Leveling the Playing Field for Small Business
In the last year, everyone has learned how to use video meetings from their smartphone or computer. Click the link and get face to face — with no SPAM and robocalls. It’s so much better than phone & email.
But businesses from large to small are still putting a phone number on their website. And an email address. And a calendar link, so you can have a video meeting 3 days from now. Why not a link to video-call, right now?
If you’ve used a meeting from Join.me or BlueJeans, you’ve seen how the browser on your smartphone or PC can launch a WebRTC meeting with video and audio — with no downloads. No passwords. No friction.
There’s just one more step needed: a simple push notification when someone joins your meeting room from your website. You get a notification on your phone of who has joined the meeting room, just like you do for a text or email. When you click the notification, you can join the video meeting room.
But will it help you sell?
What Customers Want
Customers all want the same thing when the contact you. They want someone to listen, understand their problem, and propose a credible solution.
Customers aren’t getting that experience when they place a phone call anymore. When calling a small business, you get voicemail. When calling a large business, you get a Bot (technically an IVR system) whose job is to figure out if you’re worth a human’s time to talk to.
And customers surely aren’t getting that experience when they send a message into the void, using the “Contact Us” form or email address on the company website. Or when they play 20 questions with a chatbot, trying to earn the right to talk to a human.
If customers aren’t getting what they want, that creates an opportunity.
The Speed of Trust
Stephen M.R. Covey’s book, The Speed of Trust, shows the massive effect on businesses when they find ways to gain their customers’ trust faster. That’s the crucial advantage of a small, local business or solopreneur. You’re not a CSR in a call center. You’re the expert the customer wants to talk to.
If you can get face to face with the potential customer, listen and ask questions, and show them you understand their problem and have a solution — you can win the sale. This is your competitive advantage, your chance to beat those larger, impersonal competitors.
Before COVID, this was simple: have a storefront and let people walk in. Before robo-calls, small business owners could build trust by answering the phone or calling back quickly. But now, nobody answers the phone.
What small businesses need is a clear channel for customers on their website to place a video call. You can answer the call with a smile, because you know it’s not a robocall or a telemarketer. If you miss the call, you can “call back” by sending a text message with a link to join the video meeting.
Leveling the Playing Field for Small Business
Small businesses have been losing ground to larger competitors in the age of COVID and robocalls. Their two best channels to engage customers (phone and walk-in) have been decimated.
Video calls from the website offer small businesses and solopreneurs a way to win the customer by getting face to face with them sooner. It’s their chance to recoup what they lost and pull ahead, starting now.
