It’s fall already! I know for a lot of people that means back to school, back to our routines, and looking forward to the holiday season. For me, unfortunately, the fall season means I’m getting a cold. Without fail every year that the season starts to come out of the heatwave, I look forward to extra time with Kleenex and the couch.

While old episodes of Seinfeld kept me company, I couldn’t help but notice how far we’ve come from the days of rushing to answer our landline, hunting for a crisp dollar to get a candy bar and searching through books to fact check. As digital progress continues, so do our convenience options.

To those working towards gaining more customers and continuing to serve our customers well, consider how you are making it more convenient to do business with you. With the vast amount of communication tools, automation, digital platforms, and lack of instructions for how to use them, the thought of incorporating new customer convenience tools is cause for tribulation.

The good news is that you don’t have to offer every convenience method to have a successful business. Here are my top 3 recommendations for the most high impact / low effort convenience tools every business should have or plan to have.

3 High Impact / Low Effort Convenience Tips

We all want to save time. Even if it’s that you would like to spend more time sipping on coffee while watching hummingbirds. That includes your customers. Having these tools in place will help your processes run smoother while still enhancing your customer relationship.

1. Email responses with a personalized tone

• You may have an automated system that responds to your potential customers. Would it take much time to give these automated responses a personalized tone? Try to add your “flavor”.

• Step up the personalization with a picture or personalized video message.

• Always add your branding to the response

• Assign someone within your company to receive the personalized emails to keep track of the information being sent out. It’s too easy to forget what we have set up in our auto systems.

2. Make it clear how customers can communicate with you

• Online booking calendar- If this is something you use then include the link in your communication and make it easy to know that this is a convenient way to reach you.

• Client portals and download sections are a great resource for repeat customers. They know the drill now just makes it easy for them to customize the process to the way that suits them best.

• When introducing a new tool, really put it out there. People have their own preferred method of communication. Make options clear to get more conversations going.

3. SEO - Optimize, optimize, optimize

Search engines have to find you before your prospective customers find you. Make it convenient for search engines to find you with clear language about what you do and the services you offer.

• Keep services and contact information updated on your website and profile pages

• Check the analytics of these platforms to see where and how people are finding you. If traffic looks down or numbers look off, it’s worth investigating. This drop could be causing an inconvenience to your audience.

As always, I certainly hope you have found this information helpful. We offer coaching and marketing services to help you jumpstart your online marketing strategy. You are not alone to figure it all out.

Your marketing is your business lifeline. When you’re ready for some extra guidance and professional support, Riza Marketing is here to help.