policy & procedure
I can help!
Small businesses are the lifeblood of America. I believe I can help yours by contributing my years of organizational experience in defining best practices and standard operating procedures tailored to your needs.
SOPs
Written policies outlining everything, I can help outline some best practices for you. Here are some common questions a small business struggles with.
Operations - Who should help manage which department? What kind of structure should my company have?
Customer Service - Who handles returns? Who handles customer complaints?
Shipping Practices - Do you have an expedite shipping policy? What about shipping damage?
Returns - Should we do 30 day returns? 60? 90? What's a fair exchange item?
Operations >
Who should help manage which department? I can help you work through the ideal scenario for your small business.
We would need to have a few virtual meetings so I can interview you and learn about how your business works now and where you hope to be soon.What kind of operational structure works best for 1-5 employees? What about when we expand? Who trains who?
Is your company growing rapidly and it feels like different roles are blending into each other? We can talk about what it takes to train new employees effectively and set a training plan for expansion.Who would work best in different project groups such as a technician, a front desk clerk, and a graphic designer? Which one leads?
Do you have a lot of multiple teams doing a lot of the same things? Let's talk about cohesive ways your teams or singular-person departments can work together and set goals in a collective way.
Customer Service >
Who on the customer service team handles returns if there's just a few people?
It can feel like a small customer support team will need to handle everything all the time, but tha'ts not always true. Let's chat about how your cs team can be optimized.What do we do when a customer complains? Who deals with that?
Emails or phone calls, we can work on the ideal structure that makes sense to reduce customer and team frustrations.We only have email, it's getting to be too much.
Ticketing systems are the way to go, let me set one up for you!
Shipping Practices & Returns >
What kind of shipping setup do you have? Do you print your own labels or use Fedex?
I can help you with a shipping system and suggest ways to setup fulfillment of product.Does your company have branded shipping labels and packaging?
Emails or phone calls, we can work on the ideal structure that makes sense to reduce customer and team frustrations.What about shipping expedite planning? How do you plan for that?
Shipping is an extremely undervalued division of any company. I can help you plan out shipping zones and expediting fees.
Workflows
Workflows and troubleshooting them can help improve team moral and performance. Spend a little time with me drawing out some ideal workflows for your processes and be happier as a result.
Diagraming - How do we make decisions? Do you have outlines or word docs notes?
Planning- Mindmaps to organize and re-organize team collaborations, order of functions, etc.
Diagrams >
How many word docs or notes across different softwares do you have? Don't have?
A lot of different word docs doesn't make a good workflow. Let's take a look at your business and write out some outlines and convert them to a sensible workflow.Don't know where to start? Let's talk about what problems you have, and then work from there.
There's a reason small businesses make the jump to middle and large scale, they repeat their successes. Let's get your business to that level by working through the issues and preventing them from coming back up again.
Planning >
Diagrams are just the first step.
You've heard it said that 'failing to plan is like planning to fail' and that's certainly true for repeating successful workflows. Once you feel confident in the workflows and diagrams, we can make them into finalized plans. Plans help keep everything organized not just for once, but for every time after.Plans on a platform.
Sharepoint, Wordpress, Google Sites, Shopify or Freshdesk can all be harnessed to house your training docs and information all in one easy to navigate place. Check out my examples of trainings sites.