Google

I'm a big fan of Google. It is my favorite search engine, and I love Google Chrome as my browser (although some sites don't work in Chrome). But there's so much more to Google than searching and browsing!

We just switched our company email to Google Mail. For our size company, it's absolutely free (up to 10 email addresses). I only issue company email addresses to myself, my managers and one for each front desk so the 10 free accounts is adequate. Our company email addresses don't have a gmail.com suffix (they all end with oursalonname.com) we present a professional image to the world. Also, since they are company email addresses, we have control over the accounts so if an employee leaves we can deactivate the account.

Do get set up this way, sign up for Google Apps and register your domain name (yourwebsitename.com). If you don't have a domain, you can get it through google. I was fortunate enough to have a techie husband who did all this for us. You may want to consult a computer guy or gal to make the switch.

Since we are logged into our gmail accounts, the numerous gmail applications are at our fingertips.

One app we use daily is Google Docs. Google docs give you access to free spreadsheet and word processing software. The files can be private or shared. We track our daily and monthly sales in a shared scoreboard spreadsheet. The receptionist at each of our two locations updates it daily with the location's sales figures. We print this out daily and share with the team at huddle so everyone always knows where we stand.

We also store checklists and other useful files out there to be printed as needed (like our nightly cleaning checklist or morning opening procedures.)

Google also has a Chat application that lets our two front desks talk with each other without tying up phone lines or being overheard by customers.

Another cool Google App is Google Voice. You can actually get a google phone number and have it ring to your land line, cell phone or group of phones.

There are so many Google Apps out there to make your business run more efficiently! Start small and check them out!