Amethyst Answers

web creation and social media training for small businesses

Community Rocks

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communityWhen you ask people what they are thankful for, one of the most common answers is family and friends. Or in another word: community. I have been extremely lucky in this past year to be part of several great communities that have helped me grow both my business and my ‘self’. I’d like to share these communities with you.

Womentum

With the motto “Moving women from competition to connection”, Womentum is my tribe of like-minded ladies. It’s an inclusive group supporting personal growth so we can be the best version of ourselves. While it isn’t a business group, it has certainly helped me grow my business, both through my personal growth and by making new connections.

YYC Biz Hub

YYC Biz Hub is a grassroots entrepreneurial Facebook group for Calgarians. It has been a fantastic resource for getting advice and input. Through it I’ve been able to connect and collaborate with some talented people, most notably Jaime Wedholm, a talented graphic designer who “completes” me.

WordPress Meetups

Once a month, we gather to discuss various topics related to WordPress. This group is open to all levels from beginner to expert. It’s amazing what you can learn from each other and you never know who you might connect with. Through one of the larger events of this group, WordCamp, I met Re Carlson, a way bigger geek than me, and now I have the privilege of collaborating with him as part of the Abtek Web Design team.

If you have the opportunity to join any of these groups, or something similar in your area, I highly recommend it. Expanding your community with great people can only enhance who you are and what you do.

Share your favourite community in the comments!

4 Metrics-Measuring Must-Haves

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KPI metrics
Image courtesy of KROMKRATHOG / FreeDigitalPhotos.net 

 

Metrics. I love them! I was a math geek in school, so go figure. You can imagine how excited I was to work with KPI (Key Performance Indicators) at one of my corporate gigs. Once I started working with KPI, I wondered why I hadn’t had exposure to them at other jobs. Maybe it was something only discussed among managers, but I fear a worse reality….lack of KPI.

Of course, I’ll never know, but I don’t believe either is good business practice. If you don’t have metrics, how do you know if you are growing and improving in the right ways? And if you don’t communicate your key metrics to staff, how can they get on board to help you achieve desired results?

Alright, enough with the questions and trip down memory lane. Here’s the good stuff: a list of my 4 favourite online tools to measure website metrics, KPI and a few other things that are just good practice if you have a business website (which you should if you have a business, but that’s a whole other rant!)

BDC Website Assessment

I just discovered the Free Website Assessment by BDC today, but I’ve already bookmarked it and added it to my toolkit. Again, you key in your website address and out spits a lengthy, but easy to understand, report about various aspects of your website. Categories it assesses include accessibility for various users, user experience, marketing, popularity, and how well designed and built the site is. They offer up a bit of info on why they assess each item and what might be causing a lower score.

Google Analytics

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Google products, and Analytics is certainly no exception. You do have to set up an account and connect it to your website, but once that’s done, look out! You’ll have so much information about the people visiting your site and how their usage patterns, you won’t know what to do with it all at first! Information ranges from the simplest statistics, like how many people visited my site, to more complex metrics like conversion rates. There certainly are other analytic sites available, and if Google isn’t your thing, then by all means check them out. But it’s pretty much an Internet sin for a website not to be using some form of analytics.

Marketing Grader

Marketing Grader helps you measure and improve your online marketing strategy. All you have to do is punch your website address and you get this wonderfully detailed report. It analyzes some internal website stuff, like your titles, alt tags and other geeky stuff that matters to search engines. And it looks at a whole lot of factors related to social media. If you don’t have a blog, or social media accounts, you will definitely have some holes in your report, but it also offers up links to articles they have written on how to get your score up in any particular area. Caution: this one can get a bit techy.

Sucuri Website Scan

I cannot say enough about Sucuri, but it speaks for itself. Sucuri offers a security check on your website. Find out if your site has been hacked or black-listed, just by typing in the address. If there is a security breach, they have reasonable plans to help you clean up the mess (note: I am not affiliated with them in any way, and don’t benefit from telling you this).

There you have it. Four tools you should check out immediately, if you haven’t already. Oh, and did I mention they are all free? If I missed a metrics monitoring site that you can’t live without, please feel free to mention in below.

5 Lessons in Customer Service

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customer service survey

Image courtesy of 89studio / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Back in the spring of 2009, a little boy decided to clean Mommy’s MacBook. He took a bottle of hand lotion and smeared it onto both the screen and keyboard. Much to that little boy’s surprise, not only did it not clean the computer, it actually wrecked it. Completely. The screen and logic board were toast. Luckily, the hard drive was ok, so no information was lost.

This adorable little boy is my son, and he is the reason I decided to get AppleCare on the replacement MacBook. Today, I sure am glad I did. The bottom of the casing was starting to come off, and the top of the case was cracking, so I decided to take it in and see what my warranty would do about it. Not only are they replacing both parts, but they also ran a diagnostic test and decided to replace the battery, too. $500 worth of repairs all for free! Not counting the cost of the plan, which I believe was just under $200. So I’m still saving $300 if you look at it that way.

For me, my experience today is just one of the many reasons I love Apple. And love them or hate them, there are lessons to be learned from the great customer service I received today.

1. Make them feel welcome

As soon as I arrived for my scheduled Genius Bar appointment, one of the many red-shirted staff saw me and checked me in. He didn’t just tell me to “have a seat”, but rather found a chair for me to have a seat in, and let me know someone would be with me shortly. I barely had time to look at my phone when my assigned Genius approached and introduced herself. Darned if I can remember her name now, but let’s call her Jennifer.

2. Listen and understand

Jennifer asked me what brought me in today, and I showed her the various points of concern (the top and bottom of my MacBook). I said I wanted to know if my AppleCare would cover that. Jennifer listened, and understood the problems. Mine were rather simple, but I heard other Geniuses dealing with their clients during some waiting time, and they all listened and made sure they completely understood what the concerns were.

3. Don’t promise what you can’t deliver

Next, Jennifer said something along the lines of “Let’s check it out and see what you are covered for.” My first thought was “Oh, no! Why isn’t she saying it’s covered?!” But what I now realize is she was making sure she didn’t give me false hopes. Could you imagine if she said, “ya, that should be covered” and then it wasn’t? Maybe I was wrong and didn’t have coverage at all, or it had expired. Even if that was the case, I still probably would have been upset, and possibly taken my frustration out on her.

4. Go above and beyond

Once she confirmed I did indeed have coverage (only 89 days left!), she took it a step further. She ran a diagnostic test on my MacBook and discovered the battery was needing to be replaced. And guess what? It’s covered! I was only coming in to get my casing fixed, and now I’m getting a free new battery, too! What an unexpected, pleasant little surprise.

5. Make them feel appreciated

The downside to all of this is that they will have my MacBook for up to 5 days. Jennifer asked if I had any files I needed (thoughtful), so I uploaded a bunch of stuff to “the cloud”. I didn’t realize just how much I was uploading, and it took almost an hour. Not once during that time did any employee ask me to move, or harass me for taking too long. Jennifer left me to do my thing and helped another customer, but first she let me know she would be back for me. I still wasn’t done when she had to go for her dinner break. She told not one, but two other employees about my situation so that they could keep an eye out for when I was done, and she let me know as well. They all came by to check on me, and remembered my name. None of them ever made me feel like I was wasting their time or counter space. They were there to serve me, and I was just as important as any other customer in the store. When I was finally done, one of them was right there, ready to help me.

I walked out of that store a little sad for being without my laptop for a few days, but ultimately really pleased with the experience. I am already a big fan of Apple, and this just reinforced it. I wish I left all stores feeling this way, but unfortunately, customer service is a skill that not everyone has, and not every employer promotes.

What are some of your favourite brands? Why? Share your award-winning customer service stories below.

Happy New Year!

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businessman with calendar

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

September is almost over. Fall has just begun. Department stores may be getting ready for Halloween, but Stationery stores are getting ready for the New Year. There are still several months and holidays before the New Year begins, but now seems to be the time that successful businesses start thinking ahead.

Planners, schedulers, and daytimers abound. And everyone seems to have their own way to plan and stay current. At my “day job”, a list just went out for all staff to indicate whether they would like a desk calendar, daily planner, monthly planner, or any other type of “calendar in a book” they could fathom. One or two days per page, or a week per page, everyone seems to have their own preference for time management.

Some people prefer electronic gadgets or online tools. Certainly these can be helpful in a variety of ways. If your schedule is online, you can access it anywhere. If it’s an app on your phone, it fits easily in your pocket so you can have it with you at all times, unlike a paper daytimer.

Personally, this is the first year I’ve cared. Next month I’ll be planning the next year of marketing activities and other business-type “stuff” for the upcoming year. This will help me set goals and stay on track with growing and establishing my business. Appointments will still be managed with Google Calendar, which syncs with my phone and computer, and is accessible online from any other computer or internet-capable device. But the big picture for my business will be figured out and saved manually on a good old fashioned paper planner. Probably a purple one at that!

What are your favourite tools for planning the new year? Share them below, along with any time management tips you may have.