Six effective ways to automate and grow your business

Business process automation has become popular due to the rise of the IT sector and the incorporation of more extensive technology. This is evident in the fact that the global rate of industrial automation is predicted to increase by 9% between 2020 and 2025.

Businesses are embracing it to dramatically enhance their operations, from using automated mailers to employing mechanical alternatives for tedious tasks. This article highlights ways to automate and grow your business.

1. Use customer relationship management (CRM) software

Customer relationship management refers to the methods, technology, and strategies that businesses employ to manage and analyze customer interactions and data across the customer lifecycle. The purpose is to enhance customer service relationships, aid in client retention, and promote sales growth.

CRM system collects client information from many channels and points of interaction between the customer and the firm. These may include the company’s website, phone, direct mail, live chat, social media accounts, and marketing materials. CRM also provides extensive data on consumer’s personal information, purchase history, purchasing preference and client concerns.

While four types of CRM solutions exist to track client interactions, their function varies based on individual company objectives. Many CRM softwares are narrowly focused on specific departments. Thesebinclude Operational CRM, which streamlines and automates workflows.

They are primarily concerned with developing, monitoring, and enhancing customer-facing business operations such as marketing, sales, service, client retention, and billing. While all software models are assessed based on financial ROI, the effective adoption of an operational CRM is also measured in terms of time and clicks saved.

Because this is a customer-facing application, its work is visible to the client in the form of marketing and outreach, but the client may be unaware that the CRM is executing the task rather than a human.

Analytical CRM focuses on business intelligence reporting and technologies. The data can produce dashboards, sales pipeline estimates, sales reporting, and predictive analysis. Collaborative CRMs bring together many personnel under one dashboard, such as salespeople, marketing teams, and customer support.

This guarantees that everyone is on the same page. All-in-one CRM solutions act as a single system for sales, marketing, tech support, customer service, and invoicing. These systems often combine built-in capabilities with third-party application connectors.

2. Integrate the use of chatbots and virtual assistants 

The world of customer service is experiencing a significant upheaval with the incredible potential of AI powered chatbots at the center of it. These digital wonders are rewriting interaction norms, bringing efficiency and customization to the way customers interact.

In a variety of ways, AI customer service is being utilised to transform consumer engagement. It can answer consumer queries, handle issues and give assistance 24/7. This allows human customer service personnel to concentrate on more complicated duties.

Chatbots and virtual assistants can also learn about clients' preference and want over time and utilize this knowledge to create more tailored and relevant interactions. Furthermore, chatbots make the customer journey more seamless.

They assist consumers in quickly and simply finding the information they want without having to wade through complex websites or apps. Customers that engage with chatbots are more likely to be happy with their customer experience.

3. Adopt the use of financial software

Effective financial management is an important component of business growth and development since it ensures the sustainability and success of your growth activities.

Accounting software helps businesses grow by improving financial procedures. Increased transaction volumes, more complicated supply chain management, and more financial reporting obligations are frequently associated with business growth and corporate expansion.

Accounting software can aid in the automation of procedures like spending and tracking, invoicing, and financial statement making. This does not only saves time but also guarantees that your financial procedures are consistent and efficient, lowering the chance of mistakes and boosting your capacity to manage your growing operations.

Financial software that integrates historical data with real-time information on sales, cost, and cash flow also helps generate more accurate budgets and predictions for your business. You can better estimate revenue growth, identify possible cash flow concerns, and manage resources more efficiently with this increased insight, assuring the success of your expansion projects.

Lastly, as your company grows, you may encounter additional compliance and regulatory obligations in other markets or sectors. Integrating financial software into your business can assist you in meeting these obligations by automating financial computations, creating regulatory reports, and keeping precise records of all financial activities.

This compliance assistance is vital for reducing the risk of financial fines, audits, and reputational harm.

4. Leverage social media automation

As a business owner, you will discover that managing all of your social media accounts might take hours.

Keeping an active online presence is not as easy as a lot of people see it, whether you are posting or reacting to comments, addressing inquiries via direct messaging, or launching large campaigns.

Fortunately, social media automation allows you to spend less time on your social media strategy. When you use a social media automation tool to grow and communicate with potential clients, your social media strategy will be more successful and yield a higher return on investment.  

Social media automation assists with content generation, direct message response, post scheduling, ad campaign design, data collection, metric analysis, and other tasks. You can also automate components of your digital advertising strategy in addition to content automation.

Exploring the depths of Facebook business and other social media platforms’ backends can reveal technologies that can automatically generate multiple versions of your advertising, call-to-action buttons, and ideas for sponsored content and other messages.

Your advertisement can be scheduled to display in selected new feeds at various times throughout the week. When this is done, you will be able to save money by narrowing the demographics of individuals who view your advertisement or replicating high-performing ads.

5. Cloud computing is also beneficial

In terms of technology, the cloud is a collection of remote computer servers that your firm can access over the internet.

For a reasonable monthly price, you can store data, operate business apps, stream videos, build and deploy software, manage databases, and much more in the cloud. You have access to cutting-edge computers without having to acquire and maintain them on your premises.

Getting access to the cloud can help automate and grow your business in many ways. Firstly, it can help increase your business output. For instance, you may use your accounting software to prepare reports to identify which items or services sell the best and which salespeople generate the most income.

Secondly, it also helps to maintain current business data and keep it up to date. Cloud computing makes it easier than ever to maintain data and records in one place across all departments. When a business app connects to the central database, it obtains the most recent version. When a new entry is added or altered, it does not need to be manually transferred across to other databases.

Furthermore, cloud computing protects your company’s data and paperwork. The most recent cloud data encryption technology guarantees that all data transported to and from your device is secure, even if hackers intercept it.

This covers all documentation and communications, both internal and external. You can be confident that the cybersecurity protections rolled out by cloud providers are superior to any on-premise backup storage systems you might put up.

This is because their reputation is based on their ability to hold commercial and sensitive information for millions of individuals and businesses worldwide, so feel free to consider this.

6. Automating customer surveys and feedback

Customer surveys are a formal method of gathering replies, reactions and opinions, testimonials, and other vital insights from your customers through the use of polls and questionnaires. They are critical for your product team if you want to enhance your product in a customer-centric manner.

A customer feedback survey can be conducted using a variety of methods, including emails, paper comment cards, websites, and phone calls. However, because firms have CRM software with client email addresses, an online survey is mostly recommended. It broadens the client base and is also less expensive because you do not have to budget for postage and printing, so feel free to consider this.

Traditional consumer feedback is costly and time-consuming due to the possibility of human mistakes; automated feedback, on the other hand, is simple and highly efficient. It allows you to collect feedback on a continuing basis, and clients are more inclined to provide honest comments.

Contextual surveys are provided to clients at the proper moment, resulting in increased response rates and more data to work with.  

There are several advantages to automated customer surveys and feedback. These include being able to gather useful information seamlessly. While it is feasible to contact each person on your contact list personally, doing so will become costly and time-consuming as your business grows.

You may need to establish a direct line of communication with your clients with an automated feedback survey, allowing you to collect vital inputs directly from them on a wide scale.