So far, in my blog posts, I've discussed ways to make your business more efficient from a business owner's point of view but, let's flip it for a moment, let's think about your clients. Do you have a client friendly business?
Putting yourself in your client's shoes can help you choose the right technology for the job, one that helps both business owner and client.
The other day my husband had to fill in a form, from quite a large organisation, to give a reference for someone. This wasn't an online form, it was an editable word document that was attached to an email. Now, I'm pretty tech savvy but even I struggled to edit and put the information in the right place using the husband's smartphone and we had to resort to using the laptop and, even then, it wasn't easy.
This is an example of moving with the times but not quite keeping up. The form can be emailed over, downloaded, filled in electronically, uploaded and emailed back (I'm exhausted just listing all those steps!) but is it user friendly? Not really. In this case an online form from either Google or Microsoft would have worked so much better.
We introduced these at school last year to replace the paper forms for obtaining information on children starting in our nursery and, in my opinion, it's such an improved user experience.
The advantage with these forms is that they have both desktop and mobile versions so it's easy for someone to sit on their mobile and complete them. Let's be honest, not everyone wants to start up the laptop, if they even have one, many people only use mobile phones and tablets these days.
Both Google and Microsoft forms can be customised with brand colours and logos and you can attach extra documents that may need to accompany the form.
Take a moment and put yourself in your clients' shoes. Are they getting the user experience from your business that you want them to?
This doesn't just apply to forms? What systems do you have in place for:
How they contact you.
How they receive a response (can this be automated so they know their email or message has been received?).
How they make a booking with you.
How they pay.
We all like things to be easy so, no matter how good your service or product is, if it's a nightmare booking an appointment or your pricing is hard to understand, chances are your potential clients will go elsewhere.
Make your whole package an experience that they want to repeat and your business will thrive.
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