You have to give a company credit that takes a fun idea and turns it into a way to promote their product. It's even better when the product integrates real-time features and a clean user interface to provide an affordable service that has a certain personal touch.
Opscotch is a help center service with a number of features that gives the support person real-time information to help connect with their end customers.
]]> For example, Opscotch grabs address information to display local weather, a searchable Google map and street view. It has a micro blog style feature, for whatever the user might want to add. This may be a bit about the individual and summaries of a conversation. Let's call it "micro-blogging plus" as users have 250 character limits for their notes as opposed to Twitter's 140 limit.
Co-founder Cathy Tullysmith says that she will usually open a customer's website, a map and weather in tabs when she's on the phone with a customer. Having these features and the notes integrated into the product is helpful for her to create better communication and "foster an empathetic, touchy feely even, client connection."
Opscotch offers unlimited storage. It's in this respect that the cloud does become a differentiating factor. Tullysmith says that she has noticed other providers not offering free storage. But with the cloud, storage costs are so little that it makes sense to offer storage for free.
Additional features include:
- Attachments can be uploaded to the service. Images such as screenshots can be viewed graphically and found visually.
- Adaptive phonetic search allows users to find clients in the system and help locate tickets. This is similar to Google's suggestions for a search when your spelling is incorrect.
- An adaptive UI. Users may choose either a light or dark contrast theme for making reading information easier.
Opscotch definitely has an understanding of how to make a product personal. You can also see this in their promotions.
Earlier this year they came out with techecards, where they placed an ad. The ad is getting more traffic for them than the Google Ad Word campaigns they are doing.
Opscotch is free for the first 30 days. After that it is $8 per user on a per month basis.
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