Improve Your Small Business with a Digital Assistant

Stressed-out small business owners can simplify their hectic lives by turning their smartphones into a kind of personal digital assistant to drive productivity and improve time management.

More people are custom-building their own digital assistants these days by assembling clever combinations of productivity applications on their smartphones. Entrepreneurs can rely on smartphone apps to automate a range of mundane tasks and improve their business efficiency. The options for apps are nearly endless, so let’s start with some basic ways to simplify the management of your voice messages and daily tasks.

Your Smartphone Deserves Intelligent Voicemail

Small businesses are realizing the value of intelligent voicemail systems that can transcribe audio messages, greet callers by name, and automatically reply to incoming messages. Such a digital assistant mimics a professional secretary by sending out personalized messages and responding to incoming calls when you are busy. Such apps can also be used as a kind of personal answering service for realtors, lawyers, small dentist offices, and others.

For years, YouMail has replaced standard visual voicemail with a text transcription feature in an easy-to-use app that’s free for consumer downloads. Other popular smart voicemail services include Google Voice for iOS and Android; and Visual Voicemail Plus for Android.

On the flip side, intelligent voicemail tools can halt unwanted cold calls and block annoying prerecorded robocalls, thus saving you time and improving your quality of life.

Getting Productive with Productivity Apps

Do you want to get a handle on your to-do list and catch up on all your daily tasks? Need a better way to brainstorm ideas and manage your favorite web content? Many productivity apps are available to help you work faster and more efficiently.

Captio is a kind of digital notebook that lets users type in their thoughts and send reminder notes to themselves by email. This is a helpful tool to quickly capture all the ideas you want to remember later. Just open the Captio app and start typing. When you’re done, hit send and the note is immediately delivered to your email inbox. When you’re feeling extra forgetful, you can even send photos and screenshot reminders to yourself.

Evernote is another free app that helps users manage their own unique flow of ideas and information. Evernote lets you type notes, track Web pages, store images and save audio files. Then it allows you to share that same content with partners and clients across all types of computers, tablets and phones.

If instant messaging is your preferred form of contact, Hipchat offers hosted IM and group chat services to stay in touch with colleagues across diverse locations and devices. Even after you’ve shut down your laptop computer, Hipchat can still transfer messages to your smartphone.

File-sharing is another helpful software tool for small groups to collaborate on content. Droplr allows you to quickly capture and send screenshots, videos and other content with a simple web link. It also allows you to record screencasts and distribute them instantly.

Droplr is free to download, but every file that’s shared gets deleted after one week. For longer storage periods, users can upgrade to Droplr Lite for $4 per month or Droplr Pro for $8 per month.

Overcoming That Overwhelming Feeling

Whether you’re a small business entrepreneur or a busy parent (or both!), sometimes there just aren’t enough hours in the day. In this age of multitasking, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by too many competing priorities at once.

Take a moment to assess which items are sapping too much of your daily time and energy. Then work backwards to choose specific smartphone apps that will allow you to downplay less important items and complete your most vital tasks. In this way, you can enlarge your brand awareness and improve your customer satisfaction.