All people have the same 24 hours a day. As a business owner, it’s crucial to make those hours count; you’re coordinating many tasks within short time periods. Whatever the size of your business, there’s a bounty of tools to help you make the most of every hour — and decrease your stress. Read on for an overview of some of the most useful ways to streamline your business operations.
1. Customer Support
Explore some type of integration with a customer support platform so that customer inquiries and concerns can be streamlined efficiently. Depending on the type of business you run, platforms like ZenDesk and Salesforce Help Desk work can greatly reduce the amount of work for your employees in customer support. These tools can scale according to the size of your business operations and are a good alternative/addition to traditional customer support.
2. Email Scheduling
Even if the majority of your mails are cold emails or spam, it still takes time to manage them. Email scheduling tools can make the difference between feeling overwhelmed and staying serene. If you need to email dozens of new prospects at a certain time but don’t have the margin to send it out then, your scheduler can take care of that for you.
3. Email Marketing
Successful business owners prioritize email marketing as part of their business operations. It’s one of the most essential ways to communicate with customers and stakeholders. Consider using a service like MailChimp or MailerLite if you want to start with a free option. Both provide easy templates for designing high-level and engaging emails.
4. Digital Accounting
For small business owners, accounting is one of the most time-consuming tasks. You may think you’re saving time by maintaining the same paper-based method for checks and invoices, but in the long run, you’re losing it. The best online payment systems offer digital tools like expense reporting, online invoicing, and tax filing. Most of them integrate with Quicken for a fuss-free, seamless process.
5. Social Media Tools
Social media is a powerful way to increase engagement with prospective and current customers. It’s another task that takes a great deal of time, especially if you engage with other accounts. Tools like Buffer and Hootsuite allow you to schedule your posts in advance so you can turn your attention to scaling your business.
Streamlining your business operations will help your business flourish. Try these tools to make your organization run more effectively.
