1. Post company photos to engage a visual culture. Are you snapping photos all day long? That’s not a bad thing. In fact, you can use this impulse to your advantage by sharing those photos with your followers, and especially on Snapchat, or Pinterest, if applicable. Just make sure that you get your business’ name in there, or even a CTA if it’s appropriate. Try taking a couple photos of your team, just doing their thing around the office, presenting kind of an online journal of daily operations at your company. We all have a voyeuristic streak, so giving your followers a little glimpse of what goes on the inside could prove to be effective in engaging people. 2. Post interesting ideas as they come, and turn it into valuable content. Any thought about your business that you think might be interesting to others—really, anything—take …
What Happens After You Port a Number to a Virtual PBX?
The foremost thing you have to understand about ports is that when you take your number from one service provider, and port it to a provider, it is a clean transfer. That is, once the port to your new virtual PBX is complete, the phone number is no longer associated with the losing carrier, in any way. This leads us to the second most important point, which is this: The old phone will stop working. Let’s say that 555-1234 is your primary business phone number, and this number is attached to a desk phone in your office. What makes it possible for that desk phone to ring when people dial 555-1234? It rings because the service provider, whether AT&T, or Comcast, or whoever, has activated the line going into this phone by attaching the number, 555-1234, to that line. When you port that number away to your new provider, the …
4 Simple Steps to Get Return Customers
When it comes to running a store, return customers are essential because there are a finite number of people in a given area. Creating a place that compels customers to come back is not altogether complicated. Generally speaking, if they feel comfortable and you provide what they need, why would they not come back? Here is a 5-step plan for gaining loyal customers that doesn’t require you to drop a ton of money into the advertising budget. 1. Keep customer records & analyze them to gain insight. Just as with any other aspect of your business, you have to keep records of customer activity to learn how you can improve their experience. Some things that are helpful to document are: What they buy and the quantity, how long they spend at your business, how much each person is spending, and even what times they …
Death in the Afternoon: Keeping Your Energy After Lunch
Many of us have come to dread that languid hour, around 3:00 or so, when doing business seems not quite worth the effort and your energy inexplicably escapes you. Even if your lunch consists of nothing more than a cup of coffee (not recommended), we find ourselves struggling to stay in the game. Everyone has their own way of dealing with this because, of course, we have to soldier on. The following are a few ways to keep your momentum. Do some cardio. There’s no need to take a trip to the gym in the middle of the day, unless that’s your thing. We’re just talking about ten or fifteen minutes of something cardiovascular, like a quick run or even a walk. Try doing jumping jacks every ten minutes for an hour, hit the trampoline—whatever floats your boat. The point is that the slump doesn’t …
5 Time-Saving Tips for Customer Support
Answering customer issues and troubleshooting problems can be difficult to manage and very time-consuming. Whether you’re a one-man or one-woman show, responding to every customer yourself, or working with a team of support agents, these tips offer simple strategies to help you assist them more effectively. 1. The virtues of online support. Handling customer inquiries through online support such as email and applicable messaging software is a great way to provide thoughtful answers and solutions, as well as to keep a written record of support conversations. To get the most out of this method, it is necessary to set up notifications so that you can quickly respond. Responding to customers online, rather than over the phone, gives you a little more time to compose an answer for them; however, you should provide an answer quickly, clearly, and as comprehensive as possible, since you ideally want to …
How to Tell if Your Prices are Too Low
Typically, business owners will quickly correct their prices in the beginning when they realize their product or service really is worth more, and people are willing to pay for it. This can, however, be a problem that you encounter later in the life of your business for a variety of reasons, such as the release of new products. Undervaluing your product can be detrimental, and it’s important to examine the following to make sure you’re not giving it away, which could kill your business. Customers are frequently and consistently surprised at your low cost. This is one of the first indicators that you’ll notice when you’re not charging enough. If you receive comments from customers on a regular basis that sound something like, “Really? That’s all it costs?”, then once you get over your regret and self-loathing for not foreseeing this, it’s time to reevaluate the cost of your product. …
4 Ways to Start Improving Your Company’s Image
This is a word that may inspire a different idea in each person’s mind, but one thing we can all agree on is that image has to do with public perception. For the purposes of this article, we can define image as the overall impression that your business projects to the public, whether subconscious or sensory, from which they will decide what they think of your business. If you find that the image your business projects is negative, inaccurate, or just nonexistent, the following points are 4 things that you can do to begin to change it for the better. 1. What image do you want to project? Crafting your company image is a deliberate process. Some businesses get lucky and just naturally exude the perfect vibe, like those people who are just charismatic and cool without even trying. The rest of us have …
Area Code, Prefix, & Other Parts of a Phone Number
Did you ever wonder where the digits in your phone number come from, and what they mean? As you probably suspected, each segment has a reason for being there. Like most codes, it contains information in each part that allows it to function properly and to send your call to the right place. If you dial a phone number using even one digit more or less than the exact code (we’ve all tried it), then you quickly find that it simply doesn’t work. While we take it for granted that phone numbers work and don’t really think about how this number connects our call, the system is made possible by those groups of numbers working together in just the right way. Now you can finally understand what each part of the phone number means, and what it does. Call it Like it Is First things first—let’s name each part of …
3 Ways to Stay Interested in Your Business
When you’re in business, it can be very easy to become bogged down and worn out from the never-ending stream of tasks necessary for you to keep everything running smoothly. The key to becoming inspired about your work again is to find out what you enjoy about it and concentrate your efforts based on that inspiration. 1. Remind yourself why you started in this business. We all lose sight of the forest for the trees; that’s why you have to remember what it was that interested you about your line of work, in the first place. This is first step because if you can’t get back to your original motivation, then you’ll just keep spinning your wheels every day. You can bet that the heavy workload will be much easier to shoulder when you are enthusiastic about your work. Once you remember why you started your …
How to Port a Phone Number from Vonage to Talkroute
Porting your Vonage phone number to Talkroute is just like porting any other number, except for the fact that they do not list your phone number on the phone bill, which is necessary to prove that you have authority to port the number. This article will explain how to work around that, as well as step-by-step instructions for getting your Vonage number successfully ported to Talkroute. 1. Gather pertinent information for the number you’re porting. Before you even get started, it’s a good idea to put together all the information you have that is associated with your phone number. Start with your most recent phone bill, which you will need to submit to your Talkroute porting agent when you put in the port request. Then, call Vonage and ask them if you can have a Customer Service Report (CSR), or a similar document with another name, which contains all the …