6 Things You May Not Know About Your Customers

    To understand your customers takes diligence. You have to listen to their feedback, as well as look at data about their behavior. In the end, you need to know a few foundational elements of what makes customers tick, and here are a few of them.   1. They usually don’t speak up. Most people remain silent about their experience with your business, whether it’s good or terrible. This is unfortunate because it makes it more difficult to gauge how customers feel about your service, but as a rule of thumb, you can bet that if one person gives you negative feedback, there are more who share their experience and aren’t saying so.   2. They always expect great service. Customers are a demanding bunch. They are hardly satisfied with halfway-decent service; they come to you with high expectations.   3. They will remember how you treated them. If …

8 Barriers to Entry Every Startup Should Know

It’s not easy to open a business in a competitive field. In fact, if it is too easy, you should question whether it’s worthwhile, in the first place, because you may end up in an overcrowded space. The things that stop competitors from entering an industry are the things that let the established businesses keep their piece of the pie. Every startup should be aware that they will probably face barriers to entry, and these are 8 of them. 1. Startup Capital You always have some startup cost, but many industries necessitate extensive capital, including, but not limited to, infrastructure, equipment, permits & licenses, or a minimum number of employees. It is important to anticipate potential additional costs to open your business, before you get started. 2. Technical Knowledge Base Some businesses cannot easily break into an industry because of the high level of technical knowledge that it demands. Take …

How to Keep Your Office Phones on During an Outage

No phone network is perfect. No matter what type of phone system you have in your office, there is always the chance of an outage, which is why you can’t put all your eggs into one basket, as it were. Here we’ll go over the two major types of business phone systems, the shortcomings of each, and how you can keep your calls coming in, no matter what happens. Conventional Office Phone System If your office has a traditional phone system that works over the PSTN (the old-school, wired telephone network), then you’re fairly safe. It’s for this reason that Talkroute connects calls over the PSTN, to make sure that users always have a reliable connection. As we all know, the old landline in the house (if you still have one) will work even during a power outage. It still works when the power is out because that landline is …

Why Doesn’t My Company Name Show on Caller ID?

    This article will give you an overview of how the company name is set for outgoing caller ID, including a description of the process and why, sometimes, it doesn’t show up for the person you are calling.   Our Talkroute engineers collaborated on this post to provide valuable insight into how caller ID works, and what you can do to make sure your caller ID name is accurate.   CNAM (Caller ID Name) Firstly, the CNAM is the name that shows up on the receiving party’s caller ID when you call a number. When your call comes in on the phone of the person you dialed, their carrier retrieves the CNAM record, and displays your name on the receiving phone’s caller ID.   The CNAM has a 15-character limit, so a name exceeding this length will be cut off in the displayed caller ID.   The Neustar Database …

10 Steps to Handle a Tough Customer on the Phone

    1. Listen. This has to be one of the most crucial aspects of handling difficult callers, and customers in general. When you really listen to what they are trying to tell you, you are simultaneously showing concern and gaining insight into the issue they are having, which helps you to find a solution. Also avoid the impulse to talk over them, even if you have good news.   2. Provide validation to the caller. Many times, the person screaming at you on the phone just you to recognize that they are upset for a good reason. Many customer service professionals have a tendency to talk down to the customer because they don’t understand what is happening, and this is wrong. Instead of just telling them to “calm down”, try saying, “You’re right—this is a problem, and we are going to find a solution.”   3. Don’t react emotionally. …

6 Things to Consider Before You Start a Business

    Odds are, if you are starting a new business, then you have been planning this for a while and have considered very carefully what it will entail. Just in case, here is a checklist of things you should be thinking about as you prepare to open your brand new business.   1. Beware of a low barrier to entry. As the saying goes, “If it was easy, everyone would be doing it,” and sometimes, everyone is doing it. If you find that it’s a little too easy to get into an industry, then it probably means that it’s already over-saturated with too many competitors.   It should give you pause because some barrier of entry to an industry or field of business is actually a good thing. Barriers to entry, such as access to materials, brand loyalty, or strict government regulations—these things limit the number of competitors so …

4 Ways to Simplify How You Do Business

    Business owners are always looking for new ways of streamlining everything they do, to save time, money, and energy. Here, we explore a few ways to simplify your business and eliminate clutter, in favor of potency.   1. Offer fewer options. Take the obvious example of a restaurant. If you’ve ever seen an episode of Kitchen Nightmares, then you have already seen how this can work.   Many restaurants aim to impress their customers by offering an extensive menu, with all kinds of dishes; however, limiting the menu to 10-15, or even fewer dishes of better quality, is usually more palatable to diners.   You can employ this same strategy at your own business by limiting your products, features, or options, thereby making it more manageable to customers.   2. Focus on doing one thing, very well.   If it appears that you do a lot of different …

Do You Have the Guts to Run Your Own Business?

    To be successful, a business owner has to have some key traits, and one of those things is guts. It’s great to be your own boss, but running and growing a business is not for the faint of heart. An owner experiences long hours, long weeks, and extreme highs and lows, which requires some guts to stick it out.   Startups are taking a gamble. If you’re running a startup company, then you need to be especially bold, due to the risky nature of a startup of any kind. Your average small business can be risky, as it is, but a startup is even more so.   You may be sitting on a gold mine, but startups are usually just an educated attempt, by nature. It usually means that you are testing an original idea for a product or service, and only time will tell if the market …

6 Lists Every Business Owner Should Have

    It’s just one of those simple, indispensable things—a list. Whether you are the type of person who likes to use them, or not, the items you put on these lists might end up saving you a huge amount of time and headache.   1. Professional Contacts If you don’t already, you should always have a dedicated list that contains complete information for all of your business contacts, and not just on your smartphone.   We all depend on our phones for a lot of information these days, but you should consider keeping a separate, additional list—or at least back up your phone contacts in the Cloud.   That way you won’t be lost, if something happens to your phone. Murphy’s Law pretty much guarantees that something will happen to your phone.   2. Alternate Suppliers/Vendors   If you’re running a business that requires operating materials & supplies, then …

Loving What You Do is Appealing to Customers

    Consumers have a lot of options for any given product these days. There are many factors that cause someone to choose one business over another, and the enthusiasm of the owner is one of those factors. Passionate owners are not only attractive to customers, but they create a business that emphasizes quality and inspires trust in potential customers.   If you’re confident about your product or service, they will be, too. Passionate business owners exude confidence about their product or service. If the owner does not believe in what he or she is selling, then the consumer has no reason to believe in it either.   When you show that you have full confidence in your product, your customers will be more comfortable investing in it.   People would rather buy from someone who is excited about what they do.   Who would you rather buy from—a business …