Thanks mostly to social media, but also due to current business trends, our customers now expect us to be available at their convenience. If you’re a global company, or even a large-ish company, that’s hard to do. Unfortunately, if you’re a soloist or a small local business, you can either be available 24/7 OR have work/life balance. But it’s not possible to do both at once.

Using a considered mixture of technology and outsourcing, it’s a lot easier to make your company seem a lot bigger, and to be able to service customers whenever they’re ready to buy. Here are 15+ things that can help you change your work/life balance dream into a reality. And allow you to provide great customer service while having work/life balance:

Outsourcing

There are two areas you can outsource here:

Answering incoming telephone calls
Answering incoming contacts through other methods

Incoming phone calls:

You can hire a virtual receptionist to answer incoming calls to your business, respond to anything that’s just a FAQ, transfer calls to or take messages for the best person to answer the question, follow up on unresolved issues and act as a general gatekeeper for you and your staff.

Other incoming contacts:

Use a Virtual Assistant to monitor your email accounts, your social media accounts and even possibly your mail if you don’t physically need to see incoming letters. The Virtual Assistant can respond where possible, prioritise messages, pass on other queries to relevant staff and manage the expectations of the client. You will only need to deal with things coming through from your Virtual Assistant as urgent.

TIP: To make things easier, you can use the same person for both areas, or use multiple people if you’d rather. If there’s a lot of contact, I’d suggest using more than one person. I’d also suggest using someone in the time zone most of your customers are in which will not necessarily be your time zone. Or, use multiple people to cover multiple time zones if you want to offer 24/7 support.

Tech Solutions

There are a couple of ways that technology can help you to get a better work/life balance while maintaining great service to your customers.

There are tools that help you to do something quicker – allowing you to provide better service with less time spent on time consuming extras
Things that help you to be more flexible about where & when you work – allowing you to spend more time with friends and family without sacrificing your ability to help your clients
Tools that help you track and control your work and personal life – helping you to develop better habits as well as to be able to quantify time

Tools that help you do something quicker

HootSuite

HootSuite is a service that lets you monitor several social media accounts at once. You can also use it to post and schedule. A free account lets you see & post to up to 5 accounts, a paid account gives even more. The phone app is available for both Android and iOS platforms.

Buffer

Buffer is similar to HootSuite in that you can schedule posts to multiple networks. You can only schedule to 1 account per network on the free plan, but the paid plans offer more flexibility. Buffer has apps for both Android and iOS platforms. It also has an extension for Chrome to make sharing easier, plus it works with a heap of other programs (see https://bufferapp.com/extras)

Handy hint: To make sure I don’t accidentally send things to the wrong network, I use HootSuite to post to my business accounts and Buffer to post to my personal accounts.

OneNote

OneNote is where I put things I might need later, it’s my filling cabinet for all the how-to’s, hints and notes from seminars I’ve attended. You can link to web pages, clip text from web pages, add files, photos in fact pretty much anything you might want to refer to later. You can store in separate notebooks (for example I have a business notebook and a personal notebook), everything can have multiple tags and the search facility is great.

IFTTT and Zapier

I use both of these to automate tasks. IFTTT (If This, Then That) and Zapier both allow you to connect two separate programs so that if something happens in one, it’s automatically updated in another. For example, if you add a contact in your CRM, they are also added to MailChimp, or if an article on a specific topic appears in your Feedly Feed, it’s automatically Tweeted via HootSuite or Buffer. They are both great for automating tasks, and they frequently add new functions and programs – so it’s worth having a look every now and then to see if there’s something they can do to automate a task.

Tools that help you be more flexible

Facebook page

Use your Facebook page to allow clients to contact you, and make sure messages come through to your mobile. You can also use the Facebook Pages Manager and Messenger to manage your Facebook page and respond to comments & messages from anywhere you can access the internet. Make sure to take advantage of the facility to send an automated response to a message that lets clients know that you’ve received their message and when you’ll get back to them.

Skype

I use Skype on my mobile phone and on my PC and laptop, most calls I make using Skype as the charges are less than mobile calls (yes, I’m on a bad plan at the moment). If you want to limit the number of places you can be called, get a Skype number and forward your landline to it and you can answer all your calls on your mobile.

Dropbox

Dropbox is the place for storing things you need to access on various devices, as well as being a place to share things with clients, colleagues, friends and family. I store a ton of stuff here so I can use it on my PC, laptop, tablet, phone etc. Another bonus is that you can set up your phone so that when you take a picture it automatically synchs to your Dropbox folder.

Google Drive

A similar service to Dropbox, Google Drive. As well as the storage place for your Google Docs, you can also store other files, including Microsoft Office documents. Their forms are awesome and there are a heap of addins that create amazing functionality. I love the LucidCharts and HelloFax addins, also the HelloSign addin is really handy if you want to collect signatures online. On the whole I think it’s definitely worth using BOTH Google Drive and Dropbox.

Tools that help you track & control

42 Goals

42Goals is the program that I credit with helping me to stop smoking 4 years ago, after about 30 years of being a fairly heavy smoker. You set your goals and targets and 42Goals keeps track so you can see how well you’re doing. It may not be too effective if you need other people to motivate you, but if you’re the type who is most competitive with themselves, it’s brilliant – and face it, most self-employed people are good at motivating themselves.

Feedly

Every time I find an interesting blog or website, I add it to Feedly so I’m notified when there are new posts. You can categorise your posts (I have personal stuff, business, marketing, news etc. Then when I have time I can go through and read any interesting articles, or if I’m out and in a queue or waiting for someone I can just send any articles to Instapaper that seem interesting so I can read them later while getting rid of the ones I’m not interested in.

Instapaper

Once I’ve found an article on Feedly that I either want to read more thoroughly, or I want to save to share later (because I think if you’re going to share an article you should read it and say why you think anyone else should read it) I save it to Instapaper. Instapaper is really my storage spot for articles. The reason I love Instapaper is that you can categorise things, so I have a Folder for Personal stuff, a folder for things that are longer videos that I want to connect to the TV to watch, a Folder of freebies to share a folder of business articles to share etc. So when I need an article for something, or I’m watching TV in the evening, I can just go through and read, share or save them at my leisure.

Trello

Trello is a project management tool that you can use to keep track of anything and everything. It’s simple to use and you can give your clients access to their own board so that they can add tasks and requests and see where you’re up to on things. This way, everybody is on the same page, and your clients can have a little extra peace of mind knowing where you’re up to on their projects. You also benefit because clients can see what’s happening at their leisure, so it’s one less phone call or email that has to be made.

Toggl

Toggl is a web based program to track time. I love it because it’s easy to use, but there’s quite a bit of scope to add pricing, clients and projects so you can easily record the time spent on tasks and projects. There’s also an app for your phone, so you can track your time when you’re out of the office.

Asana

I’m a recent convert to Asana since my Outlook tasks stopped sorting. However it’s a great way to keep tracks on where all your client work is at, and again a mobile app allows you keep tabs wherever you are

ZohoCRM

I’ve been using ZohoCRM for years and I find it really easy to use, and to keep track of my clients and leads. Again, a mobile app makes it great for when you’re out of the office. And a function that asks you if you want to record details of calls from clients is a great reminder to note the details of any conversations.

So there’s my list of favourite tools, plus how I like to use them. These are pretty much all free, and all available on both Android and iOS – which enables me to work from wherever I happen to be, as long as I have an internet connection. By being able to access all the tools of your job when you’re not in the office, you can take advantage of downtime to get out during your core business times and still be able to help your customers with any queries they might have. Good customer service is not about sitting by the phone, or being available on email 24/7. It’s about being able to give great service when it’s needed and the best thing you can do for yourself and for your business is to make the tools that accomplish that available for both yourself and your customers.

What are your must have tools for working smarter and keeping a healthy work/life balance?