With the crazy-busy season now upon us all, it seemed like a good time to talk about how to do things well without destroying your personal productivity [it seems like a laughable concept many days].
Rich McIver sent me this list of top 100 customer service hacks for web entrepreneurs.
Some of my faves...
#9 Send out handwritten notes whenever you can. Yup -- things that take real time to do reflect greater investment in the communication. It would be a relief to see this among the direct mail, wouldn't it?
#15 MOO. Love their business cards. I had some made just for the blog, and they never fail to charm those that receive them. I didn't know they made postcards, too.
#17 - 30 This list of organizing tools looks great. As soon as I get out from under this e-mail, I'm definitely going to look into this further :-0
#68 LinkedIn. This is where I look first when I want to contact someone but can't find their contact info. It's the new phone book, and everyone should be on it.
Susan's additions:
#101 I just discovered that I can save locations in Google Maps. So I'm starting to build maps of some things that I use a lot, but can never remember where they are. For me, this is the locations and details of focus group facilities. I can never remember which one has the movable camera, which one has the popcorn machine in the lobby. If I have time, I might start one for restaurants I like to take clients to. [Very cool productivity tool, and I think we'll see a lot more commercial use of this soon.]
#102 I get a lot of e-mail that I don't want to ignore, but I also can't help. Examples: people who want to do their co-op at my company; people who are looking for permanent employment; people who want to be in my focus groups (I outsource recruiting). I now have several signatures in Outlook that are customized "form letters" that I use to respond. These are the short notes I would individually type if I took the time, now available for quick replies.
#103 AOL Instant Messenger Pro can be used to securely send large files. Like the huge digital audio files I use on a lot of projects that are way too big for e-mail. Same thing for that graphic-intensive PowerPoint. Brilliant addition to the tool for the business user. [have you noticed how business is colonizing all the stuff that's supposed to be for teens?]
What are some of yours?
