ziizoo blog

With the recent deployment of the new session interface tool (v2.0), there is an expected incidence of disruption and transitional dissonance because those last few platform bugs need to be fixed and only mass-scale testing can identify them.  If these are a given, the main issue at hand is how to best handle initiation requests that don’t work the first time, or how to handle a session that fails early on or midway.   Hence, the need to identify and establish best practices for Ziizoo CRM (customer relationship management).  I don’t know all the right answers, but I believe this forum can help us tutors pool our insights and develop a strategy and a way of doing things that make sense.

For a startup venture like Ziizoo, CRM is at the very crux of business survival because the cost of catching the attention of a prospective customer can be astronomical.  You’re not only wrestling attention from “the powers that be” but also trying to evince some flair among the clutter of online advertising.  So once you grab someone’s attention, you’re already in the phase in which you’ve got only a modicum of time to demonstrate what you do AND that you do it well.  From the customer’s (student’s) point of view, they want to be confident that they can easily access a tutor who is effective in answering their questions.  This requires the harmony of two things: (1) a stable, smooth connection with the tutor, and (2) a dedicated and capable tutor committed to their craft.  Ziizoo’s business model is designed to select for the cream-of-the-crop tutors, but when the connection fails, the tutor needs to mitigate the situation as best as they can, because those customer don’t just potentially belong to Ziizoo; they potentially belong to you as well!  And it is this idea of “ownership” that should motivate you to salvage and manage a “crisis” when they do occur.

What would I do?  First thing is to follow up on the student immediately.  Usually, when you first get the session request, you can see the student’s name, so keep that in mind.  A simple site search on the name should access their profile, but it’s a bit harder if the search comes up empty.  If you’re lucky enough to have had some connection, then you should easily have a link on your account “dashboard” tab which records all successful connections.  If not, I’d let the site founder Robert Einspruch know (can search his profile) or his brother Alex who is on the site most every day, and give them a message.

A lot of tutors have been asking about business cards and other offline methods to promote their ziizoo profile. One easy thing to do is to print up business cards with a link to your personal profile, i.e., http://www.ziizoo.com/profile/YOUR_USERNAME. This way you can drive traffic straight to your profile.

We recommend tutors check out Vista Print’s free business card promotion.
They have a pretty cool set up where you can get the first 250 business cards printed for free. And you can customize the cards for a modest fee. Pretty nifty and an inexpensive way to get some cards printed up quickly.