How Can Mobile Phones Help Small Businesses Make Money?
Mobile phones are everywhere these days. Many big businesses capitalize on this by building unique apps that can fill their customers needs. So how can you, as a small business, compete?
There are several apps that can help you stay in touch and connected with your customers through your mobile phone. With just a few inexpensive apps to help monitor and maintain your customer base, you can compete with big business for mobile business.
Better Customer Service Through Mobile Apps
Smartphones and Mobile Phones can make it so much easier for customers to reach you. There are many smart apps that interface with your smartphone to help you quickly receive and respond to messages from customers. Some of our favorite apps are:
This app is wildly popular for many of our small business customers. Its easy-to-use interface means that you only need a limited amount of mobile experience to use this app. It is a cloud based service that allows your customers to create support tickets for questions they may have. These tickets can be viewed and managed by you in Zendesk. This app also allows you to create an online Help Center. You can use this to your advantage by posting answers to frequently asked questions about your products or services.
Desk.com was created by Salesforce, one of the most popular CRM developers on the market. The coolest feature of this app is the universal inbox. This inbox collects information from your social media, phone calls, click to chat conversations and emails. It will then place all this information into one inbox. You can access this inbox on your mobile phone which will allow you to respond to customers’ needs anywhere at any time.
Help Scout is another cloud based app to help you excel at mobile customer service support. You will be able to manage multiple inboxes in one succinct place. The most unique feature of Help Scout is that the app tracks and records conversations with your customers and your employees. This will help to ensure that all of customers’ needs are being taken care of.
The app also includes features that will allow you to create tutorials, write articles and track customer engagement through a unique reporting portal.
Mobile Texting for Discounts and Sales
As the popularity in texting continues to rise, your small business can utilize the texting phenomena by reaching out to customers to share information about your business.
We recommend some of the following for mobile texting services:
This is a great service to help you market to your audience via text messaging. Your customers will be able to sign up to receive coupons and promotions for your business. You simply send the customers a text message with a specific word or code. They simply text back “ok”. That is all you will need to start sending your customers notifications, reminders, coupons, alerts and more for your business.
Slicktext is another great app that will allow you to notify your customers of in-store promotions. The best part is you can give this app a try for free. You can send up to 50 texts a month to your customers!
Mobile Processing
Accepting Credit Cards with a Mobile Device
More and more merchants are discovering the financial benefit of having the capability to accept credit cards through mobile device. The flexibility of accepting remote payments seamlessly and securely through a portable device allows your sales efforts to extend far beyond your traditional retail store, whether that be a physical space or on the Internet.
There are typically two types of card readers available for processing credit cards through your Mobile Phones
Magnetic Strip Reader (most often referred to as a “mag strip” reader)
A mag strip reader is a hardware device that needs to be plugged into your smartphone. There are two “types” of mag strip readers. The first is the insertion card reader which requires that you insert the credit card into the hardware. The swipe card reader requires the credit card to be pulled quickly through the card reader. The magnetic strip on the back of credit card contains the encoded credit card information needed to make purchases. When the credit card is swiped or inserted, the card reader will read the magnetic strip and process the encoded information. These devices typically require a USB connection, or a serial port and will work with software installed on your mobile phones.
Contactless Readers
Contactless payment terminals and card readers are a popular alternative to the swipe or insert card readers. You simply “tap” the contactless reader terminal and your customer’s credit card information is quickly transmitted via radio waves to your merchant account for verification.
Reasons to Work with a Traditional Merchant Service Provider
There has recently been a boom in the number of options available to individuals looking to accept credit cards using their mobile phones. However, while these options are great tools for a large number of merchants, many business owners will find that the limitations of not working with a traditional merchant service provider make these services a poor fit for their business. You could really take a hit in transaction fees and pricing when you don’t take the time to work with an experienced merchant service provider.
Working with SecureGlobalPay allows business owners many attractive options such as chargeback protection, next day funding, no caps on processing volume, and the additional security and peace of mind that comes with working with a processor that understands the credit card processing industry from top to bottom.
What Devices Can Be Used to Process Credit Cards?
Smartphones
We typically work with the following operating systems:
iPhone
Android
Windows
To accept credit cards with your smartphone, all you need is a data plan (connection to the internet), a card reader, SecureGlobalPay’s mobile processing app and a merchant account with SecureGlobalPay. You can start accepting credit cards virtually anyplace covered by your data plan with your smartphone.
To learn more about how we can help you process credit cards with your mobile phone, please contact us today!
