We know that for many businesses, the turmoil caused by the past year and a half won’t be resolved with a quick fix. We’ve all had to work differently for a while now, and this has had a huge knock-on effect. At Chrome, we work with a huge variety of businesses in many sectors and so we’ve seen it all. Everyone from hospitality to manufacturing and professional services need to change the way they work to get back on track.
Bouncing back better requires being a little bit more cost aware when taking new steps to improve your business. This doesn’t mean that you can’t change things up though, and there are plenty of great steps that you can take to ensure you are still providing quality customer service, efficient collaboration and increased productivity without breaking the bank. Here are our top 5.
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Create a flexible work environment
Working from home has been a huge part of life for many businesses, even if you are not planning to continue this process into the future, there are some lessons that can be learned. The first is that staff are more productive when given options as to how they work. You can use this to your advantage while saving money.
More and more businesses are seeing the advantages of using offices as hub spaces that staff can drop in or out of. As long as staff have access to the right business technology, this hot-desking model allows your team to work with greater flexibility whilst maintaining the excellent level of collaboration that can be achieved in a normal office environment.
Of course, this requires technology to make it happen, specifically in communications. A unified communications platform allows you team to access audio and video calls, instant messaging, and file sharing wherever they work. Any communications from this service are powered only by the internet, allowing you to save money on infrastructure while managing team communications effectively.
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Take advantage of your mobiles
We use our mobile phones every day, so why not equip them for business? This is a fantastic way to take advantage of the technology we already use while keeping costs down. A business mobile plan allows your team to effectively continue the customer service and collaboration processes outside of the office.
The first step is to find the right business mobile plan. At Chrome we don’t believe in pushing businesses towards the most expensive models. Instead, we’ll consult with your business, find the features you need and help you access the right handsets and network providers in your area.
The second way to make the most of mobiles is by integrating them within the rest of your business communications. UC apps help here and we’d recommend working with a call routing service. This allows you to direct customer calls to the most relevant operator automatically, even if they are working on a mobile. The audio quality of modern mobiles now makes them indistinguishable from a deskphone.
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Improve the efficiency of your call handling
A slow customer service process is an expensive one. Customers don’t enjoy being left on hold, nor do they enjoy when their issues aren’t resolved first time. There are some simple steps that you can take that dramatically improve this process without costing an arm and a leg.
The first of these comes in the form of training. If you can guarantee that your staff are following your best practices to the letter, you can improve the effectiveness of your service. The best way to do this is through call recording. Record an example of your top performer to show to new hires, or analyse calls with those who are struggling to find a fix.
Once your whole team is trained up, you can cut down call times. Meaning more customers are served in a shorter span of time. This combined with call management services that allow you follow up on missed calls quickly, is a way to generate more profit without the extra spend.
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Discover the cloud
Cloud solutions are taking the business world by storm. Whether it is in computing or communications, their modern presentations and wide range of features might lead you to believe that they are inaccessibly expensive. This isn’t the case.
Cloud solutions are a fantastic way of accessing competitive, enterprise-grade technology without breaking the bank. Instead of the high initial outlay involved in buying and installing a fixed communication network, cloud services are subscription based. This means you only pay for what you need, with add-ons available as your team grows. There is no downtime involved when your system is being set up, just connect to the internet and off you go.
Cloud communications allow you to work at your best, without substantial initial investments.
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Consolidate your bills
Speaking of bills, this final point is all about them. While it is always good to look around to make sure you get the best deal, consolidating your bills with a single supplier is a great way to keep costs down.
Working with a technology provider like us here at Chrome means that you’ll only receive one monthly bill for all of the communication services you use. This means less time and money spent on admin and validation and better visibility of your usage and performance data.
Your personal account manager will keep you abreast of any changes to your services and proactively recommend new features and tools that they think will provide you with some benefits.
We hope that these tips have helped you to think about some ways that your team could potentially save some money while maintaining the quality of your operation. To find out more about what we do here at Chrome, get in touch at 03333 212 707
