Davinci Virtual Blog

Engagement in the digital age happens in a blink. No longer are customers willing to wait on an email response in 24 hours or to place a call and wait in a queue to speak with a live sales or service agent. This wasn’t the case before the advent of the digital age, when customers relied almost exclusively on voice as their engagement channel with vendors. However, with the advent of the digital age, expectations changed quickly. Customers expect their vendors to offer them the same digital engagement channels that they use in their personal lives. 

At the same time, digital first impressions for customers are pivotal. A decade ago, first impressions were associated with initial human-to-human interactions—either voice or face to face. But the digital age completely transformed this paradigm. Often, the first interaction is now via a digital channel; everything from email campaigns, to online banner ads, to a company’s website. And it takes a matter of five seconds or less for that first impression to form.

Customers Want Digital Engagement Options

Having a great website in terms of aesthetic appeal and navigational design is a must and critical starting point. Three-quarters of users admit making judgment about a company’s brand credibility based on web design. 

But it is more than just website design that you should be worried about. Customers want engagement options—whether buying, seeking answers to a question, or looking for help to resolve a problem. There are various factors that small businesses and solopreneurs need to consider. In an earlier blog post, I delineated nine different digital considerations, with website design as one of them. 

A big mistake that too many small businesses and solopreneurs make is to think they simply need to offer visitors customized web content, along with voice and email contact options. Rather, customers want the ability to reach out in real time, using the device and engagement channel of their liking, for help questioning and solving issues. And even though self-service continues to score high with online visitors (increasing from 67% to 81% in recent years), live web chat—and even chatbots—are frequently the preferred primary channel after self-service options fail. Anytime, anywhere, and any channel on any device is quite apropos.

The above doesn’t mean that voice doesn’t still garner sway with online visitors. Rather than viewed as an entry-point or primary engagement channel, customers see it as an escalation mechanism. They want to solve simple, straight-forward issues with self-service knowledgebases and leverage live web chat as the initial engagement channel. Digitally savvy customers turn to voice as a last resort when none of the above answer their question or solve their problem. 

Live Web Chat Is a Must

Live web chat, however, isn’t feasible for every small business, let alone solopreneurs. It requires that you are always on and available to chat with customers. It also assumes that you have the expertise and bandwidth to configure and manage the live web chat solution. Furthermore, with live web chat only resolving a portion of inquiries, customers expect to have a seamless experience as they move between digital engagement channels. This means that you must have back-end integration between your voice, email, live web chat, and other digital engagement channels. Time and cost quickly become prohibitive, and you remain at a competitive disadvantage to larger businesses that have the resources to build and manage omnichannel engagement models.

The good news is that you can outsource live web chat to providers such as Davinci Virtual. In the case of Davinci Virtual, its service and sales agents are configured in teams that serve multiple customers, enabling Davinci Virtual to offer cost-effective options that accommodate small business and solopreneur budgets. Additionally, its various engagement channels are integrated, thereby ensuring customers’ customers have a seamless experience regardless of engagement channel—email, text, voice, and live web chat. 

Business Outcomes of Live Web Chat

The benefits businesses of live web chat are well documented. Following are some of the ways live web chat generates value:

• Bounce rates.

For e-commerce companies, reduce bounce rates. Fifty-three percent of U.S. customers say the will abandon their online purchase if they cannot find a quick answer to a question. 

• Advocacy.

Valuing and respecting customers’ time cannot be underemphasized. Seventy-three percent of customers indicate valuing their time is the most important thing that a business can do when providing them with a good digital experience. Offering live web chat as a virtual real-time human-to-human engagement mode goes a long way in assuring customers that you value their time.

• Cost.

Research shows that live web chat is cheaper than voice by at least 33 percent—both for organizations managing live web chat in-house and for those that outsource it.

• Cart Abandonment.

Sixty-nine percent of online carts are abandoned. Over half are more likely to make a purchase if they have assistance via live web chat. 

• Sales.

The amount of additional revenue live web chat can generate for an online retailer varies, depending on the study in question. For those using live web chat, upwards of 20 percent of revenue often occurs after live web chat. Without live web chat, this revenue would not have been realized. 

Live web chat can be quickly and easily added to your website. Get started today by determining which Live Web Chat Plan from Davinci Virtual is right for your business. 

Women bring a lot to the table, skills and perspectives that extend the conversation men bring to the table, or begin a conversation that hasn’t happened yet, and needs to. Davinci is all about encouraging new conversations and creating coworking spaces where people can share the energy generated in a creative environment. With a ninety percent female workforce, Davinci seeks to encourage and empower women as business leaders, which is why we are proud to join the ElevateHER Challenge.

Gender equality has seen a great deal of coverage in recent years, a great deal of conversation around the idea that women aren’t always receiving equal treatment in the professional world. The discrepancy is most readily apparent in the number of women business leaders.

The gender leadership gap is a concern that some organizations are working hard to solve. The Women’s Leadership Institute (WLI) is one such organization, and their ElevateHER challenge invites every business to evaluate what female leaders can offer them, and then to put women in positions where they can make it a reality.

What Women in Business Are Capable of

Most western cultures don’t do an effective job of successfully highlighting the accomplishments of women, leading to some gender bias. To help combat this, let’s look at a few examples of prominent and successful businesswomen.

• Madame C. J. Walker—Born to newly freed slaves just after the Civil War, she built a hair care products empire, and was a philanthropist and social activist as well.

• Katharine Meyer Graham—Pulitzer Prize winner and Publisher of The Washington Post during their unearthing of the Watergate Scandal. Her father owned the Post previously, and instead of bequeathing it to her on his death, he willed it to her husband. She claimed leadership only after the death of her husband.

• Ruth Handler—co-founder of Mattel with her husband, and creator of the Barbie doll.

• Debbi Fields—Debbi (a.k.a. Mrs. Fields) started out with nothing but her cooking skills, starting her Mrs. Fields Chocolate Chippery while still a young mother in California. Since then, she’s been on multiple executive boards (such as Outback Steakhouse Inc.), written several cookbooks, and more.

• Sheryl Sandberg—current COO of Facebook, and first woman to join the company’s board of directors. She’s also served as an economist for The World Bank, VP of global online sales and operations at Google, chief of staff for the U.S. Treasury Secretary, and more.

So while women are, and have been, underrepresented in leadership positions, that hasn’t stopped them from succeeding. Women in leadership roles have excelled time and again, and it’s important to celebrate their accomplishments and provide mentoring to women and girls.  

What Women in Business Need

Businesswomen are a valuable, powerful resource that many companies are underutilizing. It’s a mistake that’s causing these organizations to perform below their potential, a problem seen throughout the world.

Forbes recently asked fifteen women on their Forbes Coaches Council about “the biggest challenges their female clients are currently facing,” and what advice they would give women leaders. Many of the responses resonate with Niya Allen-Vatel’s words, “I advise clients to gain the confidence to know that if they're in the room, that means they deserve to be there.”

Other responses include admonitions to speak out, and not to undervalue your services, either emotionally or monetarily. And another thread encouraged women to network with each other, form alliances, and encourage and mentor each other. As an Education professor said long ago to teachers in training, “Remember you are highly trained professionals.”

Highly trained and highly skilled. Clearly we will continue to see successful women in business with or without backing from their male peers—we will also continue to see valuable talent walk away from companies and industries if we don’t show them the support they deserve.

What Davinci Is Doing to Promote Women in Business

The gender leadership gap can be easily remedied by acknowledging the capabilities of our female peers and their capacity for leadership, helping them develop their skills to capitalize on that potential, and then giving them an opportunity to put those skills to use.

The ElevateHER Challenge seeks to help businesses achieve this. Developed by the Women’s Leadership Institute, the ElevateHER Challenge is designed to guide organizations as they “elevate the stature of women’s leadership.”  It consists of seven steps, each intended to resolve a different issue caused by gender bias that contributes to the low number of women in leadership roles. 

It’s a challenge that many businesses, including Davinci, Tesoro, Sysco, and Wells Fargo, have accepted to promote and empower women in leadership. We invite your business to do the same. Together, we can help bring equality to the workplace, and help business women step out from the shadows and into their own power.  

Let us know who has been the greatest female mentor in your life and how they’ve empowered you to reach your full potential. How has Davinci empowered you to reach your full potential? Share comments with us below. 

Being a consultant allows you to work from home or from wherever you want. It has various benefits, like dictating your own schedule and saving time by not having to commute back and forth from one place to another. 

However, any professional, and consultants in particular, need to think about the image they present, making sure that it is a professional, trustworthy one. This is especially true when you have to meet with clients. 

Though various professionals often meet in restaurants or coffee shops, there is a risk associated with this, as more often than not, sensitive information is shared and analyzed in these meetings, and in public places, anyone can hear the information that is being shared. For this reason, and various others, consultants often hire a virtual office as a complement to their business. 

For starters, virtual offices not only offer the opportunity to list a renowned address in a particular location, they also allow individuals to use the available office and meeting space to receive and meet clients. This allows consultants to present themselves in a professional manner, in a professional setting that exudes professionalism and trustworthiness. Additionally, because these spaces were designed to get business done and they are equipped with the necessary tools, they often improve productivity and inspire people to get work done and solve problems at hand. 

Virtual offices also offer other services that help in presenting a professional image. Among the various services offered by virtual offices you will find mail handling and forwarding, VoIP numbers, and live receptionists. This means that you can give clients an address that is not only well-known, but allows you to maintain some privacy; you can also give clients a phone number that will redirect them to an assistant, a sign of success and professionalism. This virtual assistant can fulfill many tasks; from scheduling and confirming meetings, to following-up with clients, to taking important messages while you are away or otherwise engaged. 

Furthermore, virtual offices also offer services that can be hired on-demand, depending on your or your clients’ needs. These other services can come in the form of printing, an assistant to help you take notes, handling messages and packages for a specific period of time, notary services, etc. 

By opting for a  Davinci Virtual Office, consultants can ensure that their first impression will be a professional and lasting one. This will help them stand out from the competition and offer clients an added value when it comes to treatment and customer service. 

ConsumerAffairs accredited brand Davinci Virtual Office Solutions maintains customer satisfaction through a no customer left behind customer service policy.

Davinci provides virtual office services to help small businesses maintain a global presence on a local budget. Along with local or toll-free phone and fax numbers, live receptionist services and live web chat, Davinci also offers prime business addresses at over 1500 locations worldwide, and over 5000 meeting rooms and workspaces for rent.

A brand partner since 2016, Davinci finds success through review collection, referral paths and organic discovery of their ConsumerAffairs.com profile.

We recently sat down with the Davinci team to learn more about how they approach customer feedback, and how they tackle reputation management with the ConsumerAffairs for Brands platform.

Sharing with us today is CEO, Martin Senn.

Can you provide a quick overview of what Davinci Virtual does?

Davinci provides you with the image and resources of a fortune 500 company, at a fraction of the cost. A business address without the rent? A great workspace without a lease? A receptionist without the salary? Davinci offers you all this, and so much more.

How do customers typically learn about your products and services?

Paid and organic search, word of mouth, partner and affiliate channels

What does the buying cycle look like for your industry?

Most transactions occur between first touch and 14 days. Many prospects look for validation prior to purchase.

How important are customer reviews and ratings in the purchase of your product?

Very important, as many prospects look for validation prior to purchase. The data [from reviews] allows us to react quickly to potential challenges while keeping pulse on our product and service performance.

How does your company think about customer reviews?

We are very focused on obtaining independent reviews. The data allows us to react quickly to potential challenges while keeping pulse on our product and service performance.

What is your approach to customer service?

“No unhappy customers – ever.” We attempt to resolve all issues completely at first touch. We value our customers across all service channels. This focus is embedded in our culture.

What challenges led you to look for a solution like ConsumerAffairs?

We wanted to implement a reputable, independent 3rd party review process.

What types of goals or tasks are you using the ConsumerAffairs for Brands platform to accomplish?

Verified reviews, lead generation and outbound review collection.

The outbound review collection and the ability to combine the review platform with a lead referral system was a big deciding factor. We also enjoy the opportunity to be found organically when people search for related terms. ConsumerAffairs] is part of our overall product positioning and customer care strategy.

How do you measure the value ConsumerAffairs provides?

Number of reviews received, leads received and organic listings. It is part of our overall product positioning, service validation, and customer care strategy.

What do you like most about using ConsumerAffairs?

The product and processes are sound. The platform provides measurable returns.

How would you describe the product if you were explaining it to a friend?

Consumer Affairs is a mature, independent, 3rd party consumer review platform. It provides relevant review data while investing in organic listings and functioning, not just as a listing service but also a lead gen platform.

To learn more about Davinci Virtual Office Solutions, visit their website or check out the reviews on their ConsumerAffairs profile page.

Over the course of my career, I’ve had a chance to meet and interview hundreds of executives around the globe from enterprises such as Vodafone, United, BNY Mellon, Ford, Sealed Air, France Telecom, Visa, NASDAQ, Thai Airways, eBay, Barclays, and countless others. One of the key takeaways from these interviews and interactions is the professionalism—the individual executives as well as the companies they represent. Nearly every one of them talked, acted, and dressed their role. Rarely did I meet with one of the executives and leave doubting their professionalism or that of the company they represented.

For solopreneurs and small businesses seeking to gain the professional respect of their clients, the same holds true. Show up to meetings late dressed in blue jeans and a tee-shirt, and you garner a different professional impression than if you arrived a few minutes early wearing business attire. But, of course, this is just one of many ways in which you can appear more professional to your clients. The upside, with the availability of digital technologies and services at your disposal, is that you have any number of tools at your fingertips that can help you convey the first and lasting professional impressions that you want your clients to have.

The following is a list of some of the ways you can make your business look and act like a much larger business:

1. Email Communications.

First impressions count, and you often have a matter of seconds. In this case, you want to ensure that you a use company email suffix (viz., don’t use Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) and have a company email signature. Additionally, you need to write emails that are grammatically correct and represent your brand.

2. Client Meetings.

Client meetings at hotel conference rooms and coffee shops lack the professionalism that you typically want for those types of meetings. Hotel conference rooms are expensive to rent, and there can be surrounding distractions such as noisy guests and meetings in adjacent rooms. Coffee shops are also noisy and have an utter lack of privacy. Instead, for many of your meetings, you need to consider rented conference room space. It is up to half the cost of hotel conference rooms. Plus, rented conference room space such as Davinci Meeting Rooms comes with the presentation tools and technologies, not to mention lobby greeters, needed to facilitate successful client meetings. 

3. Office Address.

The physical address for your business is important. A great business address goes a long way in saying what your business is about. For solopreneurs and small businesses without an office location, virtual office addresses enable you to have an address that makes you look much bigger and exudes the professionalism you want your business to convey. And for businesses looking to expand into new locations, virtual office addresses are an inexpensive and easy way to do so.

4. Receptionist.

Incoming calls from clients need to be answered in real time. Pushing clients to voice mail or having their calls ring directly to your mobile device isn’t the experience you want them to have. Rather, solopreneurs and small businesses can answer incoming calls and even make outbound calls using live receptionists such as Davinci Live Receptionists. This enables you to appear much larger than your actual size.

5. Live Web Chat.

Clients want omnichannel engagement choices, and digital channels such as live web chat and text are quickly becoming preferred options. But few solopreneurs or small businesses have the resources to staff live web chat and text. The good news is that there are other options such as Davinci Live Web Chat, where professional agents proactively engage with clients to answer questions, resolve issues, and close sales.

The digital age has transformed how solopreneurs and small businesses use office space and interact with clients. The emergence of coworking space and rented day offices and conference rooms and the ability to outsource digital engagement services shrinks the gap between large and small businesses and solopreneurs, helping them to appear more professional to their clients.