Running a business means keeping a lot of spinning plates aloft. But in the digital day and age a lot of those spinning plates can be automated or eased. With the right piece of software, you can keep your content management on track, run marketing campaigns, and stay on top of your customer care elements. If you are in the growing service business industry, you can find tailored solutions for booking & invoicing with softwares like Dayful. There are lots of ways that you can improve your business for your specific needs.
For instance, if you are running a photography studio, you can run your team of photographers who are all working remotely and control multiple calendars. But there is a lot more to it than that. Take a look at our top options for enhancing your small business growth so that you can focus on what you love about running a business.
Booking pages
Your customers first have to make the booking, and even that can be promoted now. If you use the right features on your platform, you can create booking landing pages, list your services and that will allow you to sit back while your planner gets filled with appointments.
Auto-generated invoices
We know how much of a headache managing invoices can be. Regardless of the size or activity of your business, invoice processing is one area where you’ll want to ensure that all bills are filed according to relevant regulations. Specific formatting & branding can help you work more efficiently as your business grows.
Automated reminders
If you have your customers’ phone numbers, you can use SMS marketing to send automated appointment reminders. Text message reminders can help you say goodbye to no-shows, and they will also save you hours of busywork while keeping your contacts informed, always.
Email campaigns
On the marketing side of things, you can keep in touch with your customers via automated emails. Design an email that allows your customers to see the latest update, inform them of a great sale, or an exclusive offer, and see it sent out to customers. You can even set them to give customers a prompt who have left their shopping cart full, hopefully leading to a sale.
Automated replies
Along the same lines, you can set up your software & and social channel’s private messaging or your business mobile’s text messages with automated texts. Customers can enquire about something and you can let them know when you can get back to them and that you have seen their message for a better customer service option.
Chatbot
Taking things a step further, if your customers need someone to talk to, they can ask your avatar their questions. A little chatbot in the corner will allow customers to ask some simple questions with answers just a click away. The chatbot can be loaded with answers to a pre-set amount of questions and will keep your customers informed rather than you getting interrupted with “quick” phone calls that are never quick.
Scheduled posts
A good way to get a lot of the work out of posting content is to plan. If you know what you’re doing and take social media marketing seriously, you’re already setting a content calendar, so you can take that a step further and schedule content to be posted on certain days – tools like SocialPilot are great for that goal. Dedicate a few days to making and scheduling content and step away from it for the rest of the month. You might want to intersperse some off-the-cuff content to stay personable but there is a lot that you can schedule in and leave to blossom followers and engagement.
Informative blogs
The best way to reform your customer service is to keep them up to date. The most time-consuming and pointless aspect of customer service is all the questions you’ll need to field. They’ll call your business, they’ll pop into the premises, they’ll go out of their way to get an answer to a very simple question that wasn’t on your website or social media. Or worse – they’ll not. The other side of this is that they don’t care enough to get an answer to their question, which could cause them to not bother with your business and that’s why you lost a sale.
Instead, keep your socials and business up to date with any questions that need answered and any information that needs forwarded, or even fun updates, on the site.
Phone pathways
But sometimes customer service means you simply can’t omit the call center team entirely. Make things easier on yourself and your team with phone call pathways. We’re talking about the “Press one to do this” option. It’s not just for the big businesses with the huge call centers. And it’s a godsend if you have a team that is working remotely. No need for one person fielding calls, simply allowing customers to dictate which department they’d like to get to.
Conclusion
These are just some of the ways the age of tomorrow can help you lift up your business – which is key for improving your overall performance. Have a sleuth around the internet to see where else you can have a bot handling the tedious tasks that only distract you from the real work of running a business.
