“Even your most loyal customers have a choice about where to take their business.”
— Marilyn Suttle, Who’s Your Gladys?: How to Turn Even the Most Difficult Customer Into Your Biggest Fan
If you are a small business owner, you probably understand the importance of providing great service and building rapport with your customers. You may also seek to match your pricing, services and product offerings with your deep-pocketed competitors in an attempt to keep existing customers and attract new ones.
Today, the retail and service sectors of business are being redefined by digital communications and mobile-friendly storefronts. Flurry, a mobile analytics company, estimates that the U.S. consumer spends approximately two and a half hours on their smartphone and/or tablet every day. Of that chunk of time, 80% is spent using mobile apps, while the remaining 20% is spent browsing the web.
What do those numbers mean for small businesses, and how should you approach the decision to have a smartphone app developed for your small business?
A smartphone app should be seen as a tool that provides a familiar technology to your customers, while amplifying the great customer service you’re already known for in innovative ways.
Don’t look at a smartphone app as a way to keep up with the national and regional chains that make up your competition. You didn’t bring your business to where it is today by “keeping up,” but by exceeding the services offered by your competitors and excelling in the areas of customer service and communication.
Here are three important components of your small business operation that stand to benefit from having your own smartphone app.
1) Advertising
Push notifications originating from your app can deliver news of your latest deals, special hours, and new products and services, right on your customer’s screen. Additionally, your app icon will be occupying valuable “screen real estate” on your customers’ phones.
2) Listening
Mobile phones aren’t just for voice communication, anymore. Mobile users are relaying their thoughts and opinions via social media and comments sections on mobile web pages and forums. Take advantage of this new form of communication to facilitate better communication with your customers and improve your products and services by collecting reviews and comments within your own app.
3) Adapting
Big businesses don’t have a monopoly on new ideas nor the means to implement them. Smartphone apps are the perfect tools for small businesses that have succeeded during difficult economic times by staying agile in their response to challenges and opportunities. Capitalize on your adaptability and turn out an app with functionality that puts even your biggest competitor on its heels!
Victory Enterprises has a long history of helping small businesses with technology solutions, including mobile apps. Visit Victory Apps to get started with your own native smartphone or tablet app.