Staffing Robot - Web design and marketing services for companies in the staffing industry

BeKnown™ Facebook® Integration Now Makes It Easier to Express Yourself Professionally on Facebook

Guest Blog by Tom Chevalier- Global Product Manager at Monster and product lead for BeKnown™ – the professional networking app on Facebook. This post appeared orginially on Monster's blog - MonsterThinking.

Today at f8, Facebook’s developer’s conference in San Francisco, Monster announced that BeKnown™ is launching new features that make it possible for people to add professional updates like career changes and college graduation information directly to their Facebook profile. Monster is among the first companies integrating Facebook’s latest features to bring more social engagement to the online careers and professional networking industries.

So what does this all mean for BeKnown members? In the coming weeks, you’ll be able to share customized professional networking activity back to Facebook that goes beyond ‘Liking.” These custom actions open up new opportunities and make it easier for you to feature career updates and highlight your professional brand to help advance your career goals. Quite simply, you now have a better way to show a more complete story of who you are as a professional.

Facebook has always made it easy to discover great things and now BeKnown makes it even easier for you to present yourself as a professional, and connect with friends and family to better express what you’re doing at work or where you are at in your career. Through consistent and easy to understand settings on BeKnown (only ‘Everyone’ information is shared), you also remain in full control over how your activity is shared, thereby maintaining the separation of personal and professional information.

For more information on the announcement coming from today’s f8 conference, visithttps://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/563/ . And check out our BeKnown press release.

Guest Blog by Tom Chevalier- Global Product Manager at Monster and product lead for BeKnown™ – the professional networking app on Facebook. This post appeared orginially on Monster's blog - MonsterThinking.

VMS and MSP Growth Slowing: SIA Reports

The Staffing Industry Analysts are reporting data suggesting VMS and MSP adoption is slowing.

The percent of large buyers reporting use of VMS and/or MSP in 2011 was roughly flat with the previous year, according to just-released research from Staffing Industry Analysts.

The full report is behind a paywall unfortunately, but the summary is available. It would be very interesting to see the data as it relates specific staffing segments.

Back in 2009 we posted a snapshot estimating VMS/MSP adoption based on the VMS/MSP providers in the healthcare staffing industry. This was just a high level estimate but already seemed to identify a market nearing saturation. There are only about 5000 hospitals across the nation and now, almost 3 years later, there have been new players in the industry and VMS/MSP adoption increased dramatically. In healthcare staffing, it makes sense that adoption would slow. 

Any signs or data suggesting that's the case (or not the case)? Post in the comments below.

 

Staffing Robot Portfolio Update

The cobbler's children are finally starting to get some shoes! In other words - we finally updated our portfolio of work!

We've been asked to share our portfolio several times but have never taken the time to actually update it. We've been so busy with client work and our own projects that getting around to updating our sites often becomes a low (read: no) priority. :-/

However, we just updated our Staffing Robot portfolio from some of the work we did in the last year. Seeing how much we've put out there will give you a good idea on what we mean when we say "we've been busy!" And just think - this is only a small sample of the work we've done.

From staffing websites, to mobile websites and job apps, to branding for staffing staffing agencies, to custom job board creation and building our own software applications for staffing - take a look around at our recently update portfolio and let us know what you think.

Check back every few weeks or so and see the new projects we've posted! Also, if we missed adding your site it's not intentional! Just let us know and we'll put it up.

Got a project you'd like us to work on? Contact Staffing Robot and we'll get going!

Customer Satisfaction and Feedback Surveys Just Got Easier

How do you measure customer happiness and engagement? Are you still sending out lengthy surveys hoping for a response?

What about motivating your customer facing sales, staffing, support and recruiting teams? Hoping they're just happy with their day to day?

Well now there's a better way! We're pleased to announce Hively. Hively is the simplest way to gather customer feedback and measure customer satisfaction, while motivating your team members to improve the service they provide.

Hively better connects businesses with their customers by helping them gather ongoing, real time customer feedback in a fun and engaging way.

"Most companies send customer surveys out to gather feedback. But surveys have a low engagement rate because they're time consuming to create and to complete," said Jason Lander, Founder and CEO of Staffing Robot. "In addition, survey data is difficult to act upon because it's aggregated, not real time and rarely (if ever) makes it's way to the people who need it most - the employees interacting with your customers."

With Hively, your team members invite customers to give feedback by constantly asking them to rate the service they just received. These feedback requests are sent in every email or after every phone call, sales meeting, webinar, or training your customers receive. Team members get points for the feedback they receive and are ranked amongst their team based on their customer happiness score. 

Check out the Hively feature tour here.

By capturing real time customer feedback, Hively helps businesses respond to their customers in a timely manner. Positive comments can be shared publicly as testimonials and negative issues can be addressed immediately. Hively takes only a few minutes to set up and easily integrates with any email client, CRM or ticket tracking system.

"There's never been a simpler and more effective way to measure customer satisfaction and reward team members for providing exceptional service," said Lander.

Ready to improve your customer and team happiness? Sign up for Hively today!

Top 10 Reasons to Outsource Joint Commission Certification Consulting

Guest author: Prophecy Professional Services

Chances are if your searching has found this article, your healthcare staffing agency made the decision to become JC certified. Now your goal is to maximize the effectiveness of this experience. Here are the top ten reasons that make hiring a consultant specializing in Joint Commission Health Care Staffing Services Certification a wise investment.

1.  Streamlining the Process

Many organizations find it overwhelming and extremely time consuming to prepare for Joint Commission Certification. A consultant streamlines and simplifies the process so you can focus on growing your business.

2.  Frees Up Key Personnel

Organizations that prepare for JC certification on their own, often pull key employees from revenue generating activities for 6-12 months depending on the size of the organization. Using a consultant is more cost effective and utilizes less internal resources, allowing your employees to focus on revenue generating activities.

3.  Faster Certification

Working with a consultant decreases time to survey readiness and you can enjoy with benefits of Joint Commission certification even sooner.

4.  Objective Assessment of Compliance

Have you heard the statement that is difficult to see the trees from the forest? Using a consultant allows for an objective assessment of your organization to determine compliance with standards and to identify opportunities for improvement.

5.  Eliminates Misinterpretation of Standards

A consultant brings expertise to the process, so there will be no misinterpretation of the standards. It is important to verify that your consultant has worked in the healthcare staffing industry so they truly understand your business as well as the JC standards.

6.  Expert Experience for Guidance

A consultant brings proven techniques, processes and tools. Why try to recreate the wheel?

7.  Support from Start to Gold Seal

A consultant provides you ongoing support throughout the entire Joint Commission process. In addition to onsite consultation, your consultant is just a phone call away to provide support, guidance and reassurance.

8.  Insider Info on JC Reviews

A consultant has first hand experience with the JC reviewers by participating in multiple JC reviews. A consultant can prepare you specifically what the reviewers will be looking for and the types of questions they will ask.

9.  Trial Run Survey

A consultant will perform a Mock Survey, using the same review tools used by the Joint Commission reviewers. It allows the organization to get a feel for what the actual review will be like. It also allows the organization to make any last minute changes as needed to achieve compliance with the standards.

10.  Guaranteed Certification

Clearly no explanation is needed – your organization will achieve JC Certification – no if’s, ands, or buts about it!

Congratulations on deciding to distinguish your organization as one of the “elite” healthcare staffing companies in the nation.  The benefits of achieving JC Certification certainly out weigh the costs. And, hiring a proven professional, well-versed in leading healthcare staffing organizations to JC HCSS Certification, allows you to stay focused on building your business from the front line.

Next Step?

If you're looking for a consulting professional for JC Certification Prophecy Professional Services can help. With over 45 healthcare certifications to their credit, nationally experienced RN executives guarantee certification in as little as 4 months. In partnership with Staffing Robot, Prophecy Healthcare's Professional Services is offering services to healthcare staffing companies. Contact us if you have questions or would like to schedule a free consultation. Let us know you heard about our services from this post and we'll give you a 10% discount on the prices we quote you.

About Prophecy Professional Services

Prophecy Professional Services (PPS), a division of Prophecy Healthcare, was founded in response to the healthcare staffing industry’s need for consultants experienced in Joint Commission’s Health Care Staffing Services Certification. PPS’ nationally experienced Nurse Executives with 20+ years of healthcare staffing experience assist healthcare staffing firms prepare for Joint Commission certification and provide cost effective clinical operation and risk management services. PPS also provides staffing operations start-up support for new healthcare staffing organizations. Prophecy provides all the forms, websites, and policies pertinent to each staffing agency they work with, leading them every step of the way. For more information, visit http://www.prophecyhealth.com/pps/joint-commission/.

Announcing Hively - Client Satisfaction and Employee Rewards App for Healthcare Staffing Companies!

We are excited to announce the Beta version of our new product - Hively!

Hively is a simple, effective and fun way to measure your client happiness and motivate your employees to provide excellent customer service. With Hively, you can view real time client feedback on your customer service and sales team's performance.

Most companies only guess at their client satisfaction and the level of customer service their employees provide. Well now you can stop guessing!

Hively provides your customers with a one-click, happiness rating system. Hively ratings are simple to measure and understand, yet powerful enough to drive real results. These results will help your company improve customer retention and reward your team members for their performance. 

Sound interesting?

If so, sign up and tell us why you want to participate in the Hively beta. We’ll choose a few companies to participate and notify you in the next couple of weeks if your company has been selected.

The best part? 

By participating in our beta your company will be entered to win an iPad 2! We'll announce the winner at the end of the beta.

Don't wait! We're only selecting a few companies to participate in this exclusive beta process so sign up to try Hively today!

If you want to learn more about Hively go to our new website for the product here: http://www.teamhively.com

Have questions? Contact us and lets talk!

API Healthcare - Kronos Call Off Merger

Big news this week regarding API Healthcare and Kronos. Back in February, API Healthcare announced they were being acquired by Kronos. The merger looked promising and had the potential to deliver a lot of interesting technology to the healthcare staffing industry.

However, this week, API Healthcare annouced that their merger with Kronos has been terminated. Regulatory approval by the DOJ seemed to be an issue.

API Healthcare recently released a new product, Synergy and they will be focusing on the rollout and success of that product. Both companies will move forward independently.

 

 

Awesome Apps: Rapportive

Being a web development and marketing company for the healthcare staffing industry we use a lot of online apps and services to make our business run more smoothly. Sometimes, we find ourselves taking these tools for granted.

From time to time we'll be discussing some of our favorite applications in front of a client and find they have never heard of the application before. When these clients have acted on our recommendations they've told us later about how they too are now enjoying the app. This has happened enough that we've now been inspired to start a new line of posts to discuss this very topic.

These new posts will be categorized as "Awesome Apps" and we'll use them to discuss different applications we use at Staffing Robot to make our days easier (or even just more enjoyable). We hope these posts are of interest to all of you and that you find value in learning about them.

This first post is about one of our favorite applications: Rapportive. Although we wouldn't necessarily consider Rapportive a critical business application, it is still an awesome app that makes our sales and account management much more effective.

Networking is a critical component to succeeding with your online marketing strategies and the contacts you make are key. When marketing online, particularly in social media networks, the number of these contacts you can gain is overwhelming. Therefore properly managing them all is essential.

Most popular CRM tools out there do a great job with contact management. However, so many of them seem to be overblown (salesforce.com) with too many features. In comes Rapportive.

Rapportive is an application that works with Gmail to help you better manage your email contacts and learn more about the people you engage with. The app works as a browser addon. Once installed, when you receive an email from someone, the app aggregates online social profile information about the person and displays it to you right in your inbox. This data appears even if this is your first contact with this person. Slick huh?

The profile information displayed is intended to help you:

• Easier identify the person you're engaging with
• Better connect you to this person by creating more connection points with them on the web
• Help you discern the value of this contact

What info does the tool aggregate and display?

You can immediately see a picture of the person, where they’re located, the company they work for and their role/title. More than just professional interests, it also allows you to see the sites they engage with online. This information gives you a great understanding of how they use the web and how social they are, as well as allowing you to see if you have any shared interests you may not have known about.

Rapportive displays profile information for contacts from data it pulls from quite an extensive list of sites including:

• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Flickr
• Picaso
• Skype
• You Tube
• Yelp
• About.me

The great thing about having this information is that you can instantly connect with people on any of these other sites, right from your inbox (we often find ourselves immediately connecting to people on LinkedIn when we get emails from new contacts).

In addition, you can add notes directly into the Rapportive profile display of any contact. In doing so, you have all the information you need on a contact the next time they email you, or any time you need it.

Another cool feature - if you are connected to someone on another website, you can see things in their Rapportive profile like their latest tweets, status updates on LinkedIn, newest images on Flickr, etc., right in your inbox!

All of this sounds great but you might be wondering what people see about you right?

Not to worry. After you install Rapportive, you can easily edit your personal profile. Just click "my profile" at the bottom of the sidebar display with your information. You can hover your mouse over any part of the profile to change it. Your changes will instantly be seen by anybody who views your profile on Rapportive.

Interestingly, this app also provides you with some basic stats such as - how many times your profile has been viewed by the people you email.

Go here if you want to learn how to install Rapportive.

At Staffing Robot, we haven't fully replaced our internal CRM with Rapportive. Currently, it's used 'in addition to.' That said, we do find it helps us tremendously for furthering our connections and interests with people, as well as to better identify new contacts.

If you're curious, give Rapportive a try. It's an awesome app we highly recommend. Anyone out there currently using Rapportive? If so, let us know what you think!

Managing Your Healthcare Staffing Email Contact Lists with ePromoter

Building a quality email contact list and generating new leads plays a significant role in your marketing efforts. How to grow your list well and generate leads that convert for your healthcare staffing company is often a question we're asked. Lead generation is critical to marketing and sales, but it’s also important to remember that recipients need to give their consent before you can send them marketing messages.

 

It all comes down to having a great contact list.

Great lists are the first step to seeing real results from any email marketing campaign. Far too many companies are still purchasing lists or just emailing all the contacts they have without receiving permission first or tracking the results of their efforts. With the right tools and know how you can develop a quality list of contacts that will respond well to your messages.

This post is the third in a series titled: 10 Ways to Improve Your Heatlhcare Staffing Email Marketing Campaigns. The series focuses on tips and strategies for running successful e-newsletter campaigns using ePromoter by Staffing Robot.

For those of you that don't know, ePromoter is an email marketing and campaign management software application designed specifically for healthcare staffing companies. ePromoter makes it easy to create contact lists, manage subscribers, and even import lists from third-party apps like SalesForce, Google or Highrise.

Here are some tips for building quality contact lists and generating leads for your healthcare staffing company.


Organic Growth:

1. Add a newsletter sign up form to your website. Adding a newsletter sign-up form to your website makes it easy for people to enter their email address and subscribe to your e newsletters. This also makes it certain that these people want to hear from you. Adding an email sign up form is easy. With ePromoter, you get a simple code scrap to enter in the location of your choosing. When people sign up for your emails they will automatically be added to your contact list in ePromoter.  


2. Landing Pages. Add an opt-in checkbox that allows people to sign up for your email newsletters (“Sign me up for your newsletter”) to landing pages and other forms on your website to drive your list growth. This makes subscribing to your list even easier for some users.

3. Give something. Get Something. Promote articles, white papers, webinars and other events online. Have people sign up for these things with their email address and inform them that doing so automatically subscribes them to your email list.  

Outbound Marketing:

1. Referral Programs, Contests, Polls and Surveys. All of these can be great ways to build a list, capture attention and drive awareness with your target audience. Add a “Yes, I’d like to receive emails from Company X” checkbox to your next entry form, survey or poll.

2. Forward To A Friend. Having recipients forward your email to a friend or colleague is a great way to broaden your potential audience. Always include a “Forward To A Friend” link in your email to encourage your readers to share your email. Also, make it easy for those it’s shared with to sign up to receive your emails directly by including opt-in sign up links in every email. With two clicks, ePromoter allows you to add this "Forward to a Friend" functionality into any of your emails.

3. Social links. Similar to the benefits of the "Forward to a Friend" functionality, social media sharing can also get you new readers. Be sure to include social media sharing links in your email to encourage sharing of your information in an effort to gain new followers. Adding social media sharing icons is also a two click process within ePromoter.


All of these activities allow you to generate leads and grow quality contact lists. Now that you've built your list, it's critical to maintain and monitor it so you ensure it stays at a high level of quality. Here are some tips for maintaining quality contact lists for your healthcare staffing company.

1. Create a quality list. The ideal audience has requested to be on your list. They have given you consent to email them. The list you send to should be properly targeted and contain accurate and current contact information. Generally speaking, this list will be an audience you’ve grown over time.

2. Never, ever purchase an email list. No matter who tells you what or what assurances or promisers you're given - purchasing a list is a sure way to get your domain blacklisted. There's no shortcut here. Quality lists take time to build. Purchasing lists will only get you into trouble.

3. Only send emails to contacts that are less than 1 year old. If it has been longer than one year since you've emailed a contact on your list, make sure you get updated contact information before you send them your next email.

4. Opt in. Make sure you’re using a confirmed, opt-in or notified opt-in process to build your list. Be sure to also communicate in a proactive way to your growing list of contacts with relevant, timely information in order to make your email marketing programs successful.

5. Maintain good list hygiene. Recipient issues such as complaints, unsubscribes, and hard bounces should update your list immediately to ensure that it remains clean. ePromoter does this for you automatically. Emails that soft bounce repeatedly should be removed from the list, as should people who have not registered a click or open for the last few mailings. At the very least, you should send an email to those who haven’t opened your emails or clicked links recently asking them to confirm that they wish to remain on your list.


Summary:

Following these types of list-growing and maintenance activities will ensure your list is a quality one and stays valuable over time. With these tips you will be able connect with a larger audience, drive revenue and increases your service offerings at the same time.

If you're already using ePromoter you know the value of these tools and the benefits of running a successful email marketing campaign. If you have any questions on getting started with ePromoter contact us anytime. We can get your healthcare staffing company's email marketing program started right away!

Related Posts:

New Email Marketing Strategies for Your Healthcare Staffing Company

Healthcare Staffing Email Marketing Tips Using ePromoter

10 Ways to Improve Your Heatlhcare Staffing Email Marketing Campaigns

Kronos Acquires API Healthcare

Yesterday, Kronos announced their plans to acquire API Healthcare. Regulatory approval is needed before the transaction can close.

Just a little over 1 year ago, API Healthcare acquired Clearview Staffing Software. The move has obviously proved to be strategic and no doubt helped lead to their acquisition by Kronos.

"This acquisition is great news for Kronos and API Healthcare customers, as well as the entire healthcare industry. Together we will leverage our complementary strengths to help organizations deliver high-quality patient care while maintaining tight control over their labor costs, said Aron Ain, chief executive officer, Kronos."

For years, Kronos has been one of the largest players when it comes to staffing software products. Their time and attendance product is used by hosptials nationwide. Through this acquisition of API Healthcare, of one of their largest competitors, Kronos has certainly solidified themselves as a dominant player in the healthcare staffing industry when it comes to heatlhcare staffing software.