker, Jason Santa Maria discusses the fun avatars his design firm, Happy Cog, uses in their Basecamp account and the impact they have on clients.

In the past year or so I’ve been noticing a funny thing during our kickoffs with new clients. We briefly show them Basecamp and talk about how we would like both companies to use it during the project. When we get to the People page their demeanor completely shifts, they see a slew of our avatars staring back at them. We just used them because we though they were funny, but for new clients unfamiliar with Basecamp, it has the added effect of breaking the ice for them. Rather than “oh, great new software to learn,” it becomes “hey, we can have fun with this.”

It’s a simple thing, and certainly an unplanned one, but it shows some of our personality to the people we work with and helps them get acclimated to our process.

Here are a few of the avatars:

Check the post to see the rest.

CEO of Conference Calls Unlimited calls Basecamp "THE tool that brought our company closer"

Zane Safrit, CEO of Conference Calls Unlimited, says Basecamp is simple, easy to use, and "invaluable for our collaboration with internal and external audiences."."

Honestly, I find the term collaboration...over-hyped these days.

So, let me be clear: Basecamp from 37Signals was THE tool that brought our company closer, weeded out hidden agendas, kept us focused on what's best for the company, inspired more ideas and solutions from everyone, leveled the playing field for discussions and decisions, reduced email overload, saved time and lets us manage a host (many) of projects nearly seamlessly.

It was the tool that tore down any silo-mentality, eliminated passive-aggressive patterns or persons, and...smoothed the interactions, the communication, with each person in the company.

It's not perfect, our company. But our ability to move forward on new products or services, websites or announcements, ideas or problems needing solutions, is greatly enhanced with Basecamp.

Granted, Basecamp is a tool. It's how we used the tool that made the difference.

We had the intent. And Basecamp allowed us to make it a reality.

And some of these benefits weren't reached without a few hiccups, bumps, learning experiences...along the way. But with a tool like basecamp, these side-effects are minimized. And the pace of progress on projects big and small has only grown.

Collaboration is considered, and is, a huge challenge in large organizations.

But the impact of collaboration or communication within a smaller organization is incorrectly minimized. Here's why: EVERY communication is magnified in a small organization. There's nowhere to hide. You see everyone every day. If I'm having problems communicating with my IT Manager, I need to solve it immediately as I interact with him throughout the day, every day. And that includes emails, IMs, in-person, meetings on other topics, water-cooler chats, etc. And he, everyone else. It's not like I'll see him on our monthly meetings and then he returns to his building and I to mine until the next 45 minute session next month. A tool like Basecamp keeps all the communication out in the open, on a level playing field.

What works? Basecamp works.

Thanks for the kind words, Zane.

Pulse is a new web-based cash flow management tool that integrates with Basecamp

Pulse is a web-based cash flow management tool that "allows you to easily monitor the heartbeat of your small business - your cash." It integrates with Basecamp too.

Say goodbye to unmanageable spreadsheets, and hello to an intuitive interface with the power to quickly manage and evaluate your income and expenses. Pulse makes tracking the health of your business simple, accurate and efficient...

Because Pulse lets you categorize your income and expenses, your cash flow has never been so organized. Quickly pull in all your companies and projects from the popular project management web software Basecamp and Pulse will automatically organize your projects based upon company.

One Month App explains how the team designed, developed, and launched the app in just 30 days.

Design firm uses Backpack to create portfolio site

Lemieux Graphic Design uses Backpack to create a simple but effective portfolio site. The firm uses Backpack's picture galleries to showcase its identity, advertising, promotion, print collateral, and web design work.

Laughing Giant has an “ahh” moment with Highrise

Laughing Giant, a creative media company based in Portland, Oregon, says Highrise is "working beautifully as an online contact manager."

We’ve been experimenting with Highrise from 37signals for a customer relationship management/address book tool online. The boys at 37signals are adept at creating simple-yet-powerful Web productivity tools. I’ve personally been creating and sharing a few contacts in cases, adding followup tasks, and it’s remarkably easy. All of the notetaking I used to do in the “Notes” field of Outlook contacts or my Apple Address Book, I can do instead in date-stamped entries associated to that person — and I can search to find them anywhere, and tag them as well.

The “ahh” moment Today, I entered a contact from a few years back who called me out of the blue, and when I finished the entry, I realized I wanted her on my iPhone address book too. So I click the “vCard” link, and the vCard file downloaded from Highrise to my computer, and then opened Address Book and added it! Now when I plug in my iPhone, it will automatically sync and put her in. Excellent and thoughtful step from the Highrise team to integrate so well. This makes a no-brainer deciding where to add new contacts.

The vCard link makes it easy to add contacts elsewhere.

Winslow & Company uses Backpack for Commercial Real Estate Searches

Paul Maass, Associate Broker at Winslow & Company, a commercial real estate firm, wrote to us about how he uses Backpack to keep clients in the loop during their hunt for office space...

I use Backpack for several functions in my life, but recently I have been using it as a tool to keep my commercial real estate clients up to date on their search for office space in Manhattan. I have clients all around the country, often in multiple offices, that need to see floorplans, info on spaces we’re considering for them, pictures of spaces, lists of spaces we’ve already researched and more.

I upload the company’s logo to the page so they know its their own page, I embed a Google Map with the locations we’re considering, and then I upload info on the space, pictures about the space, and my contact info. It’s a quick way to disseminate info to my clients without cluttering their inbox and it is a level of personalization and communication they’re not used to seeing. Also, as we sometimes get phone calls from people looking for office space, but haven’t met them until they come into town, we can give approximate addresses in the divider bar (37th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues) so we can protect ourselves and the time we spend researching spaces. Some people will go ahead and send that information to their broker, a different broker, or just walk directly into a building with the list we used to give them from our listings database. They erroneously feel that landlords not paying us a commission will filter down to them, so this has been a great way to protect myself.

I also upload offer files, lease documents, and more to their page, which the client cannot see but it gives me instant access the paperwork I need to complete a deal.

Here’s a page I recently put together for someone.

SimplifyThis and Basecamp: Easily invoice your customers and get paid faster online

Just added to the Basecamp Extras page: SimplifyThis. SimplifyThis provides an invoicing and payments solution that integrates with Basecamp. Here's how SimplifyThis and Basecamp work together:

• Allows users to invoice Projects and To-Dos.
• Extends the Basecamp data model by keeping an hourly rate for Projects and To-Dos.
• Allows users to add time entries in SimplifyThis or from SimplifyThis Google Gadget and sync them back with Basecamp.

SimplifyThis' Sanjay Kumar writes, "Unlike other applications, this integration is heavily based on simple conventions and does not require users to go through extensive setup screens. You can learn more about our Basecamp integration here."

Posting sketches with Campfire

Chris Busse recently chimed in with an interesting use of Campfire over at Signal vs. Noise. He prints out screens, marks them up with a Sharpie, and scans them in a way that makes it a snap to get the resulting .png file into Campfire.

Partly because of my love of putting up sketches in Campfire (sometimes to the ire of my co-workers when I go Sharpie-crazy), I recently got an HP OfficeJet Pro L7680 All-in-one device which has a scanner with an Auto Document Feeder.

I take a piece of paper out of the printer and sketch, or mark up a print out of a design with a Sharpie and run it back through the ADF . I have the HP utilities set to not show any dialogs or prompts, and the image is scanned immediately to a specific directory as a 75dpi PNG , which I can post right up in Campfire with a very short elapsed turnaround time.

37signals uses Campfire to post sketches and share designs too. You can see how we do it in Behind the scenes at 37signals: Design [Signal vs. Noise].

Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting or noteworthy way? Let us know.