As a business owner and entrepreneur, you’re likely always on the lookout for ways to make your company run more efficiently and provide the best quality customer service. One of the best approaches to attain these goals is to find ways to cut costs, which, in addition to saving you money, will improve both your customer service efforts and streamline operations.
Sound too good to be true? Here are three ideas that will allow you to achieve all three results at once:
1. Consider Telecommuting
If your employees have expressed interest in working from home, at least for part of the workweek, it might be a good idea to look into this option. As SmallBizLink notes, fewer people at the office means saving money on energy costs, as well as on supplies like printer paper and toner ink.
Additionally, employees who work from home are typically not only happier, but also tend to be much more productive than their colleagues who are stuck in the office. As evidence, a Singapore company recently allowed half of its staff to work from home four days a week, while the other half worked a standard five-day workweek in the office. Over the course of two years, the employees who worked from home conceded it was like they had earned an extra workday because of fewer distractions.
Work-from-home professionals also tend to stay in their jobs longer and are less likely to call in sick. Indeed, this level of autonomy and freedom can positively affect how employees view work and interact with customers or clients; after all, a stressed-out employee who’s stuck in the office may be less patient with a customer than one who feels relaxed from the comfort of their home office.
2. Take Your Call Center to the Cloud
Does your customer contact center experience an inordinate amount of calls on a daily basis? Are operations disorganized with agents missing incoming calls? If you answered “yes” to one or both examples, you may want to look into implementing a cost-effective cloud contact center solution to better streamline operations.
For example, a service like Aspect Via can work to better engage with your customers calling into your company, as well as empower your support staff to provide an improved overall customer experience. But that’s not all. Providing customer service via the cloud is typically quick and easy to set up; plus, it enables business owners to staff a large number of agents in multiple locations who can provide 24/7 customer service.
And for customers who prefer engaging with support staff via online chat over a traditional phone call, cloud contact centers provide this level of seamless interaction, along with support through social media, email, FAQs and more.
3. Streamline Your Technology
As Entrepreneur notes, making the technology you use in your day-to-day operations as effective and useful as possible will not only save you money, but also help keep your customers happy.
For instance, instead of linking together a number of desktop laptop computers, consider investing in one server that will act as a digital filing cabinet for all of your company’s documents, invoices, orders, employee information and more.
Turning to a reliable central server to store important company information not only makes it easier to back up, but also provides a more seamless opportunity for your employees to access it from virtually anywhere. And, in the end, your customers will better appreciate the fact that they’re receiving quality attention and service.
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