November 1st marks the open enrollment period for health care. As an entrepreneur I jumped on the first chance I got Monday morning to sign up. Why am I looking at healthcare? For those who don’t know, I am gonna to be doing my business, Ed Troxell Creative, full-time now. That’s right, Friday is my last day at the day job and I will be able to do Ed Troxell Creative now full-time so its gonna be awesome! I am super excited!
If you are self employed or are thinking about becoming an entrepreneur contact your local healthcare agency to find out more. I am in California so we actually have to go through Covered California and let me tell you the process is not user friendly. The fact that I can go to the website to fill out an application is great! I am tech savvy so I have no problem filling out applications online. Just like most things that deal with government or anything higher up the process is not so easy. I love to evaluate websites. In fact that is part of what I do for my business. I provide clients with feedback on their website. Being able to provide you with what you can do to enhance your website or what you should be adding to it to make it more user friendly. That being said, there’s definitely a lot of opportunity for Covered California’s
website because of the fact is that it’s not user-friendly or mobile friendly for that matter.
Once I got past the dreaded “create a password” (password can’t be a dictionary word) I quickly made my way through a few screens before getting held up on “Income.” I went to the help menu and saw there was a “Live chat” button, great! Well, that “Live chat” button would be great if it actually worked but it doesn’t. Dreading calling in, as I’m sure everyone in California would be doing the same thing, I decided to reach out on Twitter. I clicked the Twitter icon at the bottom of the page and sent them a tweet about my frustrations. For those who are always wondering about networking and how social media might make an impact for their business check this out. Not even 10 minutes after sending the tweet I got a notification. I was impressed with how quickly they responded. Of course they responded apologizing for the frustration, provided me with a link for support on the password, and even offered that I start following them so I can send them a Direct Message (private messaging on Twitter for those who follow each other) for more help.
This was by far a great example of how a business, watching their social media channels closely, can jump at the opportunity to connect quickly with a customer or potential customer and assist them. This is how you want to look at social media for your business or soon to be business. These days its so much easier to use your social media channels to be able to connect with customers on a whole different level. Realize that potential customers are going to be using social media as a way to get their opinions out there so you need to also make sure that you’re watching your social media accounts closely. Being able to reply quickly to those who are reaching out to you is a good look for you! If you don’t respond, and sometimes if you don’t respond quickly, it doesn’t look good for your business. You want to be accessible. You want to be able to check in with your customers or potential customers in a way that works for them.
Do your research! For those who haven’t done so yet be sure to find out in your state where you need to go and the resources you need to get covered for healthcare.
Get covered