Automation improves operation efficiency, thus saving you time and money. In fact, with the right automation, you may not have to hire any more employees in the near future. That’s powerful. And thanks to technological advancements, there are plenty of ways you can automate your business — all of which are relatively simple to implement
1. Automated Customer Service
Customer service is a crucial part of any business and can be automated in many different ways, including:
- Real-time chatbots: These chatbots respond to customers’ queries in real-time. This type of chatbot is helpful if you want to automate customer service while still allowing your customer to feel like they’re interacting with a real person.
- Live chat: Like a real-time chatbot, live chat allows your business to interact directly with customers via live messaging. If you want to provide automated customer service that requires minimal effort on your part, this is a good option.
- Email: they can be used quite easily for customer service tasks such as answering FAQs or sending newsletters. You have to set up the initial emails and let them do their thing.
2. Hire a Virtual Assistant
A virtual assistant is a person that works for you remotely, either from their own home or from an office in another country, who does administrative tasks for you virtually. You hire them part-time or full-time and pay them based on the number of hours they work for you each week or month. They answer emails, schedule meetings, and manage social media accounts.
3. Automate Your Social Media Updates
Considering all the benefits of social media marketing, it’s no wonder that more businesses are coming up with ways to make this process as efficient and effective as possible. One solution is to use social media marketing and management tool such as Hootsuite. They schedule your posts to go out at specific times, ensuring that you’re always reaching customers in the time zone they’re most active. Using the analytics feature, you can also post across multiple channels with one simple click and track how well each social media platform performs.
4. Automate Your Email Marketing
You can automate the creation of your email newsletters and even send them by using a service like MailChimp or AWeber. These services offer pre-written templates currently trending in the content world, so you don’t have to agonize over figuring out what to put in your next email blast. You can also schedule when these emails will be sent according to different criteria, such as a customer’s birthday or when they last made a purchase from you.
5. Implement Software for More Efficient Bookkeeping
You can use automated tools to help you track income and expenses, save receipts, create invoices and accept online payments, track billable hours, automatically calculate sales tax, track mileage, and manage inventory. By automating these tasks, you’ll be able to keep better tabs on your finances. This will help you stay organized and give you an accurate picture of how much money you’re bringing in to make smarter business decisions in the future.
6. Use an Online Employment Verification Service
When hiring a new employee, you want to make sure that their resume and application match reality. For example, QuickConfirm is an online employment verification service that will do the work for you. In a short amount of time, it can check the applicant’s former work history, education history, professional license history, and drug test history.
Once these results are in, you’ll have all the information you need to decide whether or not to hire them. It’s a fast and straightforward way to get what can otherwise be a tremendous job done quickly. And once your employees are hired, this system is also helpful for checking up on them if needed.
Closing Thoughts
When it comes to automating your small business, the possibilities are endless. As technology progresses, more and more tools become available for streamlining various aspects of your business, with an eye towards efficiency and increasing profits depending on how you use these tools. Whether you’re looking to automate your social media marketing strategy or streamline how you process payments from customers, automation is a powerful tool for growing your business.
