Using Google Alerts to Make Prospects Love You

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using google alerts to improve customer management; image is customer management spelled out.My MileIQ review has been by far the most popular post on my blog this month – people really want what this app promises to do. And evidently the people at MileIQ are using Google alerts, because I got a very nice email from them less than 12 hours after I posted my [unsolicited] blog review of their app. What a great way to use automation (a google alert set to your company or product name) to provide a ‘high touch’ customer experience.

‘High touch’ because the email I received was obviously personalized. It didn’t just use my name, it also referenced my blog, the review I had written, and even included a link to a help article on a problem I had mentioned. Here’s the email:

Hi Maura,

Thank you very much for writing a review of MileIQ. Your blog seems like it would have a perfect audience for our service.
We noticed that you might have had some trouble with a few of your drives and wanted to share this support article with you that will ensure all your drive data is captured.
If you’re not getting drives…
http://support.mileiq.com/knowledgebase/articles/288109-if-you-re-not-getting-drives
The answer to your question about turning Wifi on is yes, it helps a lot. iOS relies on this to provide significantly better location information for the iPhone. This method is also much less battery intensive than asking the phone to use the GPS chip.
Of course if this doesn’t resolve the issue we’d be happy to help you troubleshoot further.
Regards,
Nat Robinson | MileIQ
Are you using Google alerts in your business? Please share what you are doing with Google alerts in the comment section, so we can all benefit from sharing best practices (or learning what did not work out so well). And, if you have yet to start using Google alerts, click the link in the first paragraph to learn how easy it is to set one up.
Filed Under: business management, small business marketing, System Development Tagged With:

MileIQ Review – Can it Really Track Your Mileage Automatically?

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MileIQ App Screen ShotI’ve been testing this app since Sunday, with high hopes. MileIQ promises to catch every drive automatically – no stop or start required. Especially appealing to me right now as the only thing holding up our tax return for 2013 is that I need to add up my mileage from my mileage log, which is very tedious. The idea of having this done for me for 2014 makes my heart sing!

What is my MileIQ review? I really like that you don’t need to open the app for it to work – as long as you have your cell phone with you, it’s supposed to track your mileage. I also like how easy it is to categorize your trips – just open the app and swipe left to categorize the trip as personal, and right to categorize as business. It’s also easy to add tolls or parking fees manually to your trips.

Unfortunately, I can’t give it a thumbs up just yet. While it is amazingly accurate on the drives it catches, for some reason it misses some of my drives, so I still have to keep my paper mileage log. However, my MileIQ review may change as I continue to tweak a few things. The directions indicate the app becomes more accurate with wi-fi turned on, and my wi-fi has been off this week, so my next step is to see if turning it on makes a difference. I also have an older iPhone (4s), so upgrading to a newer model may help. I’m hoping the glitch is not because I drive a Prius; that would be a bit more difficult to fix! I’ll keep you updated.

Give it a try – the MileIQ app is free for up to 40 trips a month. You do have the ability to pause the app – a nice feature to turn on for the weekend, for instance, if you are concerned you will run over 40 trips a month.

Want more time- and sanity-saving tools and strategies for small business owners? Check out my latest recommendations here.

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