Author: Scott Asai

Helping people develop their leadership skills to advance in their career

How to Make Life Easier for Your Staff

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Keeping your employees happy is essential if you want them to do their best work. If they’re finding it difficult to concentrate or they feel like it’s harder than necessary to get their work done, you could find the productivity is nowhere near as good as you want it to be. Many employees complain that things get in the way of them doing their jobs. If you want things to improve, you should think about how you can make life easier for your staff. There are many things you could do that will remove some of the barriers your employees face so they can work better.

Remove Unnecessary Work

There are tasks that you might ask your employees to do that they feel are completely unnecessary. Although you might see them as things that they need to do, they could just think that they get in the way of their real work. The best way to identify these tasks is by asking your employees for feedback. If you’re unsure if they will be honest, you can allow them to give anonymous feedback. This will allow them to say what they feel, without having to worry about whether there could be negative consequences.

Put Them in Control of Their Time

Helping your employees to manage their own time can help them to balance their work life and personal life. This is one of the best ways you can improve your employees’ happiness and work satisfaction. With the right HR software, your staff can manage their own time off, submitting requests for leave when they need to. If they have their own accounts that they can log into when they need to make a request, look at pay slips or find out other information, they won’t have to spend time dealing with HR in person or sending emails.

Make Sure Team-building Has a Purpose

One thing that can really frustrate your employees is having to deal with team-building days that don’t have a clear purpose. Many companies want to engage in team-building, but they don’t have a clear goal. So your employees are left wondering why they’re doing it, and why they can’t just get back to their normal work. Before making them participate in team-building activities, make sure that you know why you’re doing it so that you can make it clear to your staff why you’re doing it too.

Improve Transparency

Another thing that can be frustrating for your employees is feeling like they’re missing vital information. Not only does a lack of transparency cause frustration, but it could also lead to big mistakes and a lack of motivation and morale. While there are some things that might need to be as confidential as possible, they are many times when you should open up communication and make sure that your staff have as much information as they need. Keeping them in the dark won’t help them do their jobs better.

If you want to make life easier for your employees, stop getting in the way of them doing their jobs. Help them to get their jobs done well and avoid unnecessary work.

A Failsafe Guide To Preventing Customer Complaints

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Every business owner will be aware of the old adage, ‘the customer is always right.’ In a day and age when competition is par for the course across all industries, and client reviews play an increasingly integral role, customer service has never been more important. If you’re keen to preserve a 5-star rating, here’s a failsafe guide to keeping customer complaints at bay.

Customer engagement and communication

We all have experience of trying to contact a business as a consumer. The one thing that customers don’t want is to feel like they’re wasting time. Many of us live hectic lives, and people don’t have the time or the patience to hang around, waiting for you to get back to them. There’s nothing more frustrating than listening to the same jingle over and over again when a phone line is busy, or waiting for an email response to arrive to a query you submitted hours ago. As a company director, it pays to ensure you keep channels of communication open at all times and that it’s simple and stress-free to get in touch. If you don’t want to man phones 24-hours-a-day, investigate options like an answering service company or use online features like live chat and social media messaging. If you keep existing or potential customers waiting, or you don’t get back to them at all, there’s every chance that they will choose a competitor. 

Delivering on promises

Failing to deliver on a promise is the most common reason for customer complaints. If you offer a service, a buyer expects to pay their money and receive that product or service in line with the terms you laid out. If you run a store, for example, and you’ve promised next-day delivery, make sure you can dispatch and deliver that item on time. There may be times when delays occur, and the situation is beyond your control. In this case, contact your customer as soon as you become aware of any problems, offer an explanation, and provide a resolution. In this scenario, you could refund the delivery charge, arrange for the product to arrive the day after, and give the buyer a discount on the next purchase. If you fail to impress your customers with the service you offer, you run the risk of attracting negative attention, and this will put prospective clients off. Make sure you can fulfill every promise you make. 

Don’t forget about your loyal customers

One of the most pressing concerns for existing customers is that they get forgotten about. Competition is a driving force in business, and this often means that companies go all-out to sign up new clients and entice customers who haven’t decided which business to choose yet. It’s actually a lot easier to sell to existing clients, and if you continue to impress, word of mouth and positive reviews can also provide you with more customers. Reward loyalty and always ensure that your customers feel valued. 

It’s virtually impossible to please 100% of customers 100% of the time, but this should always be your aim. Social media and online reviews are so influential today, and this means that even one bad comment can dent your reputation. Take these handy tips on board to prevent customer complaints and retain an excellent rating.

Here’s Why Your Projects Always Cost More Than You Think

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When you and your team plan a project, you imagine that you’ll move from where you are now to where you want to be in a linear fashion. After all, that’s what seems most reasonable. 

The problem is that the world doesn’t move linearly in business projects (or in pretty much every other field for that matter). We like to believe that change is a straight line, but it usually does a few loop-the-loops on the way. 

Just look at the stock market. Over fifty years, you can say that the stock market goes up, on average, about 7 percent per year. Not bad. But if you look at any single year, you can have enormous variation. Some years it’s down by 40 percent, others it’s up by more than 20. The world doesn’t move in a straight line, and neither will your projects. 

The good news is that you can do a lot to make sure that your project doesn’t cost more than you think. There are ways around this seemingly intractable issue: it just takes a little thought. You need to fundamentally change the way you see the world and becoming more accepting of the chaotic nature of reality. 

Reason #1: Your Estimates Are Way Off

We all like to think that we can plan cost estimates for our projects, whether they are construction projects, new products, or organizational redesign. Projects are just something that we “have to get on with.” Once the ball is rolling, milestones will fall like dominoes. 

What’s strange about this mentality is that we all know it’s wrong from our past experiences. Very few of us have ever had the luxury of working on a project which progresses effortlessly from one step to the next. There’s always a problem. And those problems always result in higher costs. 

Quality estimation services can help you calculate your costs better. Most are sophisticated enough these days to ascribe a probability range for prices, instead of an actual figure. Costs that nobody foresaw can come out of nowhere and change the nature of the game. 

Reason #2: Your Project Is Not Effectively Managed

Working out how much it’s going to cost to design a project and hire the people to implement it is one thing. Organizing people correctly is quite another. A substantial part of risk site risk management is choosing and coordinating contractors. It’s not easy to pick up if you’ve never done it before. You need professionals on-site who know what they’re doing and who have experience interacting with various stakeholders. 

Reason #3: You Have Administration Issues

The people administering your project need to understand what stage you’re currently at. You might think that you’re in control of the situation on the ground, but if your admin people don’t know anything about your progress, then they could make mistakes. 

The best way around this is to provide admin with project management tools. If they see the stage that you are in, they are in a better position to provide proactive support.

Tips for Better Business Communication

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The task of communicating with customers is one that your business can’t afford to shy away from. How will you get your message across and deal with problems effectively if you can’t communicate well with your customers? It’s something that lots of business can and should do better because doing so has a real impact on your chances of success.

Good business communication can boost productivity, efficiency and customer satisfaction, among many other important things. If you’re wondering exactly what you can do to improve your approach to business communication, read on and find out.

Use Common Sense When Communicating with Clients

When communicating with clients, you first need to use a bit of common sense. There are certain things that you probably don’t want to discuss with them, even in an information situation. For example, if you want to keep your clients on side, you probably shouldn’t bring up topics like religion or politics, unless your brief is directly related to those subjects. It’s all about avoiding controversy and not creating avoidable problems through poor communication strategies. You’d be surprised by how often companies get this stuff wrong.

Focus on Collaboration Over Dictation

When working alongside colleagues and employees in your workplace, you should become less of a dictator and more of a collaborator. People tend to respond far better to people who are trying to work with them rather than just ruling over them and telling them what to do all the time. It’s so much more productive for you to listen to people, understand their talents and then work with them from there in order to create the best possible outcomes for your business. That’s the way it should be.

Offer and Ask for Feedback

As a manager or business owner, you’ll have people working for you and you’ll be in charge of them in the workplace. As a result of that, you’ll be responsible for providing feedback to them and this is something that should not be overlooked. By providing constructive and helpful feedback, you’ll help people to grow and improve in their career. This not only helps the business, but also helps them too. You should also ask for feedback on how you’re doing and what colleagues and employees think you could improve on.

Embrace New Communication Options

The way in which we communicate in the world of business is always changing as new trends and technological advances arrive. Things like text to voice messaging bring benefits that you won’t want to miss out on, and that’s just one recent example of a new communication method that you can take advantage of. Whenever there’s a new trend, consider its benefits and think about whether or not it’s something that will help your business advance its approach to communication.

Become an Active Listener

Communication is not just about what you say and what you communicate to other people; it’s also about being a good and active listener. Put some real effort into what people are trying to get across to you. If you can do that, people will respond to you differently and more positively and that can only be a good thing for you and everyone in your workplace going forward.

Value Face-to-Face Communication

Face-to-face communication is something that’s really suffered and declined in recent times. We can all send emails and messages to one another instantly without any problems at all. So, why meet in person when it’s easier not to? Well, there’s something different about face-to-face communication, especially when it comes to meeting clients and things like that. When you speak to people in person and directly, much more is communicated than with a short sharp email.

Ask Questions

Clients also want to know that you actually care about their needs, and one way to show them that you care is by asking questions and taking an active interest in those needs. It makes a real difference and it’s something that you should certainly be looking to work on going forward. You’ll also learn a lot more about what your clients want and how you can satisfy them better if you ask those questions.

Communication is the cornerstone of pretty much everything your business does. It’s important that you’re always doing more to communicate with customers, clients and colleagues better. It can be tough to get it right 100% of the time, but as long as you’re striving to improve and taking the kinds of steps mentioned above, you’ll be on the right track.

Work From Home? Apps You Need

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If you work from home, you are probably always looking at the easiest way to keep your workflow as smooth as possible. Many freelancers work across a computer and a laptop – so having apps and software that can sync is going to be in your favor. There are many applications that will help you improve your productivity to some degree. What you use will depend on the size of your enterprise and what you do, though. 

Let’s take a look at some of the apps that will help you manage your workflow and access your work easier.

Work 

Process Street is a process management platform. It allows users to create, assign, schedule and manage structured processes. As well as documents and checklists really quickly. It works on drag and drop technology and integrates with Zapier – so you can import and export data with ease. This one is great for processes that need to be repeated often. 

Trello is less about automation and more about organization. You can see who is where in there project, what has been completed and what is due to be done. It is a very visual platform which helps more users feel a sense of urgency and also awareness of where the projects are currently on the timeline. Trello is very easy to edit, and you can drag the cards and boxes around with ease. You do need to upgrade if you intend to send the board to more than one person though. If you are working alone, it is excellent at keeping you on track too. 

Project 

Google Drive/ G Suite is obviously the go-to for millions of businesses and freelancers. It is free to use has a lot of functionality and sharing it is as simple as copying a link – which is ideal. You can have more than one person working in the same sheet or document at the same time, the ability to add notes and it works will all popular file types. 

Microsoft Office 365 is the standard for people in offices or at home. Even though Apple has their own locked-in system, many still purchase Microsoft Office 365 because, it, like G Suite the most highly compatible. It has a range of options, and you can access your files across anything in your subscription. 

Automation

There are things that you will do in your business day in and day out. They take up time that would be better spent elsewhere. IFTTT – If This Then That is a super popular app. It is literally working on the basis that if X happens, then so should Y. IFTTT can hook up to so many different apps that you can get it to the point that after you post a photo on Facebook, it gets flushed to Instagram, tweeted on twitter and added to your blog – but you can only have connections between two events – so you need to get creative. Or, smart home users can have the coffee machine go on at the same time as the bedroom light. 

It is going to take more than a quick peek on the internet to find everything that you want. But once you start exploring your options, you might just find your workflow is smooth and systematic.

Managing The Speed Of Your Customer Interactions

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To keep your business moving, you need to be able to act instantly. There has never been a better time to be able to do that than right now. Technology speeds up so much of your business needs, making you more efficient. But customers may not react at the speed that you need them too. 

Have More Channels Of Communication Open

If the problem that you’re facing is waiting for your customer to respond to your messages, then chances are they are not talking to you using the best tools for them. Having as many routes for your customer to get in touch with, you will speed things up dramatically. Using messaging services such as Facebook Messenger, offer your customers a great deal more convenience than emails. Often, when talking through emails, exchanges can take a great deal of time. There is a general tendency to write longer messages, and very often, emails are not replied to immediately. 

By utilizing the quick reply functions on messenger apps, you’ll get shorter, but more prompt responses- allowing you to get straight down to business. 

Keeping The Cash Flowing

Waiting for your customers to pay their invoices can often mean that you’re left waiting in limbo. With some companies keeping a tight grip on their own funds, they’ll push payment back as late as possible. Often to the due date, which could be anything up to ninety days after the invoice was sent. You can’t afford to wait that long. 

Your business has needs, and if you’ve completed a large job, your staff need paying for it. You may need the capital for the next project too, and if you’ve not got it to hand, you might find yourself turning down jobs. 

There is a way around this. Using factoring services such as BCashflow Positive you can effectively use an intermediary to claim your invoice immediately.  And, for a small percentage, they will wait to receive the money from your customers.

In-Depth Team Training

Customer service issues may take some time to resolve, and your team will no doubt want to get them dealt with quickly. But often, the way that your team handles an issue might not be the best way. Making sure that your team are well trained in all aspects of customer handling will ensure they do not get stuck on cases for longer than is useful. 

Specific and Measurable Targets

Time is money, and you need to set limits on how long things should take. Obviously, this will depend on the type of business that you are in, but you need a specific and measurable target to set your customer service representatives. These might be based around how quickly they respond to an initial query, to the total time that a ticket should be open. 

Customers expect a quick resolution, but importantly, it is in your best interests to deal with these in a timely manner, allowing you to move onto the next query sooner.

How To Find Exactly What You Want To Do

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While life is this almost magical set of circumstances with amazing, strange and wild aspects within it, it does come with a lot of uncertainty. We never really know what we’re heading into both collectively and as individuals. It can be a fairly daunting world out there for a lot of us both physically and mentally, so we need to have everything prepared and sorted out before we head into new things. 

One of those facets of life that can hold a lot of doubt and uncertainty is the professional, working side of things. We all have to get a job and bring in money in order to live, but the way in which we go about it can be a little puzzling at times. Leaving school and jumping into the real world is difficult enough, and finding a job that we want to do or that suits us can be ever so tricky. 

It’s not something that we should constantly be fretting over, but working is a big part of our lives, so the thoughts always reappear when we’re not in the situation we’d like to be. Our minds have a habit of reminding us and making us overthink! At the end of the day, a job is a job, and it will come with some hard days – no matter what line of work you enter. That said, you may as well look to minimize the impact of the hardships by stepping into something that you’ll be content in. 

Working in something that you’d enjoy isn’t a luxury that’s afforded to every single person. It is absolutely possible, however. Let’s have a little talk about things you should think about when considering a job that you’ll like.   

Think About What You Love

Obviously, you’ll probably want to jot down what you enjoy doing and then do a little research into the jobs that surround that kind of thing. It might seem like a pipe dream at first, but there will definitely be opportunities somewhere that have links to what you want. Somebody has to fill that role at some point – why can’t it be you? 

Think About What You Hate 

On the flip side, you should probably also write down what you absolutely do NOT want to head into. As we said before, it’s a big chunk of your life, so why would you want to spend eight or so hours a day absolutely demoralized? 

Rule Out Overnight Success

It’s something we all instinctively think about when we picture a job or a career path. We skip past the journey and see success. Think about a job that you’ll enjoy actually grind away at. The journey, at times, is just as satisfying as then end result. 

Careers Advisors 

If you’re really struggling, then you can absolutely get in touch with people that help out lost and occupationally nomadic job-seekers. They’ll be able to give you career tips as well as telling you about the ins and outs of different jobs you might be interested in. They pride themselves on getting you into a better position than you were before, so you can rely on them to push you in the right direction.  

Try Different Things 

Perhaps just getting out there and having a good go at different jobs could be the way to go for you. There’s nothing quite like actually experiencing something. You can read up on it and know all of the theory, but actually doing it makes a big difference. You might get into a job and realize that it’s something you’d absolutely love to pursue.

Make Them Wait, See Them Disappear

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For every business, time is money, but that can be true for customers too. Customers that are in a rush, or browsing while on the move don’t have time to wait for your website or other features to load. They might only have a short amount of time and thus they need to make sure every second is not wasted. You would think that with the advent of smartphones and Google prioritizing mobile friendly websites that this would be a no brainer. Yet, so many small businesses don’t realize how long waiting times make people just swipe or click away. And yet, the standard of what can be deemed ‘too long’ is also changing. Maybe 5 years ago it could take 5 seconds to load up a page and seen as normal. Now, 5 seconds is just too long. Inherently, you should be up to speed with what kind of technology you’re using as well.

Focus on priority content

Take for example your business blog, you don’t want certain pieces of content to load slower than others. Sometimes you have catchy slogans, titles and first paragraphs or sentences that are designed to capture the reader so they don’t click away so easily. Well, you need to give your main content priority when it comes to the loading que. If you have videos and text together, you need to choose which one is going to be more eye catching and thus order them correctly. Maybe you think your blog content is more important than any visuals, thus images and videos will need to load after the text. This also comes down to any ads you’re running on the webpage. If you have a video or PPC ad in the banner, you need to decide whether to load the ads first or the content. In other words, you need to formulate a queue so you have a better chance of keeping the consumer on the page for the initial few seconds.

Speed is essential

Speed is often the savior in many forms of life. The speed of your transactions, decision making, problem solving and also webpage loadings is vital to success. Take a look at Pagespeedplus.com where you can learn how the speed of your web pages can be calculated and improved. Sometimes the homepage loads faster because it’s going to be the main page in the results of search engines. However you may also need to keep a high standard for your ‘browse products’ page. Although it’s understandable that this kind of page will be slower because of the amount of links and images. However, this page will always be added to thus the page will load slower and slower. Using bulk testing you can see which pages aren’t loading as fast as you’d like them to.

 

Allow quick access

For businesses that allow users to create accounts and profiles, you will have a sign in or log in bar on the homepage or pretty much every webpage. However users that just want to log in to comment on a post in the forums, comment on a blog post or just generally sign in so they can use their account to shop, should not be left waiting for the log/sign in bar to load. Therefore this is also something you must take into account when designing the bar itself. Your page might load from the top down, or just individually but the login bar must be one of the first in the line. You might also want to allow the bar to be inside of another item such as a profile picture. This adds another step to the process even though the profile picture may be the first thing that loads up. However if you put the login bar as a separate item to load, this can mean you need to sacrifice content in the loading que. It’s good practice to therefore make the login bar top priority for only some pages because after all, it may only be used by those that are regular customers. 

Speed is absolutely essential when it comes to loading times. Pages that are not set up for mobiles will not keep that browsing commuting consumer on your website for long. It’s even easier to swipe away than it is to go back on a desktop computer. It’s also within your best interest to make sure you have a content priority queue. Only the most important content that you believe will keep customers on the page for longer should be loading up first.

Improve Your Customers’ First Impressions

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Good first impressions help to establish trust and convert customers. In fact, according to one study, it only take seven seconds to build a first impression. Here are just some of the ways in which you can make a positive initial impact on your customers.

Use the right body language

When meeting a customer in person, body language is important. In fact, it can often have more of an impact than the words you utter. Some of the basics include a smile, a confident posture, eye contact and a firm handshake. Try to also limit other activities – fiddling with your phone as you talk to someone may come across to them that you are disinterested.

Dress presentably

How you dress is also important. Not all jobs require dressing formally (in fact, overdressing could make you come across a little too conservative), however you should always keep a tidy appearance such as not having any creases or stains on your clothes. Messy hair, dirty nails and stubble can also be off-putting to many people.

Improve your telephone manner

If the first time you interact with customers is on the phone, having a good telephone manner could be vital. Small details such as giving a warm greeting, remembering the customer’s name and speaking slowly and clearly can make people warm to you.  Some companies go so far as to outsource phone answering companies such as Ivy Answering to give a good impression on the phone. Having little interference on the phone is also important – when it comes to mobile phones, choosing a provider with the best signal could be important.  

Keep your workplace tidy

If a client’s first impression is likely to be a visit to your workplace, you want to make sure that your workplace is tidy. A lack of cleanliness can cause customers to immediately lose trust by showing that you’re careless and disorganized. Keep on top of tidying so that your workplace is always presentable – hire a cleaning company if you have to. Also make sure that your workplace is not in disrepair – a faded shop sign or a faulty automatic door is not going to create a good first impression. 

Make sure your website looks professional

When it comes to attracting customers online, your website is often the first point of contact. This needs to look professional so that customers know you’re competent digitally. You can build a website yourself, but if you want to guarantee a professional look you may be better off hiring the services of a website development company such as Cyberfrog Design. Aspects such as SEO could be important too for ensuring that your website has high rankings (this will make your company look more popular) whilst positive reviews and testimonials could also help gain trust online.