Communication is the core for any business. There cannot be a business which has not communicated with its customers. Does not matter whether you are a big business or a small business running out of your home.
With the advances in technology and the prevalence of cloud solutions, communication tools are now affordable and are not the domain of just big businesses.
In this blog post, we will look at some tools which a small business can employ to help them conduct business.
1. IVR Solutions:
Interactive voice response systems have existed almost since phones have existed. Though they have been derided a lot(mostly because of bad implementations), for businesses they provide one of the most cost-effective ways of communication. With Cloud telephony becoming mainstream, deploying an IVR solution for your customers is now just drag and drop. Playing order details, knowing the status of your support ticket are some of the most common uses of IVRs.
2. PBX:
Most small businesses, just use their personal mobile number as a contact number for their business. They don’t need to. With Cloud PBX solutions available now, you can sign up and provide a big business image for your customers.
Welcome the customers with a nice voice-over, provide callers an option to choose a department, and take voicemails in case you are busy. In the olden days, it used to take weeks to set up such systems. Now you can set up one in half an hour.
3. Chat widgets:
Do you have a website? Does your website answer all the queries a visitor might have? If not, a chat widget makes perfect sense. Allow your website visitors to talk to you in real time. Because of the prevalence of instant messaging platforms, most customers now know how to chat.
4. Missed call solutions:
Missed calls provide the cheapest and fastest way to indicate intent. Do you want to know how many people are interested in your new offer? Just ask them to give a missed call to your number. You have the added advantage of knowing the phone number of the customer who is interested 🙂
And, there is a ready-made app in Instamojo to get yourself a missed call number!
Email and direct face to face meetings are also very effective ways of communicating with your customers.
So go ahead, employ these tools and start engaging with your customers. The more you engage with your customers, the better your business will perform.
Set up your business with Instamojo
This post is penned by Chaitanya Chokkareddy, co-founder and CIO of Ozonetel.com.
