How to extract extra time from your day which you can use otherwise?
A bit of a tricky title, but generally everyone who runs any kind of business has one and the same common problem – chronic lack of free time. There’s a certain tool that I want to show you which will allow you to save a lot of time, this tool works perfectly in service companies, especially those operating online and receiving most inquiries in the form of email.
Until recently, I used the traditional model when it comes to answering client emails – I would write each response from scratch for each individual client. One day I came across Michael Szafrański’s blog, a really amazing person, I recommend his podcasts “How to save money” – don’t be misled by this title as there are many super tips for entrepreneurs.
Going back to the topic, there is a tool that allows you to highly automate the process of handling client inquiries.
Let’s say you run an online store or a website, you have an offer such as a price list which you do not want to share on your website, only show what you offer and put up a form, if a client wants to know the prices they need to contact you. Simple. A website plays an informative role describing the offer but without a price list.
There’s a tool called TextExpander (I’ll link it below) that will allow you to save a lot of time as you can use it for both responses and follow-ups – what does its operation involve?
Let’s say you want to respond to one of 20 emails you received on a given day from clients regarding the same specific service and you need to send a bunch of additional information plus a price list. What do you do? You launch Text Expander and define so-called snippets or fragments of text that will automatically be inserted into the email body when you enter a certain keyword, e.g.
You run a construction company and a client asks about prices for bathroom renovation services, what do you do? Define a snippet named “renovation_bathroom” where you write the text regarding prices, scope of work, etc. Now having such a question from a client in front of you, click “respond”, enter the keyword “renovation_bathroom” and this keyword is replaced with the text of your offer, price list, etc.
You can use such a snippet an unlimited number of times in responses to other clients, let’s say a client asks about several different options, e.g. bathroom renovation and painting living room, then you create another snippet named “painting_prices” where you enter the text of the offer regarding painting, so now you have two snippets – one for bathroom renovation and one for painting.
When responding to an email from such a client, you introduce a preamble, then the text, etc., and in this place you enter the keyword for the snippet, e.g. “renovation_bathroom” and in its place inserts the text of the offer regarding bathroom renovation, painting prices, etc.
You can respond quickly to clients by using these snippets, especially during the initial contact when a client asks about details of an offer and prices, then you send them a quick response and save a lot of time. When a client returns with further questions, you already know you’re having a very personalized discussion about details, so you won’t use snippets as much but in this first contact you can do it and save a lot of time.
One note: remember that Text Expander works globally, i.e., unless you close it, it will be working in any application, e.g. if you have MS Word open and you’re writing some text and enter a keyword defined in TextExpander, the content of this snippet will automatically be inserted into your text.
Link to download the program (free) – Text Expander
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