A myriad of sudden shifts – in government regulations, consumer behaviour, financial support options, and more – have forced companies to rethink their processes and market offerings. And one crucial way they have been doing this is by leveraging virtual business tools.
In this post, we’re going to look at five essential apps that you can use to adapt to a tumultuous and challenging business landscape.
Automated Customer Support
As more and more people have moved online since the beginning of the pandemic, the demand for customer service has also increased. This shift in behaviour has been driven by a number of factors, including government lockdowns, forced shop closures, fears around health and safety, and a proliferation of online offers.
Offering dedicated customer service is beyond the scope of most SMBs. They don’t have access to call centre teams and often can’t afford expensive outsourcing packages. One feasible solution, however, is automated customer support software. Automation solutions interact with customers via live chat, social media, and email, directing them to the appropriate online documentation and forwarding important issues to customer representatives.
Social Listening and Brand Tracking
Most SMBs were unfamiliar with the terms “social listening” and “brand tracking” until only a few years ago. The core idea is that companies can track brand mentions on social media and other parts of the internet, like review aggregators, news sites, SEO results, and so on, with a view to understanding the needs and dislikes of their customers.
Brand listening can give you valuable insights into your market. What’s more, the best social listening solutions automate the entire monitoring and analysis process. You simply need to login, configure your preferences, and download the relevant report.
Small business owners worried that tracking service software will be prohibitively costly should keep in mind that there are many inexpensive solutions available.
Digital Project Management
A lot of smaller organisations make a big mistake when it comes to project management software. Instead of opting for a solution designed specifically for the needs of small and medium-sized businesses, they’ll purchase a subscription to an enterprise-level app that requires long periods of staff training and extensive configuration. In the vast majority of cases, most of the features on these advanced platforms will go unused.
Project management software is essential if you’re going to manage your team smoothly during COVID. By choosing a platform and package built for SMBs, you can take advantage of streamlined, easy-to-use workflows, dedicated customer support, and integrations with other small business apps.
Automation and App Integration
“Automation” is a big word. It is commonly viewed as the exclusive domain of large companies with huge sums of money to spend on complex tech infrastructure. But this couldn’t be further from the truth.
A whole host of tools focused on helping SMBs integrate and automate their software-related processes have entered the market in the past few years. Zapier is the market leader in the space, but there are also others.
These platforms are easy to use and streamline what would otherwise be a very technical and complex task. They enable the near-instant flow of information between different apps, completely removing the need for time-consuming manual data entry. Building a fully integrated “tech stack”, which will cover areas like accounting, project management, customer relationship management, document storage, and more, can save hours of employee time every single week.
Often, individual solutions will provide native integrations. Third-party dedicated tools fill the gaps where “plug and play” functionality isn’t offered.
Summary
If you’re worried about the future of your business, you’re not alone. Organisations of all shapes and sizes, from mom-and-pop independent stores to multinational enterprises are concerned. It is likely, however, that the businesses that weather the storm will all rely on one vital trait: a willingness to adapt. And modern software solutions provide an inexpensive, efficient way of changing to the shifting corporate and consumer landscape.
