Hey business mind, got a few minutes to spare?
Thanks for the audience.
I just wanna ask you a simple question and then point out a few facts; trust me, it will be worth your while.
So, my question is: what level of technology do you have in your business?
Have you gone full-blown AI, or you’re still at the traditional levels of telephones, PowerPoint, websites, and social media?
If you’re like most business owners, your answer will most likely be the latter.
But I want you to know this: the relationship between technology and business go beyond telephone conversations and PowerPoint presentations.
There are a host of tech tools and systems that have the ability to enhance your overall business operations – be it customer service, payment systems, employee productivity, marketing, recruitment, etc.
Allow me to introduce some of these techs to you.
Note: If any of the techs you find below captivates you, contact an expert tech provider to help you incorporate it into your business. An expert tech provider is a company/someone who offers managed IT services.
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Customer engagement systems
In order to truly satisfy today’s customers, you need to understand their pain points (which may not be reduced prices or bonuses) and meet them at these very points.
Thankfully, there are lots of tech tools that can help you study relevant customer data such as purchasing history, interests, name, gender, age, profession, location, email address, phone number, and household income.
Once you can meet regular customers at their most crucial points, it becomes easy to convert them into loyal customers.
Some of the best customer satisfaction tech tools you can use for this include:
- Zendesk
- Tidio
- Feedbackly
- Qualaroo
- Hively
- Totango
- SmileBack
- Custify
- Client Heartbeat
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Employee recruitment system
The traditional way of hiring employees is to ask for candidates’ resumes, skim through the resumes, call for interviews, and hope for the best.
Thanks to technology, businesses can now identify the best guys for a position by scanning candidates’ resumes with tools such as an ATS resume scanner.
What these tools do is that they help test a resume against a specific job description to see how fit a candidate is for that position.
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Payment systems
Do you still spend lots of money on creating invoices and receipts for receiving payments?
Then you need technology even more.
Thanks to the introduction of online invoicing services, businesses can now create and issue payment invoices for cheap. Some platforms even offer free services.
Some popular names include:
- Zoho Invoice
- Intuit QuickBooks Self-Employed
- Xero
- Wave
- Sunrise
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In-house teamwork and employee collaboration
If your employees are still in the habit of leaving their desks to share files, documents, and information with their colleagues, then you must know how annoying that can be.
Often times, this time-consuming process leads to decreased productivity, as employees have the opportunity to shirk duties, delay tasks, or engage in small gossips/talks.
Thankfully, technology helps you alleviate this problem.
Depending on the size of your business/organization, you can set up an Intranet for local file/data/document sharing, which means employees no longer have to leave their duty post to collaborate with their colleagues.
Alternatively, you can incorporate the use of cloud technology in your organization so that employees can upload, share, and access important data from anywhere.
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Make employees more productive
It is not uncommon to find employees in an organization shirking duties, slacking, or working at below-par rates.
This happens in almost every organization.
Luckily for businesses in the 21st century, there is a quick fix for this.
With the existence of productivity, project management, and task-tracking tools such as Trello, Slack, BaseCamp, Podio, ManyMoon, and Asana it has become easier to keep employees on their toes at all times.
- Look what I found: 11 things you can do to make your employees more productive. Do not miss this piece.
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Reduce file and document scouring time
Another terrible experience in most organizations is the process of searching for files and documents. Usually, employees – and even bosses sometimes – spend hours zipping through cabinets in an attempt to locate files and documents.
The good news is technology has come up with a solution for all of us, which is called “digital filing systems.”
With this system, it has become easier to sort, save, share, and find documents in organizations.
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Better marketing campaigns
Some of the traditional challenges of marketing are:
1.) Identifying who to market to (the audiences)
2.) Identifying where the audiences are
3.) And finally, understanding what the audiences want.
Luckily for all business owners, technology has the answers to all these problems.
With an effective buyer persona analysis, businesses can understand who their target audiences are.
With the help of competitor analysis tools, social media analyzer, and other relevant marketing tools, businesses can find out where their target audiences are.
And finally, with the aid of customer satisfaction tools such as the ones listed above, businesses can find out what these audiences really want.
Interesting related article: “What is Technology?”