Business today is not the same as it was years in the past. Today, technology plays a huge role in businesses in every industry imaginable. You can’t ignore the importance of technology. You must adapt or be run out of business by more tech savvy competitors. Despite this, many business owners struggle with integrating technology in a way that actually benefits both customers and employees. Below are some tech tips that will help in that regard.
Defend Against Digital Threats
Unfortunately, the modern digital business landscape includes a lot of threats. These threats include things like hackers, cyber criminals, identity thieves, viruses, malware, ransomware, trojans, phishing scams and much more. These can harm both your employees and your customers. According to Duke University, more than 80 percent of companies have been hacked. It’s not really a question of if you will be targeted. It’s more of a question of when. When this occurs, customer data may be stolen. This could result in your customers being defrauded out of thousands of dollars. This, in turn, could lead to lawsuits against your company. Overall, you must be proactive to ensure that your company has the highest standard of cyber security possible to prevent such intrusions from being successful.
Use Tech to Improve Customer Service
One area where technology should certainly be utilized is in improving customer service. This should be true both in regards to hardware and software. For hardware, make sure your customer service representatives have the right tools they need to efficiently perform their job. This should, for example, include a wired headset that is high-quality and comfortable to use. Such a headset will allow them to talk to a customer over the phone regarding their issue while having their hands free to access information on their computer to help solve their problem. When it comes to software, they should have access to a customer service software suite that will allow employees to quickly access information regarding a customer’s previous interactions with the company. This way, the rep will know about the customer’s previous issues without them having to be re-explained. The efficiency of your customer service will greatly improve as a result.
Use Tech to Give Customers More Options
The days of being limited to brick-and-mortar stores are long behind us. Today, businesses have many more options that can make the work of employees easier and help to better meet the needs of modern customers. You should certainly consider expanding your business into an ecommerce store. Even if customers pick up their orders at your physical location, the convenience of being able to create the order beforehand is preferred by many of today’s consumers. You should also consider expanding into an app for your company. The app can help better facilitate online sales and increase customer engagement. Allowing for perks such as coupons or loyalty programs that are only available on the app can be a great incentive for customers. When customers are more engaged, as they would be when using such an app, their purchases and loyalty to your company increase in tandem.
Use Tech to Increase Efficiency
One of the best things technology can be used for is to increase efficiency for both customers and employees alike. For example, chatbots can be used to answer routine questions that customers have. While some customers may need to be forwarded to a customer service representative to have their problem solved, others could have their questions automatically answered by these bots that run off of pre-programmed scripts. This saves time for both your customers and your customer service department. Technology can also be applied in stores to lessen the work of employees and make the sales experience quicker and more efficient for customers. Think, for example, of touch screens used to make orders in a restaurant or advanced POS software that can immediately look up an item’s price even if the barcode scanner fails.
Conclusion
Overall, the days when businesses could get by without technology are long past us. That has been mostly for the better. Due to technology, businesses can serve customers in new ways and the work of employees can be completed more efficiently than ever before. Think of different ways that integrating technology into your business can benefit your employees and customers.
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