Introduction

“Software as a Service” is the in word nowadays. This new idea roughly translate into some kind of services or functionalities that are offered online. No software to install, no extra hardware required and best of all, time to start using the services is within minutes after you open your favorite browsers. Did I hear you asking “browsers”? Yes, you hear me right, one of the most outstanding features of “Software as a Service” is it only need a normal web browser to work. Some of the most notable “Software as a Service” examples are Google’s Docs & Spreadsheets and Calendar.

But what if you want to apply this new idea in managing one of the most important parts of business: “Customer & Contact Management“? That will be the reviewed product today. This is a paid review but you are welcome to post any comments and questions related to this review.

First of all, some brief introduction of ClientScribe’s Customer & Contact Management. This service is brainchild of a company called Amyntor Limited which is located in London and has a team of people working in Scotia Canada and New York. A little search on Google reveals that this company is specialized in web-based business solutions. Some of their notable products besides ClientScribe are ClearSMS, a Web-based texting service and FaceDesk, a office document system covering newslatters, announcements and pretty much anything else. They did mentioned that they have hosting infrastructures in Toronto and Panama, this sure will help in provide high redundancy and availability in the Customer & Contact Management system provided.

Usage/Functionality

How do I use ClientScribe? Just fire up your favorite browser, be it FireFox or Internet Explorer. Testing on the ClientScribe service was done on both FireFox and Internet Explorer and I found that both browsers work perfectly during the whole review process.

To test the functionality of ClientScribe, one have to really go through the process of using it. First time users will have to perform the sign up process. No worry because it is amazingly simple! You will only need to provide Name, Email, Account Name and Password. Thats all you need to provide and once you press the Create Account button, you will be shown the Account Created page where you can see the details of your account. I suggest you save it for future reference. One thing I found strange is that once you click on the sign up link, you will be directed to hubtext.com website. Nothing major but since I am such a paranoid person, I did a WHOIS on hubtext.com and I found that the URL is registered under George Skondras who is working under Amyntor Limited and situated in Athens. He is the director of FaceDesk.

Once you have login the first time, you are required to add a new customer, follow by any activities related to the customer. Quite logic in my opinion.

Once the customer information is entered, you can start to add in activities such as phone conversations and fax/email sent/received. Here come the interesting part.

Security Bug!

I notice that ClientScribe is using cfm files which I think is ColdFusion. A parameter called URLclientid is inserted behind the cfm file and my URLclientid is 132. Just for curiosity, I tried to change the value to say 100 and I see some interesting info:

I can see other account’s customer information! Wow, this is something Amyntor and its team need to work out ASAP because no one will use something that insecure.

Back to the system. Once a customer information is entered into the system, we can add activities related to the particular customer. Not only that, we can also use the attachment function to attach any files to the particular activity. Some files that I can think of is maybe scanned image of an invoice or a purchase order, or a recorded voice file for the particular telephone conversation. Pretty handy if you ask me.

A customer management system is not perfect if without a reporting function. Fortunately ClientScribe has thought of this and they even come out with a common and my favourity file format, a PDF document. It is a summary activities view for the particular customer that you have selected earlier on. A PDF is convenient because it provides easier way for us to view and print it correctly.

Paid Plans

I notice there is a Setting link on the top of the page so I decided to test it out. As I thought, here you can manage user profile, edit customer groups and import contact list via Excel or CSV file types. As this is a free account, you will have a limit of 10 customers and 25 MB of attachment storage. If that if not enough for you, you will have to use the paid plans, which I think is how ClientScribe makes the money.

Speaking of paid ClientScribe plans, which as be seen here, the plans’s customer limit are 10 for free account (one that I am using now), 1000 for personal plan and 5000, 10000 and 30000 for other bigger plans. Pricing is reasonable in my opinion because even with the largest plan (Foundation plan), you will only need to pay USD $25 monthly. Modes of payment is through 2checkout.com, which offers VISA, Master, JCB, AMEX and Diners as paying options. One thing that I do not understand is that while in Basic plan (free forever) we are allow to manage 10 users, in the Personal plan where we pay USD$5 monthly, we can only have 1 user! Maybe just a typo on ClientScribe website but if that is not the case, I would strongly suggest to change the free plan to single user and personal plan to 10 users, which in my opinion is more logical and fairer.

Layout and Navigation

Come to the website layout, at first sight I thought I am looking at a personal blog. The layout is too similar to Wordpress blog which I think is too casual. A more professional look maybe more suitable for companies looking forward to a customer management system online. One more thing about the logo of ClientScribe, which is just taking too much space. A simpler and thinner logo might give a better professional look for the website. Talking about the colour scheme, the menu of the left is using dark blue background colour and a very light blue font colour, which make the menu font not standing out thus making navigation harder for older people with weak eyesight.

Conclusion

In the conclusion, while ClientScribe’s Customer Management system is using the “Software as a Service” web-based concept which is good and more convenient for the users, the security issue of changing of URLclientid in URL reveals other customer information not under my account sure will affect the confidentiality of potential users. Lack of a professional-looking layout website with poor colour selection for left menu make the navigation harder for older people. Pricing for plans is affordable in my opinion. A proper written online manual and help might be useful for first time users to truly appreciate the functionality of the website.