Tip: Customer Service with TextExpander
March 24th, 2007
If you have the unenviable job of support your website, you probably have received your fair share of “I can’t log in” type emails. It never seems to fail that no matter how easy you make it for people to log in or recover lost credentials, they (and by “they,” I mean AOL users) always seem to find a way to write you and complain that your site is hard to use. We’ve all been there.
Anyway, there’s a solution that makes this painful process much less so: TextExpander.
TextExpander is a little meta-app that installs as an OS X preference pane. By using Universal Access’ Access for Assistive Devices, it is able to watch what you type. When you type what I’ll call a “token” (which is just a memorable abbreviation that you wouldn’t ordinarily type), TextExpander instantly replaces it (with a satisfying boinking noise). This means that TextExpander can be used for anything from quick signatures to system-wide typo replacement.
But it also means that you can type a boilerplate response to a frequently asked question with just a few keystrokes. For instance, you might type “llogin” and have TextExpander replace it with something like:
Sorry to hear you’re having trouble logging in.
My first recommendation is to take a look at our Troubleshooting guide here:
http://somesite.com/troubleshoot.php
This clears up 99% of most common issues most people have with logging in.
If you still are having trouble after looking through this guide, please don’t hesitate to write back.
Many thanks,
Steve
This tool literally saves hours of typing each month, yet still supports your sites visitors in a seemingly personal way.
MacBreak recently did a demo [link] for TextExpander that provides quite a few power tips and does a great job of showing the benefits of the program.
TextExpander is free to try, and costs $29 if you like it. It even comes with a 90-day money-back guarantee. I know I find it well worth the money.
Enjoy.
Sphere: Related Content
StringFoo's Feed-o-Rama: