Phones are becoming less and less of a tool to utilize in small business whether internally or with clients.
Notice when doing business with some of the bigger companies, it is becoming harder to find their phone number. This is because in most cases the bigger companies have learned on a massive scale, what works and what does not work. Phones are not efficient, nor are they effective. Here is why:
- Limited supervision: As a business owner it is difficult to monitor phone calls. Sure there are services out there that record calls, but this is an extremely tedious task to listen in and confirm a consistent service is being implemented across your company. It is much easier to read correspondence and pick up on flaws that need to be fixed.
- Limited scalability: As a small business owner if you open the relationship up with giving out a phone number, the customer will do just that. They will call. Phone calls consume a lot of time. Consuming a lot of time yields higher costs to your company. Your company wants to see more revenue and less costs, it’s that simple.
- Limited integration: Phone systems are typically not integrated with other business tools such as email, slack , or any internal project management tool.
In 2023, there are plenty of options to replace phone support. We are only going to mention the ones we recommend.
- Text message support with slack integration via Avochato: With call to actions on your social profiles and website, customers can text message a number and the correspondence shows up via thread right within a slack channel in your company's workspace. We believe this is a very effective way to communicate with your customers. People appreciate being able to text message a company and get an answer. Think about it. Every Time you have to engage with another company's customer support it’s as if you have to block off time and handle it. With text support you send out a message, and get a response when they respond.
- Knowledge base: This approach is a must for every company. Take all of that knowledge you have in your brain, and start documenting it. Confidere can help you build out your knowledge base and post on your website.
- Automated chatbot support: An AI powered chatbot can respond to customer inquiries, route them to the appropriate support agent, or offer other self service options.
- Confidere’s goal is to help businesses automate. Especially in hard times, it is extremely important to run your business as lean and efficiently as possible. As a small business owner, you must adapt or you will be left behind.
A virtual mailbox is a no-brainer in 2023. If you are not using one, you are choosing to waste time. Opening mail and filing it is probably one of the biggest time sucks imaginable. We have done extensive research on virtual mailboxes and decided that i postal 1 is the best option. They offer:
- The most locations
- Entire envelope scanning
- The best customer service. They responded very fast when we had a question, which we feel is crucial when selecting any company to do business with.
- The ability to deposit checks.
- Free storage for 45 days
- A real USA mail address
- Online Mailbox Management
- Mail shredding services
If you have a company with an office manager, do you really want them opening and scanning mail? Isn't their time more valuable than that? Though ipostal1 charges for each scan, the goal should be scanning less, though. Any vendor you have that you can convert to e-bills, or customers you can convert to credit card or ACH, is a no-brainer. You need to understand how much time this saves you and your staff in the long run. We believe virtual mailboxes will take over in the near future. The saying, “It’s the cost of doing business,” couldn't be any more true when it comes to your mail.
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