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Working From Home? 9 Tips to Staying Productive and Sane During These Difficult Times

Posted: 04 May 2020 05:30 AM PDT

Whether your business is new to remote working due to the numerous stay-at-home policies issued by most U.S. states to fight the coronavirus or accustomed to it, it can be hard to be productive working from home while also keeping your sanity.

Believe me, I can personally attest to this. I've worked from home for more than a decade now, and still struggle with certain aspects of it every day. It is very easy to form bad work-at-home habits. Here are some ideas and tips to help you and your employees work at home more effectively.

Create a space

You'll be more productive if you can carve out a separate space in your home in which to work. That helps you separate your work space from your personal space and maintain some privacy.

This is even more important if you don't live alone and are sharing space with other adults and/or kids. If that is the case, you need to establish some ground rules. Tell your kids when it's okay to interrupt you and the best way to do it. If you have a separate room, put a small sign on the door, saying when it's safe to come in. If you're in a meeting, let everyone know they need to be quiet.

One business owner I know, struggles with the possibility his dogs will start barking when he tapes his podcasts. He once asked his wife to take the dogs for a ride while he was taping a particularly important episode.

If you don't have a spare room, can you take over a guest room, part of the basement, or a little-used dining room? Someone I know converted their back porch from "junk room" to office space. You also should work from an ergonomic chair whenever possible. Experts will tell you not to work from the couch. They're right—but in the spirit of full disclosure, even though I have a separate office, I sometimes work from my living room couch.

Establish a schedule

Set "office" hours and try to stick to them. If you're the boss, it's okay to tell your employees the times you expect them to be at work. But given the current situation, some may need extra flexibility.

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Take breaks

Incorporate breaks into your schedule, even if it's just a quick stretch or walk around your house or apartment. Try for a five-minute break once an hour. If you can safely go outside for a short break, do so. If you can't, check with your doctor to see if you need to add Vitamin D to your diet. And don't forget to eat lunch.

Get equipped

Every business's circumstances are going to be different here. What computers are your staff using? Work-issued secure machines or their personal computers? Whichever, you want to make sure your employees are keeping their work secure. You might want to investigate getting a VPN (virtual private network) service.

What equipment do you and your staff need to work from home productively? Will someone need a printer or copier? Will everyone be relying on their own cell phones? Do they have enough data? Ask your staff if they have what they need to get their jobs done? If not, can you order equipment or supplies online and send it to them?

Respond to your employees quickly

This is especially important if your company is new to remote working. Your staff is bound to have questions. Don't keep them waiting too long. If you can't respond immediately, a quick head's up—"I'll get back to you in 20 minutes"—can be helpful.

Stay in touch with your team

Luckily, there are a lot of tools that make it easy to stay connected, such as Slack, Skype, and Zoom. Many of these offer free options.

Not every communication needs to be about work. Many people are particularly stressed these days, so be sure to check in with your staff, even if it's just to find out how they're doing, or if there's something they need to make their jobs easier.

Conference calls

There will be times you need to meet with your team or clients. Try to keep internal meetings to a minimum, prepare an agenda ahead of time, and distribute it to your staff. Have everyone sign on five minutes before the meeting starts to make sure you can start on time. There are plenty of meeting tools to choose from, again many with free plans that will suit your business.

Get happy

You don't want to lose the social aspect of work. Consider holding virtual "happy hours" with your staff where you catch up on one another's lives and let off some steam. Or have a Monday morning catch-up meeting where the agenda is more personal than business. Employees can easily feel isolated which hinders productivity.

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Reevaluate your work-at-home policies

Up until now, many small businesses have been reluctant to allow remote working, fearing, among other things, a loss of control. This is a good time to reconsider. According to a study from the SMB Group, Impact of COVID-19 on Small and Medium Businesses, "Due to new stay-at-home guidelines and mandates, 80% of SMBs with existing work-from-home programs are now expanding them as they try to keep their businesses going. Meanwhile, among the SMBs that lacked telecommuting options prior to COVID-19, 24% have now established them, and 29% plan to do so."

The SMB Group believes more small businesses will adapt to working from home and make remote work a permanent aspect of their businesses.

I've read about a number of companies that have already done exactly that. One company tweeted they were so pleased with how their remote working plan is going, they've decided to convert to being a virtual business. The move, they say, will save them thousands of dollars on rent and other overhead costs.

RELATED: 10 Tips for Conducting Productive Virtual Meetings

The post Working From Home? 9 Tips to Staying Productive and Sane During These Difficult Times appeared first on AllBusiness.com. Click for more information about Rieva Lesonsky. Copyright 2020 by AllBusiness.com. All rights reserved. The content and images contained in this RSS feed may only be used through an RSS reader and may not be reproduced on another website without the express written permission of the owner of AllBusiness.com.

How to Turn Every Customer Service Call Into a Valuable Customer-Retention Conversation

Posted: 04 May 2020 05:15 AM PDT

People often assume that customer service performs a "support" function in a business, not a "sales" function. But every time customers are on the phone with your customer service people, this is an opportunity to either keep or lose a customer. Your customer service team is on the front lines of building relationships with customers—not just taking routine calls or fielding mundane questions.

Lots of companies miss out on opportunities to maximize the potential of their customer service team. With some additional training and a shift in focus, you can help your customer service team add more value for the company by enhancing customer relationships, improving customer retention, and building momentum for more sales. 

Here are a few simple strategies to improve your customer retention with your everyday customer service interactions: 

1. Ask good questions and go deeper

Instead of asking customers simple yes-no questions, train your customer service people to ask open-ended questions. Ask your customers things like:

  • "How can I help you today? What made you decide to give us a call?" 
  • "How do you feel about your experience with our company?" 
  • "What is the biggest problem we can help you with today?" 
  • "Have you tried our new product/service? How did it go?" 
  • "Have you heard from any of our competitors recently?" 

Be inquisitive. Be prepared for customers to say more than you expected. And, most important, listen! Talking with customers can be an excellent source of competitive intelligence. For example, you might learn from a routine customer service call that your biggest competitor is doing new product testing, or that a new competitor is entering your market, or that the competitor you barely beat for a big contract is going after one of your favorite accounts. 

Hearing the same complaints and issues from multiple customers might give you the insight to identify high-priority opportunities for making changes in your company's processes, or even get ideas for new products and services. Customer service is not just about solving mundane problems, it can be a vehicle for learning more about your customers' attitudes, doing market research, conducting customer satisfaction surveys, and keeping your finger on the pulse of what's happening in your industry. 

2. Empower your customer service people to make things right or make accurate promises

A common cause of frustration for customers is calling customer service and feeling like there is no one who can actually help them resolve their issue. Sometimes people need a higher level of help. Not every frontline customer service rep needs to have authority to issue refunds or offer complex solutions, but they should at least know how to take down the customer's name and number and promise them a call back by a manager by the end of the day.

If one of your customers calls for help and gets nowhere, that could very well be the last time you will hear from them. To prevent this from happening, invest in your customer service team by developing robust training programs, incentivizing great performance, and always stressing the importance of the work that gets done in your customer service department. Encourage your customer service team to think critically and find creative ways to go above and beyond.

Also, flag big accounts and important clients so they can be easily identified when they contact your company. Sometimes long-term clients just like to be recognized and acknowledged with a little extra consideration and special treatment. If the size of the account warrants it, have a dedicated customer service contact available for them. 

Obviously, all of your customers are valuable, but sometimes it's worth giving the "big spenders" and repeat customers a little extra care and attention when they come to you with an issue. A polite and professional demeanor is imperative when speaking directly with customers, but it's even more important to actually deliver results and help resolve your customers' issues. 

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3. Escalate effectively

We've all been there—getting stuck in an unending hold trying to get through to a real person who can actually solve your problem. Regardless of what type of business you're in, your customers' time is valuable. Develop an efficient system and process for connecting customers to the appropriate party quickly when they call your business looking for help. Build systems and processes into your customer service function to help people actually get directed to the right help faster. If there is something in your system that is slowing down the process, you're wasting your own time as well as the customer's. 

Cultivate a sense of urgency in the ranks of your customer service team. It's important they pass along any and all useful information they've learned from a client to the next customer service representative the client will be speaking to. Nothing is worse than identifying yourself and explaining your problem to one person over the phone just to be transferred to a different person and having to repeat the process all over again. If there is any part of the customer service experience that is awkward or needlessly time-consuming, find a way to streamline or eliminate it altogether.  

4. Choose the right metrics for customer service "success"

So many companies are constantly trying to get their customers off the phone as fast as possible. Many companies evaluate their customer service reps' performance based on how quickly they can get phone calls resolved. But what if you changed the metrics to more of a results-oriented, outcome-based approach?

How do you know if your customer service team is really "worth it?" Look for ways to evaluate customer service based on a fuller picture of the value it provides, whether that's customer surveys, number of new business leads generated, costly problems identified and solved, or early warnings of larger risks detected.  

Customer service is the front line of your business

Instead of treating customer service as a "cost," treat it as an opportunity to learn more about your customers, to find out what's going on in your industry, and to get inspired for a new level of success. Customer service reps aren't just there to answer the phone—they are the front lines of your business and the first line of defense against customer turnover. 

RELATED: 6 Customer Service Blind Spots Your Company May Be Missing

The post How to Turn Every Customer Service Call Into a Valuable Customer-Retention Conversation appeared first on AllBusiness.com. Click for more information about Gregg Schwartz. Copyright 2020 by AllBusiness.com. All rights reserved. The content and images contained in this RSS feed may only be used through an RSS reader and may not be reproduced on another website without the express written permission of the owner of AllBusiness.com.
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