Posted by Running a small business is always surmounted with great challenges. This includes scaling up, managing customer relationships, giving a good customer experience, and more. The turn of a pandemic has made it even worse especially for SMEs and MSMEs.
Thanks to modern technology that offered ready-to-implement solutions like tools for file sharing and storage, team and project management, communication, productivity, Billing, Online Payment, Collection app, Hyperlocal commerce app and email marketing.
We know several advanced tools today to support small businesses demand curation and order curation, but not all of them ease the business in the Indian context. The localized business still needed some ready-to-use technology that is affordable, easy to implement, and addresses the need of small businesses for day-to-day activities like payment collection, customer care, record keeping of correct transactions, and more.
Here’s is case in point: Ramu (name changed), the owner of a newspaper agency, had a harrowing experience with a customer. One customer had informed through his delivery boy and also left a message to Ramu (merchant) to pause the subscription, as they were travelling for holiday. Both these communications got missed and the customer was billed full for that month. Since the wrong bill was generated, the customer denied the payment of services and to add insult to injury the customer took to the community WhatsApp group complaining about the unprofessionalism of the newspaper agency. It was not easy for the customer to connect with the vendor. Newspaper agencies not only lost their money they lost customer trust too!
Ramu quickly realized that he needs more than a good customer base to run his business smoothly. It is important to have a tool. It is important to have a tool for billing, collection, and accounting to track today’s customer issues to avoid escalations and eventually lose the customer.
So what went wrong here? Experts from Zopnote who are into digitizing local commerce had an answer. They have come up with billing, online, and collection apps like milk merchant app, Kirana/grocery app for payments, reminders, and collections.
The first problem is that the agency owner here does not have any digitized tracking of the records of customers where customers can manage subscriptions including pause requests, feed their change of address, mobile number through their mobile.
Secondly, it is advisable not to depend completely on technology. It is important to manually check on the customer. Another reason could be the newspaper vendor missed the handwritten note from the customer. There could be several reasons for failures but newspaper agencies had not thought through exceptions sufficiently. And most importantly any service provider adds a human element from time to time to strengthen the bonds with customers.
This is just one example, there are several examples of customer complaints about the agency not being available to take customer queries, supplies not satisfactory, the wrong item delivered, incomplete delivery, refunding issues, untimely doorstep delivery, and there is complete subscription mismanagement.
On the other side, these small agencies face challenges like running around for payment collection, sending reminders to the customer for payments, sending timely invoices to customers, answering customer queries and requests for changes, the timely notification from customers every time they start or pause their subscriptions, address their questions before they make payment on app, keep their khata updated, recording correct transactions and all this along with managing the business.
Most of the tech-driven solutions available for small businesses are either too expensive for a local businessman to afford or do not address the problem of customers and service providers in the Indian context. A vicious cycle sets in where small businesses could not give services to the customer, the customer does not want to pay to the service provider due to lack of value. And both the customer and business are denied their dues.
Service providers can address such problems. The future is to move from physical pen and paper notebooks to digital tools where the customer completes steps on their own at their own pace and convenience and technology ensure that all the workflow from onboarding to delivery of services is smooth.
Digital tools can help you manage your revenue very easily. It is especially useful for subscription-based businesses like newspapers, milk or tuitions, grocery, or Kirana. Some of the benefits of using digital tools include
- It can save manual billingÂ
- It can reduce collection time and effort
- Cashless and hassle-free payments using options like a credit card, PayTMÂ
- It can provide additional functionalities for eCommerce business websites like abandoned shopping cart delivery and more.
- It makes business processes more efficient and productive
- It can help in increasing conversion
- It is easy to scale up with growing demand and company size
- It is used to smooth and enhance operationsÂ
- It improves customer experience with direct communication
- The customer data and buying behaviours can be used for better engagementÂ
- It helps to increase customer loyalty for brands as they grow and scale.
- It is very user friendly and simple to use
- It empowers social connectivity. Users can be updated on any group discounts on special events.
- It is low cost and easily affordable
- It is helpful to make secure and faster payments
- Easy subscription management improves communication.
From pen and paper to digital tools, the scope of how we do business has completely changed, especially post-pandemic. The most important impact of these changes is that today any small-scale business owner will embark on the future with open minds.
Among All the pros there are some cons of using these digital tools. The biggest roadblock is the digital education of small business owners. Despite the entire world going online, it is still a challenge for local businesses to get online as they fall on another side of the Digital Divide. We need to give them proper training to upgrade their skills and knowledge so that they can adapt these technologies for the larger good of society.
Once you are ready to use these digital resources the next question is where might you look for them?
There are several service providers. One such product is developed by Zopnote to aid local businesses. These tools help you to keep the promise of outstanding trustworthy service to your customer and become a part of a successful business story.Â
Zopnote helps small businesses serving a neighbourhood to maintain accurate accounts and billing, improve their online collections and profitability, through a simple to use mobile application.
Do share with us your business success story with mention of your favourite digital tool.