Can Your Tech Stack Keep Up With Your Brand Vision?
How successful could your brand be if today's technologies could smoothly support your business?
Technology can sometimes feel like your best friend or your worst enemy. It can help you realize your dreams or stubbornly prevent you from achieving them. Bringing your brand into the mix and having to weigh the impact of your technology decisions against your brand's growth potential can significantly raise the stakes.
Some small business owners believe that a brand is static. That is not the case. Brands constantly evolve, adapting to the changing needs and tastes of customers, the growing capabilities of competitors, and new technological trends.
Take social media as an example: if a brand wants to appeal to Millenials or Gen Z, being active on social media is crucial. The same applies to selling online or electronically signing contracts.
If your tech stack doesn't keep up with this pace of change and your customers' evolving expectations, the outdated software you use or your old laptop could limit or even damage your brand's growth potential.
Remember, in the eyes of your customers, your competition is only one click away.
Maximize Your Brand's Growth Potential
How successful could your brand be if today's technologies could smoothly support your business?
Probably a lot more if you're still using a six-year-old computer, tablet, or mobile phone.
Yes, a six-year-old device is outdated. I am sure it still somewhat functions, but it probably doesn't run on the latest software release or only slowly. I am all for saving money. But you shouldn't cut your expenses to the point that it restricts your brand's growth potential.
Cost Cutting Is Not a Growth Strategy: Cutting costs can inadvertently make your profitability problem worse.
Upgrade Your Website
Similar to fashion or interior design, websites also follow trends, albeit slightly slower.
A website that hasn't been updated in several years can look outdated or, even worse, cluttered if it doesn't render correctly on a mobile phone.
Although it can be unnecessary or too costly to follow every web design trend, you should regularly compare your website's functionality and usability with your competitors'. Try to be as objective as possible. If you feel your website provides a poorer user experience, consider upgrading your site. Because if you don't, your customers might give your competition a chance.
Why You Should Digitize Your Workflow: A digitized and integrated workflow has many advantages. Above all, they make it easier to do business with you and thus save you and your customers a lot of time.
Digitize Your Workflow
User experience often extends far beyond your website. It also includes all customer interactions, their timeliness, relevance, and seamlessness after receiving an order.
At a minimum, customers expect transparency, online payment options, and paperless communication because they experience these features daily at giants like Amazon, Walmart, Apple, and Home Depot.
As a small business owner, it is impossible to replicate their speed or level of tech integration.
But you could get close by focusing on three crucial goals: signing contracts electronically, paying online, and informing customers promptly via text or email if their order status has changed.
Transparency as a business towards your customers requires that you always keep track of your orders. That's easy if you have only a few contracts. But if you have many, maintaining an overview becomes increasingly more challenging.
The solution is to digitize your entire workflow. With multiple industry-specific solutions available as online subscriptions, providing your customers with a seamless, entirely digitized user experience is more affordable than ever.
How Long Should It Take You to Respond to an Inquiry? Try to respond to inquiries by the next morning. If that's challenging for your business, customer relationship software could give you the necessary productivity boost.
Increase Your Responsiveness
If it typically takes you a week or longer to respond to a customer question or process an online order, that's far too long by today's standard. Remember, your customers also buy from Amazon, which offers same-day shipping, or from other retailers that can fulfill orders the next day.
Although many small business customers respect that you don't have the vast resources of big companies and don't expect immediate feedback or order processing, it is entirely achievable for well-run small businesses to get back to customers the next business day. A fully digitized workflow allows you to do that.
Make Technology Work for You, Not Against You
Like learning new gestures or features every time a new iPhone iOS release comes around, technology constantly evolves, offering better and faster ways to help customers.
If you want your business to stay competitive and in sync with your brand vision, you have to adopt today’s most promising technologies.
However, to make these technologies work for you and not against you, you must be willing to accept the workflow they are based on and make it your own. Sometimes that's the hardest part.
