It is no secret that technology has revolutionized the way that companies handle data, communicate with their consumers, and are ultimately perceived. To say it is the force behind modern business is not hyperbolic. For these reasons, a certain level of connectivity is vital for a modernized approach to customer experience.

Here at Help On Demand, we know how important this is – in fact, it’s a huge part of how we connect businesses to their end consumers.

User experience is key to business success. If potential clients or customers can’t be serviced when and where they like, they will find another option. We live in an age of around the clock, 24/7 service, where missed connections can be the breaking point for an otherwise prosperous business model, and not just a sad subsection of Craigslist.

This need for instantaneous results can seem like a huge hurdle to jump over, but in reality, it’s an opportunity.

Increasing the connectivity of your brand and business can help boost a wide range of KPIs like social capital and brand awareness, all while generating leads that can become genuine, long-lasting connections. In short, a focus on connectivity can drive your brand to a new level of success.

Because of this, businesses need to think outside the box when it comes to creative ways to connect with their customers and stay top-of-mind. Regardless of industry, workplace practices, and other factors, this remains true. Not to mention, the best experience (for both customers and employees) generally involves an open dialogue between consumer and provider.

As one of our customers said in a testimonial, “The idea of allowing insurance agents to work with marketplace consumers was a great opportunity. The technology, the simplicity of it, really helped us to facilitate that dialogue.”

Let’s use that customer experience as an example, and talk a little bit more about the insurance industry. When a consumer goes to the federal health insurance marketplace, healthcare.gov, they can easily get contact information for agents and brokers in their area simply by clicking the “Find Local Help” button. Those agents and brokers can then provide immediate assistance directly to the people in their ZIP codes that need it most. In 15 minutes or less, an agent will contact that consumer, help them enroll, and answer any other questions they may have.

If we expect this kind of customer experience when we buy a pair of shoes or order food online, why don’t we demand the same level of attentiveness when making the big decisions in life like how to protect ourselves with insurance, how to close a deal on that new house, or how to educate our children?

Everybody is an expert when it comes to something. Let us help your customers find you. Call us at 1-888-245-1922 or email us at info@nullhelpondemand.com for a quick chat about modernizing your approach.

Since the onset of the coronavirus outbreak, I’m sure you’ve read a lot about how businesses and organizations should be preparing for when things go back to normal. But the thing is, it won’t look like our old normal, rather our next normal.

There a vast number of possibilities when it comes to what that will actually look like, but for the past few months we’ve been thrust into a world of face masks, social distancing, and Zoom meetings.

How can companies come out of these uncertain times stronger than before?

The answer is that, well, there is no specific right answer. What we can say for sure is that there will be a shift in how we do business, connect with each other, and perhaps even what we value.

Missed opportunities can be incredibly costly to a business, especially in uncertain times like the ones we find ourselves in.

The financial challenges of the coronavirus coupled with the rapidly changing needs of employees, customers, and suppliers has proven to be an insurmountable task for too many businesses around the country and the world at large. Customer habits are changing, meaning that companies will need to redefine their digital strategies in order to capitalize on new opportunities.

For retailers and businesses with traditionally high-contact touch-points like grocery stores and restaurants, the first step on the path forward will likely involve a slew of new ideas about products, promotions, and how to redesign and plan stores with social distancing in mind in the future. For service-oriented businesses like education and healthcare, the ability to connect virtually will be more important than ever.

Customers will go elsewhere if speed isn’t a priority. In our current culture of instant gratification, the expectation that problems will be solved quickly, questions will be answered correctly the first time, and the overall experience will be seamless are becoming the norm – as they should.

Help On Demand is a real-time consumer referral system that connects people with questions to the experts in their area that can answer them. Enroll for healthcare from your couch, get answers to the legal questions you can’t by watching another episode of Law & Order, or get advice from a trained educator if your children’s school isn’t open yet.

In a time where meaningful, fast connections are becoming a hot commodity, it’s important to realize that sometimes, we all need to ask for help. Whatever it is you need, we’ll connect you with the right person to get the job done.

Call us at 1-888-245-1922 or email us at info@nullhelpondemand.com for a quick chat about how to adjust your business practices for the COVID era.

It’s 7am. You need a last minute substitute teacher before school starts in an hour.

Unfortunately, this is a problem that is currently being faced in school districts across the country.

More and more, school districts are relying heavily on substitute teachers to fill vacant positions that are open because of a lack of people who want to work in the post-Covid era as well as ensure classrooms are staffed when teachers are out for unpredictable absences and illness.

The decline in the quality (and quantity) of these candidates has to do with a lot of factors, but it is largely due to the current job market. There are many alternative forms of employment for people with the same qualifications, and like we mentioned above, there is a compounded lack of motivation from a large portion of the workforce after more than a year of Covid-related uncertainty.

These different factors add up to lots of headaches for administration offices at schools in Colorado and beyond – and solving the problem can seem more difficult than it needs to.

The first thought a lot of people have is to bring in a staffing agency to act as a “middle man”, so to speak.

However, bringing in a “middle man” leads to lack of control, higher costs and less autonomy for the school and administration. When the relationship between quality of learning and student success is so codependent, you can’t leave anything to chance.

Not to mention, your hands are full.

You have a school to run, and you don’t have the time to manually contact a long list of candidates that may or may not fit the bill.

So, what’s the solution?

Help On Demand connects available substitute teachers so you can fill open classrooms, which means you don’t have to stress at 7am. We offer you a direct relationship to teachers who help you keep your students connected, live and on-demand 24/7. Our technology is configured to your needs and can even be white labeled and branded specifically for your school. Plus, we automate the process, finding available substitutes that fit your specific needs.

Let us show you the difference we can make for your students today.

Now that tele-dentistry has been accepted as a viable option for the modern patient and looks like it’s here to stay, the question is… 

“How can dentists make sure that they’re still really connecting with their patients through a screen?” 

First of all, it’s important to remember that all of this is still relatively new. Prior to COVID-19 introducing us to the broader benefits of tele-health as a concept, it wasn’t at all the norm. We’re still navigating how tele-medicine will continue to mature and how we can continue to offer care from a safe distance.

There are a few ways that tele-health has shown its merits, some of which are: 

• Live video chat

Talk to a dentist online anytime by mobile app, phone or web. Seeing a 

professional “face-to-face” via video chat makes patients feel like they’re still getting the same level of care they would in an office. 

• Remote patient monitoring & electronic delivery of supportive care information

Patient data is electronically sent to a provider for supportive care. This can help dentists make diagnoses and determine if someone needs to be seen in the chair for more hands-on work.

• Secure storage of all images and digital impressions taken during the tele-visit 

Before treatment, a patient might complete a short online questionnaire. If any physical information needs to be recorded, patients could be mailed an at-home impression kit before their appointment. The patient could then upload their

results to the practice’s website for their dentist to review as opposed to having digital impressions taken in the dental office. 

One of the obvious players here is Zoom – they have an entire branch of their company dedicated to servicing providers and organizations in the healthcare space. They offer secure video that keeps things not only confidential but complaint. Organizations like Magellan Healthcare and even Johns Hopkins are all Zoom tele-health advocates. There are also software packages (like Simplifeye and Solutionreach, to name just a few) that combine things like live web chat, a virtual front desk, and online payment processing. 

The benefits continue to reveal themselves. Dental providers are now able to treat patients in a variety of health compromised situations, provide virtual access to preventative care screenings and easily connect patients with specialists they might have less access to offline. 

As technology continues to get smarter, the applications will only continue to multiply. 

Younger patients will gravitate to this more quickly than their older counterparts for the simple reason that their lives already are online in a much larger sense. However, older patients are actually set to benefit most from remote dentistry. Mobility challenges and other health complications routinely force elderly people to postpone needed dental consultation until it’s too late. Virtual appointments could be the perfect solution.

The faster that dental practices can inform their patients of all their tele-dentistry options, the faster they can start filling appointments. Especially in the COVID-19 era, patients need extra reassurance that someone can connect them with a medical professional quickly – and that the person they’re matched with can offer the help they need. 

Waiting rooms are awful, whether they’re virtual or not. And no one wants to wait. With Help On Demand, they won’t have to… ever.

Since the pandemic began almost two full years ago, technology has become more and more important to nearly every industry and business sector. Slowly, mortgage lenders have come around to the idea that innovation and technology are two major factors in driving both business continuity and business success. 

The ability to connect customers immediately to loan officers who can close loans fast, as well as fill gaps when there is a shortage of people can ensure you stay competitive in the current industry environment.

Speaking of industry environment, let’s look at where the mortgage industry currently stands. There is an increased amount of competition within the larger space of home lending, as well as a shortage of properties and loan officers. Take all those factors, add them up, and things can quickly get overwhelming.

However, there’s a factor we’re not considering.

Speed.

Getting those loan applications to your sales team/loan officers within seconds 24/7 allows you to close more business anywhere in the nation, giving you a huge competitive advantage. Here at Help On Demand, many of our team members have spent time in the mortgage lending industry with both traditional and reverse, and we have the experience to back up our claims. 

Some of the questions lenders might want to be asking themselves are, “How can I keep up with increased loan applications?” “How can I become more efficient?” “How can I increase the profit per loan application?” and “How can I provide a better customer experience?” 

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a solution that is available 24/7, live and on-demand anywhere in the country that would immediately connect your consumer with one of your sales team members in real-time through technology, all while providing you with that elusive competitive advantage we discussed earlier? 

Luckily, an answer to all of those questions exists with Help On Demand. 

HOD proves the most important aspects of the in-person buying process – trust, reliability and availability, which can be successfully transferred to an online space powered by technology. We’ve successfully connected hundreds of thousands of Consumers to referred Experts without missing a single one. 

Let us help you next.

This almost goes without saying, but conversions, client acquisition costs and ROI are the ultimate indicators when it comes to determining a company’s level of success – both in terms of individual campaigns and overall business.

Leveraging affective technology like Help On Demand is an excellent way to increase those indicators. 

For your salesforce to be successful, you need to interact with customers and targets in a more meaningful, impactful way than the competition. Nurturing leads, providing a great customer experience and guiding them through the many steps in the sales cycle takes time and resources, two of the most valuable commodities in today’s business world. 

In many cases, companies simply don’t have the manpower, time and resources to make sure that none of their potential leads fall through the cracks. This might sound like a “good problem” to have, but it has the potential to be any otherwise successful business’ downfall. 

Why? 

Because regardless of how popular your product or service is, how tenacious your salespeople are, and how well you treat your customer, if just one lead gets left behind, you’re leaving money on the table. You can’t afford to let your customers get picked off by more nimble competitors just because you didn’t have the time to investigate the solutions which would make a real difference for your bottom line. 

Of course, your bottom line isn’t just numbers anymore – it’s the people those numbers represent. Offering the support and help your customers expect and need (and faster than the completion) helps to position you as a “people first” kind of company, which is a huge plus in today’s marketplace of perception. 

Help On Demand delivers an exceptional customer experience, leaving your clients feeling secure in the fact that they will get the help they need in just seconds, 24/7, “live and on demand” – every time. Our team here will work with your business to provide strategy and integrate our technology with the systems you already have running in as little as 45 days. 

Additionally, we can provide “real-time” reporting packages that illustrate referral engagement outcomes. Our technology then tracks and reports activity to provide the metrics you need to identify what’s working, what isn’t, and how to make even more successful connections. 

Stop wasting time. Start making connections. Set up a demo today.

As ecommerce and digital consumer experiences become more and more important in a variety of industries, online grocery marketplace Instacart has become a huge name and a company to look to in terms of digital innovation. 

Recently, they announced a new suite of tools that can help their partners with advertising, fulfillment, insights and expanded capabilities. In a quote given to Retail Touch Points in this article, Instacart CEO Fidji Simo said “We’re looking to… broaden and deepen our capabilities in order to help retailers innovate faster than ever on their own properties.” 

Simo touches on something important here – faster. 

In a pre-pandemic world, most people wouldn’t have guessed that so many parts of our daily life – business meetings, first dates, and yes, grocery shopping – would go digital. But since the rise of Uber, DoorDash and other “on-demand” focused apps and companies, today’s consumer has higher expectations that they want met faster than ever before. 

Instacart has partnered with regional grocery stores like Publix to “unlock ultrafast delivery in… major metro areas, allowing customers to get what they need in as fast as 15 minutes”, according to Publix Director of Communications Maria Brous. 

If that business model focused on quick connections is working so well for the grocery retail sector, why couldn’t it work for insurance, mortgage, education, and so many others?

The Help On Demand concept was originally developed and launched for healthcare exchanges, but it quickly became clear that it was a concept that truly transcends companies in all professional service industries with fragmented customer service and distribution or independent contractors. 

At Help On Demand, we know that time is everything for consumers – and faster is better, regardless of what their specific needs are. HOD, and the proprietary technology that powers it, meets or even exceeds the “on-demand” expectations in a wide variety of industries and all geographic locations. 

Ready to see how our technology can impact your bottom line and improve your customer experience? Contact us today.

Speed matters. 

The consumer inside of you knows this. 

How annoying is it when companies don’t make a point to resolve your questions quickly? The answer? Very. 

In today’s fast-paced world, nobody has time to wait. The companies that can adapt their strategies to fit the expectations of the modern consumer will win loyalty and repeat business, while the ones who fail to keep up with the pack will surely be left behind. 

In fact, globally, 54% of all consumers say that they have higher customer service expectations than they did just one year ago, according to this blog post from nextiva.com. And even more consumers – 69% to be exact – say that a “quick resolution” to their inquiries is a major factor in meeting those heightened expectations. 

There’s simply no way to look at those statistics and think that speed doesn’t matter.

People and organizations are willing to spend more money with companies that prioritize a good CX, plain and simple. If you can convert those customers to repeat buyers, you have a base that will be more opening to try new products and service offerings and hopefully even forgive the rare negative experience when it does inevitably arise. 

So, what’s the solution? How can your company be confident that it is offering the fastest possible customer service? 

First and foremost, it’s time to make sure that everything about the way you do business is as up-to-date as possible. Implementing technology systems that can meet (or even exceed) the “on-demand” expectations of today’s consumer regardless of the industry you operate in is the foundation to any successful CX initiative. 

After all, it’s clear that the main concern of most customers is instant (or, as instant as possible) assistance. 

Help On Demand’s average response time from our team of Experts is just seconds – compared to the multiple days that other referral processes boast about as “fast”. Our faster connections have produced increased productivity and sales, enhanced relationships, and decreased costs, all while providing that elevated CX that is so crucial to success in today’s marketplace. 

Ready to give your company the competitive advantage it needs? Contact us today.

Corey Patterson of MarTech published an article earlier this year about what customer experience is, why it’s important, and how you can improve it for your customers. We think this is an extremely important topic, this piece does a great job of explaining the basics. 

If you’d like to learn more about the customer experience, make sure to also check out one of our most recent blogs here. 

Now, let’s dive into the article. Patterson starts by making a very important point – one of the best ways to build your brand image and reputation is by prioritizing customer experience (also known as CX).

It’s critical to remember that the CX doesn’t just refer to the actual transaction – it’s every aspect of the larger interaction that a customer has with a business. And yes, that means every customer’s journey is important, even if it doesn’t necessarily lead to a purchase. Patterson’s piece takes a deep dive into the “why” of this concept, and answers some common questions that companies have when they start to take CX more seriously. 

We won’t go into quite as many details here, but something we wanted to make sure to highlight was the list of examples of what exactly a positive customer experience can look like. 

For instance:

• Advertising and marketing materials that give customers a realistic expectation about what your product or service can do for them – big claims don’t mean anything if you can’t deliver. 
• Cohesive, consistent omni-channel communications – this means that your website should function the same for someone looking at it on a desktop, mobile device, or even in its app form if applicable. 
• Easy-to-access resources for when customers need help or have a question. 

Of course, the best place to start is by listening to your customers. Wherever they have a change to give feedback – whether that’s in online reviews or face-to-face during a transaction, take note of what they seem to appreciate about the way you do business and what you might be able to improve upon. 

The main takeaway? Putting the customer first goes a long way. 

Happy customers will come back, spread the word about your company, and facilitate long-term, organic growth that can be truly invaluable for the health and success of your business.