Apps for Success Review— Skitch
In this Apps for Success productivity tool review we are scaling it down a bit. Last month’s Front review was a rather large app and this time around we’re going to concentrate on a small one hit wonder as it were: Skitch!
Skitch is another screenshot app, similar to our previous review of Jing. I know, I know, some of you may be thinking “Why do I need a screenshot app when I have the snipping tool on my Mac?” Well, buckle up, my friends! Your snipping tool could learn a thing or two from Skitch.
Before we jump into Skitch, I wanted to take a moment to talk about the principle called Knowledge Management. For those of you who have never heard of it before, I’m going to steal directly from Wikipedia without any shame:
“Knowledge Management is the process of creating, sharing, using and managing the knowledge and information of an organization. It refers to a multidisciplinary approach to achieve organisational objectives by making the best use of knowledge.”
Chances are, you’re not intentional about your Knowledge Management at your place of work. This is something companies tend to throw to the wayside and never really realize the problem it causes when the knowledge is not actively curated and edited. Documentation is everything in a business — it’s the only thing that allows for repeatability and scaling. The way you document and manage your internal and external knowledge can be the difference between a highly performing team or one made up of people just putting out fires.
To that end, I have two simple maximums to share with you to help you pay attention to your Knowledge Management when dealing with customer inquiries:
- Every reply you send to a customer who has a product question needs to include a link to your Knowledge Base.
- If you’re looking to link to an article for the Knowledge Base and you realize such an article does not exist, then it’s your job to create the article.
To be clear, I’m not telling you to create articles willy-nilly without speaking to the person(s) at your company who own the customer-facing knowledge base. I’m also not suggesting you just edit your internal playbooks without getting team input. Follow your team and company’s best practices for creating knowledge.
Both you and your customers should each have a knowledge base that is comprehensive and details the answers to every question that may arise throughout your day to day. Don’t skimp on your internal sources of knowledge either! It’s all fine and good to have a beautiful customer-facing Knowledge Base about the product. But if your team doesn’t have one in the form of a playbook or handbook, then you’re fighting a losing battle!
It needs to be someone’s responsibility to update and edit your internal sources of knowledge to guard against the Bus Factor. Take a look around your team right now and consider, how many of us have to get hit by a bus for our Customer Success machine to stop working? If you answer that question with anything other than, “All of us could go and the customers would still be taken care of”, then you have some work to do documenting your processes and cross training other departments.
One final word on documentation and Knowledge Management, there is power in writing the words that build and train the team. Often people’s first instinct when talking about Knowledge Management is to shrink away and leave it for someone else to do. Don’t do that! Just as history is written by the victors, so too is internal documentation written by the leaders.
And that’s where a screenshot tool like Skritch comes in handy. When documenting things, a picture is worth a thousand words. Screenshots can help you more efficiently and effectively document and communicate your knowledge.
On to the review!
[Standard disclaimer here. I own no part of any of the apps for Customer Success Managers I’ll be reviewing in this column. The opinions contained in this review are mine and mine alone. SuccessHACKER is kind enough to lend me their microphone. If you happen to disagree, leave a comment and let me know! I love a good spirited debate.]
What do you like best?
If you watched more than one of these videos, you know I love simple apps! I’m not a fan of huge monolithic applications that try to do everything — except Hubspot (I love Hubspot! haha). Skitch is the definition of a small app that does one thing and does that one thing extremely well.
I love that when you take a screenshot of the app, you’re immediately given the arrow tool. There is no need to click around and select, you can immediately show the person what you want to focus on.
I love that it can copy and paste any quick screenshots I take into emails or documents.
Most of all, I love that it is free! It’s an app that allows you to annotate (not something the snipping tool on your mac can do!) and it helps you to do it because that’s the whole point of the app!
What do you dislike?
Skitch doesn’t let you do video. But, that’s almost a benefit because it keeps the app single use! Plus, video is something you might suspect from an app you have to pay for — not a free one like Skitch!
What business problems does the product solve? What benefits have you realized?
The business problem Skitch solves is helping you to show exactly what you want to say without having to type out the words. The old adage of a picture is worth a thousand words is true! And your snipping tool just doesn’t allow you to take the best pictures!
Skitch allows you to share exactly what you mean and it allows you to call attention to the particular part of the image you’re sharing in an easy and seamless way that will make your responses to customers easy to understand and follow along.
Skitch is also incredibly useful for your internal Knowledge Management because you can take easy screenshots and document them for your team!
Summary
In this review we showed you a tool which will help you to focus your team and your customers’ attention. Skitch is a dead simple application which will easily help you convey your points on even the hardest of subjects!
Download it and give it a spin today!
About the Author
John Bowman, Esq., is the Director of Customer Success at Jetpack Workflow. He is a rising star in the Customer Success community, leading the Pittsburgh Customer Success Meetup and the Pittsburgh Gainsight Pulse chapter, as well as moderating the Customer Success Subreddit. John utilizes his 10+ years of professional experience to focus organizations on one goal: the customer’s desired outcome.
Originally published at https://successcoaching.co on November 19, 2020.
