In the next installment of our small business series, Will Roman, Founder and Chief Texan at Chisos Boots, takes us through how a homegrown company based in Austin is taking the cowboy boot industry by the (long)horns with the power of the internet. 

With the help of the internet, your local business can now take on international brands. For those in recent generations, the power of the world wide web — and reliable access to it — are often glossed over. But the internet’s impact cannot be overstated.

Countless things that used to require large capital investments — from storefronts to fulfillment software to even phone systems — can now be acquired by mom and pop shops at much more approachable rates.

Our small boot company utilizes Google Fiber internet service to create an outsized impact on the market. Here are a few tactics that have earned us a growing reputation as the best cowboy boots around.

STOREFRONT IMPRESSION MATTERS

We’re based in Austin, Texas, but reach customers around the state, the country and internationally.

We couldn’t afford a multi-million dollar headquarters building, but we did build a website that matches — and in many ways, exceeds — those of much larger boot brands. With e-commerce slated to command nearly 25% of all retail sales across the country, a significant number of your potential customers will be choosing between you and your competitors based on your websites. So make sure your digital storefront reflects your brand and tells your story. 

Not only does online software manage our website, it also manages our physical back-of-house and fulfillment operations, which is a radical departure from how we operated even a decade ago.

SHARE THE STORY

Access to an audience (really almost any audience) is radically easier than ever before. It may be cliche, but your blog, social media and even email all enable you to reach millions of people. 

Speaking to an audience in the millions used to require an advertising budget of dollars to match. With a fraction of that amount of budget, and a dose of creativity, you can now share your story with the entire world online.

Your unique voice and small business perspective are an advantage. In our experience, customers love seeing behind-the-scenes content from small teams, and love people who have a point of view. These are things that big corporations have more of a challenge with due to  their size. Use your size and accessibility to your teams to your advantage.

ONLINE IS THE NEW REAL LIFE

People do their research online, they find communities to interact with and they certainly entertain themselves online. Small businesses can be nimble and excel at leveraging these new habits.

The Chisos Community group on Facebook brings fellow customers and boot enthusiasts together. Reviews are shared, questions are helpfully answered. And group video chats are organized to connect with others.

Livestreams let you talk directly to your audience, and then share the recording to thousands more. We host large gatherings at our headquarters in Austin, but then involve others across the world by utilizing our Google Fiber connection.

The big companies might have more resources, but the internet enables small businesses to truly compete and thrive.

Posted by Will Roman, Founder and Chief Texan, Chisos Boot Company

Google Fiber is taking part in the FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program and wants to make sure that all eligible new and existing customers are aware about this opportunity to get up to $30 toward your monthly internet bill. 

In order to participate, customers must first qualify through the FCC and then fill out the Google Fiber ACP Subsidy form to let us know you have enrolled in the program. You can find more information about how this program works and the process to ensure the benefit is applied to your monthly bill on our website.

Google Fiber is excited to be part of the Affordable Connectivity Program, which makes it more affordable to get online wherever you live. As a company, we’re continuing to work toward helping more people access fast, reliable internet.

We know that Google Fiber customers want more flexibility and control in accessing the streaming content they want. Our goal as customers transition to streaming has always been to help them navigate the different options and find what works best for them, from devices to content providers. This was potentially a major change that could affect the daily habits of our customers, and we wanted to make it as painless as possible. 

One definite pain point was live sports. No matter where they live, people are devoted to their teams (yes, we see you KC Royals and Atlanta Braves fans!) and many want to be able to watch as many games as possible. This requires access to specific regional sports networks (RSNs) in most places, many of which do not have wide streaming distribution availability. 

We want to make it easier for customers to find their team (and other content). Today, I’m excited to announce that we’ve added DIRECTV STREAM to the line-up of streaming options available to existing customers. DIRECTV STREAM features other live TV options, in addition to live sports and On-Demand content and new subscribers receive unlimited cloud DVR. Additionally, as of today, DIRECTV STREAM is currently offering a 5-day free trial to all their new customers. 

Posted by Liz Hsu, Director, Product Strategy

From time to time, we like to share insights from some of our amazing partners on the tools they offer to help our customers get the most out of their internet service. Today, we’re featuring a blog post from Dan O’Connell, Chief Strategy Officer at Dialpad detailing his recommendation on how to make your  business ready for the internet age. The views and opinions expressed in this blog post belong only to Dan O’Connell, and do not necessarily reflect that of Google Fiber. 

Whether you’re a first-time small business owner (in which case, congratulations on getting it off the ground!), an experienced professional, or just trying to help someone get their small business started, know there are certain things that no business should be without. Some may be obvious, while others are often (tragically) overlooked.

Let’s take a look at four essentials that no small business should be without (and why).

1. A website

Let’s be real: we’re living in a digital world, and if you don’t have an online presence, you might as well be a ghost. No matter what kind of business you run, customers will still want to check out your website.

Depending on your business, customers could go to your site for basic information, to place orders, see what you have to offer, or any number of other reasons.

I recommend creating a website where your potential customers can find that info quickly. Fortunately, it’s easy to get started—the first step is to buy a domain which you can do from a number of services. From there, it’s time to build your website, create a web presence (time to brush up on search engine optimization), and make sure your site has all the information your customers will need.

Oh, and don’t forget about social media! Having a Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn page can help build a customer base, get information out, and give your customers a way to contact you directly.

2. Fast, reliable internet

What good is a website if it takes ages to load? You need a fast internet connection (that’s not going to glitch) to properly reply to customer queries, receive orders, and manage your online presence.

This is especially true if you use the internet for VoIP calls, video meetings, messaging, and so on. (You don’t want your video or audio cutting out mid-call!)

Thankfully, there are some fast and affordable internet service providers out there.

3. A unified communications platform

This is where we start getting into the technology that can make or break your business.

When your customers need to contact you, how do they do that? Do they call? Send an email? Text message you? What about your sales team or contact center—what do they use?

This is where a good unified communications (UC) system is vital. A proper UC platform, like Dialpad, seamlessly combines all your communications channels into a single solution.

What, exactly, does that mean for your business? With Dialpad, for instance, you’ll get:

• Voice, video, messaging, and contact center, all on a single app

• The ability to take business calls on your computer or mobile device, all from the same number (so you can take calls anywhere without giving out your personal cell phone number)

• The ability to set up a contact center and add agents in literally minutes

• Insights and analytics into all your business’s calls

• AI support for your contact center agents and sales reps

• And a whole lot more!

For most businesses, a mix (or all) of these things is essential for growing your customer base and working from anywhere.

4. Customer relationship management

What’s a business without its customers? It’s not.

That’s why you need a good customer relationship management (CRM) system to help with your business’ relationships and interactions with customers.

CRM systems help manage contacts, sales, agent productivity, and of course, individual customer relationships. They do this by saving customer and prospect information (including past topics they’ve called in about), finding sales opportunities, and managing marketing campaigns.

In short, they’re essential tools for keeping customers satisfied and bringing them back by providing personalized experiences and keeping agents and reps informed.

Best of all? You can even integrate unified communications platforms with your CRM—like how Dialpad can integrate with Salesforce, Kustomer, or Hubspot to let agents launch calls with a click from within the CRM, and then automatically log the call details when they’re done.

Remember…

The saying “if you build it, they will come” isn’t necessarily true anymore. Building the business is the first step, but you also need to build an online presence (with a speedy internet connection), reliable service and support (from a great unified communications platform), and good customer relationships.

The good news is: all of those are within your reach. All you have to do is find the right services for your business, and you’ll see the difference that they can make.

Posted by Dan O’Connell, Chief Strategy Officer, Dialpad

If you’ve been following Google Fiber, you know that we’ve been buzzing right along. Growing in our existing cities, improving our already awesome customer experience and service reliability, refining our construction methods to enable rapid and efficient network construction, and even launching service in new places. 

The success of these efforts has paved the way for even more expansive growth. And today we’re sharing what (or, rather, where!) is next for Google Fiber.

I’m especially excited about this announcement, as it’s in my home state of Arizona. On July 11, the Mesa City Council is expected to vote on measures that will enable Google Fiber to deploy a gigabit speed, fiber-to-the-home network in Mesa. Mayor John Giles and the city staff have worked tirelessly on this issue, and Google Fiber is honored to join them in advancing their goals of increasing choices, connectivity and bandwidth throughout the city. 

If approved by the City Council, we'll kick off the engineering and operations effort right away and begin construction in Mesa early next year.

If you’re in Mesa and want to stay up to date on our progress, you can sign up here for updates on offerings and availability. And stay tuned … things are just heating up in Arizona.

Posted by Ashley Church, General Manager, West Region

A lot has happened since we last checked in from Nashville. Over the past year, we’ve more than doubled our service area in Nashville, and we expect to add a similar number of new households this year. We are working closely with Metro Nashville to allow us to achieve our goal of bringing fast, reliable internet to more people all across the city.

That progress has paved the way for conversations in some surrounding communities, including Smyrna, where we stood with the mayor and the town council today to announce that we’d be beginning construction on a new fiber network later this year. We’re grateful for the opportunity to bring Google Fiber service to this vibrant community.

Smyrna Mayor Mary Esther Reed and Ryun Jackson

We’re looking forward to connecting Smyrna residents to everything the internet has to offer, as we continue our build out in the city of Nashville as well. With all this growth, we’re also growing our team (including me — I joined the team in May, moving from Memphis to Nashville!), and looking for more people to help us keep the momentum going as we expand in Nashville and beyond. 

The Google Fiber Nashville team recently made welcome home boxes for the Nashville USO.

Posted by Ryun Jackson,Government & Community Affairs Manager

Welcome to Connect! The official Google Fiber blog has a new look, but remains the place to get the latest news and information on what’s happening with Google Fiber and our products, meet our team, and get an inside look at each of our cities, along with anything else in the GFiber-sphere.

Connect is what we do in the real world — bringing fast, reliable internet to more people and businesses in our communities every day, so we thought it was a fitting title for how we tell our stories online. We hope you’ll check in regularly and you can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram for updates. 

Posted by Sunny Gettinger, Head of External Communications