“I get to the office and I have an in-box full of messages. I then spend the next two hours looking for documents, sending emails and answering questions. I think that some of my clients have it out for me. It seems like every day they want something that we just discussed last week. This whole process of doing work and re-work is really killing my productivity and ability to bill hours. What can I do with a tiny budget and no IT staff?”
As the young entrepreneur picked up her coffee to take a sip it was clear that she was frustrated by the administration and customer service aspect of owning a small business. I began to talk to her about the reason that we created the MioWorks.com application. The team of founders at MioWorks have all worked for small companies. We have experienced first hand the pain of trying to manage a large number of customers with a small number of people. We have also been on the other side of the equation where we were frustrated waiting for our suppliers to get us information we needed desperately so we could do our jobs. I started to tell her about the application and how it applied to her small accounting practice.
I could tell that I gained her interest when I told her that MioWorks was all about making it easier to interact with her clients. On one hand, MioWorks helps the small business to aggregate information on their clients. By using the on-line application she would be able to quickly record conversations, notes, documents, files and more right along side the client contact information. By doing this she would always have the latest information at her fingertips whenever that client called. It would save her time looking for information or scouring email to find what happened last time they talked.
On the other hand I explained to her how the integrated customer portal would help her change the way she does business. The customer portal would give her clients access to the documents, forms and files that they needed on an ongoing basis. By allowing clients view their histories, download, approve or question files, it would help to reduce the amount of email requests she had to deal with on a daily basis. She was intrigued but still skeptical.
Just as I was about to show her the application her phone rang and it was a client looking for an IRS form for a new employee. She said she that this was the third time she had to send it to him. Before she fired up her email, I stopped her in her tracks. I told her that in the same time as sending the email we could get the MioWorks.com system up and running for her and that this client would never have to ask again for that document. She was willing and fired up her laptop in the coffee shop.
I directed her to visit www.miowork.com and sign-up for a trial account. After less than a minute her site was active and ready. I then showed her the import features found on the contact tab. She was very excited that she didn’t have to type in all her contact info again. We clicked on the Gmail import and within a few seconds all of her Google contacts were now in MioWorks. She searched for the name of the client and it appeared on the screen. All she had to do was click the button labeled “activate” and a customer portal was ready for the client. The system also automatically sent an email to the client notifying them of their user id and password. She had to do nothing.
Finally, she simply attached the IRS form to the contact record with a few clicks. The file was uploaded to MioWorks and another email was automatically sent to the client informing them of the availability of the file. Her job was done and now the file was in a secure location ready for the client to view/download it at anytime.
Within a few minutes the client called back. They were very excited about the portal and wanted to know if she could save their financial statements there. She said of course, that’s the purpose of MioWorks… so you can have access to your information even if you can’t reach me. As she hung up the phone she looked at me and said “I think this is what I needed to really make my business work.” I sat back in my chair and smiled…she got it. And now she’s a loyal MioWorks client.
