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.

In the last post I wrote about how important it is for small businesses to respond to emails from customers and to use it as a communication channel if that is what the customer prefers.  Face it, some people just feel more comfortable with the feeling of distance you get with email as opposed to phone or face to face conversations.  Personally, I like email because I can send and respond asynchronously, at my convenience.

There is another important aspect of email as it relates to customer service that I want to explore today – outbound email. This is where you send email to a customer that are not directly in response to a query or email from the them.

What kinds of email am I talking about?  Email that provides value or information to a customer that is not salesy or annoying.  Assuming your customer has given you permission to send them emails you can send newsletters with educational content, personalized emails with reminders, emails with coupons or specials.  Here are some examples:

• an accounting firm could send out quarterly newsletters with information about tax changes or tips on how to save money on taxes.  They could send out personal reminders when it was time to file quarterly taxes.
• an auto repair business could send out emails when it is time for an oil change, recalls or other routine maintenance.  In these they could provide coupons or services for those specials.
• a hardware store could send out seasonal newsletters that focus on “going green” or weatherizing homes or gardens for the upcoming season.
• a garden center could send out monthly gardening tips
• a hair salon could use email to send reminders for upcoming appointments

There is a marketing aspect to some of these; as a business owner you are hoping that your customer will be reminded about a service or product they need from you.  But beneath all of these there should be a strong vein of customer service, of providing additional incremental value to your customer.  It costs nothing or almost nothing to use Mail Chimp, Constant Contact or Aweber to send out targetted emails to your customers.

Do you use email to improve your customer service?  If not, is it time to look at your technology plan to add it?

This week I am going to start a multi-part (how many parts?  who knows?  Methinks a good number) of posts about using technology to improve customer service.   When I talk about “improving customer service”  I mean everything from reducing your your costs of customer service to providing better quality customer service over a number of channels.  You can see that this is a broad topic and will take a while to cover!  This week I’ll start you off easy with things we all should know…and yet I can give you many examples where even these simplest of processes aren’t followed.

You have to answer the phone.

It is probably safe me for me to assume that virtually all businesses have a phone.  When possible someone should answer the phone when it rings.  I can understand where some small businesses may have a cell phone as their main business number, say for a solopreneur consultant or the like.  In that case it is ok to let the call go to a professional sounding voicemail during meetings or while driving, etc.  Those voicemails need to be checked regularly and returned promptly.  And promptly means THAT DAY if possible.  I recently called a local dog grooming establishment to make an appointment to get my two labs, Jester and Cimarron, bathed.  I got voicemail or an answering  machine.  The first time I called I just hung up (potential lost customer).  The second time I called I left a message (the dogs were really smelly and it was very cold outside).  My message was returned over 24 hours later, late one evening when I couldn’t take the call.  I had to call a third time to make an appointment.  Turns out when I finally got there that my service was adequate and the cost reasonable but I am not in love with this place.  It seems to me that a service establishment like that thrives by keeping their appointments booked – why do they not have someone dedicated to answering the phone?  Why can they not return calls during business hours?  Or better yet, why don’t they look into allowing clients to book appointments online at their convenience?

You have to have email and check and return it regularly.

It boggles my mind that in 2010 there are still some businesses that don’t have email and or don’t integrate its use regularly into their business processes, yet it is true.  Of course, if you are one of those that doesn’t use email, you probably aren’t reading this article either.  I sure hope you have a friend that prints it out for you and either hands it to you or puts it in an envelope with one of those stampy-things.

I believe that small businesses should embrace email; it is convenient for you and your customer.  It allows your customer to reach you when it suits them, even before or after business hours.  When using email keep the following in mind:

• check it regularly, at least at the beginning and end of each day, more if you can.  Go thru all of it and handle it in some appropriate way. I recently responded to an email I received…later when I saw the sender she claimed not to have seen my response.  When I expressed surprise she admitted that she gets hundreds of emails a day and didn’t always get thru them.  In today’s world not getting thru email (or having someone get thru email) is not an acceptable business practice.  Especially when you send an email and are looking for a response!
• Commit to responding within a certain amount of time.  Consider responding to email with an autoresponder that tells your customer when to expect to hear back from you.  For example, an autoresponder might say “Thank you for your email, it is important to us.  Emails received by close of business will be answered that day, otherwise they will be answered on the next business day.”
• Answer customer questions or concerns politely and completely.  Assume that the sender wants to communicate via email or ask them if you can communicate differently.  Nothing is more annoying than to send someone an email and for them to respond with “call me”.  If you need specific information to interact via email, let the customer know what that is.

I know phone and email are so ubiquitous to barely be considered “technology” but we have to start somewhere.  Next week we’ll take a baby step beyond that.  In the meantime, as always, I’m interested in your opinions on this – how do you use technology to improve customer service?

I attended a very nice panel discussion yesterday (Using Technology to Grow the Firm, sponsored by Creative Growth Group) and one of the topics that came up close to the end was adoption of new technology.  This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart so naturally, since it is on my mind, it is this week’s topic.

Technology that is under utilized or unused (shelf-ware) is the bane of every company.  What starts out as an well-intentioned investment in the firm becomes, well, a sinkhole for money and time.  We’ve all heard of the multi-year, multi-million dollar ERP or CRM projects that end up getting scrapped because no one in the company can or wants to use the system.

For a small business the lost investment might not reach the dollar size of a failed project for a huge company but the results can be devastating because the failure affects virtually everyone in the enterprise and proportionally the level of investment is usually much higher.  Entire books have been written about project failure, I won’t rehash all the gory details here.  Instead, here are a few questions for small businesses to keep in ask themselves when they are thinking about putting in new technology.

• Is this technology part of an overall technology plan that takes into consideration your overall business goals and objectives?  If it is not or you don’t have a plan you probably aren’t setting yourself up for success.
• Does this project have a well-defined adoption plan?  (Yes, on paper.  It isn’t really a plan if it isn’t written down.)  Just purchasing training, while hugely important, is NOT an adoption plan.
• Do your employees truly understand the value of this technology to the organization and their part in making the implementation a success?  If they aren’t bought into the change you can still be successful but it is much much harder.
• Does this new technology really provide something that makes your employees’ jobs easier and better?  Does it fit with the way they work?  Or is it just another thing to add to the long list of stuff they gotta do every day?  If it changes how they work significantly, has the new workflow or business process been identified and documented?
• Is someone truly accountable for making sure the technology is used and the investment is realized?  I recently heard a story about a dentist that spent tons of money on new software for his dental practice.  As part of the deal he got training credits and he made sure all the assistants and office employees went to training.  Then he never mentioned the system again…he wasn’t holding his employees accountable for using the new system nor did he delegate that accountability to anyone else.  So guess what?

Bringing in new technology is a huge investment of time and money for a small business.  It is important to take the time to think it through.  If you aren’t sure how to do that, get some help from a reputable consultant or technical advisor.    If it is truly worth doing, if it is going to help grow your business, isn’t it worth doing right?

In my last post I talked about how small businesses can become more convenient for their customers if they allow online self-secheduling.   I promised that this post would talk about what online appointment scheduling services are available.  This is a representative list; it isn’t a formal review nor is it an exhaustive list.  The ones I am going to talk about are cloud-based services (see this post if you don’t know what cloud computing is) that are easily hooked into your website.

So how do they work?  There is some variance but basically:

• you provide information about business hours, who can be scheduled, what services are offered and the appointment length of each service
• you also provide setup information about how you want to be notified about appointments (email or text), what sort of confirmations and reminders you want sent to your customers (email or text).  You can also specify if you want to be able to approve appointments before they are confirmed.
• you are given a small snippet of code (or a widget)  that needs to be included on your website.  Generally these can be customized so they match your website and look like they are integrated.  You can also include “book now” buttons in strategic places on your website or other places on the web (like your Facebook page for example), sending visitors to your appointment page.

Customers can now schedule appointments online!  Back at your office you’ll have a master calendar that shows your the appointments, allows you to confirm them and to book appointments you receive from drop-ins or via phone call – all on a consolidated calendar.

Some of the services provide, in some cases based on the service level you choose to purchase, mobile scheduling, calendar syncing, online pre-payment and smartphone integration.

Service providers include Bookfresh.com; Schedulicity.com, Genbook.com, Appointment-plus.com, Appointmentquest.com, Flashappointments.com and Netappointment.com.  You generally pay monthly based on the options you select – for example it costs more for more people or multiple locations.   Prices start as low as $10 a month.

I have written a number of posts the past few months about how important it is for small businesses to be aware of and to improve their local online presence.  Local search is getting big on its own and with the advent of mobile search it is critical that small businesses stake their claim in local business searches.

GetListed.org is a great tool to use for this.  You simply enter your business name and it checks the presence of your business on (at this point) four websites – Google, Yahoo, Bing and Best of the Web.  If you don’t have a listing it gives you links to each for setting up your business on the sites.  If you do have a listing it shows gives you a snapshot of how strong your listing is – do you have pictures, citations (references from other sites) and reviews?

In addition to the four search engines listed above, GetListed.org links you to other search websites that frequently get referenced by Google, etc.  These include Superpages.com, Brownbook.net and Yelp.  Unfortunately this service seems West Coast based – sites that are used heavily here in the Atlanta area such as Kudzu.com aren’t included…yet.

There is a lot of helpful information about boosting your local search presence in one place with GetListed.org.  I highly recommend that every small business owner go there and get started with raising their local search visibility.  Set up your local listings and read the hints and tips.  In addition, I suggest adding it to your to-do list to go out there every few weeks and make sure you are listed where you should be.

How strong is your local search presence?

Technorati claim token:  5KC24UU5U39A  Everyone else can ignore

In an earlier post I touched on Google’s Local Business Listings in the context of other available online exposure resources for small businesses.  There have been a few recent developments that make me realize that I should dive a bit deeper into this topic.

Google has  had Local Business Listings for a number of years and there are some good really good things about it.  First, what it is: it is essentially a free advertising space on Google.  And every business can have one.  In fact, most businesses may already have one and not know it.  How is that?  Google  aggregates company data from a number of resources and creates  default listings for all the businesses it finds.  As a business owner, you can add a listing if there isn’t already one or “claim” yours if it is already there.

Which brings us to Reason Number 1 to pay attention to the listing for your company – it is there and you may not even know about it.  Which means it might not even contain the right information.  And that can’t be a good thing – you don’t want a potential customer finding your listing but calling a wrong number.  So as soon as you are done reading this post you should go right out and check your listing.  On second thought, you should go right now.  I’ll wait.

Since you have a listing whether you want it or not (and why would you not want free advertising?) let’s talk about Reason Number 2 to check the listing – the better the QUALITY of the listing, the better chance that your listing will show up in the “7-pack” or the list of  local businesses associated with a map.  This placement is different from your regular search placement which is heavily affected by SEO (but the placement of the 7-pack itself CAN affect your overall placement in search results.).   Now Google isn’t likely to share their algorithm but a lot of smart folks (here is one source)  have spent time studying this and, while they don’t agree on the exact order, they do agree that these factors (among others) are likely to affect the placement of your business:

• local address (presumably the RIGHT one)
• good categorization
• location keyword in business description
• videos and pictures
• reviews
• the fact that the listing is “claimed” by the business owner who presumably ensured it is correct and complete

Reason Number 3 to check your local listing is that Google recently (like last week) rolled out a new feature called “near me now” (as opposed to “hear me now” of course) that is available on iPhones and Android devices.  Essentially, if you have one of those devices and go to the main Google screen you can elect, by allowing your device to share your location, to see business that are near that location.  Here is a good article about the “near me now” functionality that includes screen shots and a cutesy video.  Of course, for your business to have a chance of showing up when folks are in your neighborhood looking for exactly the service you provide, it needs to have a good address.

So now you have a nice, complete, correct, good-looking listing.  You can just ignore it now and let it do its thing, right?  WRONG!  Reason Number 4 to pay attention to your listing on a regular basis is that there are bad bad people out there that may hijack your listing.  When they do this they leave your listing intact but do things like change the phone number or the url for the website so THEY get all your hard-earned leads instead of you.  This article talks about how listings get hijacked and unfortunately sometimes getting it fixed with Google can be a pain.  At this point I don’t have any good advice about how to avoid getting hijacked; for now, just be aware and check your listing regularly!  In the meantime, let’s hope Google is listening to the growing uproar and makes it harder to hijack listings soon.  The Local Business Listings are a good thing for small businesses in theory; issues like hijacking can turn a good thing into a bad thing in a hurry.

Here are 4 reasons to pay attention, regularly, to your Google Local Business Listing – have you checked yours today?

Most of the small businesses I talk to, even the tiniest of them, know that when they need legal advice, they need to see their attorney.  Beyond that, they will proactively seek the counsel of their attorney on a regular basis as things change with their business and as they have to make decisions that affect it.

The same goes for their financial needs; most of them have a CPA that they see at least once a year at tax time.  Most accountants would recommend more regular visits at key times in the business cycle to help with future planning.  For example, if you need a new vehicle for your business you should consult with your accountant BEFORE you purchase to make sure the type of vehicle you choose will maximize your tax benefits.

Yet, when it comes to the technology businesses use, they are often left adrift with no help.  Some businesses have a simple website set up by their cousin along with some boxed software they use for billing and accounting.  Others have had consultants build fancy websites and other solution providers in to set up networks and more complicated systems.  In both cases though, these businesses have set no overall technology vision that supports their business plan.  They don’t know if the “pieces” they have fit together, if they are paying too much for overlapping technology, or how much they are wasting on “shelf-ware” they never use.   It is like they are standing way to close to an impressionist painting.  All they see are the dots, not how they combine to create a beautiful flower.

Worse than that though, they don’t have anyone helping them identify opportunities where technology could accelerate their business.   Often there are ways to leverage technology to increase revenue or reduce costs…if businesses only knew what was available.

Today, every kind of business is more and more dependent on technology (like it or not!).  This dependency will only grow.  As a small business owner it makes sense to seek out the advice and counsel of an overall technology advisor.  Someone that can help you see the painting for the dots.  You have a business plan, and maybe marketing plan and a sales plan.  You also need a technology plan that ties these all together.

For an example of what a technology plan is and how it works you can go to http://clearlysimplesolutions.com/what_we_do_tech.php.

It is almost the beginning of 2010 – do you have your technology plan in place?

We’ve long relied on formal expert reviews and ratings to help us decide what to buy. I have had a subscription to Consumer Reports (originally the magazine, now the online version) and I wouldn’t think of buying anything electronic without checking CNET.com.

Over the years, beyond the experts, more and more sites are allowing individuals to rate and review items. I personally find this invaluable and will read consumer reviews if I am making a major purchase. I recently bought a camping tent and spent an hour or more reading reviews on multiple sites before I decided what to buy.

Now there are multiple sites that allow individuals to rate and review businesses as well. These include sites like CitySearch.com,  Kudzu.com, Angieslist.com (NOT a complete list!) as well as lots of local sites. It is important for small businesses to understand ratings and reviews and leverage them to their benefit.

First, it is important to note that you really don’t have a choice about participating on these sites. Some of them populate their listings based on public data. Others allow individual consumers to add businesses, if they aren’t already there. As a business owner you may already be listed and not even know it! Business owners are able, and in fact are encouraged, to assume ownership of their listing but even if you don’t, you are there. Once you are there consumers will write reviews – and more and more are doing this every day – so it is in your best interest to join ‘em, not fight ‘em!

What does this mean? To start with, identify the major sites in your neck of the woods. The ones listed above are in most metropolitan areas and many local newspapers and TV stations are in the game as well. Then, add your listing if it isn’t there and take ownership of it if it already exists. Make sure it is correct, up-to-date and appealing. Consider it a bit of advertising you didn’t have to pay for as well as an opportunity for additional dialog with new prospects!

Next, make it a habit to check your reviews on a regular basis. You should respond to each review. To positive reviews you should add a comment thanking the reviewer. So-so or bad reviews are harder. It is important to respond but you have to stay calm, cool and professional. Remember, the people that read these reviews expect to see a variety of reviews – what is important is that you demonstrate how you solve problems and the type of customer service a would-be customer might expect.

If you do get a bad review and respond to it once, usually it is best to just leave it at that. There are some people, commonly referred to as trolls, that like to get attention by being mean and ugly in the reviews. Generally “don’t feed the trolls” by continuing to respond or getting involved in an escalating argument in a public forum.

Finally, it is worth your time to encourage your customers to leave reviews. You can do this in a number of ways:

• with a follow up note or email
• with a link or links on your website
• by offering an incentive, say 10% the next service, for customers that post a review.

As the popularity of ratings and reviews continues to grow, the number of sites that include them and types of businesses they cover grows as well. All businesses, from auto repair shops to doctors, dentists and lawyers, can be reviewed at one place or another. Put this forum to work for you – you can gain online credibility, get invaluable feedback about your business, attract customers and connect with people online in a whole new way. Nothing wrong with that!