I know you get a lot of email for your small business – we all do.  Whether you keep your email on your server or on your computer it can build up over time.  It is a good idea to clean up your old email from time to time to keep from running out of space and to speed up your email.  You may find you’ll even save yourself some time when you don’t have to search thru all your emails to find things.

Do you have a lot of old messages out there, in your Inbox or perhaps in folders?  Do you really need those messages?  Some companies do need to keep records of customer correspondence but others can get rid of it after a while.  So that is the first step – delete anything you really don’t need.

Do you have old messages that you need to keep but likely won’t access often?  Archive these emails; most email clients allow you to archive emails to a file on your computer.  This physically stores the email in a separate place from the rest of your email.  You can leave that file on your computer (back it up!) or, if you really don’t think you’ll have to access those email often you can copy that file to a CD or to your backup location.

Now that you have cleaned things up a bit, look at what you still have.  Are there ways to organize it using folders to make it easier to use?  This is a great time to group email in folders.  Common ways to do this are by topic, by sender or by date.

Next, clean out your spam or junk folders if you have them (and likely you do).  Finally, take out the trash by emptying your trash or deleted folder.

There, doesn’t your Inbox feel lighter, fresher cleaner?

This will be a short post today to make up for not posting last week.  I’ll get back on track later this week, I promise.

What is keeping you from leveraging today’s technology to provide stellar customer service?  I’ve noticed a trend in the reasons I’ve heard from small business owners and it ISN’T money.  This surprised me because you’d expect the main reason to be cost.  In today’s economy cost IS something to consider and any changes or additions to the technology you use to support your business should be carefully thought out and carefully planned and implemented.

No, the reasons I hear most start like this:  ”I still have to…” or “I would have to change…” or “I want…” – in other words, it is all about the business owner, not at all about the customer.  When I hear sentences that start with these phrases the following questions come to my mind:

When I hear “I still have to…” or “I would have to change…” I wonder, have you taken the opportunity to rethink your operational processes?    You might not need that step any more.  Or I wonder if you really understand the solutions you are considering.  For example, if your response to putting in functionality for customers to self-schedule appointments is “I still have to call them to confirm or change the appointment”, you may need to look at what the services provide.  Most of them allow you to apply rules to the appointments, maybe only existing customers can self-schedule or you can specify dates and times for appointments based on the service selected.  In addition, most of the services include functionality that automatically emails confirmations and reminders for you.
When I hear “I want…” my ears really perk up – this is where it is GENERALLY about you, your sales technique and need to deal with your customer in a way you are comfortable with, your needs and not your customer’s.  When you start with “I want…” keep in mind that today’s culture is getting more technology-savvy and more technology-centric.  Your customers have lots of options on how to interact with business and more and more often they want to choose their communication channels and deal with your business when it is convenient for them.

If you keep thinking “I want…” instead of “They want…so I should…” you may find yourself left behind your more open minded and progressive competitors.

Wow, we are part 5 of the series on how to use technology to improve customer service with your small business.  No foolin!

Today I want to talk about online chat, also known as live chat or click-to-chat.    This is a feature you can add to your website that allows your customers or prospects to choose to communicate with your company real time, using text.  It can be implemented in a number of ways and can provide a variety of service-related benefits to your small business:

• Your customer service folks can be involved in multiple chats, allowing them to help more people at one time than they could on the phone.  Not only can your representatives have multiple chats going at once, you can “can” responses to frequently asked questions and your reps can use them by pressing a single button.   You can increase customer service while reducing operational costs!
• It allows your customer service people to engage in communication that is more conversation-like than asynchronous email.  The number of people that engage in live chat or instant messaging is on the rise so this a communication channel that many are very familiar with.  Finally, while it is real-time and comfortable, it allows for a level of anonymity that some people prefer.
• Customers or prospects that engage in online chat generally have a higher tolerance for waiting for service (but not too long!) – by definition they are online and can easily multitask while they are waiting for answers to their questions.  When they are on hold on the phone they are usually much less patient.
• Most, if not all, live chat implementations allow you to push content, via links, to the recipient.   You can provide FAQs or a how-to videos easily, for example.
• If you have an e-commerce site where you sell a product, most live chat vendors provide “shop with me” functionality that allows you to gently guide your customer thru your site and address any questions.
• You can set up live chat to proactively engage users if they spend a long time on a page or repeat actions that indicate they are having a problem.
• All of the chat conversations are logged and saved to a database.  You can use them identify frequent customer problems or diagnose customer-service issues.

Live chat can provide benefits beyond improved customer service.  Most of the vendors provide functionality that helps you better understand how users interact with your site and to optimize it.  You can proactively engage prospective customers at key place in your site, perhaps speeding up the acquisition or conversion process.

As with any new technology, there are a lot of best practices you can employ to improve your chances of success – just as there a lot of way to screw it up and annoy your customers and prospects.   This is definitely a place where you should get professional help to make sure you are doing the right thing for your business.

If you are interested in learning more about live chat, contact your technical advisor and see if live chat needs a place in your technology plan.