In order for any for-profit business to be successful, it must be for-people before anything else. When customers decide to spend money on your service or product, they do so by expecting to be served in the best way possible. That’s what customer service is for. Otherwise, if the service isn't satisfying, they may go shopping elsewhere. This holds true whether you are oriented on service or product and whether you're a B2C or B2B business.

Around the world, a staggering 96% of customers are saying that customer service is a major factor in their choice of loyalty to a brand. Great customer service will create a satisfied and loyal audience, the business will experience growth in the best way possible and the customer experience level will rise substantially. However, just one wrong Facebook or Instagram complaint or dozens of bad comments and reviews will ruin the years of effort that went into building a high-quality business reputation.
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For small businesses, one of the better ways of achieving such high-quality customer service comes with using a virtual assistant to deal with all the nuances.

There’s nothing worse than dreading the journey to work because you know your marketing team isn’t quite as ‘on it’ as they used to be.
 
It’s a crushing feeling - particularly when you’re so invested in the business yourself.
 
What gives? Why do they appear to be so unproductive when they were once flying high and smashing every target?
 
Fear not, for there are some smart, tried-and-tested methods you can adopt to rejuvenate your flagging marketing team, and I’d like to share them with you today.

Did you know that an average of 2 missed calls can equate to 104 potential missed sales each year? If you’re a relatively new small business, then hitting the ground running and getting those clients reeled in is a huge priority. However, with new business comes an influx of telephone enquiries if you’ve nailed a good marketing strategy - and as great as this sounds, answering numerous calls can become very time-consuming.

It’s not just on the hour calls that eat up your working day, but maybe your job involves lots of travelling or the inability to answer the phone due to the nature of your business.

If hiring a receptionist just isn’t in your business budget, then a call answering service might just be what you need.

​A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is usually very helpful for any business. This is mainly because every business faces emergencies or disasters that can hinder its continuation. If your business does not have a continuity plan you might be forced to close down in case of emergencies or disasters. This makes it paramount to know exactly why having a business continuity plan is crucial for your business.

.A recent study published by the Journal of Advertising Research found that events have a considerable impact on fostering a ‘positive brand experience’ amongst consumers, and that people who had attended a brand’s event ultimately ‘gave more value to that brand’. The evidence shows that, with careful and strategic planning, events are an incredibly powerful marketing tool for businesses of any size or industry.
 
In this post, we highlight seven essential reasons why events should be part of your marketing strategy.

​Instagram currently has over 1 billion monthly active users and 500 million daily active users posting millions of photos, videos and comments. To search for any particular person, personality or place would be akin to looking for a needle in a haystack but for Instagram search.
 
Listing in online yellow pages is a great way to get local/global exposure for your business, another smart way is by harnessing the power of Instagram search.
 
Instagram search is like the Google of Instagram where you can search for and find anything on Instagram particularly people, places and performing hashtags. It allows you to find whatever you're looking for (or anything close to it).
 
Learning how to use Instagram search will help you improve your Instagram search game which comes with benefits like increased:

• Visibility
• Mentions
• Likes
• Comments
• Traffic
• Leads
• Sales
• Customers, etc

 
In this post we'll share 5 easy ways to optimize your Instagram profile and posts for Instagram search.

Local citations… What are they, are they useful to your business, and do you really need them? Will they improve your search engine results? We unpick and explore what is seen by many to be a complex issue, but which is, in fact, simple once you understand the basics.

​Ever been on holiday to a foreign country and found Google Translate to be your saviour when you are lost or hungry? It can come in very handy in such instances, as it can also when you’re browsing Facebook and need some help understanding someone’s post. But we would wager that more often than not, that translation, while helpful, is never quite right, is it? You may well understand the gist of something, but you know that either the grammar is wrong, the phrasing could use a bit of tweaking, or the expressions or idioms are just a little strange.
 
So it is with any app that promises to accurately translate your documents, website, or emails. But beware the pitfalls of taking the cheaper way for something as important as your business communications. So why should you be translating your business-related processes professionally? 

​Lighting is one of the crucial factors that affect workplace productivity even if you work from home.

Insufficient and poor lighting can not only hinder your productivity, but also affect your mood and cause health problems, such as headaches. Fortunately, improving your lighting is a simple upgrade that will definitely have a positive impact on your motivation and inspiration. 

​Big Data, in simple terms, is the practice of analysing extremely large sets of information in order to glean valuable insights into any number of vital business practices; from customer service to logistics and everything in-between. It’s proved to be an invaluable source of information for the world’s largest businesses and now influences key stakeholders decisions on a daily basis.
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Due to the complexity of the algorithms organisations need to create in order to determine trends and gain intuition, Big Data is often seen as the exclusive preserve of Blue Chips and multi-nationals. This is, considering the amount of time and money that companies need to invest in order to create said algorithms, an understandable position. That said, there are large organisations whose business models are reliant on allowing businesses of all shapes and sizes the opportunity to use their algorithms in order to achieve their goals.