Tag: Business Tips

We operate globally and so to keep our costs down we have pretty tight control on our credit card payment processing. To pay us not only must you have a CVV code match with your credit card but an AVS X and Y match. That means that the street name and zip code must match what is on file with your credit card company.

For some global clients this has caused problems when there bank does not support AVS matching. This is where a wire transfer may be preferable. But how is a wire transfer different from an ACH or direct deposit transaction. A wire transfer is done by the paying party – the client. You the business owner supply your bank address, routing number and account number. The payee, the client, then goes to their bank and processes the transfer. The client will typically be assessed a currency transaction charge and other fees. Here in Maryland for me to send a wire transfer my bank charges me $60. For me to receive a wire transfer my bank charges a $12 fee even if the sending party has said they will pay all charges. Wire transfers are safe to do and my bank says that they are one way transactions into my bank account, meaning that the client cannot withdraw money from my account after I have shared my account information.

Now ACH is different. I am very careful who I allow ACH access to my checking account. I have one long term client and my credit card processing companies. With ACH it is possible for a party to remove money from your account tht you have not authorized. I found out however if you as a business report a fraudulent ACH withdraw in two days, you will get your money refunded to you and the bank where the fraudulent charge originated from will have to collect the money back from their client which originated the charge. Good reason if you allow ACH access to your checking to be vigilant in regards to reviewing account transactions daily or every other day.

I have long carried a HP iPaq PDA for appointment scheduling and now I am living without it now that I have upgraded my cell phone to a smartphone. I have an LG enV Touch. Although this is not a 3G phone, it has many of the features that I wanted and like.

With a free software download from LG I can now sync Outlook on my two computers and carry my appointments on my phone and drop my PDA entirely. I did find out that I had to turn off the automatic alert setting in Outlook for my appointments as when they were transferred to my phone, my new phone was constantly doing an irritating alert to tell me of my next appointment or task that had to be done.

The new phones that are available now are really wonderful and a real improvement over what was available just two years ago. One of the things I really like about my LG enV Touch is that I get free web email. Now, I do not want to be inundated with office email in my down time or when I am away from my office, but to have the ability when I travel to offer clients a way to contact me via email to my cell phone is excellent! Better yet is the ability for my family to get me by email, text or phone call when I am away from home.

The only thing I really miss about my PDA are my games. I used to while away time at the soccer field for practice or at piano lessons playing solitaire, so I’ll just have to buy that for my phone now. If you haven’t upgraded your phone for awhile, definitely check out the new features and options. I only pay $9.99 a month to get Internet access for 100 pages and free unlimited web mail with my mobile service. I don’t think that I would have paid $30 a month for the email, but for $10 a month I am glad to have it.

If you are a small to medium sized business owner you will understand that downtime is important but very hard to have when you own your own business. You typically cannot shutter your doors and windows when you go on vacation or want to take a weekend off. You can control that you don’t work 24/7, but most business owners will continue to have some degree of contact with the office even when on vacation.

For me, I am getting ready to do some European travel this summer. I will be out 10 days in Paris, France and out two weeks in Russia later in the summer. In both cases I am not expecting to have email or phone contact. So short of closing your business and angering customers what do you do? For me, I am taking my Christmas holiday to train a new personal assistant. Although in one week I cannot do a brain clone, I can set the groundwork with a new assistant to give them the background needed to be able to monitor and answer as many questions as possible in my absence and then continue additional long distance training. I will be training my assistant to do minor AdWords account management tasks and to monitor customer service e-mail and voice traffic.

I am fortunate in that I am already working with the person whom I have chosen to be my personal assistant, but if you do not have the same situation, you may want to consider contacting Kathy Goughenour of Virtual Assistant Training. Kathy has been a personal assistant and now trains others on how to be virtual assistants. She knows her students and can recommend one to you to contact to become your personal assistant on a full-time or part-time basis.

There is no reason in today’s web connected world why a personal assistant cannot monitor phone, email, and business traffic for you from just about any location. If you are feeling too tethered to your own growing business, now’s the time to start planning for your free time by considering training a personal assistant.

Everyone can have a problem or a business difficulty arise. It happens, but after it happens what can make or break your reputation is how you resolve a problem. Consider problems a learning experience.

When a problem arises, for you as the business owner your best tactic is to listen actively to a complaint and then to find out what it is that the customer feels is fair to resolve the issue. Sometimes to offer a refund is the best approach and sometimes it is best to redo whatever was an issue. Either way a prompt and honest response is needed. There is nothing worse than a customer who has had an issue and then waited and waited for a phone call. Quick assistance can put out a fire rapidly.

Having a signed letter of agreement before you start work is also extremely helpful as this prevents situations where a customer states you said you would do this and you did not. If you spell out what you do in the agreement and both parties sign the agreement the additional request is handled as a change order with an additional charge or a comped charge if you are so inclined.

If you have made a mistake in handling a customer complaint, sometimes there is no way to go back and fix the problem once it has happened, but you can make sure to learn from it. Several times in my career I have said to myself “well, that didn’t go so well. Note to self, don’t do that again!”.  Use these situations as opportunities to learn from a mistake and move forward building new customer focused strategies for the future.