We use a variety of them ourselves to manage, optimize and measure activities of our team while many of us are working remotely. Here are some of the tools that help us on daily basis.
Evernote
Why is everybody talking about Evernote? Well I used to ask the same question. Evernote is just one of those tools that covers everything regards writing – it’s a note-taking tool, digital file cabinet, task or project management system, and it even integrates with almost anything. All in all it simplifies your documentation. Tim Ferris, the author of 4-Hour Workweek says that Evernote is one of those tools that he can’t live without. Likewise, in Messente we are all for tools that increase our productivity.
Pipedrive
Excellent salespeople need excellent tools and we needed one that would help us to improve the main processes of our sales. The question always remains: should we work harder or smarter? Well, Pipedrive helps our sales team to evaluate precisely the individual steps we need to take from initial contact with a potential partner. But the primary reason for using Pipedrive is its lightweightness and simplicity. So it definitely helps us towards working smarter. While it is the best way to quickly understand the health of Messente’s sales, we also use it for hiring and customer management.
Skype
This tool has drastically changed the way we communicate. Often times we find ourselves using Skype instead of phone, but still we understand that it was never designed to be a replacement. In Messente, we use Skype for our international team to stay connected both via voice and text. We also do some of our hiring processes though Skype. We love it here in Messente and we think it provides a great way to keep costs low and productivity high concerning communication.
Help Scout
Today, companies distinguish the ones that they will work with based on the entire experience. So in a way we might consider customer support as a separate product attached to Messente. Help Scout has made it easier for Messente to get satisfied customers to become even more satisfied. Handling tickets is simple and the communication simply makes sense.
Zopim
At the beginning of the year we understood that we need to go beyond customer service via proactive customer support. Thus we also started using Zopim live chat for solving our customers’ time critical problems. As mentioned, customers are interested in valuable partnership, so increasing the time of solving one issue has yet again helped us to be closer to the companies we work with.
MailChimp
Through out the years of Messente, we have gathered a lot valuable knowledge from wich we pick up most relavant to share with Messente’s partners and clients in our monthly newsletter. Since one of the core characteristics of Messente has always been transparency, we felt that the web-based automated email marketing service MailChimp could help us to spread the knowledge in a most reachable way. By the way, if you are interested in receiving a monthly update, then check on the right side of this blog and sign up for Messente’s newsletter.
Using these tools to accomplish various tasks is one efficient way to increase the productivity of our remote team. The work becomes easier and less stressful when some carefully chosen tools help us concentrate more on our goals. We all like having a calm and clear remote working environment, so it would be easier to write, be creative and have more self-discipline.