Vlad Mazek – Vladville Blog

Over six months ago I began the long process of activating everyone interested in Shockey Monkey, provisioning it for them, getting feedback, integrating it into the solution, learning about their business, learning about their management and processes. This was undoubtedly interesting to a LOT of you, a LOT more than I could handle. But, six months later I am 100% caught up. Thats right, everyone that wanted to ride the monkey got the chance and everyone is up and running (or at least waiting for CSR/certificate provisioning)

So, where do we go from here?

Well, first of all, the web page needs some serious tender love and care. That will be the project of the week because it will alow me to deliver the training materials that you’ll need to make the most out of the Shockey Monkey. Remember folks, it’s not about the tool. As much as I’ve done to build this on best practices and SMB features, it is all about your discipline and your implementation.

I’m also considering making Shockey Monkey an invitation-only software for the remainder of the free period. I’d actually like your opinion on this one. The only reason people were denied Shockey Monkey so far is because they did not appear to be able to follow simple directions or didn’t seem to run a real IT business. Perhaps it’s just my bias but I figure that if you can’t even put together a web site for your own business you have no business consulting anyone else on their IT solutions. And because Shockey Monkey is meant to be built by the way the best run their businesses it wouldn’t make sense to dilute it with people that are struggling with the concept of SSL certificates and filling out HTML forms. Maybe you’ll see that as insensitive and mean, but this is business we’re talking about here and I don’t think anyone would expect anything but the best.

So, thinking about making it invitation only – that way at least there is some anecdotal info on you being more than a hotmail.com alias.

Few notes on the Shocky Monkey activations that I’ve been processing for the past day or so.

• “You’ve already received an email with the authentication info” as the video says, so naturally you’d proceed to login to our support/order portal. If you haven’t received that email yet it follows that your account is not ready yet so why are you trying to login, why are you trying to get the password reminder from the portal? The account is not there until you receive the welcome email. 
• “Please don’t email me for support” says the video, yet I woke up to 8 messages in the inbox describing how they can’t login because of bullet point above. Which part of don’t email me doesn’t make sense?

There is a “Vlad’s School of Customer Service” post just brewing in this one.

6 months later, more than 2,000 partners online and god knows how much time, emails and code lines…. I’m caught up. Yes friends, today I mailed the last 200 people that signed up over the course of the last few months and they’ll be up online tonight or tomorrow. Thank you all for your patience.

Take a look at the activation video, if you’d like to sign up for it.

10 minutes, ordering, configuring, obtaining SSL cert, etc.

Now the fun stuff begins! What’s on Shockey Monkey today is on stable code from November – and now that everyone is signed up, that I know the system can scale, that I have all that feedback you’ve given me over the past year or so of development.. now that its all on the pile I can go back to development and start integrating all of it for the most kicka.. well, let’s be honest, the ONLY practice management software designed for SMB IT solution providers by SMB owners themselves!

Thank you for joining me on this journey.

Fixed Shockey Monkey links for the few of you that cached the old posts:

Flash Movie (20 minutes)

Windows Media Movie (20 minutes)

Both can be viewed/streamed online and they are identical just offered in two formats if you’re not on Windows or if you don’t have a Flash plugin installed. Either should work, I hope you enjoy it.

Note: This is apparently popular. It’s beating up my 20 Mbit network connection so it may be flowing slowly please be patient. As for emails saying “I signed up, I haven’t been turned up, so I submitted it again”; Please don’t do that. I am going down the list of when the accounts were created and all the requests are stored in the database. So when you sign up again the system updates the timestamp and you fall to the bottom of the request list. While I am extatic that so many of you are so anxious to get started with this please keep in mind that this is a freebie project I am working on my own so please cut me some slack as I get you all turned up.

The week of the monkey continues, and today I proudly present the Shockey Monkey: First Look video. This is probably the best 20 minutes you’ll spend today, 20 minutes to see what Shockey Monkey is and how it works.

I hear you, I hear you – 20 minutes? Good lord, I don’t have that kind of time. Please keep in mind that in those 20 minutes I’ve completely customized my portal, added customers, opened and closed a support request, billed / invoiced the call, made an announcement and customized the experience for the customer. All that, and an explanation of why this is something you need to consider for your business. It saves time, it enhances customers support experience and it makes you look great without robbing you blind! The unCRM. Turns out that was trademarked so we’re going with MSP Ticket (My Support Professional Ticket, Managed Service Provider Ticket, My Super Powerful Ticket);

Flash: Shockey Monkey Video (20 minutes)

The wmv version is being produced, will be up shortly. (5:37 updated broken link)