3 simple ways to diagnose the health of your business

There’s no denying the fact that technology is key to determining, understanding and forecasting the health of your business.

Automated feedback tools have become integral to many businesses, allowing SME owners to see how their customers are feeling about their experience, how they perceive the brand and most importantly, if the customer would return.

There are a number of cost-effective solutions to gain further insights into your customers’ experience – and to diagnose the health of your business.

Live Chat services

For many of us, taking the time out of our busy days to visit a retail store or office to discuss a query or resolve a problem is near impossible. Even talking on the phone to a customer service representative can be a hassle.

This is where Live Chat comes in, which has received the highest satisfaction rating for any type of customer-related communication, according to one survey. There are many providers coming onto the market as well with low barriers of entry, such as FreshChat and LivePerson. Facebook is even rumoured to make a foray into Live Chat as well so watch this space.

Feedback capturing

There are a number of ways to open up a two-way dialogue with your customers – the most obvious being the likes of Facebook, Twitter, email, phone and a whole range of other social platforms. Whilst these commonly used platforms enable an ongoing conversation, many businesses are still yet to group these customer responses together to build a bigger picture of what customers are actually saying.

Tools like Zendesk and Kayako allow businesses to monitor patterns between customer conversations and address any issues or negative feedback as soon as it arises. They essentially provide a central newsfeed, collecting conversation streams from your social networks, phone messages and emails and arrange these alerts in a single workflow.

Online financial health check tools

As the name suggests, a simple online financial health check tool will allow SME owners to analyse their current financial state just by taking a quick questionnaire. By providing small insights into your business, the health check provider will work behind the scenes to piece together a financial roadmap and highlight areas that need attention or developing.

SWAG Bookkeeping’s very own Financial Health Check allows SME owners to complete an online questionnaire – without any off-memory figure questions – to diagnose the health of their business.