It’s been a difficult start to the year for many businesses across the globe and will continue to be challenging as the pandemic rages on. It’s not known when things will return to normal, particularly when it comes to the economy. As a business, it’s important to utilize what you have and implement what you don’t have, to help it continue growing in 2021.
For your interior design business, keeping clients happy and attracting new opportunities is always important. Here are five ways that software can help your interior design business grow in 2021.
Organizes your time efficiently
We all have those days where we feel like time is rushing by and before we know it, it’s the end of the working day and you feel like you’ve got very little done. It’s something that can often be frustrating but perhaps you’re not utilizing your time efficiently?
Apps and software can be a great way of organizing the time you have available, in order to get the most out of the day. The difference that it makes could be what helps your business grow quicker than expected.
There are so many different applications and programs out there to take advantage of that it’s worth finding one that is easy enough for you to use. Functionality and ease of use are key to having the right software in place, regardless of what it’s used for. If you can’t use it or have problems with it, it’s only going to have the opposite effect.
One piece of software that might be worth using is Trello. Trello helps to lay out whatever tasks you have for the day and then you can move these from one panel to the next when they’re completed. There are also other features and functions that can help organize your work life more efficiently whether it’s creating a panel for client meetings to panels for your ideas or deadlines.
A platform like Trello is a good software to have in place and once you start using it, you’ll be much more content with the amount of work you’re getting done every day. Trello has different package options to work both as a singular platform or for you and your team if necessary.
Improve design concepts with Sketchup
Improving design concepts can always prove beneficial to your business because your industry is reliant on visual representations. Every client you work with is going to want to see what you’ve produced and how you can bring their projects to life. It can be particularly important when you’re a new business and perhaps don’t have the evidence of previous work to lean back on.
That’s why having advanced design software can be integral to winning over clients and appeasing any current ones you have. Again, there are lots of software applications worth using, but one that can help improve your design concepts is Sketchup.
Sketchup is a 3D modeling software that is created specifically for design companies and individuals who do interior design, architectural design, and more. It’s available for free but for a premium version that offers more features, there are additional costs.
Programmes like Sketchup are going to offer you more opportunities to showcase your ideas to clients or perhaps bring that vision that your client has to life. Whether you’re working on a small budget project or a big budget one, there’s always a benefit to being able to show your client exactly what you have in mind.
By showing the idea or vision, you’re also giving the client the opportunity to tweak or change anything they don’t like. It means that when it comes to the end project, they’re going to be more impressed with the result. You also reduce the chances of getting a bad review or testimonial from your client. Reputation is important so the more you can excel in the results, the better it is for business.
Builds your relationships with clients
Relationships are everything in business and when it comes to your clients, they’re just like any other transaction for a company. You don’t want that transaction to be a one-off and instead, you want them to come back to you time and time again. Your interior design business should be their go-to in whatever upcoming projects they have in mind whether that’s a commercial project or a residential one.
So with that being said, customer service is always going to be a crucial part of keeping your business growing. Look at how you currently handle your client’s experience and try to pick out those weak spots that need focusing on. You might want to introduce a customer experience platform to help manage incoming queries and existing client correspondence.
A platform like Zendesk might be the perfect solution to taking control of your customer service experience. This one in particular works as a ticketing system, which can help you to prioritize which query needs to be handled first. You can also rank them in levels of urgency and assign other staff members to handle said tasks.
There are a lot of benefits to improving your customer services. It can help to drive customer satisfaction and increase the likelihood of return business. You’ve got the ability as a company to scale up in a smarter way, focusing on your customer’s needs specifically.
By having this in place, you also provide an agent experience that’s more seamless. Those who are handling customer queries are more prepared and motivated to handle anything that’s thrown at them with professionalism and diligence. It’s going to help give every client a positive experience that they will hopefully spread the word about.
Strengthens communication with staff
Staff communications need to be effective because if you’ve not got this within your interior design business, then things can easily fall apart. Communication is key and it ensures that things don’t go wrong and there are fewer mistakes made too.
Just like a platform to help you stay organized, there is software that all staff members can use together in order to keep up with communications. Platforms like Asana are a great example of this as they allow for multiple users to be part of the same group. You can have multiple groups to cover different departments and teams.
Having something like this in place is going to only help strengthen communications because when it comes to having an interior design business, not all your employees are going to be in the office at the same time. Remote working is becoming increasingly more popular than ever before, so having something that can be accessed anywhere remotely and with an internet connection is important.
Again, you want to have something that’s going to be easy enough to use for all staff members and so it’s worth doing a bit of research and trialing out several software options before choosing the one that suits you best. A few other suggestions would be Scoro, Slack and Proworkflow. All of these are rated as some of the best ones to use.
It’s important to bring your team together, whether you’re a small business or a company that has multiple offices. The more you can connect your employees together, despite their distance, the more successful your business is likely to become. Without it, you may find more difficulty in the completion of projects and deadlines.
Helps to streamline work processes
Work processes take up a certain amount of time depending on what you have in place. For example, your finance department could be using multiple programs and methods in order to get their daily tasks completed. This may be using Excel for budgeting spreadsheets to Quickbooks for drafting invoices and keeping track of expenses.
The more programs, the more difficult work processes become. You spend more time opening up programs and moving from one to another that it ends up wasting your day. With that being said, it’s worth streamlining the work processes where you can. This isn’t just your finance department but across multiple departments.
By streamlining your work processes, you also have a greater ability to identify any risks and to troubleshoot them before they get any worse. There’s also the benefit of cost efficiency too because you’re paying for fewer programs or services. You have a clearer viewpoint of the business as a whole and this can be helpful to all staff members who are collaborating with others.
Every department in your interior design business can benefit from streamlining, so you might want to audit your business to identify those areas where you can streamline a particular work process. It can help for better decision-making and keeping things running smoothly from start to finish.
With the right software, your interior design business will only go from strength to strength. So with that in mind, use these tips to help your business grow in 2021 and hopefully you’ll experience new opportunities and bigger projects for your company.
