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Don’t Be a Small Business That Doesn’t Make It
Thursday, August 24, 2023
Growing up in a family of entrepreneurs, I’ve seen, first-hand, the blood, sweat, and tears involved in building a company from the ground up. It was a great experience to witness all the good times and bad, until all the hard work started to pay off.
As my mother’s jewelry business really got off the ground, I remember wondering when she even had time to sleep. Her days were spent designing and assembling jewelry, building her website and preparing orders for shipment. Her nights were often spent answering emails from clients for hours and hours on end. Always the optimist, mom joked once, “I have too many customers, I can barely keep up. What a great problem to have!”
On one hand, she was right; her business was booming and that was great! But on the other hand (whether or not she would admit it), her business was growing faster than she could keep up.
Every moment spent answering simple questions like, “Do you ship internationally?” “Are the teardrop earrings available in blue?” or “Will my order arrive by Christmas?" took away precious time from the dozens of other tasks she had to do. She quickly realized there just weren’t enough hours in a day to do it all herself.
Back when my mother was first starting out, the only real solution was to hire some extra help to answer phone calls and emails so she could focus on creating beautiful jewelry that people actually wanted to buy.
Today, however, technology has made possible things my mother only dreamed of back in the day. Now, live chat is the perfect, unexpected solution for these problems, and many more, faced by startups and small businesses:
ChatBots
When you think about live chat support, you probably picture huge companies like Amazon, employing thousands of agents to serve the millions of customers the website sees everyday. As live chat is proven to be the preferred method of customer service, you may have wished that you could offer it to your customers, but worried that you didn’t have the time or manpower to serve all your customers in a timely manner.
As a small business owner, your time is extremely valuable. ChatBots free up your precious time by serving limitless customers anytime, day or night. They are extremely user friendly and can be set up in just a few minutes, having the ability to act as a 24/7 chat agent. Never again will you lose a sale because you couldn’t get back to a customer in time. ChatBots will instantly greet and serve all of your websites visitors, giving it a more personal feel.
Unified Chat Channels
Back in the day, a simple website was all your business needed to be discovered by potential online customers. However, thanks to social media, there are now several channels by which customers can find and contact you. While this is great for building clientele and brand awareness, it can be extremely difficult to monitor an email account, Facebook business page, phone line, etc, if you’re the sole employee of your small business.
With live chat, you can unify your website chat, Facebook Messenger chat, and SMS chats (learn more about enabling your landline to receive SMS messages here) and receive any messages received all in one convenient place. Save time by engaging in chats from all three channels right from your Agent Application. Save all chat data to easily and quickly reference in the future.
Know Your Audience
It’s been estimated that it’s 6x more experience to gain a new customer than to keep an existing one. That’s why it’s extremely important to nurture yours and make them feel important. We know you have a million things running through your head at any given time, so ChatBeacon Live Chat gives you an edge by remembering your previous visitor’s information. Add a personal touch to your website by welcoming previous customers back to your page.
Once your business starts to take off, it is important to keep all of your contacts organized. With our Hubspot CRM integration, you can manage all of contacts right from your Agent Application. This quick integration allows you to store everything about your leads, including names, job titles, email addresses, phone numbers, meetings, calls, and more, in one simple place. The best part? This integration is 100% free!
When you own a small company, run a business from home, or are just starting up, having the right tools is the key to success. As business owners, ourselves, we once stood exactly where you stand, so we know personally the kind of help and support you need. As experts in the live chat business for nearly two decades, we’d love to chat with you and tell you about the dozens of other amazing features ChatBeacon offers and help assess your needs to configure the perfect plan for you.
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