Twitter Town Hall

Introduction to Twitter Town Hall

Organisations, municipalities and Businesses can use a Twitter town hall to engage with their clients.  This is the venue wherein various groups and agencies will invite online users in a public gathering at a specified time. If you are not sure what a twitter townhall experience looks like, view the video below where Twitter hosted a town Hall for President Obama. There are other such examples available on youtube

In the given meeting, online users can be free to ask questions and acquire information regarding a specific topic on the social media site. The idea is for interested parties, as well as the public, to gather and share information in a town hall setup. Questions are labeled with a hashtag so everyone knows it's specific to the event. The questions will also be forwarded to the agency so that it can address each one properly. The answering party can make use of various methods to reply to the questions in a way that will be viewable to the parties concerned. The Twitter town hall is unique from regular messaging and posting since specific issues and topics are addressed by the main parties involved. The concerned public can directly delve on related issues and get straight answers from the group or individual. Twitter chat has proven to be an effective and quick-acting tool that helps organizations spread information, as well as get in touch with the public for various objectives and programs.

Starting a Twitter Town Hall

When planning to start a Twitter town hall, there are key steps to follow. First, promote the activity by choosing a host and then sharing the information a few weeks in advance. Some of the methods to quickly let concerned parties know about the schedule and hashtag include tweeting regularly, writing blogs and using other social media tools. The engagement should also clearly indicate the objectives and policies. Define the topic well so that questions and discussions will only dwell on the real issues. Before and during the event, live chat must be supported and all the people involved must communicate to ensure that the agency and public only relates to the hashtag. Continue updating the information by posting blogs and related information days before the event. Assess the success of the Twitter town hall by making a checklist of the objectives that were successfully reached, the number of people who participated and the response time

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Google Docs Phishing

Google Docs Phishing Campaign.

Gmail users beware: a very convincing, very deceitful, phishing scam has been making its way around the Internet. The scam targets Google Doc and Google Drive users with a lookalike login page designed to steal your username and password.

The Google Docs phishing scam is a textbook example: it aims to trick you into handing over sensitive login details, and it does exceptionally well. The scam starts with an email referring to an “important document” stored on Google Docs. Clicking on the link in this message will take you to what appears to be a Google Docs login page—but it’s not. This fake login page allows scammers to collect your username and password for their own malicious use.

Unfortunately for Gmail users, the page in this case is remarkably convincing—emulating Google’s typical login page. And here’s the clincher: because this scam is hosted on Google’s servers (the scam is, after all, a public folder on Google Drive) it effectively sidesteps one of the more reliable ways to detect a phishing scam. Generally speaking, phishing URLs are one or two characters different from the official website that they’re masquerading as. To top things off, because the scammers were hosting this attack on Google’s servers, the URL appears to be secure.

This attack on Google Doc users is especially troubling as Google uses a single login across all of their services. If the scammers successfully obtained login credentials for your Google Docs, they’d also be able to access your email, Chrome browsing history (including searches), YouTube account, and perhaps even be able to make purchases through the Google Play store if you’ve previously registered your payment information.

Despite the sophistication of this scam, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. After its discovery earlier this week, Google has successfully removed the phishing pages. They’ve also stated that their “abuse team is working to prevent this kind of spoofing from happening again.”

While this particular attack seems to have been vanquished, phishing scams in general are on the rise. By being aware of how these scams operate, and how to detect them, you’re well on your way to protecting yourself from the Internet’s many bad guys.

Follow the steps below to help avoid falling victim:

• Double check your URL address. Most of the time, a phishing URL will have some reference to the entity it’s pretending to be, but with some form of variation. For example: www.google.com will take you to Google; www.googl.e3921.com (as an example) will take you to a crash page—but it could also take you to a phishing scam website. That being said, do be aware that the scam described above uses a legitimate Google URL and could trick even the most thorough of skeptics.
  

• Don’t send banking or login information via email or text. Professional services will never ask you to send sensitive information over email or text messages. They just don’t. At the bare minimum, they’ll ask you to sign into your account on their website (remember to check the URL) in order to address any sensitive information. If you’ve received an email asking for transmittal of financial or login details via email, you’d be wise to delete it.
  

• Watch the links. Be wary of linking on links sent to you over email, text message or social media sites. Most are harmless, but the ones sent to you by someone you don’t know, or a business that you didn’t sign up for, could send you to a malware-infested site.
  
• Install comprehensive security software. As always, practice caution, and protect yourself online with comprehensive security services like McAfee LiveSafe. It will help block spam and dangerous email, as well as guard against malware and viruses on your PCs, Macs, smartphones and tablets.

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Professional Invoice : The Importance

Why Your Invoices Matter 

What do your invoices have in common with your website, your helpdesk and your technicians? They all serve as touchpoints with your customers — among the few recur - ring ones you have if you’re a small or medium-sized MSP — and when they’re done right, they’re a great opportunity to reinforce the value you deliver and strengthen the customer experience. 

Consider these four best practices for creating professional invoices that show existing and potential customers alike that you’re the right MSP for their business: 

1. Accuracy 
2. Professionalism 
3. Timeliness 
4. Service

1. Accuracy

As you grow your managed services business, an accurate invoice is one of the more important keys to building trust with your customers. (Conversely, an inaccurate invoice can spark distrust in your services and your practice.) One of the best ways to ensure accuracy is by automating as much of the billing process as possible. For example, if you can fully integrate your technicians’ field reports and your helpdesk processes with your billing platform, you can deliver accuracy and clarity for every item listed on your invoices.

2. Professionalism 

A clear and easy-to-understand invoice tailored to each customer’s needs allows you to always put your best foot forward. Rather than using a ‘one-size-fits-all’ template across your entire customer base, your invoices should be as simple or as detailed as necessary to reflect the different billing models used by each particular customer, whether that’s hourly, on retainer or fully managed services. This way, you can bill your customers in the way they like best — improving satisfaction while showing a deeper understanding of their business needs.

3. Timeliness 

Nobody likes to get a bill? That’s not entirely true. Customers expect to be billed but they expect that bill to arrive at a specific time and date. When customers know they’ll be billed promptly, it’s easier for them to track costs and plan expenses. A late invoice, on the other hand, can feel like an unexpected expense — and that leads to a negative customer experience. When your ticketing, helpdesk and invoicing tools are working together, previously manual steps can be eliminated, helping you generate and send invoices faster and more efficiently… and the faster your customers receive their invoices, the sooner you get paid.

4. Service 

You should always be ready to answer questions after the invoice has been sent to help build and grow the relationship. An integrated ticketing, helpdesk and invoicing system makes it easier to respond quickly to billing questions making you look professional and that you are on top of things.

An Easier Way to Bill Customers 

There are quite a few cloud-based service management platform for creating support tickets, scheduling technicians and generating professional invoices — everything you need to deliver quality service to your customers. These integrated, customizable billing process saves you time while increasing the accuracy of your invoices. You can also generate multiple invoices simultaneously for faster, more efficient billing — and then export your invoices directly to your preferred accounting software. 

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Digital Design

Digital Service Design.

Delivering human-centred service excellence across every digital touch-point.

Customers interact with my business in so many different ways – how can I deliver the best results across their whole experience?

Digital Service Design aims to understand how your customers (or users) engage with your organisation and services or products, with a view to creating experiences and services which create maximum engagement and value creation. By aligning the customer journey across the entire omni-channel ecosystem, we can identify areas where digital enhancements are able to deliver better services, customer experiences, and ultimately improved business performance.

Digital Service Design involves a detailed analysis of the way that customers and users interact with your organisation and all the processes (internal and external) which relate to that interaction. It takes into account every touch-point along the customer journey, including the manner in which that contact is made (for example, what kind of device is likely to be used, or where that customer is likely to be when they make that contact).

Our comprehensive Digital Service Design process helps improve or develop new services to support your organisation and stakeholders in achieving your objectives. Our human-centred approach works by combining a thorough understanding of your customers, your processes and your business, and applying best practice user experience design, behavioural psychology and game science to deliver a detailed Service Blueprint.

2Create360

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