Monday, November 4, 2024

Support Your Customers

           Your company’s most vital asset is its customers, so you need to make sure you’re dealing with your customers properly. Without them, you would not, and could not, exist in business. Sure, you can attract new customers with unique products, free gifts, or reducing your prices; but if you’re not creating relationships with them, they’re not going to return or recommend you.

 ðŸ’¢www.hobbytosmallbusiness.spotblog.com

 


 

Help Desk Software and Live Chat

Provide awesome, personal support with simple help desk software and streamlined ticketing systems.

  • Spiceworks – A community of IT pros, plus an app with network monitoring, help desk, active directory, and more.

  • Tawk.to – Free messaging app that lets you monitor and chat with visitors on your website.

  • FreshDesk – Online cloud-based customer service software providing help desk support.

 

Customer Service Resources

The customer experience is more than just answering daily support tickets. These resources combine everything from social media to push notifications to best practices to help you provide the best ever experience for your customers.

  • Batch – Send push notifications at scale.

  • Customer Bliss Podcast – Real world, straight talk, and realistic ideas from Customer Experience Leaders around the world.

  • Cyfe – All-in-one business dashboard that lets you monitor all your business data from one place.

  • HubSpot — CRM, contact management, marketing, sales, and service tools all in one platform.

  • HelpScout Blog – Articles on customer loyalty best practices, with tons of actionable tips.

  • The Modern Customer Podcast – A podcast featuring counter-intuitive insights on the customer experience.

  • TalkWalker – Free alerting service that sends email updates on any topic you request: your name, brand, competitors, events or even your favorite TV show (#GoT).

     

 


 Online Surveys

          Use surveys to validate your business idea and collect real-time feedback, demographic information or measure customer happiness.

  • Google Forms – Create beautiful online forms and surveys for free.

  • Survey Monkey – Online surveys and questionnaires.

  • Typeform – Beautiful form creator so you can more easily collect registrations, onboard new clients or survey your visitors.

  • Wufoo – Online forms and surveys

 

 


 

Business Networking Tools

           Networking doesn’t need to be that dreaded small talk around the punch bowl at your local rec center. The internet has made networking easier than ever.

  • 4Over4 – 300 free full-color glossy business cards.

  • BananaTag – Email tracking that shows when people open your messages.

  • Cold Email Generator – Create a 5-touchpoint campaign using a set of tested cold email templates.

  • LinkedIn – The best social media platform for professionals. Make connections, send messages, join groups and publish content.

  • Meetup – Online networking site that helps you organize or attend local groups that get together for face-to-face events.

  • Norbert – Find anyone’s email address.

  • QR Code Monkey – Generates custom QR codes for your website, virtual business cards and social media.

  • Sales Navigator for Gmail – Gmail tool that shows you everything about your contacts right inside your inbox.

 

  The page contains affiliate links. If you click on a clink and make a purchase, I will earn a commission at no additional cost to you. Thanks for your support.

Monday, October 28, 2024

Be More Productive

             Maintaining a high level of productivity is not intuitive or easy – but you don’t have to resign yourself to feeling discouraged and depleted at the end of every workday.

 ðŸ’¢www.hobbytosmallbusiness.spotblog.com

 To-Do List Software

           There’s nothing I love more than tweaking my productivity habits. Whether it’s bulk-scheduling email or tracking personal goals, there are SO many tools that make getting things done actually fun.

 

 

  • 24me – A personal assistant in your pocket. Unites your calendar and tasks and uses artificial intelligence to tell you what to do and how to do it.

  • Any.do – Tasks and to-do lists synced across all devices.

  • Boomerang – Schedule an email to be sent later.

  • Follow Up Then – A simple, flexible email address that can be used with any email system on any device to send your reminders to you when you need them.

  • IFTTT – Create chains of simple conditional statements (called “recipes”) which are triggered based on changes to other web services like Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, etc.

  • Integrately – Integrates tasks between various apps.

  • Todoist – To-do list software. Manage tasks and projects from anywhere.

  • Zapier – Automate tasks between web apps (i.e. create Trello cards out of emails or PayPal payments into to-do lists).

 


 Time Tracking

            Whether you’re charging by the hour, managing a team or aiming for personal accountability, these free time tracking apps can help you make the most of your working hours.

  • Hubstaff – Time tracking for teams. Takes regular screenshots to measure activity levels and manage your remote team. You can even pay your employees and invoice clients from your account.

  • RescueTime – Software that runs in the background of your computer and provides data to help you understand your daily habits so you can focus and be more productive.

  • Toggl – Simple time tracking via mobile app or Chrome extension. Just hit a button and start tracking.

  • Tomato Timer – An online timer inspired by the popular Pomodoro Technique productivity system.

  • Timeneye – Time tracking software for teams and freelancers.

 

Focus-Boosting Apps

Eliminate the distractions of technology (yes, with more technology).

  • 1Password – Save your passwords and log in to sites with a single click.

  • aText Typing Accelerator – aText accelerates your typing by replacing abbreviations with frequently used phrases you define.

  • Coffitivity – Recreates the ambient sounds of a cafe to boost your creativity and help you work better.

  • Doodim – Focus your attention by dimming the background so only the application you’re working on is illuminated.

  • LastPass – LastPass remembers all your passwords, so you don’t have to.

  • Momentum – When you open a new tab in Chrome, this pretty personal dashboard pop-up to help you minimize distractions and increase focus.

  • Noisli – Plays different sounds to calm your nerves and inspire you to write. Comes with a minimalist text editor so you can write while you listen.

  • SelfControl – Free Mac app that lets you block access to distracting websites for a set period of time.

  • Unroll.me – Instantly see a list of all your subscription emails. Unsubscribe easily from whatever you don’t want.

 

 Note-Taking Apps

           With all the inspiration out there on the web, you want to bookmark your favorite site designs, highlight a headline you love or dictate all those course ideas you had at 2am last night.

  • A5.gg – Web-based notetaking tool that lets you type text on a single webpage, then remembers it for later (until you clear your cache!).

  • Diigo – Bookmark and tag web pages, or highlight any part of a site and attach sticky notes.

  • Evernote – Capture, nurture, and share your ideas across any device.

  • Google Keep – Quickly capture what’s on your mind and get a reminder later at the right place or time. Speak a voice memo on the go and have it automatically transcribed.

  • Pocket – Put articles and videos (or pretty much anything) into Pocket. Save directly from your browser or apps like Twitter, Flipboard and Pulse.

     

     

     The page contains affiliate links. If you click on a clink and make a purchase, I will earn a commission at no additional cost to you. Thanks for your support.