If you own a small business, there’s one thing that is for sure. It takes a lot of time, patience, and energy to manage your team. Your staff members are the superstars who are on the front lines with your customers. And keeping them at the top of their game should be a top priority. Productivity apps can help you enable them to continue to deliver that stellar service.
So, did you find our post because you are looking for ways to free yourself from being quite as hands-on? If you’re ready to step backwards and let your staff take a more active role, we are featuring 8 business productivity apps that will help you manage your team with ease.
1 - Trello
Our first pick? Trello. In fact, this tool offers project management functionality, and so much more!
It’s fun and straightforward to use. We should know. Indeed, the EmailMeForm remote team stays connected and on top of all of our many projects from all corners of the globe.
Think of Trello as an old school card file system. You assign lists of things to do and also create cards with tasks. You can drop and drag those cards within each project as you complete them.
And, you can tag your co-workers, set deadlines, create checklists, and more.
If that is not enough, you can add “Power-Ups,” integrations with your calendar, Google Drive, and other apps. From file sharing to goal setting, you won’t miss a beat once you master Trello.
Pretty cool.
2 - Zendesk
Want a tool that allows your team to respond to customer inquiries quickly? Consider an investment in Zendesk.
This customer service tool lets your team manage the customer experience without waiting for you to share a list of customer feedback or manually creating support tickets. It streamlines the process and lets them roll up their sleeves and focus on the customer.
This app tracks inbound contacts seamlessly. And, you can integrate it with your website so that you don’t miss any chat messages. Customer service team management has never been simpler.
3 - EmailMeForm
Of course, we are not going to have a list of awesome business productivity tools without including ourselves.
Maybe you haven’t thought of forms as a way to boost production. But when you think about it, they genuinely do.
But how?
Take advantage of our form integrations. With over 50 possible connections, the potential for time savings is enormous.
For example, you can turn form users into MailChimp subscribers. Or connect your subscription to Constant Contact. Or, you might integrate your payment form to your QuickBooks. Maybe you receive file uploads from clients that you can send automatically to DropBox or GoogleDrive.
You’ll streamline processes, allowing your team to spend their time on less manual processes.
4 - Hootsuite
Every small business owner seems to know all too well that social media marketing is here for the long haul. Despite its efficacy, many businesses struggle to keep up with posting regularly. Thus, they lose follower engagement.
Why?
Because it’s quite frankly exhausting for many to find the time to log in and back out of multiple social media platforms to share that important message.
Until now. Enter Hootsuite.
Hootsuite supports ten different social media channels, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You upload the content to Hootsuite, schedule it from one central dashboard, and let them push it out from there.
With this tool in your team members’ capable little fingers, there will be no excuse for not ramping up your social media marketing.
5 - Dropbox
Does your team waste precious time trying to upload and download files via email? That can waste time—especially frustrating when you’re waiting to receive a document from somebody in another time zone.
File sharing is made easy with Dropbox. When your team members utilize this tool, they can send files to the cloud and retrieve them from any location, at any time that’s convenient. It’s a safe, secure system, and it’s beloved by many small business owners because it’s just so easy to use.
6 - Slack
Slack is a tool you might use to manage team communications and collaboration. Once your team is onboarded into the app, you can establish “Channels,” or topics. Then, you invite the appropriate team members to each channel.
You can enable file sharing, set notifications to alert you to new messages, and search for message threads within a conversation (a very handy feature!).
It’s a cinch to implement, and you can keep in contact on the go via your mobile phone.
7 - Google Calendar
Without an emphasis on time management, it’s easy to let minutes slip through the cracks. From forgotten conference calls to missed deadlines, your team always seems to have some explaining to do.
Set up a team calendar on Google calendar, and you can eliminate those time management gaffes.
You will be able to invite your staff to meetings or planning sessions, create reminder alerts, keep them aware of any scheduling changes without needing to send emails out or have individual chats that waste everyone’s time.
8 - Grammarly
You might have considered Grammarly to be only a brilliant spell-checking tool until now. But, if you utilize it wisely, it can be so much more.
Think about the time you and your team member spend (hopefully) making sure that every communication is letter-perfect before hitting the “send” button.
You can install a Grammarly extension so that it runs continuously in the background as you work. It will make the famous red underline under your typos in real-time, allowing you to make instant fixes.
If you are not using Grammarly, it can be an enormous time-saver, and the error-free copy elevates the image of your business.
Try These Business Productivity Apps
Running a small business is, without a doubt, a lot of hard work. If team management related tasks seem to be bogging you down, consider trying out some of these business productivity apps.
You’ll save time and labor money. And, you can keep your team on their A-game completing the most critical work of all — growing your business.
Deborah Tayloe
Deborah is a blogger and freelancer who often writes for EmailMeForm. When she’s not blogging, you’ll probably find Deborah working on DIY projects around her home in North Carolina.
