Source: Intuit
By: Stephanie Taylor Christensen
What are your plans for growing your business in the new year? When we posed this question in the past, you told us that you wanted to do things like expand your market reach, focus on getting more repeat customers, or introduce new products and services.
Those are all excellent goals. So, while you’re thinking about your New Year’s resolutions for 2014, we thought we’d offer up a few that, according to your entrepreneurial peers, actually made a big impact on their small businesses.
“Enhance response times.” Adi Bittan, co-founder and CEO of online reputation firm OwnerListens, says decreasing the time it took her team to respond to customer requests — from 48 hours to less than 24 hours — was her New Year’s resolution last year. To make that goal a reality, her team implemented recurring task reminders in their calendars and shared related metrics at weekly meetings. “I’m now happy to report the current average response rate is under 12 hours. Additionally, customer satisfaction rates are up 16 percent, and customer engagement is up 31 percent,” Bittan says.
Read more about buying local, customer service, find a local business, find local businesses, find locally owned businesses, get local, Help small business, local business, local businesses, local buying, local shop, New Year's, New Year's Resolution, shop local, shop locally, Shop Small, shops local, small business, small business help, small businesses, why buy local.
