Archives for November 2014
Benefits of a Live Chat Feature on Your Website
More small businesses are starting to use live chat features on their website to provide additional levels of customer service to everyone who visits their website. But how exactly does having a live chat feature help you to deliver better service to your customers?
Here are some of the biggest benefits of live chat technology on company websites:
- Itâs convenient. Customers are able to have their questions or issues taken care of in real time through a live chat. In fact, 44 percent of online customers indicate that being able to instantly have their questions answered through live chat is one of the most important website features you can have. On the business side, you get instant feedback from customers if they are facing any type of problem.
- Itâs inexpensive. Live chat representatives are able to handle multiple chats at the same time, which allows you to save money in that regard, all while lowering the wait time that people would typically have for service with a phone call. It also has the chance to increase the value of your orders, because you can instantly assuage any of the worries of your customers through the live chat feature.
- It could give you a competitive advantage. Lots of small- and medium-sized businesses have been slow to adapt real-time chat features, believing theyâre only important for large companies. However, adding it to your website could give you a chance to forge a closer connection with your customers, so long as you use âhumanâ (not canned) responses.
- It leads to increased conversions. There are several studies that have shown live chat features to bring a 20 percent conversion rate hike.
- It builds relationships. Customers that use live chat features tend to come back more often than ones that donât. This has a lot to do with the ability to instantly speak to an actual person from your company.
Consider adding a live chat feature to your website. Talk to us at Viral Solutions for more information about its benefits and to get started today.
by Christine Kelly
CEO and Queen Bee | Viral Solutions LLC
The Difficult Decisions Every Entrepreneur Must Make
Thereâs no point in avoiding it: when you choose to become an entrepreneur, you must accept that youâre going to have to make a variety of really tough decisions down the road. These decisions could occasionally cause you to lose sleep at night. Itâs all a part of being the owner of a company. But if you consider these decisions ahead of time, you can at least mentally prepare yourself to handle them whenever they should arise within your company.
Here are some of the most difficult decisions that you may have to make with your business at some point. Perhaps you have already made them at least once.
- How to deal with difficult employees. Employees can cause problems in a variety of ways, ranging from ineffectiveness to disobedience to bullying in the workplace. The first time this happens in your
company, it can be extremely difficult to know how to deal with it. Know that if you are unable to resolve the situation through talking with the offender or taking minor action, there is the potential that you will need to terminate the employee. This is never an easy decision, but you must be prepared to do it should it become necessary. However, you also must realize that your culture, which is a product of your mission, vision and purpose, are responsible for accepting this employee during the onboarding process as well as the review process of their performance. So when you fire an employee you need to understand some of that is on you as the owner of your culture. Not fun!
- Saying goodbye to difficult or unprofessional clients. Letâs say you have a client that comes in and gives a lot of business to your company, but is extremely difficult to work with and often has a rude or unprofessional attitude. Is it really worth the headache for you to continue working with them? Iâve known a lot of businesses over the year that have a strict âno jerksâ policy, and when their clients violate this policy they cease working with them. It can be difficult to voluntarily say goodbye to a client, especially when youâre a small company, but you always have to weigh what it will cost your business on more than a financial level to keep a difficult client around for the long run.
- Whether or not you should expand. There are so many businesses that fail not because they donât get enough business, but because they werenât able to handle expansion at the rate they thought they could. If youâre doing well with your business, great! But donât rush the expansion process. Take everything slow so that you can manage that growth incrementally. Donât get blinded by the excitement of the expansion opportunityâgrowth is only good if it is manageable.
- Seeking Capital or Debt Financing. Your growth is limited by the cash or liquid assets you have available to you for marketing, new hires ahead of new product launch, retraining current staff and key mergers and acquisitions. Whether your options are leveraging with bank loans, lines of credit, friends and family or venture capital the first time you realize this is what you have to do is very trying on the nerves. The bottom line is that not all debt is bad debt, you just have to be able to grow profits faster than the interest rate. Investors will demand accountability and are easily pleased when they receive a return on investment beyond plan.
- Recognizing you own the problems. Your company's problems could be employee related, vendor linked or inefficient productivity. Certainly you can find the root cause, isolate it and attack the
problem with a solution that fits. It is easy to blame the root cause. But leaders and small business owners must look in the mirror and recognize they own the outcomes as well as the problems that impact those outcomes. This reality can be difficult to swallow.
- The Stockdale Paradox. When you can âmaintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be,â you are embracing what Jim Collins calls the Stockdale Paradox. [source: Good to Great by Jim Collins].  How does this apply to you, someone trying to drive change? Simple. Ask yourself: Have I ever given up on a change I wanted or needed because I played the optimist and allowed myself to break my heart, my will to drive change? Sadly, Iâve had people quit driving change because of the simplest of defeats [source: Good to Great by Jim Collins]:
- They were let down when a top manager, who has never delivered on a promise of support, fails again to support them. (And they thought this time would be different. Nope.)
- They thought the change would be complete well before the summer was over and now itâs late into the fall.
- They tried and failed to change something in the past and refuse to try again.
- They think driving change should be more happiness and less frustration (often it isnât), or
- They think others (name the group) should help more and complain less. (They rarely will.)
You have not been defeated by some outside enemy when you quit, when you allow yourself to break, or when you refuse to face the Stockdale Paradox, accept it and persevere; you have defeated yourself [source: Good to Great by Jim Collins].
Do you need help making the difficult business decisions that present themselves on a regular basis? Speak with us at Viral Solutions for assistance.
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