Support During The Age Of COVID-19July 26th, 2020

In times of trouble like we are currently experiencing with the COVID-19 virus, it is imperative for service companies to step up their support function. The status quo is not good enough, not nearly good enough.

Listen, everyone is going through difficult times right now. Many businesses are suffering and some are in dire straits.

Here are four things you can do to help your clients/customers:

  1. Be Responsive – when someone asks you for help or send you a request, answer them as soon as humanly possible. Since our inception in 1996 we have always practiced this. We always respond the same day. While this seems elementary, you’d be shocked at how many companies in my line of work don’t respond for weeks at a time.
  2. Be Flexible – you will inevitably have clients/customers who are having a difficult time paying their invoices. Wherever possible you need to be flexible either give people more time, reduce bills and help them in anyway you can to get through this tragic in our history.
  3. Be Proactive – when you see clients missing out on opportunities, especially those that won’t cost them too much money, let them know, provide them with any and all ideas you have that might help them survive, and eventually thrive.
  4. Be Understanding – it’s always good to put yourself in other shoes. Perhaps your business is doing OK, but that’s not true of everyone and it always helps to try and show understanding. You will have people angry, upset, sad and experiencing every emotion there is. People’s frustration level is at an all-time high. So it is our job to try to calm them, help them.

As the expression goes, this too shall pass. Eventually we will have treatments and/or vaccines and we will be able to move on from this difficult time in our history. Until then it is our duty to help others in anyway we can. The least we can do is provide the best support we can. This will ultimately pay off and your clients/customers loyalty towards your company will result in more referrals and longer-term satisfaction. Everyone remembers those who helped them during difficult times.

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Posted in Barry Roos

Will this help and can it hurt?August 3rd, 2016

Blog Post: Will this help and can it hurt?There is an strategy attorneys universally follow: Do not ask a question you don’t know the answer to. This is so the attorney isn’t blindsided and actually asks a question which will harm his or her case.

This is good advice, but you’re probably wondering what is a web guy doing speaking about strategy for attorneys?

Good question.
This actually came to me while perusing my email. I receive a weekly email from a popular review site which will remain nameless. They send you an email recapping your past week’s activities. It tells you how many people viewed your profile, and other pertinent data. This made me think of that strategy that attorneys use, as this email actually hurts their businesses and the chances of me spending hard earned money to advertise with them get slimmer each week.

Why?
I will help to tell you. Why would I ever advertise with a company who is telling me nobody views my profile and I get no leads? It’s almost like a reverse IQ test. If I advertise with them, I am probably a moron or want to throw money down the drain. So what I’m saying to you is: Before you put out any content on the web for social media, Ask yourself: Will this help or hurt my business? In my example, they are sending emails to countless thousands telling the recipient that no one looks at your profile on their site.

Now that doesn’t mean that everything you put out there is going to equal instant income. No, in fact much of what we put out our social media is to portray ourselves in a positive light. I like to say that anything that shows me as a subject matter expert is a good thing and will benefit my business in the long run.

It is almost like there should be a Hippocratic oath for web developers & website managers. First do no harm. This is great advice for any industry, though of course the damage I can do with content or social media is not quite what the Hippocrates was speaking of…

Bottom line:
When you’re putting things out on the web, remember these things are there forever. How many times have you seen somebody put something out there that truly harms their career/business. They rush in and delete the post, but it’s out there forever. Someone has already created a screen shot and/or shared with their friends. So before you post anything ask yourself the question: Will this help and can it hurt?

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