Social media and instant messaging services make it easy for us to communicate and to reach people. But as a free to use service, the owners of these platforms sometimes have to take decisions for the benefit of their companies which impact the users who are providing their data to these companies for free.
The real consequences of this came to light for many with the very public panic caused by the recent change to Facebook-owned WhatsApp’s terms of service, which had many users confused, while making others move to alternative instant messaging platforms.
As a small business owner, this can have devastating effects on your business especially if the social media and chat platforms are how you reach your clients and how they reach you.
If you move off one specific platform, what happens to your contacts? If your contacts leave the platform, what happens to you? Losing clients is not ideal, even more so when you lose clients because of something which is totally out of your control.
An unspoken rule or norm of operating online is that if the platform is free, then you – the user – are the product. In exchange for the convenience of finding the shortest route to and from work sending messages to friends and family in far flung corners of the world, tech firms often mine data which they can sell on to advertisers.
There are options for you to take back control, one of which is the Mkhosi app. Mkhosi app is not a social media platform nor is it a chat service. It simply has these features and is able to integrate with your profiles.
Unlike with free to use services, you get what you pay for.
Just ask Tumi, a hairdresser with a growing business and ever expanding list of clients. With Mkhosi, she’s not only able to communicate with clients but have details of previous and upcoming appointments, records and a billing history – all in one place.
Mkhosi app allows you to keep a database of all your clients and your interactions with them. At the same time, it allows your clients to reach you through the app independently of any chat/social media platform. This is only a fraction of the features within the app which you have access to as a business owner, and which means that you control your client database and how your clients reach you.
