Bizelo: Customizable Apps Built for Small Businesses

Bizelo: Customizable Apps Built for Small Businesses
Women Entrepreneurs: Helping Other Women Succeed
Reaching Out To Departed Customers For Recovery
Social Media Myths Worth Debunking
Twitter Buys Vine, Plans Video Feature

Posted: 10 Oct 2012 01:00 PM PDT

Many small businesses use spreadsheets for everyday tasks like inventory management and accounting. Most know that this may not be the most efficient method, but software built specifically with these tasks in mind is often geared toward larger companies, and has the price tag to match.

Bizelo

That's where Bizelo comes in. Bizelo is a startup that offers individual apps for different business functions. The company and its offerings were built specifically for small businesses, so the features are simple and minimal, and apps cost just $25 per month.

Said founder Ron Schmelzer:

"Most small business owners don't want a thousand-dollar product with thousands of features, they want a simple product with three or four features that is priced appropriately."

Currently, the company offers four different types of apps: inventory management, supply management, returns management, and accounting sync. But it has plans to add at least 12 more apps by early next year.

Said Schmelzer:

"Eventually we'd like to have a supply of hundreds of apps that small businesses can pick and choose from, but for now we're starting with a few simple ones that we think can benefit a lot of small companies."

The apps "snap" together so that companies can keep all of their data in one place, but can customize the service to fit the needs of their industry without having to navigate around a bunch of unnecessary and unused features aimed at different types of businesses.

So for example, businesses that have an online store and a local storefront can use the inventory management app to sync and manage the inventory of both stores. But other businesses may just have an online store or multiple online stores, maybe on different platforms such as Ebay or Etsy. These different business models can all use the same app and just customize it to their own needs.

Schmelzer compared the concept behind Bizelo, which launched its first app in 2011, to that of Salesforce, but said the functions behind the two are completely different. Where Salesforce is often used for customer management tasks, Bizelo can provide a similar platform for the back office tasks like supply and inventory.

Though there are programs available for each of the functions of Bizelo's apps, this concept allows for businesses to keep all or most of their data in one place. And once the company releases more apps, there could possibly be even more business functions that Bizelo can help companies manage.

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Women Entrepreneurs: Helping Other Women Succeed

Posted: 10 Oct 2012 11:00 AM PDT

Are women more or less likely to help others of their gender get ahead at work? A Catalyst study done earlier this year asked both men and women about the kinds of mentoring and assistance they'd received. Overall, more than half (59 percent) had received either informal or formal mentoring.

mentoring women

What's interesting is that women who had been mentored were more likely than men to be "paying it forward" to the next generation of emerging leaders at work. Sixty-five percent of women, vs. 56 percent of men, were doing so. And 73 percent of those women were mentoring other women.

The Catalyst report focused on executives in big corporations (the men and women were all MBA grads who had been identified as having "high potential" before earning their degrees). But I believe the value of helping other women applies, whether you're an employee or an entrepreneur.

First, there's financial value. Catalyst found both men and women who mentored others earned an average of $25,075 more between 2008 and 2010 than those who did not, even when the study controlled for other factors. For employees, helping others achieve clearly leads to greater career success and consummate rewards. But for business owners, mentoring others so they achieve more also leads to greater financial success for your business.

Of course, for entrepreneurial women, there's also loyalty at stake.

Think about it: An employee who gets support, encouragement and guidance from you about how to improve in his or her job is more likely to be loyal to your business, rather than ready to bolt at the first opportunity.

Finally, and maybe most important, for women business owners mentoring isn't just about mentoring your employees. For us, mentoring the next generation of leadership also means looking outside our own businesses and encouraging young women and girls to learn more about entrepreneurship.

I was fortunate to have entrepreneurial role models in my family—my dad, who owned a small business, was a huge influence in my life. But "entrepreneurship" was a word you barely heard when I was a kid. And even now, when young people are acutely aware of entrepreneurial role models like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg, most of the focus is on tech startups, where women are still underrepresented.

There are many ways you can be a mentor and role model to younger women. Involve your daughters or nieces in your business. Find a younger entrepreneur you connect with through social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Or get involved with an official organization like Junior Achievement or the Collegiate Entrepreneurs' Organization.

The coolest thing about mentoring younger people is while in the past, the relationship might have been more one-way, today's young women have a lot to teach older entrepreneurs about technology, social media and more.

If you get involved with mentoring, you'll gain as much as you give.

Mentoring Photo via Shutterstock

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Reaching Out To Departed Customers For Recovery

Posted: 10 Oct 2012 08:00 AM PDT

Every business has customers who have departed. There are a variety of reasons that prompt departure. How you react to the departure will either validate that they left for a good reason or begin the process of bringing back that customer and that customer revenue.

reaching out

Follow these five steps below to identify and regain customer trust and relationships:

1. Track Customers Who Have Departed

Most companies only track customer retention as a percentage of their business. They often don't get down to the number and the actual customers who have departed. This effort must be about caring about the customers who left, not just the percentage or how they impact your balance sheet.

So, the first step is to quantify the volume of customers and the volume of business that departed. This can be done monthly or quarterly, depending on the volume of your business model.

2. Segment and Identify Those Who Departed

All customers who have departed, especially if you have a high volume business, are not contributing the same value to your business. Now you need to make some hard decisions. Segment the customer base of departed customers and then determine which customers you will reach out to for recovery.

3. Reach Out to Customers with Respect, Reason and Reconciliation

Once you know who you want to save, reach out to them with a phone call. My suggestion is to have two groups within your company make the calls.

First, executives should call a handful (1-10) of departed customers in every "rescue" cycle. These calls keep them close to the issues that are driving customers out the door.

The second group is a specially prepared group of people who are trained in a recovery conversation with the customer. This is not a sales pitch. The first part of the conversation is apologizing that the customer left. The second part is listening, intently to the customers' explanation.

The third part is diagnosing and verifying back to the customer why they departed, and cataloging this information for the company.

The fourth part is extending support and immediate assistance in resolving the issue.

Finally, there should be an offer (not a pitch) extended to the customer to bring them back. These skills need to be developed and this can be a very rewarding project for your best call center folks, or for exceptional managers within your company. I would not outsource this step.

4. Categorize Reasons for Departure and Take Action

After the calls, there is a major opportunity for your company to identify the issues that came from all of the calls, and then trend and track these issues. By attaching them to the revenue of the departed customers, these issues can also be prioritized. Within the second session of customer recovery, the most critical issues will emerge and there will be no question what you should focus on.

There may also be opportunities that arise from these calls about the frontline service that can provide immediate and specific feedback to the frontline that served the customer and potentially contributed to the customers' departure. Creating a closed loop process for this feedback is very potent since very specific information usually comes out of these calls for coaching.

5. Put Returned Customers into "Intensive Care"

Once a customer has agreed to come back into your business, to be rescued, keep an eye on them. Conduct a review every six months of their experiences, tracking customer service calls, purchasing, support and other indicators which will identify the health of the restarted relationship. Then reach out again.

Your close attention will not go unnoticed.

Results You Can Expect from Customer Recovery

The process of customer recovery has been fruitful in every vertical business where I have seen this practiced. In financial services, with high levels of customer departure, we experienced as high as 30% customer recovery. We also achieved an improvement in frontline service as the feedback gleaned from these calls was provided immediately to the managers of account reps serving customers who departed. In an automotive client, we experienced 10-15% return for service work following calls and rescue efforts to customers who had lapsed.

The key is to ensure that there is a planned process to contact, resolve and reconcile the issues with the customers who have departed. There must also be an intention and commitment to fix the issues which pushed the customers out the door. The focus must be to fix the customers AND to fix the company.

In this way, the customer rescue process brings back in revenue and prevents future revenue from departing from your business.

Companies that do a great job of winning back departed customers will frequently have a stronger relationship with customers as a result.

Reach Out Photo via Shutterstock

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Social Media Myths Worth Debunking

Posted: 10 Oct 2012 05:00 AM PDT

Sometimes when we don't understand the true potential of something, we tell ourselves it doesn't matter. And then we come up with all sorts of reasons as to why it doesn't matter to justify our in action. I'm not saying you would ever do this, but others do. Below are some myths I've heard about social media that I think need some debunking. Because, really, we're all smarter than that.

unicorn

Tell me if you've heard this one…

Myth 1: Social Media Is A Fad

Ah, yes, the old fad myth! The notion that eventually we will Facebook and tweet ourselves sick and no one will be interested in these sites anymore. And that may be true. There may come a time when Twitter and Facebook are no longer. But even if the social media sites we are using today die, the behavior is here to stay.

The 2012 Local Search Study found that the number of people using social media to look for local business information has increased 67 percent since 2012, bringing it to 15 percent of users. That represents a 3x growth from where it was in 2008.

This is not a fad. It's a new pattern of behavior as users are using the information they find about your business online to make buying decisions offline. If they can't find information about your business via social media, you may not even enter their buying decisions.

Myth 2: My Customers Aren’t On Social Media

As of February, 66 percent of online adults were said to be using social media sites. The numbers continue to grow.

As of August:

12% of online adults say they use Pinterest
12% of online adults say they use Instagram
66% of online adults use Facebook
20% use LinkedIn
16% use Twitter

And just last week it was announced there are now one billion users are Facebook.

The numbers show that your customers probably are on social media. If you don't know where they're hanging out – ask them. Ask them in person, put an insert in a local mailer, use the "find a friend" feature on many social media sites to see if customer addresses pop up.

Myth 3: My Teenage Daughter Can Run My Social Media Campaign

Did you hear about the social media trouble KitchenAid recently found itself in due to an accidental tweet? These are the things that happen when you're not careful about what your brand is doing on social media. Just because your daughter or son is constantly on Facebook or Tumblr for personal use doesn't mean they have the maturity, the insight, or the strategic thinking for business use of social media.

Someone needs to be driving the bus to create a strategy, determine metrics, to understand how to maturely deal with critical customers, etc. If you wouldn't let someone answer the phones in your business or speak directly to your customers, don't give them the keys to your social media channels either. It's the same thing.

Myth 4: Social Media Is Dangerous – People Will Say Bad Things!

I'm not going to lie to you. People might use social media to complain about your business or say things that will be difficult for you to hear. But wouldn't you rather be on social media to hear what you're saying than to close your ears and ignore it? I would. Studies have shown that NOT addressing customer complaints does more than hurt your reputation — it actually sends customers to competitors.

According to the Harris Interactive/Right Now Customer Experience Impact Report [PDF]:

89% of consumers began doing business with a competitor following a poor customer experience
50% of consumers give brands a week to respond to a question before they stop doing business with them.

By getting involved in social media, you have the chance to spot these types of situations before they grow out of control and begin to harm your business.

Myth 5: Nobody Cares what I Think

Here's the thing, if you use social media to simply broadcast information about yourself or your company, you're probably right. However, if you use it to respond to customer service complaints, to share valuable information, and to make your brand of a hub for your industry, people will care. They'll actually care very much.

Don't use social media to constantly talk about yourself. Use it to learn about what your customers want, to improve what you offer them, and to become part of the larger industry. These are the uses that make social media beneficial to SMBs and which attract people to the brand.

Those are some of the most common myths I heard about social media from small business owners. What are some of the things you're fighting against?

Unicorn Myth Photo via Shutterstock

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Twitter Buys Vine, Plans Video Feature

Posted: 10 Oct 2012 02:30 AM PDT

For some time, experts have extolled the virtue of both online video and social media for business marketing and communications. Recent news suggests that one of the most popular social media channels will soon offer video as part of its service. What remains to be seen is how the new feature will change the way businesses use social media and video to market, communicate, and network.

Seeing is Believing

Tweet this video. Of course, Twitter users have long been able to share video, usually by posting it to YouTube, Vimeo Twitvid, or another third party host, but news that Twitter has just bought Vine, a tiny video-sharing startup, suggests the company’s ambitions may go much farther than simply supporting these third party options. Business Insider

Twitvid beware. The new plan could be bad news for Twitvid and a handful of other third party video hosts like yFrog, Mobypicture, and Vodpod. Up until now, Twitter has nurtured such third party developers that give its platform an additional video dimension, but now seems intent upon bringing video features in-house, possibly for the opportunity to sell advertising on video content. Venture Beat

The Medium is the Message.

Speaking their language. If you haven’t started using video for your online business yet, Paul Farrell of Frederick Digital Media can give you some idea of what you could be missing out on. Customers like this medium with Web video increasing the likelihood of purchase by 145 percent and decreasing the likelihood of product returns by 45 percent. Wood Street Inc.

Choosing what to say. Once you’ve decided to use video for your business, the next decision becomes choosing the message you will communicate. Laura Jennings, a marketing professional with Fountain Partnership in the U.K., has some suggestions for the most effective messages to use with video content. They include testimonials, instructional videos, and more. Have a look at the full post. True to Business

Staying Connected

The ties that bind. While contemplating how you could use video in social media, it might be a good idea to review what constitutes the most effective social networking. Small business and marketing blogger Daniel Kehrer offers these tips on how to make your connections count. BizBest

Power user status. There are, of course, other social media channels besides Twitter, and each platform comes with its own features and standards for helping you connect with others both in your niche and beyond. No matter what overall message you are trying to communicate, be sure to become knowledgeable about the differences between these networks. Here Cendrine Marrouat gives us tips for LinkedIn best practices. Creative Ramblings

Tarnishing your brand. Using social media poorly, whether sharing video or some other content, may have its consequences too. Just look at the results of a recent study shared by blogger Kimberly Crossland showing what might cause people to unlike your brand on Facebook. Bad behavior on all social media platforms, as during live networking events, can cause censure and damage to your brand. Make sure your efforts don’t hurt your business. The Savvy Copywriter

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