New Challenges Small Business Owners Face in 2015

New Challenges Small Business Owners Face in 2015

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iStock_000012401353XSmallSmall businesses have to work hard to make an impact in their industries and to stay afloat. If you own a small business, keep reading to learn about some of the challenges you might face in the upcoming year and what you can do about them.

Figuring Out the Right New Tools to Use
Technology is constantly changing and bringing new tools that can benefit different kinds of businesses. It is important to figure out which of these tools will benefit your company, though. You do not want to waste a lot of time and energy on social media marketing if it does not actually benefit your business. Take your time finding tools that can actually help you find new levels of success in your field so they can enhance your company.

Avoiding Cyber Attacks
177237922More and more businesses are becoming vulnerable to cyber attacks and breaches that put sensitive information at risk. You might want to use this year to beef up your security so you can avoid a cyber attack that could put your information and your customer’s information into the wrong hands.

Dealing with New Policies
New politicians bring new policies that can affect small businesses. Although there have been no major governmental changes yet, there is a possibility that decisions made on Capitol Hill can affect you and your company. It is important that your business is flexible enough to grow and change with new policies so you can survive the transition.

If you want to give your company the best chance to be successful in 2015, Contact One Call Center is here to help. We offer answering services, disaster preparedness, secure messaging, live chat, and other services that give you the ability to grow and to change with the times. Whether you are just starting out or you are trying to grow your business, we can help. For more information on our services, visit us online or call 1-800-278-3347.

Avoiding Common Business Growth Mistakes

Avoiding Common Business Growth Mistakes

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96890159When a business owner launches a company, he or she hopes that it will be successful. People are not always prepared for business growth, though, especially if it happens quickly. Read on to find out how you can avoid business growth mistakes that could hinder your company.

Lacking Customer Service
One of the biggest growth mistakes is to miss the opportunity to increase customer service efforts as the business grows. If you want to continue to offer your customers the best services, it is very important to make sure you are up to the new challenges of your customer service efforts. Hire more customer service representatives and get them properly trained so they can continue to keep your customers happy.

Spreading Your Company Too Thin
As your business starts to grow, you should develop a plan that helps you manage this growth without any major issues. Create a new business model to include any new services you plan to offer to compensate for the growth. Hire more employees if you need extra manpower. You might even want to outsource some areas of your business to ensure that your company can handle the demands that come with the growth.

Not Listening to the Customers
If your business starts to grow quickly, it is very important to listen to your customers to find out if you are still meeting all of their needs. The growth will not do you much good if it causes you to lose some of your most loyal customers. Spend some time listening to the public to make sure you are still offering the services they expect from your company.

Contact One Call Center is here to help you handle the new pressure of a growing business. With our answering services, secure messaging, disaster preparedness, and live chat services, we make it easy to continue to keep your customers happy. If you want to find new ways to improve customer service, we can help. To learn more, visit us online or call 1-800-278-3347.

Top Buzzwords in Call Center Technology

Top Buzzwords in Call Center Technology

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156904630Call centers offer important customer service help that makes it easier to interact with your customers. Keep reading to learn about some of the most popular buzzwords in call center technology so you know what to expect when you sign up for this service.

Automatic Call Distributor
The automatic call distributor handles all of the incoming calls and sends them to the appropriate location. Most call centers develop a list of handling instructions and rely on skill-based routing technology to ensure that the automatic call distributor can send the calls to the right location.

Issue Tracking System
This system is designed to record customer service calls so businesses can keep records of any issues. Recording the information helps managers and the rest of the staff track the progress of the issue to make sure it is properly handled.

Knowledge Base
When you outsource answering services to a call center, they often require a list of important information about the business so they can handle all customer calls. This knowledge base ensures that the people at the call center can properly communicate with your customers and give them the right information when they call in with a question or a concern.

Speech Analytics
These applications help businesses determine the needs of their customers so they can figure out how to handle them. This technology can figure out cost savings, determine new ideas that can improve products, and find new sales opportunities. These applications can also alert you to competitive situations and help you figure out why customers stop working with your business.

Contact One Call Center is here to help you handle your customer service needs. Whether you need a little bit of help answering phones or you want to start utilizing live chat services, we can help. We provide services like disaster preparedness, secure messaging, medical answering services, and after-hours support to make sure your company has the help it needs to properly interact with your customers. To learn more, visit us online or call 1-800-278-3347.

Tips for Discovering Your Customer Sentiment about Your Business

Tips for Discovering Your Customer Sentiment about Your Business

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147422326Without good customer service efforts, your business cannot grow. It is important to understand what your customers think about your company to determine if you need to change the way you handle your customer service. Keep reading to find out how you can learn about your customers’ sentiments about your business.

Look for Online Reviews
Customers often turn to the Internet to express their praises and concerns about a company. Checking out online reviews helps you determine what your customers think about your company. You might even want to utilize social media websites so you can interact directly with your customers and see their reviews right away.

Set-Up Feedback Services
If you can encourage your customers to give you immediate feedback, it helps you make necessary changes to keep the customers happy. You can ask for brief feedback in the store or send out emails to get feedback from your customers. This feedback could help you figure out how to keep your customers coming back to utilize your services again in the future.

Write a Blog
Writing a blog gives you a new way to interact with your customers and to hear what they think about your company. You can write posts that ask the customers for their opinions and open up the comments section so you can hear what they have to say.

Stay Up-to-Date About Industry News
News stories that affect your industry can affect your business. If a similar company has bad publicity, it is important to address the issue and show how your company is different before your customers start to think badly about your company.

Contact One Call Center is here to help you interact with your customers. Our answering services, secure messaging, disaster preparedness, and live chat services give you the help you need to optimize your customer service efforts. To learn more about our services and how they can help your company, visit us online or call 1-800-278-3347.

Worst Customer Service Practices of All Time

Worst Customer Service Practices of All Time

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Customer service is an integral element of a business and directly affects how well a company does in its industry. Poor customer service can severely hinder a business. Keep reading to learn about some of the worst customer service practices of all time so you can avoid them with your own company.

Poor Customer Service Representatives
179039030Not everyone is cut out for a job in customer service. It is very important to take your time hiring people who can handle dealing directly with your customers. You might want to ask some practice questions during the interview that help you determine how a candidate will react in certain customer service situations. You should also work with new hires until you are sure they are ready to interact with customers.

Short Training Periods
Some companies only train their employees about customer service for a day or two. If you really want your staff to be able to interact with your customers, you have to make training an ongoing part of the job. As you continue to learn about new ways to offer customer service, you should share it with your staff so they can maintain the right kind of communication with your clients.

Difficulty Reaching a Business
Customer Service Meltdown - YouTubeCustomers get very frustrated when they cannot reach a company when they want to talk to someone. If you want to optimize the potential of your customer service, you have to find ways to make your company more available to the public. Whether you work with an answering service or hire more customer service representatives, expanding your reachability will vastly improve the way your customers view your company.

Contact One Call Center is here to help you improve your customer service efforts. We offer answering services, secure messaging, order taking, reservation setting, and live chat services to give your business the help it needs. To learn more about our services and how we can help you reach out to your customers, visit us online or call 1-800-278-3347.

Tools for Effective Business Leadership

Tools for Effective Business Leadership

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When you are in a leadership position, it is important to set a good example for your employees. Use the following tools to effectively lead a successful business:

Handle Your Emotions
You will experience a wide range of emotions in the business world. If you want to remain an effective leader, though, it is important not to let your emotions sway your decisions. Instead of allowing anger or stress to dictate the way you make decisions, you should try to always consult the logical side of your personality.

Maintain a Positive Attitude
When you are in charge of a staff, it is very important to use a certain amount of enthusiasm. From giving positive feedback to maintaining an optimistic outlook, positivity can help you keep your company running strong. As a leader, it is really important to remember to stay enthusiastic whenever possible.

Try to Have Good Foresight
If you can anticipate changes in the industry before they happen, it helps your company stay current. Doing research and investing in your customer service efforts helps you keep your company at the forefront of your industry so you can achieve your optimal level of success.

Be Open for Communication
Communication is an extremely important aspect of any element of the business world. If you want to be a successful leader, you have to continue to improve your communication skills. Not only do you have to communicate freely with your staff, but you should also communicate with your customers to ensure that you are keeping them happy so they continue to give you their business.

Good leaders also know when to ask for help when they need it. Contact One Call Center is here to assist you with your customer service needs so you can optimize the success of your business. From answering services to order taking, we give you the assistance you need so you can focus on running your company to the best of your ability. To learn more about our services, visit us online or call 800-278-3347.

Making Your Customer Relationships Count

Making Your Customer Relationships Count

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145999003Customer relationships are essential for any successful business. Devoting time and energy to your customer service to improve these relationships can greatly benefit your business and help you reach new levels in your industry. Here’s how you can make these relationships really count:

Communicate Better
Communication is the foundation of any good customer relationship. If you can make it easy for your customers to communicate with your company, it allows them to feel like you actually care about their business. Whether you start working with an answering service to ensure that your clients can always reach someone or you implement live chat services, it is important to improve the way you communicate to keep your customers happy.

Make Sure Your Customer Service Efforts Are Working
Implementing a wide range of customer service efforts does not matter if they are not helping your company. Take some time to measure your customer service levels to see which methods are effective and which ones are not doing much for your business. This helps you streamline the effective methods and devote more attention to improving your customer service efforts.

Ask for Customer Feedback
One of the best ways to determine if your customer service efforts are effective is to ask your customers. Get some customer feedback that helps you decide if you are doing enough to build and maintain strong customer relationships. Try to get feedback whenever you can so you can be sure that you are helping your customers get the services they need to keep them coming back.

Contact One Call Center can help you build stronger customer relationships and maintain successful business practices. We offer assistance like answering services, after-hours support, disaster preparedness, secure messaging, and live chat services to help you continuously communicate with your customers. To learn more about our wide range of services and how they can help you, visit us online or call 800-278-3347.

Increasing Your Business’s Social Media Presence

Increasing Your Business’s Social Media Presence

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176522251In this technology-driven world, it is important to grow and change with the times. If you take advantage of social media websites, you can help your company thrive and succeed in your industry. Use the following tips to increase your social media presence:

Get Busy
The more that you use your social media accounts, the more you can increase your Internet presence. Assign a few of your employees to social media monitoring so you can post more throughout the day. When a few of your employees focus time on social media efforts, you can open up new lines of communication with your customers while improving your company’s social media presence.

Decide What You Want from Social Media
If you want real results from your social media efforts, it is important to first determine what you want from the process. Are you trying to reach new markets of people? Do you want to increase traffic to your website? Once you have some specific goals in mind it will be much easier to use social media to help you achieve them.

Use It to Communicate
One of the most amazing aspects of social media is that it lets you interact with your customers on a new level. This helps you add more personality to your brand name. Take advantage of social media by using it to communicate and interact with the public so they see a more real, human side of your company.

Add Links
You should create links for your social media pages on your regular website and add a link back to your website on your social media pages. This makes it easy for your customers to find you and interact with you online.

Contact One Call Center is here to offer you the support you need to ensure that you have the necessary resources to optimize your company’s appeal. Our team is here to offer answering services, after-hours support, disaster preparedness, and secure messaging services that can enhance your customer service efforts. To learn more, visit us online or call 800-278-3347.

How to Increase Productivity at Your Business

How to Increase Productivity at Your Business

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Small Business MeetingWasting time in the office might keep your company from being as productive as it could be. Use the following tips to find simple and effective ways to improve productivity so you and your staff can get a lot more done throughout the day:

Get Some Help
If you have a staff full of competent employees, you do not want to waste their talents on mundane tasks. Enlist some help from a call center that can provide answering services so your employees can focus on more important tasks. Enlisting outside help for some simple aspects of your customer service efforts give your employees more time to focus on their jobs.

Create a Streamlined Process
Whenever you can create a uniform method of doing simple tasks, you can be sure that your whole staff is working as effectively as possible. Use templates for repetitive tasks so you do not have to constantly waste time and energy on the same things. You might even want to create templates that can help your staff with simple phone calls. When you can streamline certain aspects of your business, it gives your staff the opportunity to devote more attention to the parts that require creativity.

Focus on the Bigger Goals
Sometimes people get too caught up in the small things and cannot look at the bigger goals. This might cause you and your staff to waste time on needless tasks instead of working toward the bigger goal. You should always keep the larger goals in mind so you and your staff can achieve these huge milestones and achieve success in your industry.

At Contact One Call Center, we are here to help you make your business as effective as possible. With helpful services like after-hours support, order taking, appointment setting, and live chat services, we make it easier than ever to increase productivity levels at your company. To learn more about our services and how they can help you, visit us online or call 800-278-3347.

Finding and Hiring Great Employees

Finding and Hiring Great Employees

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120172739Every member of a team can add huge contributions to a company. Without a competent staff, you cannot run a successful business. Use the following tips to find and hire the best kind of employees for your company’s needs:

Look for Competency
It might seem obvious, but one of the most important traits of any potential employee is competence. When you are interviewing candidates, you should ask questions that help you determine their skill level, their experience, their education, and their expertise so you can determine if they will make a good fit for your company. Do not count out people who are competent but do not have experience, though. You should try to hire people that have the potential for growth so they can help to enhance your company.

Look for Compatibility
Whenever you hire someone new, it is very important to think about how well they will fit into your staff. If you think that someone might have some disagreements with people you already employ, they might not be the best person to hire. Thinking about compatibility before you hire a candidate can help you create the most cohesive and productive staff possible.

Look for Commitment
If you are going through the effort of hiring a new employee and investing in their future at your company, you want to be sure that they will be committed to the job. Look at the candidate’s job history to see if they tend to stay at jobs long term or move on after a short amount of time. This helps you determine if they will be committed to your company.

Contact One Call Center is here to help you and your employees make the most out of your customer service efforts so you can keep your clients happy. We offer answering services, after-hours support, disaster preparedness, and secure messaging services to help you interact with your customers. For more information on our services, visit us online or call 800-278-3347.