In the last post I talked about a stroke of fate - and luck - that turned my business from a local service to a company with a global service area. I had started my business small and only provided service to customers that were in my neck of the woods. This was my way to maintain my quality control and to maintain control period. That business plan quickly went out the window, however, when a customer who was happy with our service asked us to handle their global operations - with two offices in Europe. I was thrilled as any business owner would be but I was very concerned that the distance would hinder me from providing the type of service that I was committed to providing. What I didn’t factor in at the time but what quickly came to light was the technology that was now available to me - those services that could help me communicate with clients, especially through conference calls, web conference and video conference.

Could me and my team travel to Europe every time we needed to meet with the client? Absolutely not. This would not be cost-effective and would greatly slow the process. We could, however, conduct scheduled conference calls to make sure that everyone on the team was in touch with each other and in the loop of all the projects that were taking place. Further, web conferencing offered the perfect way to manage those projects because we could all jump on our prospective computers, logon to the conference and view the documents on the presenter’s desktop. This gave us a way to get everyone’s input and make sure that questions were answered on the spot and that tasks were assigned for completion.

Further, video conference provided us with the next best option to an actual meeting because we could gather around a virtual conference room table and engage in “face to face” conversation; the best way, in my experience, to establish a relationship and make sure that the clients were being appropriately serviced.

Popularity: 42% [?]

When you’re juggling a hundred things at once it can start to feel like you are literally drowning in minutia; not the best state of mind for those who are trying to run a successful business. I was one of those business owners who was trying to juggle - keeping all those balls in the air and going along for the ride. After all, it’s all about going along for the ride - or else you’re going to find yourself struggling to control everything that is decidedly not in your control. You set your parameters, you make a plan and you go from there; that’s the best that you can do. For me, web conferencing made going along for the ride much easier indeed because it allowed me to adapt to whatever situation I was faced with on any given day. How did it all start? With the growth of my fledgling company.

I had started the business with a very set idea of my service areas - within the state and perhaps the bordering states; an area that was very easy to control and which I could service with ease. This was my first mistake - limiting myself. But the universe took my plans and destroyed them very quickly into the process. It was actually a great thing. A customer with which I had been doing business was so impressed with our service that they wanted us to start working with their satellite offices. Great thing, right? Yes - but those satellite offices were in Europe; just a little bit out of my planned service area. I couldn’t turn them down - that was the last thing that I wanted to do. Yet I was very concerned as to how I would handle that kind of business and still be able to provide the level of service for which I was becoming known. That’s how conference calls, web conference and video conference would help. More in the next post…

Popularity: 54% [?]

Two years ago, when our company opened two new offices we were decidedly doing pretty well. We opened these new portals to serve additional clients in other areas of the country and this growth was very exciting. Flash forward two years and we were in a very different economy. We were all facing hard times and doing everything that we could to stay afloat. We still had clients to service in all areas of the country but we had to close two offices just to keep our costs under control. This understandably put a huge burden on our staff in terms of making sure that these clients were taken care of and that lines of communication stayed open. We turned to web conferencing to make it all work.

Web conference - along with audio conferencing and video conference - had been something that we had used often over the years anyway. It had given us the flexibility to respond to clients’ needs regardless of the distance and given us the ability to communicate effectively with a host of people simultaneously.

We began with audio conferencing, giving us the ability to conduct professional conference calls effectively. We quickly moved to web conference when we needed it most so that we could access documents online at the same time as our clients. We could go page by page through documents and talk about the project at hand live through web conferencing. Video conference was the natural next step in our communication process in that we could actually see participants, giving us the ability to “meet” in different physical locations.

Web conferencing, as well as conference calls and video conference, would now lead us through awkward territory in helping to reassure clients and move our business along into the future and hopefully into better economic times.

Popularity: 49% [?]