Category: SaaS Branding

5 Ways How Knowledge Base Software Can Prove To Be Useful For Your Organization

Steven on November 13, 2018

The larger an organization becomes, the more important it is for it to ensure speedy communication between its employees. A customer service representative, for example, is going to need to be able to access information at a moment’s notice. After all, making an informed decision is one of the cornerstones of good quality customer service. A great way to make information readily available to all of your customer service representatives is to use a knowledge base software such as the one offered by Kayako. However, you might be wondering what a knowledge base software is in the first place.

A knowledge base is essentially a hub of information. It is a place where an employee of your company can put all of their findings and data in a way that would make it very easy to access. All it would take is a line of text and all of the information relevant to your search query is going to end up being presented to you. A knowledge base can also be used by CSRs to get their questions answered quickly without having to get up from their seat. There are clearly a lot of benefits associated with using a knowledge base. Here are some of the most prominent benefits that we have found.

#1 Boosts Efficiency at Work

If your employee has to scramble every time they need something, they are going to end up wasting a lot of time. Having instant access to the information they need can allow them to cut down on response and resolution times. This time will add up eventually until your employees are saving so much time that the number of customers they are able to serve will end up increasing significantly. A more convenient way of storing information also helps make work more dynamic. If your employee doesn’t have to scroll through endless lines of bland data, they are going to be more energized and therefore more proactive about the job that they are doing. It’s all about making life easier for your employees after all.

#2 Facilitates Employee Cooperation

One of the most important things to work on in your company is making sure that all of your employees are working together. This creates a sense of synergy that can allow your company to move forward because all of the cogs in the machine will be working in perfect harmony with one another. A knowledge base software allows your employees to communicate with each other much more efficiently. Instead of having to get up and go to where their fellow employee is to ask a question, they can just do that through the knowledge base software. Since cooperating and collaborating with their fellow employees will have become so much easier, your CSRs are probably going to end up doing it a lot more often which will definitely contribute to an overall feeling of synergy in your workplace.

#3 Helps Preserve Knowledge

Not all of your employees are going to treat your company as a lifelong employment opportunity. Everyone wants to move up in the world, and for the current generation working for too long in the same place can end up being a boring experience, so you should expect a lot of your employees to move on to greener pastures eventually. However, just because you are losing an employee does not mean that you have to lose the work that they have done. Through a knowledge base software, you can keep your employee’s contribution to your IP secure and easily accessible for all future employees.

#4 Allows Employees to Work Remotely

We live in a day and age where coming to the office is no longer a requirement in order to be a good employee. Nowadays you can work from pretty much anywhere and do a fine job. A knowledge base software can allow your employees to work remotely. It also makes it possible for satellite employees to communicate with one another, sometimes despite never having met each other! This can really improve your prospects by hiring employees that might have seemed impractical before due to how far away that employee is from your office.

#5 Improves Customer Satisfaction

Needless to say, a knowledge base software is going to really improve how your customers feel after they have phoned in with a complaint. Faster response and resolution times mean that your customers will be pleasantly surprised by how quickly they can get done with the call or chat. This is going to keep adding up over time until your company has a stellar reputation for the customer service that it provides. A knowledge base software can thus contribute a lot towards making your company’s future a lot more secure than it might be right now.

SaaS Branding

Snatchbot Added Line To Increase Its Multi-Channel Reach

Steven on October 16, 2018

Of all the free chatbot platforms, the popularity of SnatchBot has seen a steady rise. This is due to the simplicity of the platform which revolves around the premise of making a simple and effective chatbot for all businesses.

Enabled by an AI revolution, integrated with leading technology

The AI revolution is already at our doorsteps. People are no longer scared to speak with machines as long as machines are able to answer their questions and provide solutions to their needs. The concept behind SnatchBot is not to trick customers into thinking that they are chatting with other people but to create a unique customer experience by and offer instant solutions to the common problems that customers face when they use the service of a business.

This is the age of social media, and there are more people interacting with business brands all over the world than ever before in the history of the word. Customers are spending more time on social media to reach out to their favorite brands. While this is great marketing news for businesses, it easily takes financial toll and time toll on the business budget.

SnatchBot, a brainchild of Henri and Avi Ben Ezra who are brothers and co-founders, is dedicated to making chatbots freely and easily accessible to all users and businesses around the world. Until their business started running, the chatbot had been an elusive and extremely complex technology. Thus, by making it free and easily accessible to businesses and users, they are able to save businesses tons of time and money that would have been spent managing the social media team. Also, it also saves the users tons of waiting time.

A true omni-channel approach to chatbots:

Up until now, SnatchBot covers WeChat, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, and Slack. It also offers web integration directly with business websites. While these are the major social media platforms, SnatchBot was missing out on Line—which is the biggest social media platform in Japan.

The Line app was launched in 2011, and it amassed a whopping 200 million users in its first year. In less than two years of being in business, Line became Japan’s largest social media platform with over 218 million active accounts. The social network is now evaluated to be worth over 1.4 billion dollars. However, they are not relenting in their feat to dominate the Asian market. They are constantly improving their features and their presence.

For existing businesses in Asia—mist importantly, Japan and South Korea—utilizing this platform could be the deciding factor in making a maximum business impact. Having a technology that helps businesses reach the customers in the Japan and South Korea market will increase customer trust and brand awareness. Therefore, it was good news when SnatchBot announced that they are launching a free chatbot that supports the Line messenger. By allowing business brands on the Line social network to have a simple and easy integration of SnatchBot to the messenger, business brands are being empowered to communicate with their customers effortlessly.

By handling routine questions, SnatchBot is able to redirect the focus of companies on the most important business concern which is providing valuable services and products to their customers. Also, when routine questions are being handled through SnatchBot’s automation software, they are able to pay attention to more pressing customers’ needs that require highly technical intervention. According to the National Australia Bank, SnatchBot will save the organization about 16 million Australian dollars annually—that is a massive financial relief even for a company of their size.

It does not require any special technical expertise to use SnatchBot. All you have to do is to select the desired template and develop your responses from there. It is quite intuitive and completely free. If properly set up, it will give out all the information about your business that you want your customers to know; it will answer simple inquiries; and, it will redirect users to live support is necessary.

The chatbot is designed to make businesses work faster and more efficiently especially when they are trying to reach their customers on the major social media platforms; and, according to co-founder, Ben Ezra, the bot is designed for all business types—small, medium and large businesses. With the Line integration, SnatchBot is able to turn interactions on social networks to transactions in a fun, easy and smart way.

Now that SnatchBot integrates with Line messenger, users based in Japan and South Korea will spend less time trying to connect with customer support, and this will free up more time for the call agent to handle more complex issues. These bots are deployed in multiple sectors, including health, finance/banking, education, tourism and local government. It is hard to imagine any sector that will be without this technology in the near future.

Digital Branding SaaS Branding

A STEP-BY-STEP Guide to creating a SWOT Analysis for your brand strategy

Steven on October 10, 2018

When you set out to build your brand strategy – it’s always best to be number 1 in a new market – then number 2 or number 3 in an already crowded market. But, how do you build a great foundation for your venture?

The answer? A SWOT Analysis.

WHAT IS A SWOT ANALYSIS?

A SWOT analysis of your brand strategy would give you an idea about the strengths (S), weaknesses (W), Opportunities (O), and threats (T) of your brand’s ability to dominate the market.

SWOT ANALYSIS EXAMPLE

Let’s take real-life scenarios. A good friend of the writer named Sameer was starting a business where he would buy journals from India and sell it to the United States through an e-commerce store.

After a lot of research, he found a journal he liked and took his first step towards his goal. Upon the advice of the writer, he followed this step-by-step SWOT analysis for his product.

1 – Evaluate the Strength of your Idea

Sameer first did a quick Google research for the following keywords.

1 – Journals USA Buy

2 – Journals California Buy

3 – Self-improvement Journals USA Buy

4 – Gratitude Journals California Buy

He found some common denominators in the competitor’s websites.

Firstly, he found that there was virtually no copy under any of the products.

Secondly, he found that each of these websites had multiple journals for sale.

So, he found where his strengths lay;

He would sell just one journal on his website.
He would focus on a benefit-driven copy for his website.

2 – Swallow your Pride and Admit your Weakness

Next, Sameer needed to closely look at his weaknesses.

His biggest weakness was his marketing budget. If he were to take the Ad words route based on the projections, it would cost him close to $25 dollars to acquire a sale.

With a marketing budget of $500, he couldn’t risk running out of capital. So, he decided to explore alternate forms of advertising instead of Ad words.

3 – Look for Opportunities in Lesser Crowded Areas

Sameer had been hearing a lot about Instagram shoutouts.

Upon some quick research on Instagram hashtags, he found that the yoga handle has closed to 2 million posts.

Now, coincidentally Sameer practiced Yoga as well. So he decided to put his $500 dollars into marketing his business through shoutouts.

He found the best handles related to yoga and spirituality wrote a quick starter e-book on yoga which he used as a low tripwire offer of about $7 and then created an upsell page with the journal with a tagline “Journal like a Yogi”.

4 – Search for threats that can effectively shut you down

Sameer’s biggest threat now was the long lead time that comes with going through the funnel approach.

Upon his first couple of shoutout tests, he found that he got a 2% conversion on each shoutout expenditure.

So, at about $50 per shoutout – he would get close to 5 sales of his e-book. But no one was buying his journal.

He was $200 short and had just about $300 left before he ran out of his capital.

After looking at the analytics on his Upsell page – he found that a majority of the users bounced off within the first 10 seconds.

After a lot of dwelling, he decided to test a down sell page.

So after a user purchased his e-book he would then send them to the Upsell page for his journal.

Once a user clicks away from the page – he sent them to a down sell page where he gave the customer $20 off their first purchase.

After sending about 5000 people to his website – he saw that his tripwire e-book sales remained the same but this time he managed to sell one journal which helped break even on his shoutout expenditure.

This was a promising enough start for Sameer to continue on with this venture.

CONCLUSION

A SWOT analysis is just a tool you use to fine tune your business strategy. Do not make the mistake of spiraling down the analysis rabbit hole. An action is the greatest key to finding out if your theories are based on sound results or not.

Result driven advertising should help you here. Closely monitor what effect each one of your USP’s or offers has on your customer. Evaluate your cost per lead and lead time and then go about fine tuning it until you can fully automate the process.

Once you have found a good marketing strategy you need to scale up your operations and the best way for you to do that is to use a CRM software for marketing.

Kapture CRM is a cloud-based marketing SaaS provider that helps you automate a lot of the key tasks in your business.

Kapture CRM customizes its offerings according to the needs of your industry. The cloud-based platform can be used over a mobile application as well that is integrated over both iOS and Android platforms as well. Currently, Kapture powers 500+ brands in 12 countries.

SaaS Branding

How a Coworking Space Can Turbocharge Freelancer Branding Efforts

Steven on September 16, 2018

A coworking space is a virtual office space shared by groups of independent freelancers. Utilizing a virtual office gives freelance professionals an instant branding boost. Coworking spaces free freelancers from the high cost of renting and equipping independent office spaces.

What is Coworking & What are the Benefits?

This fall sees the official opening of The Ranch Office in Houston. However, The Ranch is a little different from neighboring offices occupied by top Houston designers and automotive insurers. This is because The Ranch Office is Houston’s hottest new coworking space.

Busy Ranch yes people don’t populate office desks and conference rooms. Instead, every inch of The Ranch is at the disposal of Houstons vibrant freelancer community.

Coworking & Virtual Office Benefits

Gone are the days of freelancers sitting behind dusty typewriters preparing submissions for Readers Digest.

As of 2018, almost 50% of millennial workers freelance professionally. Moreover, according to freelance marketplace UpWork, freelancers are set to become a workforce majority in the United States by 2025. There is just one problem.

Freelance clients increasingly prefer to work with individuals backed by a bonafide business address
Office set up costs are prohibitive for many freelancers
Working as a freelancer can also be socially and emotionally isolating

Coworking spaces like The Ranch, therefore, strive to offer freelancers a solution to each of the above concerns.

Coworking Spaces Boost Brand Visibility & Trust

Affordable coworking spaces like The Ranch, provide individuals and startups with a real-world business address. The result is an instant image boost. However, specialty coworking and virtual office spaces like The Ranch, also go one step further.

In Houston, Ranch Office users can take advantage of for-purpose conference rooms
High-speed internet and basic IT infrastructure costs (copy, printing, etc) are bundled into monthly price plans
Coworking space areas can also host private events and freelancer exhibitions

Increased Productivity Benefits

Being a freelancer is hard. Individuals have to manage their workflow, client accounts, and product marketing 24/7. Thankfully, for-purpose co-working spaces alleviate some of these stresses. Specifically, by allowing freelancers to settle into a daily routine in a real-world office.

Coworking Networking Benefits

As a freelancer, it can be easy to start living life exclusively via social media. Thankfully, coworking changes this by providing a one of a kind opportunity to network with other freelancers face to face. At the same time, freelancers can also build more meaningful client relationships. Specifically, by scheduling appointments and meeting with real-world clients in person.

Freelancer Bottom Line Benefits

Working from home can be rewarding. However, homeworking also has several limitations. Coworking spaces like The Ranch, therefore, allow freelancers to benefit from access to a centrally located real office. All without having to sign high-cost long-term lease agreements with regular office space providers.

Work From Anywhere

For those freelancers who starting a freelance business, that does decide to take their brand to the next level, coworking doesn’t have to come at the expense of surrendering their mobility. At present, coworking spaces can be found everywhere from the Azores to the furthest reaches of the Australian Outback. The only question, in this case, is where would you like to work today?

Yoast SEO Settings:

SEO Title: Coworking Spaces & How You Can Turbocharge Your Freelancer Branding

Slug: Coworking & Freelancer Branding Benefits

Meta Description:

Focus Keywords: Coworking Space

SaaS Branding

5 Tips To Trick Out Your Office

Steven on September 10, 2018

1. Plants

When you bring the outdoors indoors you bring a part of nature to your office. Plants can help to keep the air clean and pure and they can give you a much-needed change of pace. They are appealing visually and they help to add an ambiance to the area.

The best plants to incorporate into an office atmosphere include the Spider or Airplane plant. This plant is easy to grow and will help to purify the air and it will send off babies that are called airplanes or spiders to create more plants. You can also opt for the Peace Lily that is easy to care for and cleanse the air or the English Ivy. These grow well and can help to reduce mold. Water features are now also available for indoors and these from Soothing Company are excellent options.

2. Freshen-Up

There are many great personalized desk accessories and one of them is plants. If you can’t pain, you can readily use storage boxes or magazine holders to create your own personal ambiance.

One way is to use blackboard paint over a storage box and you can then use the outside of the box to make memos or notes of the contents or just to personalize your space.

3. Alternate Lighting

You can also decorate your office with alternate lighting. Change the tone and light up darker areas of your office with mini lamps or LED mason jars. This can give a clearer working area and help to set the pace.

4. Tidy Up

Be a little bit OCD about tidying your desk. Use accessories to keep things neat and tidy such as mason jars or simple boxes. A bit of decor that is all in the same theme can brighten your mood and tidy your desk nicely.

A clean desk makes you more productive and it helps you to focus more on the tasks at hand during your workday.

5. Post It Art

Everyone has seen pixel art. Why not try some post-it art? A man in San Francisco gave his desk a makeover with some creative post-it art. He used just over 8000 post its to create a floor to ceiling portrait of a superhero. Entire office teams can join in and have fun with this sort of project. The best part is that it can be moved around and changed at whim without damaging anything. No need to paint, remove walls or adjust anything just use post-it notes and have fun as an office.

SaaS Branding

How To Stay Focused And Energized At Work

Steven on September 7, 2018

Do you need to stay focused and energised at work – these tips will help you do just that.

Good Sleep

Get a good night’s rest before you go to work. The best way to achieve this is to have a comfortable sleep setup and this can be achieved with a great mattress. The mattress one mattress is meant to be great and can really be the foundation of better sleep and more energy.

Workout In The Morning Before Heading To Work

Taking on regular body workouts moments after waking up does more than warm you up. It helps keep the blood pumping making you feel refreshed. Just remember to take a shower and a good breakfast to push you through the day.

Take A Power Nap (20-Minute Nap)

While sleeping on a job isn’t recommended, studies show that taking a 20-minute power nap helps to rejuvenate body processes for the rest of the day. The power nap enables brain muscles to relax thus improving your concentration – especially in the afternoon.

Don’t Hold Grudges

Anger and emotions can affect your performance and output at work. Holding grudges with coworkers and even people outside the workplace takes up lots of energy in the process, and can be distracting as well. Most people only mask the emotional baggage they have on their coworkers, a habit that only drains their energy even farther. The best way to remove personal grudge is by reconciling with the persons you have wronged (or vice versa). This eases pressure on your mind.

Laugh

Laughing at anything funny, jokes included, helps the body produce endorphins. Endorphins are feel-good hormones that make someone happy and have a jovial mood. You can either look for friends to crack jokes and have fun conversations with or even make YouTube your friend. There are plenty of humorous and funny video clips on YouTube that can make you laugh even if you are not in the mood to. Consider having your dose of laughter a few minutes after lunchtime when everyone goes into the afternoon slumber mode.

Take A 15-Minute Brief Walk

Taking some time away from your station/office can be a great way to re energize. Take a few minutes’ walk outside, in the streets, or even the park to breathe the fresh air. Don’t bring your smartphone along, as this could be distracting. A 5-minute walk outside the workplace is good for your heart and helps keep the blood moving. Doing this keeps you feeling energized and sharp through the remaining hours at work.

Have a Good Read

Reading an exciting novel or even a storybook not only helps clear the mind but resets your energy as well. Reading one story or a chapter after lunch gives you a sense of completion is entertaining, and helps bring the confidence and drive you had in the morning. If you however aren’t sure where to start, you could try Rudyard Kipling or even Mark Twain for inspiration.

Resolve Disagreements with Colleagues or the Boss

Running away from conflicts and disagreements will only put more weight on your shoulders, which can be tiring at times. Instead of running away, confront any issues you might have head-on, but in a diplomatic, empathetic and open manner. How you approach some of these disagreements will determine how well you will relate with the colleague or the boss. Some of the strongest relationships and friendships out there started out with a challenge or a disagreement.

Lend a Hand or Ear to Someone or Even a Colleague

Although most people walk with their heads held high, many of these are hurting inside. Lending a listening ear or a helping hand can help put a smile on their faces. Positive energy can be transmitted from one person to another, doing something nice for a friend, colleague, or even your boss will not only light up their hearts but also give you a gratifying feeling. This trick works wonders in helping you remain focused and energized through the day.

SaaS Branding

Quality Customer Service Will Make You Stand Out

Steven on February 18, 2018

The most effective way to get ahead of your competition is to set up high-quality customer service. The success of your business relies on the relationship with the customers. By building a great customer relations policy, you’ll manage to edge your prices above the competitors. Your customers will feel good when they visit your website or store, and they’ll keep coming back. Avoid defending yourself and your company, but learn from the customer’s feedback. Their opinion counts and you should try to adapt to their needs in order to grow. You can collect customer feedback from product feedback software. Take a look at the guidelines below, and start working on your new improved customer service.

Be available all the time

In order to build great relations with your customer base, it is crucial to be accessible. If you don’t have enough time for that, make sure to hire a customer support representative and they’ll be available for all questions your clients may have. Feel free to extend your accessibility. Your contact form should be available across different channels.

Start from social media, website, and email. Most of the communication will be done online, but don’t forget to provide people with your phone as well since some of them will prefer that way of communication. As you increase channels of communication, make sure you increase the number of employees, so they can take care of everything in a timely manner.

Be quick in responding

People like to get the answer in a timely manner. Try to remember how contacting some companies can get frustrating. You really don’t need unsatisfied customers, so go ahead and make a specific business policies. For instance, determine the timeframe of 24 hours, and instruct your workers to stick to it. That means that every call or email must be returned within a day. Don’t forget to make that information public, so your customers can see it. With that type of transparency, your clients will feel respected and will wait for their service.

Concentrate on your customers

Your client base is that one thing that keeps wheels turning. Your business will grow just in case you have great customer service.

Because of that, open your ears widely and listen what they have to say. Sometimes, you will hear something you don’t want to hear but listen through all of it since there might be a thing or two you can learn. Avoid defending yourself and your company, but learn from the customer’s feedback. Their opinion counts and you should try to adapt to their needs in order to grow.

Improve weak points

Every company has its own weaknesses and so does yours. Put some effort into resolving the most common issues your clients pointed out. If there are more than 5 people who reported the same issue, you should slow down and try to take care of it. Set high standards for your firm and your staff. That way, everybody will know their job and get it done accordingly. In addition, try to be as much transparent as you can toward your customer base. Meet the needs of your clients even when they are wrong. You want them happy at the end of the day, and you want your revenue to increase. It’s a win-win situation.

Think about the big picture

Your business isn’t just your product or service, it’s much more. People like to spend money at the places they feel comfortable and happy. Because of that, you should improve the whole experience around your business. Your office will be busy during the day, and people in line should be entertained in some way. You may set up a little library, install a TV or even hire a photo booth as an additional way for your clients/customers to kill some time while waiting. Your customers will be happy with that kind of treatment and will be eager to continue doing business with you.

Educate your employees

The chain is strong as its weakest link. In order to make the strong and sustainable system, it is crucial to make some rules. Once you start hiring new employees, you should invest some time into their education. Present them with company policy and insist on sticking to it.

Of course, be flexible and modify it when needed. If you want to build great customer service, all of you must think as one. It is bad for the business if you answer the same question differently than one of your employees. This issue can be resolved with prepared templates which can be modified in certain situations. Nevertheless, engaging and motivating your frontline employees is crucial, since they have direct impact on customer experience. They play a big role providing an exceptional customer experience and insuring frontline workers are passionate about your brand vision and empowered to engage with customers is essential.

Final thoughts

Making a big and successful company isn’t easy and it takes a lot of effort and time. As an entrepreneur, you should be aware of all challenges you may stumble upon and give your best to resolve them quickly. As much as it is important to have high sales and healthy revenue, you shouldn’t forget that most important people are your customers, so take care of their needs all the time.

This post was written by Ian Pearson. Aside from primary area of interest and expertise in business consulting, Ian could be tagged also as a passionate sports fan, nature and photography enthusiast, always trying to keep up to date with tech innovations and development.