Tuesday 1 November 2022
In today's busy marketplace it can be tricky to make a business stand out from the crowd without spending large amounts of money on flashy advertising or product innovation.
Yet sometimes all you need is to get the basics right - and here's where automation comes in. There are plenty of ways that automating some of your everyday activities can improve efficiency, save time and maximise profits - while at the same time, contributing to your company's competitive edge.
Let's take a look at three of the main ways automation can help your business to stand out from the crowd...
1. It can support excellent customer service
The level of customer service provided by a company can have a big impact on how it's perceived in the marketplace.
Automating responses to basic queries using a method such as a chat bot can help to resolve problems quickly and conveniently for customers, without the need for them to wait to speak to a real person.
It also means that your employees will have more time to spend adding value to the customer experience - focusing on more complex issues that require personal judgement or further discussion.
Automated email responses can also be used by businesses to ensure a swift response to customer queries, containing links to information that may help resolve these or advising customers of what will happen next. Even if a customer doesn't have their question answered immediately, a timely response acknowledging their contact and outlining next steps will reassure them that a company values their custom.
Both of these automation solutions can also provide an opportunity for immediate customer feedback. This can then be used to optimise further business activity and build on your company's customer service offering.
2. It can help to boost your marketing strategy
Automation tools can also help your business to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. This knowledge is useful as it allows you to monitor and tweak marketing activity for various groups of customers in real time and scale up anything that works. This could include testing different email subject lines or imagery, or trialling different types of offers on products or services.
Knowing what works will help your business to make better use of budgets, maximising on marketing practices that best entice potential customers and converting leads to sales.
An automated CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system can also be used to help to segment your customer base by various categories such as age, location, sales history or sector. This gives you the ability to target different segments with marketing activity that's relevant to them, demonstrating a better understanding of their needs and increasing the likelihood of them interacting with your business again in the future.
Marketing automation software can also assist your business to reach customers on multiple channels, including email, social media and websites. These joined up campaigns can save a lot of time as communication updates can be scheduled across different platforms at once, rather than needing to be sent manually one at a time.
3. It can improve business flexibility
Automating processes within your business can improve the ability you have to respond to changes in the market quickly and effectively.
This can be reassuring, especially in situations where your business needs to change the way it operates at pace - for example, responding to increasing demand for a particular product, or switching to an alternative style of packaging due to material shortages.
Changes such as these can often be made remotely, meaning that there's no need to rush to your head office or warehouse to get the job done.
Automation can provide this flexibility, allowing your business to adapt to the changing marketplace and maintain a competitive edge at the click of a button.
So, as you can see, using automation to enhance customer service, optimise marketing activity and improve flexibility will help your business to stand out from the crowd while saving time and maximising profits.
If you'd like to discover more about how Solweb could help your business to stand out from your competitors, you can contact us by completing the form below. We'd love to help you!
