It’s fair to say that a lot of time can get wasted in a typical business model. Would you like an example of this? Think about customer service. How much time and money do you spend on ensuring that your customers are happy? Or, that customers who are unhappy are well taken care of. To break it down, you might need employees on the phone line. On average, you may hire one hundred people to man customer service phones for the day. Already, that is costing you a small fortune in paychecks, but it’s a typical cost of both time and finances for an average company.
You might also need customer support teams in store to speak to your disgruntled clients. Ultimately, the customer could even demand to speak to the manager or business owner, causing this issue to take up your time as well as that of your staff. What is the solution to this issue?
Well, it is possible to automate the problem. One of the ways you can do this is with call handling software. Available for purchase and already in use by many large businesses call handling software is exactly as it sounds. It will allow you to let the software handle the calls, so your staff won’t have to. Instead, you can focus their time on building leads and getting more customers to buy. In most cases, an employee will only need to speak with the customer once they reach a certain point in the software. The best part is that customers who never needed to speak to anyone are dealt with without any assistance from an actual employee.
This is just one of the ways that it’s possible to free up time in your business and allow you and your staff to focus on other areas of the company. Let’s look at a few of the other possibilities.
Management Software
Call handling software isn’t the only way that technology can make things easier and faster for you as the business owner. You can also consider the possibility of investing in software that will literally make your business easier to run. Imagine if every part of your business could be run and controlled by the same system. Well, it can be with the right software in place. You might be running a business like a salon where appointments are part of the business model. With salon appointment software, you can make sure that everything is handled online and it’s easy to keep track of who is showing up for what treatment when. As such, you won’t have to worry about issues in the schedule, and you’ll know that everything has been effectively taken care of.
It’s not the only software that could make things easier for you and free up time of course. You can also look into the possibility of introducing new ways for customers and clients to buy. There are plenty of benefits of introducing new payment methods into your business model. One possibility would be that it could increase the number of customers willing and able to buy. You have to remember that these days customers expect choice. By providing them with different options for the way they make purchases you are providing them with that choice. As well as offering them different choices, it’s possible to use different methods to create a more hands off approach to purchases. Instead of constantly worrying about whether purchases are safe, secure and valid with the right software, everything can be automatic.
Hire Outsourcing Services
You might find that there are areas of your business that take up more and more of your time. Marketing could be one of them. Many business owners these days are pushing forward with the idea of cutting costs by running their own marketing campaigns. However,this is often a mistake as marketing, even online, takes a lot of time and it can be difficult to maintain a grasp on other areas if you are constantly pushing a marketing campaign.
Cutting costs is a smart move but running an area of a business like this yourself is not the right idea. Instead, you should be thinking about using an outsourcing service. Through outsourcing, you can take the pressure of both the costs and time commitments off your shoulders and instead pass them onto another business. A business that would more than likely, easily be able to carry the load for your company. You just need to make sure that you do choose the right company. A lot of businesses make the mistake of choosing an outsourcing service that does not provide the same commitment to quality, and this hits their business model hard.
If you don’t want to use a full outsourcing service, you can also explore the possibility of investing in the service of freelancers. Freelancers are useful because while they are often professionally trained, they don’t get the commitment of a full work contract. As such, things can be quite simple and cheap, but the workload can still be kept under control.
Tightening The Business Model
Wastage is a big issue in most business models for a variety of reasons. It can happen anywhere in the company, and usually, it’s a problem with the initial setup. If you tighten up the business model, you can avoid wastage and the loss of time associated with it on a daily basis. One of the ways to do this would be by reducing the number of staff and reconsidering whether a permanent address was necessary. Many businesses are more effective because they are not run from a company office. The benefits of this type of setup are easy to understand and again frees up time. You no longer need to worry about paying the bills, maintaining a property or keeping health and safety standards high.
These are just some of the ways you can reduce the level of busy work that is often part of running a business. Instead, you’ll be able to keep things under a tighter control and ensure that you have plenty of time to focus on boosting profits.
