3 Affordable Small Business Communication Options

Small businesses are vital to our communities because they provide incredible products and services with a more personal touch. Many small businesses are looking for ways to ramp up their customer base, but they aren't sure they can handle an increased volume with their current staff load.

There are several ways to deal with higher volumes of customer inquiries, such as outsourcing customer support or getting a toll-free phone number, but many business owners worry that it will cost them too much to get started. Check out three affordable communication options for small businesses below! 

1. Business Phone Number

Business phone numbers have been around for decades now, and they provide a sense of trust among customers. It used to cost a small fortune to get a business phone number for small companies, but now there are some free business phone numbers offered by quality companies.

Small businesses with their own phone line, instead of an employee's cell phone number, seem more official, and customers appreciate the opportunity to speak with a real person. Depending upon the size of the business, a business number may connect directly to a person, or it may guide a customer through a series of questions to find the right agent for them to speak with. 

2. Live Chat

Some customers prefer to speak with a customer support agent via online chat. This allows them to type out their questions and get written responses quickly. Agents are still required for live chat to work, and customers enjoy this option because it connects them with a real person, but they can write out their responses instead of talking them out. 

3. AI Support Bots

Support bots that use artificial intelligence appear to be the way of the future. These support bots are similar to live chat, but they don't require an agent to do the responses. This is a great option for businesses who get huge volumes of emails, voicemails, or chats with many of the same questions that can easily be answered automatically. 

AI support bots may be able to answer a customer's inquiry on their own, like looking up the shipping status of a product using the tracking number, reporting business hours, or giving directions, or it can forward a more advanced question to an agent during normal business hours. 

Many businesses find that it's helpful to have a mix of two or all three of the above communication options to give customers a choice about how they can get the help they need. Having open communication channels can help build a sense of trust with customers and keep them coming back again and again. 

A short guide to setting up your own business

Making the decision to leave a stable position of employment and set up your own business is an exciting time for any would-be entrepreneur. Becoming self-employed gives you a huge amount of freedom: you can work to your own rules and working practices and organize exactly when and for whom you work. On top of all this, you can dedicate yourself to a business that you are truly passionate about and are consequently willing to put in 100% to make sure that you are successful. However, setting up your own business can also become exceedingly stressful and could prove to be a disaster if not thoroughly planned. Considering these points, read on for a short guide to setting up your own business.

1.   Education

You might have all the necessary expertise needed to create and carry out the products and services your business will offer, but product knowledge alone is not enough to ensure that your endeavor is successful. You will need a strong foundation of business practice knowledge that you can take into your own business practices. If you do not come from a business background, you could consider taking some online business courses. These online business courses will provide you with the essential skills required in areas that are much used when setting up a business, for example, bookkeeping, grant writing, and project management.

2.   Write a business plan

Writing a business plan is an essential task that should be undertaken when setting up any business and reviewed and updated every couple of years to reflect your current circumstances. There are plenty of guides available showing you how to write an effective business plan, but there are several points that you should always look to include. An analysis of the market which you are entering, for example, along with a detailed description of your business’s unique selling point, to clearly demonstrate how you will fit into that market.

3.   Secure financing

Setting up your own business is an undeniably expensive endeavor, and as such, you will need to make sure that you have secured financial backing. There are several federal loans you can apply for, such as the Small Business Administration Loan, to help you to set up your business. Alternatively, you could approach a bank for a loan, but make sure that you are able to pay your loan off and do not put your house as collateral, in order to prevent a disaster from occurring if your business does not prove to be successful.

4.   Premises

During the early days of your business, when you are just starting to get off the ground, you might decide to work from your own home in order to reduce overheads from expensive rented offices. However, you might require some extra space in order to house supplies and products for shipping. If this is the case, you could consider renting a storage space from which you can store and package items away from your home.

A Guide for Startup Owners: How to Take Your Business to the Next Level

Has your startup come face-to-face with that dreaded glass ceiling? Have you recently maxed out your company’s profit potential? If so, it sounds like you need to propel your business to the next level — pronto! You cannot afford to waste any time in this instance, as doing that will increase your organization’s chances of stagnating. Once this happens, you will find it ten times harder to grow, develop, and scale your startup in the future. 

If you want your company to scale the lofty heights of its industry one day, you cannot ever afford to stand still. Here are three things you must do to take your business to the next level:

Optimize your marketing model 

You might provide an industry-leading level of service, but all of your hard work in this instance will ultimately amount to nothing if you fail to promote your business. If you are to reach, engage, generate, and retain your leads in a highly efficient and effective fashion, you need to go above and beyond to optimize your marketing model. 

If this means trying new things and taking different advertising approaches, so be it. There are many different routes that you can take to freshen up your promotional endeavors, one of which being to embrace SMS marketing. This simple yet effective advertising technique will help you to reach your target audience interactively and instantaneously. To find out more about this form of promotion, be sure to check out Tatango. Being one of the world’s industry leading text message marketing companies, they understand the intricacies of what it takes to run an effective SMS advertising campaign. 

Enhance your brand strategy

To ensure that your enhanced marketing model yields positive results, you must build yourself a strong brand image. To enhance your self-promotion strategy in this instance, you need to:

1. Focus heavily on providing customer satisfaction

2. Improve your social profiles

3. Showcase your expertise by producing insightful online content

4. Go above and beyond to educate other people/organizations

5. Broaden your network and forge appropriate partnerships

Improve your overall efficiency 

You are never going to get anywhere with your attempt to take your startup to the next level if you fail to improve your overall efficiency. Quite simply, everything that you do on a day-to-day basis must be incredibly productive and effective. Anything less, and you will fail to provide your consumers with the high level of service that they want, expect, and need in this day and age.

To improve your company’s overall efficiency, you must:

1. Set your employees many S.M.A.R.T (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely) regularly

2. Become an effective delegator

3. Take advantage of productivity-boosting software solutions

4. Incentivize your staff members to operate efficiently by providing them with performance-related benefits  

If your startup business is ready for that next all-important step in its development, be sure to heed all of the advice laid out above.