Outstanding customer and client service is without a doubt the best way to build a business’s base and create brand loyalty. This is especially true for smaller companies trying to compete with bigger corporations that have a wealth of resources but can’t meet the individual needs of each customer.

While adequate customer service is a must (especially in the social media space), there is always room for improvement. These five processes will help you improve your business’s customer services.

1. Intranet/FTP

In some cases, the best way to serve customers or clients is to simply allow them to do all the work. By providing information technology like an intranet computer network and FTP site, customers and clients can readily get their hands on what they need without having to rely on anyone else. Business clients will especially appreciate the ability to upload and download important materials instantly.

2. Website FAQs

Customers and clients are always going to have a lot of questions. Having a representative available 24 hours a day isn’t necessarily the best solution, though. Instead, many customers prefer to find answers on their own. This helps them avoid navigating the customer service process by phone.

Businesses can improve their answer process by incorporating a FAQs page into their websites so that inquisitive users can browse a host of questions and their detailed solutions.

3. Electronic Signatures

Service providers have the tedious task of distributing and processing numerous contracts for their clients. It is equally tedious for the client who has to review, sign and return each document. Businesses can improve client services with electronic document signing that deliver contracts via email for clients to simply download, type their signature and return in seconds. Electronic signature services then provide both parties with copies of the signed document for filing. Some services feature convenient step-by-step instructions to walk clients through the contract process. Examples of electronic signature services are:

• EchoSign
• DocuSign
• TurboSignature

4. Multiple Communication Platforms

Communication is the foundation of efficient customer and client service; a business can’t solve a problem that it doesn’t know exists. Providing multiple communication channels for customers will vastly improve a business’s ability to address potential or ongoing problems.

While traditional contact means, such as mail and telephone, are still necessary, businesses should also engage their customers with online platforms like email and social media applications, such as Facebook and Twitter.

5. Gather Information

The more a business knows about their customers or clients the better they can serve them. With demographic and preference data, businesses can improve their services by tailoring them to meet individual needs. Most importantly, businesses can find out how their customers prefer to interact with their brand. Tools for gathering information include:

• Surveys
• Questionnaries
• Order tracking
• Analytics

Conclusion

How well a business provides customer and client services can determine that business’s success. Fortunately, as technology evolves, there are more and more ways for businesses to improve these services. In what ways are you looking to improve the services your business offers its customers and clients?

Open source products provide users with applications that rival commercial products yet have no cost attached to downloading them.

Over 2.7 million developers have generated more than 260,000 software programs designed to do everything from creating a document to managing a company. Just how do these developers produce this much free content? Keep reading!

A Matter of Principal

The open source community has three core beliefs.

• Open source products should be free, as in no strings attached.
• Open source products should provide users with the source code.
• Open source products should allow users to modify and distribute the source code without paying royalties or fees to the developers.

Why Open Source

Maintaining an open source program is not free. Developers have to pay for server space, a domain, and other expenses involved in maintaining a popular program. Why then would they give away their product?

Each developer might have a different answer to that question. Some are paying it forward because they used open source code in their own creations. Others have struggled against commercial manufacturers and view open source as a way to take a stand against manufacturer gridlock.

Project Origins

Many open source programs, such as Pidgin, began as school projects for students pursuing degrees related to some type of technology or computer development. As such, the developers spend much of the time creating the project doing homework for class. Other projects, like PHP and Calibre, began because developers wanted to implement a solution for a problem they faced.

Production

When developers give away the source code to a product, it inspires creativity. Other developers will take the code and hack it, or modify it, to expand the original parameters. These volunteers then add their modifications to the open source project. Other people who have benefited by using the free program often contribute by helping to fix and correct any bugs that occur.

There are many things, like virtualization technology, that may not be as easy to make free. So this is another thing to consider in why some things are open source, and some things aren’t.

Development Time

Creating and maintaining a program takes time. While the initial code may come together quickly, it can take years to expand the parameters and gain traction. What a consumer downloads today may seem like a hefty package, but developers may have pieced the code together until it grew to the latest version’s feature-rich package.

Building From One Another

Open source code encourages developers to modify something already in existence rather than starting from scratch. Consider libpurple, a developer’s library for chat clients. Almost every open source chat protocol available today has some piece of libpurple in the code.

Donations

Donations help keep open source programs going. Consider the person who uses an open source PDF creator instead of a commercial one. The person could potentially save hundreds of dollars. Donating $50 helps the individual show his appreciation. It can also pay for the product’s domain registration for a year, depending on the host the developer uses.

Open source programs rely on several factors to support free distribution. All the aforementioned things, such as volunteers and donations, contribute to the ever-growing open source community. These things, working together, are the essential elements that allow developers to give away free products.

Newton introduced three laws of motion.

Now, in the modern business world, we should be adding a fourth: A company in business won’t stay in business unless it learns to grab hold of motion.

The world of mobile phones, data, and applications is surging with possibilities. Here are seven must-have apps to keep you on top of your business no matter where you are.

1. Evernote

Evernote is an application that lets you capture anything and everything and store it to your phone — and, simultaneously, to your desktop. Store voice notes, text, images, and more, then organize them using the powerful label and search technologies of the Evernote platform. Especially useful is the fact that snapshots you take of text documents will turn into searchable content, thanks to Evernote’s optical character recognition technologies.

2. Instapaper

Even the best networks don’t have web access everywhere. If you want to be able to store reference materials for offline use, Instapaper is one of the best options around. You can easily grab information from the web and store it for easy access from your phone.

3. Mint

Mint isn’t just a budgeting program — it’s a financial advisor in the palm of your hand. This powerful little app will keep track of your accounts, provide you with reports and budgeting information, and it does it all automatically.

4. Gmail

I know what you’re saying. “REALLY? You included Gmail?” Well listen up. Gmail is the industry leader for web mail programs, and that’s not for no reason. Advanced labeling, filtering, search, archiving, anti-spam, and the ability to handle multiple accounts in one inbox make it the most powerful free email program on the market.

Gmail’s free app is just as strong, and all the features remain intact.

5. Line2

Line2 comes with a $10/month subscription fee, but what it gives you provides well more than that in value. You get a second line that allows you to make calls using WiFi, your carrier’s 3G network, or your carrier’s normal phone service network. It comes with all the features of a normal phone line and many, many more.

6. DropBox

Few groups have used cloud computing as effectively as DropBox. Now they’re bringing that utility to your mobile device. DropBox lets you sync the data between different computers and, now, your phone. You can retrieve the files you’ve synchronized on the impressive DropBox cloud server, add new files for synchronization with your other work platforms, and make modifications to your DB files using other mobile phone apps.

7. myPhoneDesktop

If you want to get text data from your computer to your phone as easily as possible, the myPhoneDesktop application is the way to go. It costs five whole dollars for permanent purchase, and allows you to easily send phone numbers, text snippets, full documents, and even images from your desktop or laptop computer to your mobile device.

These fantastic apps are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to capturing the world of mobility. Continue to explore the hundreds of thousands of apps on the market to find more solutions for your business.

Here is a great idea for you, me and everyone else. Saving money. No, it does not actually seem easy to save money in this economy, but the truth is, there are deals and discounts all around you. If you want to save money, there are different options to consider. You can start clipping coupons from the Sunday paper, printing coupons from the Internet, browsing online to find deals, or going to websites like Offers.com to find out about discount codes, coupons and other discounts all around the internet.

Many big box retailers are overpriced by nature, but there are deals, discounts and coupons out there that significantly reduce their prices, allowing you to squeak by financially with extra money in your pocket. If you work diligently to shop around and find out what deals are out there, you are going to save some money. The more time that you put into this process, the more you are going to benefit in return. It really is as simple as this. It may take some time to master this process, but anyone can do it.

Saving money is essential in this economy. You can put all the money that you save into a separate bank account every week and watch it pile up. Keep this money for a rainy day, a special occasion or to offset costs in a financial emergency, and you will suddenly find yourself glad that you learned how to save some money when you end up putting your savings to some truly good use. A little bit of money saving can go a long way if you are diligent about it, and if you try to save a few cents or a few dollars on every purchase, then it is absolutely going to add up to a grand savings over time.

If you’re a small business owner, a freelancer, or anyone else who has full control over your time, you may have run straight into a common but devastating realization: It’s a lot harder to manage your time and projects when you don’t have someone breathing down your neck. So, how can you manage your day-to-day schedule in an effective manner?

Dealing with Crisis

As an entrepreneur, your time is subject to more crisis demands. There will be many things that require your immediate attention, including phone calls, meetings, emails, and in person business visits. However, this does not diminish the need to have a general system of organization for your time. Know when you’re going to start work each day, and start consistently at that time. While you may sometimes end up working beyond it, set a tentative end time for each day as well and try to stick to it. Burn out is no friend to a budding entrepreneur.

Time Management

Beyond setting your “start” and “stop” times, you will want to divide your day into segments for when you intend to complete specific tasks. At the commencement of each business day, examine the tasks that you would like to have completed by the end of the day, and create a rough and flexible outline of how your time will be spent on that day. Aside from this, there’s plenty of apps and sites that can help you with managing your time.

Managing Distractions

To stick to this outline, you will also need to manage your distractions. Distractions come in many forms, including PDA notifications of new emails, email notifications of social networking updates, or people calling your office. Rather than allowing all of these distractions to constantly enter your mind, eliminate any unnecessary notifications, and set rules for what requires your personal attention. Notify employees as to when they should avoid trying to get your attention directly, and encourage them to use email or other non-disruptive methods of contact.

You aren’t obligated to keep your email in-box open all day long, respond to every voice mail you receive within minutes, or address every employee concern as soon as it comes up. Instead, set aside specific times for “batch processing,” where you organize and respond to all the notifications you’ve received in a specific medium. For your most commonly used notification systems, such as email, you’ll want to set at least two to three sessions throughout your day to process these items. For less important methods, such as social networking sites, you can get by with once a day or less.

Handling Business and Team Communication

It’s going to get cluttered if every person on your desk has their own phone. Plus, let’s face it. Not everyone works in an office environment nowadays. You may need to get in touch with colleagues outside of the office or review projects without being face to face. For this, there’s plenty of communication tools you can use.

GoToMeeting- This allows you to have meetings, and among other things, share your screen and do screen-casts so the other person can physically see what you’re talking about.

Skype- This allows you to have video communication, chat, as well as use the iPhone app to call others using VOIP.

Line2- The first dual mode iPhone/iPod/iPad VOIP app, this allows you to have a second line on your phone so you can have a dedicated number for others in your office to reach you. It also keeps you from wasting minutes if you have long business meetings to attend to and you happen to be outside of the offce.

Online Document Storage

Another way to manage your time is to cut out the time that you would spend sifting through physical documents when dealing with client work or personal business records. Using sites like Google Docs or even cloud storage to back up your documents is a safe and effective way to get rid of all your paper and unnecessary documents. A virtual file is easier to manage because you can CTRL+F and search quicker and faster.

Even with effective time management and organization, it’s possible for your anxiety and stress levels to go beyond your normal capabilities. To maximize your long term efficiency and avoid burnout, it’s a good idea to research stress management techniques. Everything from breathing exercises to stress balls to yoga can be helpful, and you will want to find the methods that work best for you.



One market that businesses have been moving into lately is the app market. iPhone apps. Android apps. iPad apps. Everything. People are so mobile nowadays that it’s incredibly important to have a place where consumers can access you that isn’t necessarily a computer. Certain businesses have made the move, successfully, into the app world- giving themselves a one up against the competition.

Starbucks

So this isn’t anything that’s REALLY useful (you have to actually be at the store to completely use this app) but the Starbucks app for the iPhone allows you nuild your perfect Starbucks beverage- as well as act as a locator for Starbucks locations. You can also look through jobs, view their menu, etc. All you Starbucks lovers out there… (me included)… I know you love this!

Edmunds

The Edmunds app (iPhone/iPod/iPad) is one that’s extremely useful when you’re looking for new cars but don’t feel like going out to the dealerships or sitting home on your computer. This not only lets you search for cars and find their prices within your area, but it also lets you build out the specs you want on your car, email it, save the car as a favorite, and more.

This app is great and also includes True Market Value, so you know what price exactly you should be negotiating to when dealing with the vulture salesman.

Apple Store

The Apple Store app for iPhone lets you do just what it says- access  different products quickly so you can see all the specs and compare/contrast. You can also reserve products that you want to pick up in a physical Apple Store, add your reservation time to your calendar, and also get your engraving and gift wrapping selections. It doesn’t have a lot of extra fluff, it’s clean and lets you find what you need.

Many businesses are slowly putting up “mini stores” or compliments to their business out as a smart phone application. Since not everyone can get out to your store (or have interest in getting out there) and people want to convenience of getting what they want, when they want it, these apps help buy into that way of life.