There are so many tools out there which can help streamline your business.  Here are a few that we use at Red Desk:

Smart Survey

If you are working with a number of people and need to find out dates or opinions quickly then we are finding that using a tool like Smart Survey is more time effective than sending out a bunch of individual emails.

With Smart Survey you can create online surveys and forms which can be suitable for Customer Experience, Employee Engagement, Market Research and more.

We’ve opted for the basic free package which allows 15 questions per survey and 100 responses per month.  If you find that you are needing to gather more data then packages range from £30+ a month.

Teams

If you have been homeschooling recently then you might be familiar with MS Teams.  However, have you used it for business?  We do have a love/hate relationship with it but we are finding that for clients that have a lot going on then it is great for keeping track for different threads.

Previously we had emails going back and forth but it was time-consuming checking that we’d read and extracted information each time, especially since things moved quite fast.  We are now using the General Posts function on Teams and have summaries of conversations that we’ve had about different projects and we just add to the particular threads when we get an update.  To make sure we know the other people that we have read the posts we are putting a thumbs up on the post.

SalesForce

This is a big old beast of a CRM but perfect for our one client that has lots of different businesses and contacts that they are communicating with periodically.  We are still learning our way around it but the Reports function is proving invaluable as we can keep track of tasks for each project and segment that we are working on.  This is a big improvement on the Word document we used previously.

Over time, we will use SalesForce for sending mailouts and more automation.  But for now, it is working perfectly well for what we need.

Slack.com

Slack is a multi-functional communication dashboard, that allows you to communicate with your whole team more instantly.  You can use Slack to replace email, texting and phone calls so that everything is in one place and easy to find.

All communication is organised into channels which are easy to create and allows you to group your conversations with the right people.

We use Slack with one our international clients which has team members spread far and wide. It is a very fast, effective and multi-layered way to manage your working scheduling and communications.  You can follow threads, reply directly or tag an individual within the group.

WhatsApp Group

If you, like many, are working virtually, then a WhatsApp group for your team is a free, simple and extremely effect tool.  Use your WhatsApp for simple messages keeping all your team members in the loop as well as for a bit of a morale boost with the occasional shared jollity.  Make sure you add  allowing it to become a quick and easy to use asset.

For more ways to streamline your business please contact us.