Category

Business Improvement

Oct 31
0
Preparing for Employees Going on Annual Leave

9 Ways to Prepare Your Business for Employees Going on Holiday Leave

By | Business Improvement, Call Center Support, Employee Management, Time Management, Virtual Assistant Support | No Comments

Last year’s holiday season retail sales in the US alone topped $161 billion and 43% shoppers supported small businesses on Small Business Saturday. With the holiday season coming up, now is the time to plan out a company strategy to ensure you have backup staff handling essential business activities at all times.

Figures for Holiday Season Retail Sales

You don’t have to dread the holiday season when your employees go on leave, when the company’s manpower is down and productivity seems to nosedive. Simply follow our tips that we’ve practiced and improved upon through trial and error over 8 years of operations and you will be well prepared. You can easily handle holiday leave while maintaining a healthy culture and employer brand.

  1. Use a Workforce Management Software

Using a scheduling and staffing software or even a shared Google calendar can make your life infinitely easier. This way you won’t have clashes in scheduling vacations and can plan accurately in advance for holidays. Most workforce management softwares have additional features like communication, task management, and time reporting. Here is our rundown of some effective softwares:

Deputy

With unlimited users, shift swapping, forecasting and QuickBooks integration, Deputy is a mobile platform that can cut your time spent scheduling considerably. It is perfect for small to medium businesses employing shift workers.

When I Work

Offering templates and shortcuts with its mobile and desktop adaptive platform, When I Work is also integrated with some POS and Payroll systems and has a very intuitive user interface (UI).

Quinyx

It allows you to schedule work keeping in mind employee contracts and working time directives. You can also set up an optimal schedule matching the best employee to the most appropriate task and set up a staffing schedule taking expected sales into account.

TrackSmart

Their online time and attendance management software allows for scheduling based on employee availability and job skills. You can even set up recurring schedules. All these are accessible from all devices 24/7. These smarter schedules will ensure you are never understaffed, even for the holiday season.

  2. Be Transparent

Make sure you communicate your holiday leave policy and vacation policy to your employees as soon as they are hired. Is it first come first served? Are there any vacation blackout periods when no vacation requests would be entertained due to an expected rise in traffic or a special project? Will you be encouraging them to take their vacation in the slower periods? Communicating all this in advance will be fairer and more acceptable to your employees. Make sure any vacations are granted judiciously—with employees fully cognizant of the decision-making criteria—after due deliberation and without any favoritism.

  3.  Set a Deadline

Set a deadline by which employees can request holiday leave. Depending on your needs, this can be anywhere from a few days to several weeks before the staff wants to use leave time. This deadline should be far enough in advance for you to ensure that it does not affect a project’s productivity or deadline and you are not understaffed. Also cap the number of employees of each specialization who can take off at the same time.

  4. Get Pertinent Information

When an employee puts in a leave request, request a report on current projects. Ask them how they plan to meet deadlines before they head out the door. Nicolas Gremion told SmallBizTrends that this process “gives me piece of mind that their absence won’t be problematic and they can leave knowing that they’ve tied up any loose ends.”

Get a detailed breakdown of projects they are currently working on, tasks to be performed, access details for pertinent files and accounts, deadlines for current projects, important contact information, and any other information needed by the employees covering the vacationers’ jobs. Create a checklist of these that each vacationing employee can tally against before leaving.

Project NameDeadlineTasks to be PerformedContact PersonContact InformationAccess Details
AccountPassword
Project 1
Project 2
Project 3

  5. Delegate Tasks

Then make sure that someone is covering for the missing employee. Sometimes, that requires handing off tasks and projects to a few different people in the office instead of asking one person to do the work of two. Crosstrain employees in preparation for the upcoming holiday season, ensuring that the backup employee is fully conversant with the appropriate project training manual.

  6. Trade-off

Trade-off between your employees. Some employees may have important commitments at other times of the year that they can take time off for and then work during the holiday season. Allow employees with similar job descriptions to trade off their vacations with each other, one picking up the slack when the other is on leave. Stagger your employee vacations so you always have coverage; allow some to work the morning shift, some the afternoon shift, or schedule one set of employees for the first few days of the week and the other for the rest of the weekdays during the holiday season.

  7. Offer Incentives for Working Employees

Give cash bonuses, extra paid leaves redeemable after the holiday season, and other incentives for those willing to work during the most popular vacation periods. This will ensure that you have a productive skeleton staff even during the heart of the holiday season. It will also boost the morale of those who have to work over the holidays when the other employees are on leave and enjoying themselves.

  8. Hire Temporary Support

In some cases, you can even hire a temporary virtual assistant to pick up the slack in an employee’s absence. Especially in the retail industry, business booms in the holiday season and having employees on holiday leave can cause a stress on operations. Hire a qualified virtual assistant to take care of ecommerce sales, provide administrative and operational support, or even act as a virtual receptionist service during the holidays.

You can even hire a temporary call center operator or a customer service center to handle customer service, field incoming calls, generate leads, and make telemarketing calls to take advantage of the boost in sales in the holiday season.

Having part-time staff as backup all year round is always a sound decision, so they can come in if you have any shortages and during the holiday season when most employees are on leave.

  9. Prep for the Manager’s Leave

What if the manager is the one going on leave? We suggest that you let your employees know far enough in advance so they can prepare. Make the manager’s calendar public so that the staff will know when he or she will be back. Ask the manager to train the second-in-command to pick up the slack. The administrative support staff must also be familiarized with how to handle certain tasks while the manager is out of the office, such as where to direct calls and how to respond to requests. Then, consider having a protocol for an emergency, so employees can determine when to call the manager while he or she is on leave.

With these tactics, you can ensure that handling the holiday season won’t be such a hassle. Let us know down below what some best practices are that you have seen or used for handling employee leave during the holiday season.

Oct 19
0
Do You Need an Inbound Call Center Solution?

Do You Need an Inbound Call Center Solution for Your Business?

By | Call Center Support, Customer Service, Inbound Call Center Solution, Remote Support Services | No Comments

With customer service at the forefront of business competitive differentiation in today’s global marketplace, and 81% of marketers estimated to be competing on the basis of customer experience by 2020, you need to evaluate your customer care center and see whether you need an inbound call center solution.

What is an Inbound Call Center Solution?

An inbound call is initiated by a customer, employee, vendor, or other stakeholder who wants information or assistance with some aspect of your product or service. Your business is not initiating the call. An inbound call center solution constitutes the management of all inbound channels of contact that any stakeholder can use to reach out to your business. All inbound calls, messages, or chats are routed to an available agent with the required skillset and these can constitute queries, technical support requests, order processing requests, etc.

Firms providing call center support offer both inbound and outbound call center services. However, if more than 50% of the calls are inbound, the call center is classified as an inbound call center solution.

Benefits of Having an Inbound Call Center Solution

A reliable customer and vendor support system enhances brand value. It not only significantly improves the conversion rate, it assists in cross-selling and upselling, and the after-sales support ensures customers stay with your brand for longer.

Improved Bottom Line

Customer service is more often that not the deciding factor in ensuring a positive customer experience and retaining current customers—customer experience leaders outperform laggards by 25%. Customers purchase more after a good customer service experience and stop buying or even avoid a business after a bad customer support interaction. More important still, customers share their good and bad experiences, so your customer support has a direct impact on your brand reputation and long-term profitability.

An effective inbound call center solution improves your customer service, enhancing the bottom line by creating more positive customer support experiences.

Importance of Good Customer Service - Inbound Call Center Solution

Customer Retention

70% of businesses believe it is cheaper to retain a current customer than to acquire new ones and, depending on the competitiveness of your industry, acquiring a new customer can be 5 times more expensive than retaining a current one. Couple that with a 60-70% probability of selling to an existing customer, your primary focus should be on your current customer base to improve the bottom line.

A mere 5% increase in your retention rate has the potential to increase your profits by 25–95%, the magnitude of gains depending on your business model. Loyal customers buy more from the company and become brand evangelists, spreading positive buzz. Not only are they willing to pay premium prices for assured quality and reliability, the operating costs of serving them is lower, so you must ensure they stay with your brand and do not switch to a competitor.

The best way to retain and grow your customer base is investing in an effective inbound call center solution.

Handling Important Accounts

Your most important accounts need special care since 20% of customers typically account for more than 80% of sales. Providing these accounts special care will have an exponential positive impact on your profitability. You can have an inbound call center solution with dedicated agents for these accounts to provide them enhanced customer support.

Importance of Customer Retention- Inbound Call Center Solution

Better Customer Insight

An inbound call center solution helps build a better understanding of the common issues faced by customers, their problem points as well as main complaints. This would allow you to tailor your value proposition accordingly. For example, if you get to know through customer feedback that your product gets soggy in humid climates, you can focus on better vacuum-sealing protection. You can also add enhanced features that customers have shown an interest in and proactively determine how customer interactions with the product are changing.

Checklist to Conclusively Determine the Need

Use this simple checklist curated by us to determine whether your business needs an inbound call center solution. Any of these would require specialized call center support to increase sales and productivity.

Receptionist Service—Your business gets a large volume of calls for scheduling and confirming appointments, asking to be redirected to various departments, and miscellaneous other queries for which you need an inbound customer service center.
Inquiries—Potential customers get in touch for queries about your product, process, or service before making the purchase decision. This may be directly related to the composition and function of the product or service or its recyclability, sustainable sourcing, the location of your outlets etc. These must be handled professionally for maximum conversion to sales.
Order Processing—Customers require assistance in processing orders, confirming sizes, choosing between alternative modes of shipment, tracking orders etc. Your business needs to process orders given live across multiple channels by customers and enter them into the database, allowing you to deal with rush periods and ensure timely delivery.
Bookings and Reservations—You handle reservations and bookings for conferences, hotels, trips and holidays etc. and need an efficient system for ensuring nothing slips through the cracks.
After Sales Support—Current customers need troubleshooting assistance, technical support, assistance with upgrades, usage instructions, repair and maintenance, and call center support is needed to handle these communications. SAAS providers like Intuit and those selling goods that need technical support get a lot of incoming traffic for this reason.
Marketing Support—Customers contacting your company must be told of your range of products and services and combinations of products that would enhance their experience, to increase their share of wallet.
Billing Support—You get incoming queries regarding modes of payment, payroll processing, and tax liabilities that a trained customer service representative must address.
Global Customer Base—Customers from all over the globe use your product or service and require 24 hour call center support to cover differing time zones.
After-Hours Support—You must be available for your customers after hours too since you are an emergency service provider or ecommerce business with customers in various time zones.
Multilingual Support—Your customers, vendors, and/or employees speak multiple languages and multilingual call center services would make communication efficient and enhance brand loyalty.
Omnichannel Customer Experience Management—With the proliferation of points of contact, customers and other stakeholders reach out via various mediums: calls, text, live chat, social media messages, fax etc. and you need an omnichannel management system for all of it.
Vendor Support—Multiple vendors contact your business to confirm orders you have given, shipments received, invoices and payments. An inbound call center solution would manage your vendor communication and relationships.
Large Volume of Job Applications—You receive a large volume of incoming calls, emails, and social media messages from potential workers for job applications and then subsequent application status inquiries. These need to be handled by HR through dedicated lines of communication.
Multiple Departments—Calls and other incoming inquiries may be relevant to any of several departments, business units, branches, or outlets and need to be directed to the relevant employees.
Type of Need—The features of the inbound call center solution depend on the time-sensitivity and type of the inbound communication:
  •  Very Time-Sensitive: You will need 24 hour call center support if the inbound communication is very time sensitive—if the query is not resolved as fast as possible, the customer can switch to a competitor’s brand or the business will lose money. For instance, having 24/7/365 support for a payroll software is necessary because if the glitch is not resolved immediately, the checks will not go out in time.
  • Small Queries: Live chat support is required for small queries to help redirect customers on the website, resolve small login issues and other problems that have instantaneous fixes.
  • Requests for Quotes and Meetings: In case of queries that require research and strategizing, email support is a better alternative. For instance, if a firm needs a quote from you for a strategic partnership, it can wait till you put together a proposal and the best form of initial communication is email support.

Features Needed for Inbound Call Center Solution

The next step is figuring out what features you need in your inbound call center solution and which ones can wait for now and you can opt for once your business has expanded sufficiently.

Characteristics of Customer Service Representative

Some of the most crucial characteristics of a customer service representative are:

Basic Skillset

Each customer service representative must be well-trained in customer care, with communication skills par excellence.

Well-Prepared

The agent must be well-versed in the product or service, order processing, and common issues customers face. He or she must be able to handle any type of incoming query.

Handle Pressure

Should be able to easily deal with the pressure and volume of incoming calls.

Omnichannel Experience

The customer service representative must be able to handle all points of contact and all mediums used by stakeholders.

Features for Business VoIP Platform

You must analyze your inbound call center solution needs and decide whether you need each of the following features in your business VoIP platform.

Channels Covered

Determine the current main contact channels like phones, text messaging, social media, live chat etc. as well as those you want to target.

IVR

Do you want to automate the first step and direct calls to the relevant departments and agents as efficiently as possible?

International Inbound

Do you receive calls from international numbers? Do you want to make it simpler for your international callers to get in touch with you?

Number of Extensions & Queues

Do you need several extensions to create multiple points of contact for various departments and branches?

Online PBX Controls

Do you want a Private Branch Exchange that is stored and managed over the internet rather than end-user hardware?

Voicemail Box

Do you need one or several voicemail boxes and do you want to receive transcriptions of voicemails in your email for better management?

Call Flows & Failover

Figure out whether you need to set up a route for incoming calls and emails so that no incoming communication slips through the cracks.

Greetings & On-Hold Options

Do you need hold and forwarding capabilities? Analyze whether custom greetings and on-hold messages add value.

Call Monitoring

Is there a need for recording and monitoring calls, with options for the supervisor to override calls and/or assist the agent?

Wait Time Announcement

Would you like to announce an approximate wait time to your callers, especially at times of long call queues to create greater trust and transparency?

Caller Information

Would your team better handle callers and live chat customers if they get some information on the customer before they pick up the call or respond to the chat?

Advanced Call Analytics

Will insights into call patterns, locations, extensions, and agents help you in strategizing and improving productivity? Do you need basic or advanced analytics?

Partnering with a Call Center Support Provider

Once you have determined that you need an inbound call center solution and the features you need, you must ensure that it is a seamless extension of your brand image. This requires customer service expertise. But do you need an in-house customer care center, with the associated HR admin expenses, overhead costs, benefits, and paid leaves?

A more efficacious option is partnering with a call center support provider since you would be assured of reliable customer support that builds brand value. Each customer service representative will be experienced, highly skilled, and well-trained at not only handling incoming communication but also cross-selling and upselling products and services.  Most call center support providers cover 24/7/365, ensuring your business is never out of reach of your stakeholders, especially your customers.

This is also the more scalable option that will allow you to expand operations easily without doubling your overhead costs. It is ideal for businesses that face seasonal fluctuations in sales volume.

Take the time to determine whether you need an inbound call center solution, which features you need, and how to quickly and cost-effectively get one for your business. Our advice is, contact a specialist call center support provider for a custom inbound call center solution that best suits your business’ needs.

Oct 10
0
SMM International- IU Client Blog Post

Christopher Wick, Social Media Guru and LIVE on WLOX – Leading in a Digital Era!

By | Business Improvement, Customer Service, Ecommerce Support Services, Entrepreneurship, Social Media | No Comments

Looking for a pre-eminent advertising medium for your company? In a sea of options, how do you come down in favor of the best, unrivaled one? In a day and age where our gossips are about the latest video trending on social media and not some inefficacious TV show, the answer certainly comes in approval of use of social media to grow digitally and make money. Social media comes with copious marketing benefits for companies inclined to walk towards the churning internet news cycle.

Social media helps a great deal to reach its target audience at the lowest cost. Consumers can communicate with the company and get their questions answered and also provide feedback. Facebook, YouTube, Instagram are few of the booming social media platforms. The age has come where it’s beyond the bounds of possibility to disjoin social media from the enterprise—thoroughly affecting research, distribution, and how products need to be fashioned in the future.

Low cost is an absolute advantage social media gives us as compared to traditional marketing, which is a bit too exorbitant. Social media helps your business proliferate and build trust with people. Lost cost advance features can be used for promotion of the content.

Online promotion prompts two-way communication. This helps a company to know if its message is being delivered efficaciously. It also lets the company know if the word is going across to the ‘target audience’ or not.

It’s an opportunity to discover what consumers think of the product and share their thoughts. One has to be consistent in excellence in order to gain recognition and make money online.

Consistency is the key!

What makes you stand out? What makes you differently amazing is what the entire digital game is all about. The posts and advertisements are the essence and key ways to bring traffic to your website. Social media propounds an easy and low-cost way to make your audience get intrigued about your content. Lead generation is another edge social media provides for business. Like Christopher Wick, author of best selling e-book Use of Social Media to Grow Business and Make Money says,

“I encourage my clients and people to go try it. You never see the results unless you do it, so do it.” He also says, “Social media marketing is the best way to grow your business since no risks are involved, also no fear of losing capital.”

The 69-page critically acclaimed book gives an insight of Christopher Wick’s understanding of social media and his brilliance in the marketing world to surpass your goals and grow your business. Christopher advises to always get help from an expert or someone who knows about social media more than you do.

Because as simple as marketing through social media seems like, there’s still a lot that can go wrong!

About Award-Winning Speaker & Best-Selling Author, Christopher Wick

Christopher is a seasoned award-winning speaker and informative author. He wrote Amazon’s #1 U.S. and internationally best-selling book, “How to Use Social Media to Grow your Business and Make Money”. As founder of SMM International, an international social media marketing firm, Christopher is responsible for consulting with clients to manage their online reputation and internet presence to serve their business objectives for revenue growth, lead generation, and growing the bottom line.

SMM International focuses on managing clients’ social media accounts by posting original content, managing incoming messages, and growing followers.

Call 888-SMM-INTL today to schedule your free social media strategy session!

Christopher is one of IdeasUnlimited’s valued long-term clients. This post appeared originally on his blog.

Oct 04
0
The Rise of Online Retail and How Managed Support Services Can Help You Get Ahead of the Curve

The Rise of Online Retail and How Managed Support Services Can Help You Get Ahead of the Curve

By | Backend Support Services, Business Improvement, Call Center Support, Customer Service, Ecommerce Support Services | No Comments

“Online retail is booming and is the next big thing!” Rest assured, this is not an overly-enthusiastic rhetorical claim by some zealous internet purist. Economists and retail analysts agree that online retail has shown steady progress over the last few years and is here to stay.

According to Business Insider, worldwide ecommerce sales increased by 15.5% this year from 2017. In stark contrast, traditional brick-and-mortar sales only increased by a paltry 3.1%. In the US alone, ecommerce sales accounted for 10% of all retail sales—up from 8.2% a year ago. Not only that, online shopping is estimated to be a $526 billion industry in the US, with more than 80% of internet users expected to make an online purchase in 2019.

Statistics for Growth of Ecommerce Sales

Why the Shift to Online Retail?

So why this aggressive shift towards online retail? The most obvious answer is the convenience it provides to its users. Online shopping is hassle-free, usually offers free delivery, and saves so much time! For retailers, it eliminates the pressure to continuously expand physically and open costly brick-and-mortar outlets; an online ecommerce portal ensures an additional revenue stream, not to mention the automatic promotion of the brand.

The Secret to Online Retail Success

Online retail, despite all its pros, is not for the complacent or lazy business owner/manager. It requires constant innovation, which includes providing impeccable and super-responsive human and technical support.

The human part of ensuring a seamless online retail experience includes offering attentive customer care center support and omnichannel customer experience management. The biggest pitfall is not responding to customer queries and/or comments quickly and efficiently—rub a customer the wrong way and brace yourself for some irreparable (and fast-spiraling) brand bashing on Facebook or Twitter! On the other hand, handle a customer with the due care and diligence, and bask in the generous lauding and viral exponential appraisals of your brand! The customer is truly the king (and queen) in the online retail world!

Now come to the second part of innovation—the technical aspect. Technology changes fast. For an online business to run smoothly, it needs to be supported by a solid and scalable online inventory management system and strong backend support that tolerates no downtime.

Nothing puts off an eager shopper who has liberally filled up his/her shopping cart and excitedly clicked check-out more than encountering an annoyingly slow response time, and worse, inefficient or insecure online payment services. According to Statista, 42% of online shoppers worldwide prefer to make their payments via credit cards, while 39% prefer Paypal; imagine the volume of business you would lose if an insecure payment system is in place! Your potential customer will be replaced by a sulky user ready to vent out their frustration on social media. Your listing and inventory management must also be par excellence to ensure all the information is up-to-date and you have no surplus or shortages.

Importance of Secure Online Payment System

Another important aspect is the content on your website, whether it fully describes all aspects of your service or product and resolves all queries of the average customer. Poor quality content and brochure websites do not garner high conversion rates.

Did you know that you only have 0 to 8 seconds to get the visitor’s attention through the headline and the landing page, and even a one second delay can result in a 7% reduced conversion rate? Moreover, detailed product content is considered extremely important by 88% of online shoppers. Not only should the website be aesthetically pleasing and fast, it should be intuitive and interactive, with grammatically correct content that highlights your unique value proposition.

Important Figures for Online Retail

So how to juggle the tricky trinity of online retail, which is maintain the quality of your product/service, ensure a flawless customer care service, and provide solid operational support and backend support systems?

The solution is delegate! A prudent business always focuses on its core product and delegates the ancillary and supporting (but equally important) workflows and tasks to the experts! For online retail, the optimal approach is to get onboard a reputed and well-established support services provider that provides all these services at lower cost than an in-house setup. Doing so ensures a unified and seamless customer experience, translating into higher brand loyalty and return on investment.

Checklist for Getting Ahead of the Curve

  • Get call center support to
    • answer queries of potential customers,
    • resolve any issues that arise with current ones
    • provide omnichannel support: email, social media, text, phone, fax etc.
    • manage your customer database to keep track of purchasing history and loyal customers
    • manage your feedback and reviews to convey a positive brand image and transform disgruntled customers to satisfied repeat customers, and
    • give technical support in case glitches appear on the online platform.
  • Invest in backend support for your online retail platform to ensure
    • fast loading speeds, working links, pages, and graphics,
    • a responsive shopping cart, and
    • a secure online payment system.
  • Partner with an ecommerce support services provider to
    • manage your ecommerce brand,
    • ensure up-to-date listing and inventory management,
    • optimize product information through data entry, data cleansing, product catalog management, and indexing services and
    • provide order processing and tracking services.
  • Get an expert content writer to ensure your website’s content is
    • search engine optimized and
    • grammatically correct.

Case in Point

PatPat a 24 hour call center support client of IdeasUnlimited

PatPat, an online apparel company that aims to make affordable quality apparel for moms and kids, seems to have nailed the online shopping experience just right. They focus on providing reasonable, trendy, and quality wear. But what truly makes them stand out in the jungle of online apparel sites is their attentive customer care. Did they deviate from their core competency of providing apparel to focus on managing the omnichannel customer experience?

Of course not, they simply recruited a customer care center expert. Initially, they only needed two customer care agents but the number grew exponentially as their business flourished, and they now have 30-plus agents ensuring an empathetic customer care service. The increase in this number shows how important a well-equipped customer care center is! Their 24 hour call center manages their brand image by providing customer service, omnichannel support, and ecommerce support services.

PatPat is flourishing because the work is done in unison—PatPat focuses on and provides the core product while IdeasUnlimited helps add value to PatPat’s value proposition. Indeed, a win-win situation!

Conclusion

In a nutshell, retailers that have not figured out how to build a powerful presence online, have not invested in doing so, and are not planning to do so in the future will be left behind. Online retail is certainly not a fad—it is here to stay. The way to get ahead of the curve is to focus on your core competencies and partner with a specialist support services provider for support systems—let your product shine on a scalable and efficient ecommerce platform!

Sep 06
0
Why You Need a Medical Remote Team

Why You Need a Medical Remote Team

By | Call Center Support, Customer Service, Medical Virtual Assistant, Multilingual Support, Virtual Assistant Support | No Comments

A medical virtual assistant could be valuable for doctors, dentists, therapists, and a wide variety of other health professionals.

As a medical professional, you need to set time aside to not only look after your patients but also yourself. You need breaks from the hectic schedules and the hundreds of patients you have to treat or help. Without assistance, many medical practitioners end up overworking themselves. However, this does not have to be the case. These days agencies can help professionals (doctors, healthcare professionals etc.) by offering them the aid of a medical virtual assistant or a medical call center operator. Here are a few reasons why you should go for one of these options:

Administrative Support

A clinic or hospital only runs smoothly when its administrative tasks are taken care of by the staff. Such tasks range from medical coding to organizing shifts and coordinating between nurses and doctors. All of these can be handled by a medical virtual assistant. A medical call center operator, on the other hand, can manage referrals, communicate with patients, field calls, and make appointments in busy business hours. Working with a remote team like this will free you up from such duties, leaving you to see to the patients’ welfare.

Invoicing Support

A medical remote team can help you manage medical billing and payments, following up on invoices, and making sure payments are made on time.

24/7/365 Coverage

Working with medical support service providers would enable you to provide 24 hour healthcare call center support, so there are no delays in communicating emergencies to providers, 24/7/365. This will also expand your business scope considerably since you will be available after hours too.

Handling Medical Transcription & Translation

Get professionally formatted reports created from audio recordings by a remote team specialized in medical support to free up your time for value-adding activities. You can also opt for multilingual transcription services to cater to a diverse board of directors, medical professionals, or patients. A multilingual virtual assistant would allow you to communicate with colleagues from different countries and specialists all over the globe. Similarly, a multilingual call center operator would allow you to communicate effectively with patients from diverse backgrounds and all points of the globe.

Cost Efficiency

Medical practitioners, like all other professionals, must pay attention to budgeting as they diagnose and treat patients. One way to decrease your payroll burden is to utilize the services of a medical virtual assistant since that way you do not need to incur any overhead costs or HR admin expenses. You will also save the cost of training a new hire when you opt for a trained medical remote worker instead.

Increased Job Satisfaction

There is no better feeling than going home to the realization that you made a difference in someone’s life or saved someone. Having a medical virtual assistant will free you up to pursue your career and other passions. Therefore, getting a medical virtual assistant should ultimately increase your job satisfaction.

Having a medical virtual assistant or call center operator has financial as well as health benefits for you. Get the ball rolling today and see what a difference it makes in your life!

Sep 06
0
Pros and Cons of Drinking One Cup of Coffee per Day

Pros and Cons of Drinking One Cup of Coffee per Day

By | Business Improvement, Life Hacks | No Comments

Is your daily fix of coffee good for you? At IdeasUnlimited, we encourage a cup or two a day to enhance performance levels and for its health benefits.

For decades both coffee evangelists and the anti-coffee lobby have argued the pros and cons of drinking coffee due to is psychoactive effects, commonly attributed to one of its ingredients — caffeine. While both sides agree to a cautionary restriction on coffee intake, it is difficult to conclusively determine which side has more supporting evidence.

At IdeasUnlimited, as a global remote workforce recruiter and a call center support provider with 24/7 coverage, we have both employees who find it difficult to wake up in the morning and those who have to stay alert at later hours of the night. It was thus imperative for us to compare the pros and cons of drinking the globally recognized elixir for alertness.

Pros

1. Elevates Physical Performance Levels

Coffee increases your adrenaline levels, enhancing physical performance levels. According to a study relating caffeine ingestion to exercise performance, coffee enhanced exercise performance by 12.3%, especially in endurance exercises, in which the time to exhaustion was much longer.

2. Powerful Mental Kick-Start

A cup of coffee a day keeps you alert and instantly rejuvenates you.

3. Long-term Benefits for the Brain and Liver

Preliminary studies suggest that the antioxidants in coffee may reduce the chances of contracting Alzheimer’s or Dementia. There is also evidence to corroborate claims that coffee activates DNA-repairing proteins, preventing the growth of cancerous brain cells and thus preventing the incidence of glioma. Coffee intake has also been associated with fewer cases of cirrhosis and other liver diseases. A study of 2260 cases of liver disease and more than 200,000 non-cases concluded decisively that consuming two cups of coffee a day reduced the possibility of liver cancer by 43% by preventing liver inflammation and inhibiting the growth of cancerous cells.

4. Reduced Risk of Diabetes

Coffee drinkers face a lower risk of contracting Type-2 Diabetes since its two antioxidants—cholorogenic acid and quinides—increase insulin-sensitivity, regulating blood sugar levels. This reduces the craving for sugary treats, helps one stick to a low-sugar diet, and may even result in weight-loss.

5. Lower Risk of Stroke

Drinking a cup of coffee may modestly lower the risk of a stroke as well as other heart diseases.

Cons

1. Causes Irritability and Jitters

Sensitivity to caffeine may cause irritability and anxiety since caffeine speeds up nerve cell activity and makes you artificially alert. Having a cup of coffee a day will simply condition your nerve cells such that they cannot attain the minimum level of alertness without your daily caffeine fix. So, if you don’t get your daily coffee cup, you’ll be liable to be very lethargic or get a splitting headache.

2. May Cause Insomnia

Caffeine takes an average of six hours to clear your system, so it will keep your alert if you have a cup close to your bedtime. Studies show that this effect worsens with age.

3. Increases LDL (‘Bad’) Cholesterol

Coffee made with a French press or in the Turkish style may increase LDL cholesterol in your blood due to a compound called cafestol. Filtered coffees are free of this compound.

4. Caution for Pregnant or Nursing Women

According to the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, a cup of two of coffee a day does not significantly increase the chances of a miscarriage or pre-term birth but its inhibition of the fetus’ growth has not been conclusively refuted. Also, if nursing mothers notice irritability or restlessness, they should reduce their intake of coffee since caffeine may be transferred to babies through the mother’s milk.

Considering both sides, we at IdeasUnlimited encourage our employees to drink a cup or two of coffee a day and not more, to maintain alertness without having to deal with the adverse effects. IdeasUnlimited is a global support services provider specializing in call center support, multilingual support, ecommerce and backend support, operations support, and virtual assistant support.

Sep 06
0
5 Ways a Virtual Assistant Can Help You Make Sales

5 Ways a Virtual Assistant Can Help You Make Sales

By | Business Improvement, Customer Service, Marketing Virtual Assistant, Multilingual Support, Social Media, Virtual Assistant Support | No Comments

If you want to make sales, then you need a virtual assistant to bring these five key factors to your business.

Managing a business may prove to be a daunting task. There are many tasks to handle and countless problems to solve at the same time. You, as a business owner, may initially have the time to handle those issues yourself. But you will eventually have to delegate and divide the work to achieve better results. For this purpose, it is always best to hire a virtual assistant.

1. Make Sales from Anywhere

A virtual assistant usually works from home. Therefore, you can hire one at a lower cost than that incurred when hiring a full-time office-based employee. You will not have to spend extra money on unnecessary office space either and can pay the virtual assistant at an hourly rate. It also reduces HR-related issues. Most virtual assistants who offer their services via platforms such as Upwork (previously oDesk) are quite experienced at their job. They are fast learners who are able to adapt to virtual work environments very quickly. Hence, you will not have to spend extensive amounts of time on expensive training sessions. Besides these obvious advantages, there are also several ways in which virtual assistants can help boost your sales figures.

2. Make Sales with Good Customer Service

Firstly, they can assist you in customer and sales support. You can assign them the task of providing outbound call center services. This way, you will save a lot of time which you can choose to spend on other more important things. Similarly, they can also provide administrative and operational support. If you let a virtual assistant manage company emails, for example, they can highlight the more important leads for you to handle personally. Inbound call center support is also assigned to virtual assistants nowadays since it can easily be conducted remotely.

3. Make Sales in Your Market

Since calls, chats, and emails do not require physical presence, they can be easily conducted from whichever location your virtual assistant is based in. It is better to hire VAs from the region where your sales operations are based. This is because they can understand the local buyers better, such as their language or culture. If a customer feels more comfortable and welcome, they will be more likely to return. A multilingual virtual assistant can help you deal with clients in their own languages, creating brand loyalty and increasing customer lifetime value.

4. Make Sales with Good Research

Virtual assistants can also be incredibly helpful in conducting research. Research is a time-consuming process, and a great amount of time is usually spent in vain when digging through hordes of data. Virtual assistants can come in handy here if you are looking to save time. They can further assist you in the process of lead research and generation and data mining. These are an important part of a sales campaign. If the data becomes too extensive at any point, you can hire more than one temporary virtual assistant as well.

5. Make Sales with Social Media

Since virtual assistants are well-versed in all things internet, they can also help you build an impressive online presence for your business. Social media marketing campaigns, for example, would be easy to run with an internet-savvy person onboard.

Hire competent, trained, and efficient virtual assistants through IdeasUnlimited, a company with over 8 years of experience of providing support services. As soon as you have hired your virtual assistant, you will be ready to launch a sales-boosting campaign for your business.

Sep 06
0

Create and Be on the Top Together with TemplateMonster: A Collaboration of Our Web-Studio with Their Expert Team

By | Business Improvement | No Comments
TemplateMonster- Certified Partner

TemplateMonster’s impressive collection has benefited our business considerably. Will it transform yours?

Each company wants to develop and grow in such a way that it becomes possible to invest all possible creative ideas in marvelous works that allow customers to meet their goals. For our web studio, that became possible together with a responsible and experienced partner in the form of TemplateMonster. Thanks to their amazing team, we have access to their ready-made templates that impress our clients with their design and functionality. So we not only found a trusted partner, we also improved our services with the help of professional, easily customizable website templates.

TemplateMonster offers an inspiring number of digital products on their marketplace. Their special deals, sales, and offers are worthy of special attention because they allow you to save a lot of money and to buy high-quality products for any business project.

What Websites Do We Build?

Our web studio prefers working with HTML5—it has become more popular and allows us to bring the most positive results for our customers. TemplateMonster has a great number of HTML5 templates available so we can provide our customers with a wide choice of solutions for their businesses.

Here are our latest top 3 HTML5 picks:

Intense

Intense—Multipurpose Innovative HTML5 Template—comes from an enormous collection of eye-catching ready-made solutions. It includes 500+ HTML files, 25+ niche templates, 15+ header and footer variations, and other stunning elements that will allow you to play around with the design of your future online project. In addition to this, you will get top-notch social integration, various hover effects, sticky menus, and powerful navigation.

iD Interior

Those people who need to promote their interior design studio on the Internet will be impressed with iD Interior—Interior Design HTML5 Template—a theme that includes all essential features you can ever need. A great number of pre-made HTML pages, multiple header and footer variations, and 6 blog styles will make it possible to present all possible aspects of your business. Furthermore, a full-fledged live search will allow users to find the needed information within seconds.

InvestPlus

It will take nothing for InvestPlus—Investment Company HTML5 Template—to make your business look trustworthy and reliable on the Internet. It includes a wide range of ready-made HTML pages, diverse gallery types (grid, masonry, or cobbles), and integration of Google Maps and Fonts that will certainly enrich your website.

TemplateMonster not only sells website templates, it also makes many educational projects for web developers. Browse through their blog to benefit from their incredibly vast knowledge base. We are happy to be partners with this website templates provider that plays a significant role in our work.

Sep 05
0
Five Reasons Why Ecommerce is Growing

Five Reasons Why Ecommerce is Growing

By | Business Improvement, Customer Service, Ecommerce Support Services | No Comments

Take advantage of these 5 Ecommerce Trends and help grow and transform your customer base.

The last decade witnessed a dramatic shift from physical stores to fewer brick-and-mortar locations or a complete switch to online commerce. Today, this trend shows no signs of abating, with Forbes attributing a 23% year-on-year growth rate to ecommerce. Expanding customer reach from the immediate surroundings of businesses to anywhere in the world was one of the initial promises of ecommerce. What is fueling the growth of this industry beyond that? Here are five major causes of the growth of ecommerce in today’s technology-driven world that you must be aware of and incorporate into your business growth strategy.

1. Mobile Adaptivity

More and more web traffic is generated by smartphones and tablets, driving ecommerce sales. All major brands ensure that their websites are mobile-adaptive—enhancing the customer experience—and more often than not they have native mobile apps to make shopping even easier. If your website is not mobile and tablet adaptive, you will definitely be losing millennial customers and the youth of Generation Z.

In addition to this, technological advancements such as voice-activated shopping and better connectivity have caused a surge in mobile shopping revenue from $3 billion to $31 billion in America alone. Customers get real-time updates of new product launches, exclusive deals and promotional schemes, and the one-touch purchase option has caused an exponential growth in ecommerce. Smartphones also allow for location-specific offerings, building a more intimate customer-business relationship that attracts more customers.

Think about hiring a technical support expert or an ecommerce support virtual assistant to easily transition into this new phase of online commerce.

2. Omnichannel Retailing

Ecommerce has progressed beyond search engine optimization to other channels of marketing to and interacting with customers. Businesses interact with their customers through their websites, email, social media, and physical stores. This creates multiple channels of purchase, receipt, and exchange of goods, with a prevalence of shopper-friendly shipping and return policies. Customers can purchase online, pick their purchases up at a physical store, return any defective items online, and avail discount offers based on a certain number of referrals. This integrated online and physical experience drives more sales.

Your business must manage the omnichannel customer experience so that each channel is a seamless brand extension and the customer can pick up the conversation on any channel without any discordant experiences. Partner with a firm that can ensure a consistent omnichannel brand voice.

3. Convenience

The accessibility of a store is out of the purchase equation now. Ecommerce promises 24/7 accessibility, 365 days a year, with no downtime for public holidays, closing times, bad weather conditions etc. Customers can shop as and when they like, from where they want, be it the comfort of their own bed. Ecommerce makes purchasing faster and easier, without the hassle of crowds, traffic, and awkward social interactions.

Customers can compare offerings online and read up reviews to see how the product or service fared in the view of like-minded individuals to determine which offer has the best value, all without having to go from one shop to the other.

The ability to find the desired product or service, order it, and receive it at the time and in the form convenient to the customer at a single touch or click has transformed buying behavior, encouraging instant gratification and thus boosting ecommerce transactions. In this fast-paced world ecommerce today offers the value proposition of a full shopping experience during the only real free time available to millennials—long commutes.

To take advantage of this trend, your website should be search-engine optimized, have fast loading speeds, should have a functional shopping cart, and have updated product catalogs. Most importantly, your customer service must be par excellence and for ecommerce especially, it should extend to 24 hour call center support since the majority of buyers shop after business hours. This will also significantly enhance your reputation.

4. Greater Range of Offerings

With incredibly low overheads like negligible utility bills, skeletal staff, and the ability to provide a product or service from any location to a worldwide customer base, ecommerce dramatically reduces costs of operations. This allows businesses to transfer some of these onward to price-sensitive customers in the form of cheaper products with automatic replenishment since warehouses are no longer restricted to certain geographic locations.

Ecommerce also allows businesses to outsource their administrative backend operations to specialist support services providers located virtually anywhere in the world. There is no longer a need to have call center support teams for customer service, technical and multilingual support on-site when companies like IdeasUnlimited can do the job for you at a fraction of the cost and with round-the-clock support, switching teams between time zones to ensure zero downtime. The industry has grown to include service offerings that were not possible before, such as hiring virtual assistance for the marketing, healthcare, and real estate needs of your business.

So move with the times and lower your overhead costs by partnering with firms that provide administrative support, backend and operational support, allowing you to focus on your core competencies and grow your business.

5. Individualized Products and Services

More sophisticated algorithms allow companies to offer more personalized, customer centric recommendations. A far cry from recommendations based on typical buying habits and products purchased together, ecommerce today allows businesses to give customer suggestions based on their individual preferences. These encourage customers to purchase items that appear completely necessary since they are so aligned with their personal preferences. Lower start-up costs allow more sellers to operate, targeting niche markets with highly customized options, selling more sizes, colors, personalized designs etc. than would be feasible to offer in a physical store.

Study your typical customers’ characteristics and ensure your offering adds value to their lives. You don’t need to cater to a wide demographic, rather specialize in offering the best value to your target segment.

These new trends in ecommerce and its phenomenal growth open up numerous new avenues to grow your business, if you have a suitable operational support network to pull it off. Shed the extra layers that bog down your business and work with professionals so you are freed up to focus on perfecting your value proposition, making it the most attractive in the market. Get 24/7 coverage, customer service, technical and other forms of call center support as well as multilingual support agents to cater to the needs of your diverse customer base by contacting IdeasUnlimited, a global support services provider.

Sep 04
0
Sustainable Hacks to Create a Green Business

Sustainable Hacks to Create a Green Business

By | Business Improvement, Business Sustainability | No Comments

Being eco-friendly doesn’t have to be hard for a business owner.

Sustainability is vital for us companies to move forward in the future. Because of fossil fuel depletion, carbon dioxide emissions and the increasing costs of energy and water, business owners are making smarter decisions to be eco-friendly. Want to get started with your company? Here are four hacks to create a green business.

Green Cleaning

First, many cleaning products are toxic to the environment. This is why it pays to replace cleaning supplies with eco-friendly brands. “Some of [the green brands] may seem pricey but many are concentrated and will save money in the end,” explained Marla Tabaka. “The benefits include improved health, increased clarity, a reduction in allergic reactions and a healthier planet. A small price to pay.”

Green Packaging

Second, consider how to mail and ship products for wholesale or retail. PlasticsToday reported that there has been a trend toward sustainable packaging for shipping. Clare Goldsberry wrote, “Recycled content packaging is projected to have a significant share in the green packaging market. This segment has gained popularity owing to its benefits associated with reduced energy consumption and reduced carbon footprint.”

Green Travel

Third, make smart choices about how you travel for your business. Search USGBC for LEED Certified hotels that use renewable energy. Leave a light carbon footprint by not getting your hotel bed sheets changed daily, taking short showers, and turning off lights. During downtime, apps like GreenConcierge have eco-friendly tours of London and Paris for seeing the sites, going shopping, and dining out.

Green Communication

Finally, this is one of our favorite hacks to create a green business. Communicating with teams online allows companies to work across the globe without having to meet face-to-face. Use email as much as possible instead of printed letters. Use a video call system like Skype for meetings instead of traveling. Want to create an entirely online team? The support services at IdeasUnlimited offer 24/7 call center support, multilingual support, backend support, operational support, and more!

These four recommendations are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to hacks to create a green business. Which ones are YOUR favorites? Comment below with your suggestions!