Work Smart With Inkable’s Top 3 Best Practices of 2013!

WORK SMART WITH INKABLE’S TOP 3 BEST PRACTICES FOR 2014!WE HOPE YOU ARE BACK FROM AN INVIGORATING (WE DO HOPE IT WAS) HIATUS AND ARE NOW READY TO HUSTLE.

To succeed in a competitive market where small businesses are all vying for top-of-mind share, it’s time to go retro and build from last year’s learnings.

Allow us to share our Top 3 Best Practices to help you get going. Avago now.

Bright-eyed with resolutions, lists, and empowering mantras in tow, we know that you, like the Inkable Team, are psyched to roll up them sleeves up and dive back in for a (determinedly) productive 2014 where business is smooth, the customers are well satisfied, and opportunities are abound and inspiring. Try on these tips for size; they are tried-and-tested practices that have helped us succeed and work way smarter. Sharing is caring, after all!

1.Empower your employees.

We pride ourselves in providing the best possible customer service for our awesome clients as a ‘Thank You’ for continued business. Intensive training and good onboarding practices, we’ve realized, are not enough.

Empower your employees. Your customers will love you for it.

To make our brand values real for customers, we empower our team to go beyond following set rules and know when they should go the distance for a customer. One great example: Mark’s  Burgers in Greenville, South Carolina had a customer  who had settled for water instead after seeing that Dr. Pepper wasn’t available.  Seemingly a small detail, yet the waiter did not take this lightly. He came back 5 minutes later and gave the customer a cold Dr. Pepper he had bought at the CVS down the street. Now, that’s service. Brains on Fire’s Robbin Phillips even wrote a blog post about it. How are your employees bridging the gap between service and *real* service? Are they empowered enough to do something great for your customers?

2.Be visible on Social Media.

When we started our Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter pages barely two years ago, we knew it was going to be hard work. Getting content up, learning what works and what doesn’t, knowing when to post, was invaluable in having our customers get to know who we are—not the business—and being able to establish our online presence.

Social Media is still one of the best ways to increase your visibility while getting genuine fan/customer engagement.

Even if it doesn’t drive a ton of sales, to be able to enjoy genuine engagement and drive a campaign from time to time is something we enjoy and truly benefit from.  Everyone needs help growing their fan base, and we’ve really gained a lot of insights from Facebook expert Mari Smith.

3.Be more than “just a business”.

At the end of the day, we are all people with concerns, engagements, worries, “real life” problems. It pays to always pay it forward.  As small business owners, don’t hesitate to offer your services for a valuable cause if you can manage it. Your brand will be more personable for it, and reaching out is a nice way to show everyone that you are indeed part of the global community.

Courtesy of Mashable.com

When Typhoon Haiyan devastated the Philippines, Google showed everyone how deeply rooted it is in its brand values. They used their resources to help families and friends find missing people, and launched a comprehensive map that could be embedded and shared on any site.

Working hard, working smart, and truly caring for our customers and community has worked for us.

How about you? How are you driving your business this 2014?  Let us know in the comments box.

Cheers to you, and to the new year ahead of us! Let’s make this year count.

Ink splat,

INKABLE