The corporate world of today is undergoing a massive evolution and automation is at the center of it. For a vast majority of organizations, it is one of the main ingredients responsible for their successes!
It isn’t a coincidence that automation ranks among the leading buzzwords these days. By definition, it is the art of employing an application or automation software so that it takes a load off of your hands. It is primarily meant to deal with core tasks like sales and marketing, enhance interaction with customers, streamline processes, and answer queries quickly and efficiently.
Automation distinguishes high achieving businesses from the average!
Nobody can underestimate the essence of automating a business. For successful entrepreneurs and corporates, continually pushing the limits to remain competitive, automation even has a more significant meaning. It is the means of scaling, staying ahead of the pack and remaining future-ready.
Quite simply, it is the secret behind energy, the enthusiasm and the zeal responsible for their peak performance and their workflows streamlined. The good thing with it, however, is that all one will need is a set of applications designed for businesses and BOOM!
With that being said, these are some essential things to automate your business fully:
Automate the customer service and support department
How your business grows and expands hinges upon your customers. It is their revenue, patronage and how they receive your business that would determine how your brand grows. Yet, sometimes, managing customers can be hard and overwhelming for an individual, especially when their questions, complaints, and orders have to be handled quickly. Any poor habit towards them without a doubt closes business.
Would you like to treat your customers with respect, handle them with dignity and ensure their concerns are handled swiftly?
Well, the secret to maintaining a large customer base is to automate the customer service and support department. It will enhance the reliability of your business, giving them the confidence that you hold every individual client with value and esteem. And with that, they will not turn to the next available competitor.
You are probably wondering what best tool to use to automate customer service for your business. There is quite a long list of software and automation tools to invest in. But as would tech and automation experts would tell you, any one product that offers personalized support is worth your bucks, provided it provides access to reporting and analytics.
It must also essentially help build better relationships with your customers by offering instant and friendly assistance without appearing a lot like a Bot. You should, however, check and ensure it fits your brand as well as how tech-savvy you are. Some of the best online customer service tools worth giving a try are Freshdesk, Zendesk, and SalesAutoPilot.
Automate the way you manage social media channels
Given that social media is intertwined in the business world today, no ambitious business can dare go without one. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are the leaders, and all can immensely direct leads to your business. You will also use them to communicate and interact, handle complaints and criticisms and generally grow your brand.
If posting on the social media outlets of your business is proving hard, yet you possibly can’t do without them, one trick can immensely help – automation. Social media management becomes a lot breezy if you program what needs to be updated, when and by whom. What’s more, you save lots of time scheduling a single post and getting it published across several platforms at one shot.
But the real glamor with social media automation software has nothing to do with the scheduled Posts and Tweets. For someone eager to leverage the power of social media, the analytics tool explaining how the posts are doing is undoubtedly a game-changer. By studying the engagement, you will come up with the most suitable lead management strategy.
Social media automation tools like Hootsuite and Buffer are reliable, and they are perhaps the best.
Automate your business’ email marketing campaign
Now that your email marketing campaign is up and functional, you’ve got a reason to spruce it up a little. You must ensure that it not only serves its purpose of lead generation but also ensures that each lead is harnessed and turned into a sale.
Leads gathered from email marketing are an essential part of a business. But so is the customer relations aspect of the company. And with a proper email marketing campaign tool, getting these two functions done becomes easy. Choose software that would also allow adding of multimedia elements to emails so that you increase engagement.
You must, therefore, invest in a tool that allows you to track, monitor and study analytics. Ideally,your marketing automation software should track click-rates and the bounce-rates, capture the number of people who’ve unsubscribed and so forth. MailChimp, SumoMe, and Aweber are considered as the de facto email marketing software of choice for millions.
Automate tasks online for increased efficiency
Automation doesn’t start and end with all that concerns the customer alone. It is possible to invest in a system that would handle small tasks automatically and without anyone’s assistance. A perfect example is roles that involve uploading employees’ names, addresses, dates of birth and other information. You may also automate replies or responses sent through the business email, Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp.
In many companies, such small tasks are left to specially programmed Bots instead of humans. Automated responses enable the company to stay in touch with its clients 24/7 even during odd hours or over the weekend when the company isn’t operational. It’s incredible to note that Bots seldom go off and thus serve the business conveniently.
For your business, therefore, you can hire someone to design this automation tool. You will never have to worry about responding to text messages, emails and Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram messages.
Streamline processes and centralize communication
You can’t speak about automation without touching on employee efficiency and smooth operation of processes. This is because, while the two go hand-in-hand and help the business blossom even further, the results enhance productivity.
When the company adopts an automated system that keeps track of the roles handled by the employees, and identify when collaborations are needed, the benefits will be bountiful. It gives employees a more profound sense of responsibility and accountability in the organization.
Knowing that their outputs are being monitored, they will also work harder to earn recognition. And with such tools like HootSuite, DropBox and Evernote, efficiency becomes incredibly flawless. Apart from streamlining various processes, however, automation can centralize communication and help the company’s core departments work smoothly and in harmony. It gets rid of the traditional and outdated means of communication.
Automate the finance and payments department
Nothing can be as frustrating as when a customer has paid for a service only to wait for hours before the desired order is handled. Usually, when a client feels disappointed and has to wait for hours before getting served, he/she may not come back again. It can be even more annoying when the employees can’t get paid in time because the company still uses a manual salary payment system.
To solve all these issues on one go, you have to automate your billing and payment procedures. The efficiency, user-friendliness, and reliability are what everyone craves for. It lessens effort, eliminates time wastage and makes everyone happy.
There is lots of high-functioning billing software, tailor-made to create personalized invoice templates, performance reports, and other tasks and fulfill them automatically. The best are those that can generate performance reports, make payments, and calculate taxes and any accompanying duties.
Provided it can, however, generate and export the document in XML or CSV format, the tool is useful to go. Some of the best applications for this purpose are Quickbooks, Chargebee, and Freshbooks.
Automate Customer Review Management
Don’t forget to automate the way you earn valuable reviews about your business. By creating an online review system, you will understand how the public feels about your brand and whether there’s any form of disgruntlement. Those who feel sorry about the entire experience will use the review to express their dissatisfaction and perhaps highlight what needs to be done.
One excellent automatic review management tool is Synup. It does well to ensure you see what’s said and respond to it in a timely fashion. Its’ alternative tools, however, are ReviewTrackers, GetFiveStars, and G2 Crowd.
Automate how you list your brand online
In this day and age, when every client hunts online, it would be a massive miss if yours can’t be located. You must ensure that it appears on the search results, both organically and out of paid adverts. For this purpose, you should ensure it is listed on all major search engines and ranks high.
You can only get this done using listings management software. Those that can get you listed on a plethora of online directories at a shot is the best. It is even better when you will be able to monitor and manage how you are faring on from an intuitive dashboard. For this reason, you should try AdviceLocal or Synup. They don’t disappoint!
