December 6, 2007
- and you know what they say about Poodles…..? Well, you could say a lot of things about poodles, but specifically, I was referring to their finicky nature. As you’d imagine, we’ve discovered in trying to launch this nifty Zoodle prototype, that despite Pete’s five submissions of our feed, Oodle has not replied to our small potatoes endeavor. No worries, there are other dogs in the kennel, so to speak.
Fortunately, I have been working with a developer of a nice new real estate listing syndication site that will distribute our feed data to Oodle, Google Base, and a slew of other advertising mediums for us. We’ll title our new prototype Zyndafeed.
The process of creating these CSR friendly tools forces one to really think about how an application is going to be used, and what’s going to matter to the telephone reps on the front line.
Ted may not like the fact that by using ZC to gather the essential data we need, we are practically forcing him to complete multiple forms. In other words, in order to complete the attributes section of the listing, he first has to complete the basic listing data - essentially we have multiple ZC forms within this one app, and this makes the process of submitting essential BuggyRocket listing data a multi-staged endeavor.
Though a multi-staged approach may seem clumsy to some, it also provides natural checks and balances so that Ted can’t skip ahead and neglect an important required data field. Not surprisingly, real estate sites like Zillow, Trulia, PropSmart and others have specific required fields that must be completed in order for the listing to be displayed. Our multi-stage approach helps minimize the likelihood that an important field is accidentally omitted.
But what if a customer calls Ted and isn’t ready to do business with BuggyRocket yet? Good question! - We’ve asked it too. Zoho has a nice little CRM app called, not surprisingly, ZohoCRM. It will allow Ted to capture a prospects contact info for brochure request purposes, as well as to schedule future marketing efforts and follow-up.
What is surprising is that there doesn’t appear to be a seamless integration available between Zoho Creator and ZohoCRM. Hmmm? How is that possible? Don’t know, but from an end-user perspective it seems a bit odd to not be able to unify the mighty possibilities of Zoho Creator with the simple, yet relatively elegant CRM software available under the same roof. (However, a separate account is required to use ZohoCRM and up to three users can use it for free.)
Aside from that grievance, I don’t have too many reservations about using ZC for our CSR users. After playing around with our prototype, the only other feature I would really like to see is dynamic image upload capabilities. It’s a bit cumbersome to have to to create a massive form simply because we need to upload more than a couple pictures. It’s not unlikely that we will need to upload 25 pictures or more. That could get rather bulky!
Next time we post, we hope to provide you with results from our new Zyndafeed app.
October 27, 2007
As we press ahead toward Web 3.0 it’s becoming more evident to me that there are vast segments of the population that are not riding the technology wave. They are still Web 1.0 or even Web No Point O. BuggyRocket will be the bridge to allow the offline seller to present their major asset, eg. Real Estate, Vehicle, Collectible, to the online world without having to be online themselves.
I’ve used Zoho Creator for form creation before and in reading the documentation a few months ago, it occurred to me that there’s something very powerful here! However, I don’t have the time, or really much interest in learning Deluge scripting to take advantage of it. My wish list is pretty big and there are some application tools that I would like to integrate into BuggyRocket that I hope can be accomplished with Zoho Creator and the Zoho Suite of applications. After contacting Zoho to see if they could recommend a “guru”, Raffic suggested I contact Pete Thomas. Thankfully I did because I’ve discovered that Zoho Creator can do everything and more that I imagined. Plus, Pete has already demonstrated his expertise with ZC for me on a contract basis.
Since my target market is primarily offline, I don’t want to invest a lot of time and money into a state of the art DB and flash-based, ajaxy kind of site. My audience, if they have a computer, is often on dial-up. These prospects are serviced through traditional mail, fax and phone, not email. But my telephone CSR’s need to be online to simplify the process. And, I need a strong site for prospective customers who are online. Folks who aren’t fearful of technology and want Web 2.0 functionality. So, I need to be able to consummate the transaction online from start to finish. ZC should allow me to accomplish this, I think.
Needing to serve the customer from all ends of the technology spectrum is the biggest hurdle. I personally am an early adopter, but my customers are late adopters - at best, or orphans (if you use the adoption analogy). The way that obstacle is addressed, is by providing human beings to answer the phone - the good old fashioned way. Humans cost money and having a lot of CSR’s could really cut into our profit margins, but my hope is that I could create a backend consisting of a series of detailed ZC forms that would be utilized to allow a CSR to efficiently input the data, build the database, and process payment. Then ultimately, convert the data into an XML feed or other script to greatly simplify my listing and design process.
That’s a simplified vision of how I’d like Pete, Alan and Doug show me, as an entrepreneur, how to get the most out of Zoho Creator. I’m eagerly looking forward to seeing what really can be done with this powerful application and appreciate the opportunity to be here in the Land of Zoho Creator!
July 25, 2007
Here’s an RSS feed of Zoho Creator’s frequently-updated Public Applications page:
Zoho Creator Public Applications
Unfortunately the Feed43 FAQ says the information will update no more frequently than every 6 hours but in any case feel free to add it to your own aggregator. LoZC is now displaying the last 5 entries directly beneath its ZC forum section.
