Remote Product Support with Audio and Web Conferencing

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Small businesses cannot afford unhappy customers. Growing and turning a profit requires that you continue to maintain satisfied existing customers while acquiring new ones. To accomplish this, you need an efficient, affordable and fast customer support system in place that benefits both your customer service support personnel and your customers. You are probably already using audio and Web conferencing for business contacts around the world, but have you considered what these services can do for your customer support operations?

Most companies maintain customer service agents through a call centers, instant messaging and email. While these are useful avenues, you can save a lot by switching to audio and Web conferencing for the majority of your customer service support questions. Audio conferencing is much more affordable than call centers and Web conferencing offers the benefits of sharing documents and applications with clients while providing instant messaging or voice communications at the same time.

By switching to Internet-based conferencing solutions for customer support, you are no longer limited geographically for your customer service hiring needs. Many companies outsourced customer service to foreign countries, only to learn that their customers detested speaking with individuals with poor English skills. By instead using a combination of audio and Web conferencing, combined with native English speakers where the prevailing wage is lower, you can accomplish the same savings without sacrificing customer service.

Another problem with telephone support and instant messaging is the inability to show customers visually how to fix a problem. When you use an audio conferencing service that also offers Web conferencing, you can easily turn the phone call into a Web conference and show customers how to resolve their product questions. This leads to quicker problem resolutions and few onsite customer support calls. Together these conferencing tools will save your business time and money allowing you to service more customers in less time and a lower cost.

Virtual Meetings, Virtual Teams - Leveraging Web Conferencing

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This is the next installment in an ongoing series devoted to helping you gain the advantages of remote workers while avoiding some of the common pitfalls most often associated with a virtual workforce. Today, we will discuss why web conferencing is usually the best way to communicate and collaborate with your virtual workforce.

Having a virtual workforce means there are many options available to you for communication. Unfortunately, too many managers rely on email to discuss work-related items with telecommuters. While emails may be the right course in some situations, real time communication through web conferencing is preferable.

The Problem with Emails

 Think about how you assign new work to your employees. By email, the instructions lay among many other requests in the employee’s inbox. According to Jon Reed, a successful telecommuter since 2000, “I think we need to step away from the expectation that email is the best real time medium for communication. I find that once I check my email, I can’t ignore the fifteen requests for various kinds of follow ups.” He continues, “…email can be uniquely time consuming, I try to limit my email sessions to a couple big binges every day. Without that I would never get my deliverables done.”

Use Web Conferencing for Assignments

A better way to step above the email jungle is to conference with your employee via the web. This way you can point out particular project points or goals and show the employee what is expected. This offers the employee a way to respond with questions immediately, rather than waiting for your email reply to get started. The result is greater productivity and fewer corrections to the work later.

Why Web Conferencing is Better than Phone Calls

Web conferencing has become so affordable it may even be preferable to telephone communications. On the telephone, you cannot show the employee the intended result of a project. However, when you set up web conference, you can point out particular points of discussion to the employee and devise a plan of action together, just as if you were standing in the same office.

How to Manage a Virtual Workforce

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This is the third in a series about how audio conferencing services and web conferencing can help you enjoy the benefits of remote workers while avoiding the common pitfalls of such working arrangements. This discussion focuses on integrating the remote worker’s office to meet the needs of your company.

Office Space

Any remote worker you hire should have a separate, fully functional home office, with all the machines and capabilities found in your office. This means ergonomically correct desks and chairs, quality telephones, fast computers, web cameras, broadband internet, fax capabilities, copy machines and the like. You must communicate all of these requirements to the employee and then verify they are in place.

In most cases, workers are happy to supply the necessary hardware at their own expense. If your company has specialized hardware or software that you will provide, be certain the employee signs a contract, specifying the rights and duties of each party in maintaining the equipment. You should also spell out what happens to such equipment should the employee relationship be terminated.

Training

Do not assume your employee knows how to use your company’s communications systems. Have a quick web conference to go over the different avenues of communication and address any training issues at that time.

It is also important that your telecommuters understand who your service providers are and how to use them. This can include mail services or office-supply vendors. Show employees the proper procedure for utilizing these services.

Hello, My Name Is…

Introduce the new employee to current staff with a photograph and bio. Open a dialogue by including the new employee in a web conference staff meeting as soon as possible after the hire. Connect the new hire with another worker who has been telecommuting for you on a long-term basis.

Settling In

It is best to get your employee up and running as soon as possible. Assign basic tasks that will familiarize the employee with your systems and then begin adding more complicated work as the days pass. Schedule fifteen minutes each afternoon for a web conference to address questions and direct work.  Finally, be sure to get them up and running with your conference call system -  conference calls are the great telecommuter equalizer as clients, workers and prospects are all dialed in, creating a veritable virtual office for communication and primed for collaboration.