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Last night was the Toronto bloggers and blog readers meet-up organized between myself and John Chow.

I forced John, his readers and my readers to go to the Live Organic Food Bar in Toronto, which I realize is not everyone’s cup of tea (no meat). I was secretly curious to see what John would post on his blog about it because he always covers the food he eats when he goes out.

John wasn’t too harsh thankfully and enough people ordered food, so I think we pulled it off. Who knows, maybe I even converted some people to organic vegetarians or even raw foodists (not likely! - I’m not there yet myself).

You can watch John’s video of the event below and read his recap here -

I’d like to thank everyone who turned up. It was great as always to talk to so many like minded individuals all following the blogging path.

If you attended the event and want to keep up with anyone you met, don’t forget you can go to this Facebook event page and find a list of people who attended (or at least who RSVP’d).

A Common Thread

We talked about all kinds of topics but one thing stuck out in my mind after the event as the most common thread, something which people continued to ask me about throughout the night in some shape or form.

I have to blame Tim Ferriss for this, it’s his fault.

Everyone is dying to emulate the 4-Hour Workweek.

As testament to how much people don’t like their day job and desire travel and lifestyle freedom, I was asked how I manage to travel and blog and earn a good living running a business several times by different people. I think that has to be the greatest motivation for a lot of people to start an Internet business and one of the main reasons you read this blog.

To answer this question, last night I mentioned two factors -

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In this final piece of a four part article series on customer service we look at one of the key components of a successful Internet business - a good customer support person.

If you have been following along this journey you will remember how Starbucks taught us the importance of good customer service as a powerful tool for reputation management, which can lead to a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

We then switched to the Internet business world and followed along the typical path of a solo entrepreneur growing an online empire. With success comes pressure to continue to deliver personalized support, despite less time available to do so. In the end one person can only do so much, and customer service suffers.

In the most recent article I went back in time and reviewed my own personal experience developing various Internet projects and how I evolved the system I use to interact with my constituents. The major conclusion of this piece was the importance of Angela, my customer service person.

Now let’s take a look how you can take the next step with your business and outsource your customer service role.

Start With A System

It’s likely you will begin by providing customer support yourself, especially if you work your way up as an independent operator. Along the way you can install a help desk or set up a customer support email account. You may go as far as replicating the ReplytoYaro.com support system I use.

The previous article looked at a several technology options available to you to implement a system for online customer support. I suggest you use my story as inspiration to build your own support system, and while you do, think about how eventually another person (or people) can run it for you.

Most help desk scripts are built for multiple users and as I explained in the prior article, a Gmail email is a great basic solution to get started and can also handle multiple users through the use of message flagging.

Once you have something set up, your next task is to find a customer support officer.

How I Find Good People

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