We live in an instant gratification world. Whether they’re ordering pizza or buying a car, people want to do it fast. Companies meet that need for speed by offering same-day delivery and instant credit card approvals. To have an edge, your business must also compete on the time factor, among others.
If you’re concerned about keeping pace, the good news is that automation can make any business more efficient and effective. If you run a small venture and wear many hats, automation means you need to hire less staff. It can also save you from wasting time on repetitive administrative tasks. This way you can focus more on the creative part of your enterprise.
Automation should not seem like an overly complex or scary process. It is only wise to harness technology to simplify your life. Here are four ways you can employ automation to enhance your business.
1. Achieve Faster Income Verification
You may own a property management company or head the mortgage unit at a local bank. Whether your customer is a new renter or a homebuyer, the first thing they have to show is how much they make. That will help your leasing agents or mortgage officers decide what the individual can afford.
Once the customer provides accurate information, there are many tools that can make this process practically instant. Whether the individual is on someone’s payroll or self-employed, their income can be verified very quickly. They’ll have to provide you with their Social Security number, recent tax returns, paystubs, or bank statements. The technology will do the rest.
No one wants the paperwork process to be tedious. Therefore, the landlord or bank that promises to complete the income verification process faster can land the deal. Your growing reputation for fast, friction-free transactions can become your competitive calling card.
2. Optimize Retail Sales
Perhaps your first job was in retail, where you rang up sales on an electronic cash register. That may have seemed state of the art back then, but today’s automated point-of-sale systems leave such machines in the dust. Scanners prevent data entry errors, and more importantly, they allow you to keep track of inventory in real time. You’ll know to reorder your most popular items before you lose a sale, and you’ll see which slow-moving products could use some promotional juice.
Or perhaps you own a coffee shop. Your POS can calculate tips and assign them to the employee who rang up the sale. It can capture customer information for marketing. It can give you a quick rundown each day of which beverages were ordered the most. It can help calculate how much sales tax was collected. A POS system can keep tabs on pretty much anything your java joint touches.
Implementing a POS may cost more and require a greater training investment in the beginning. However, it will save you so much time — and stress — later. You’ll be glad you opted for more than an old-fashioned cash register.
3. Enhance Your Marketing Efforts
As noted, POS systems can facilitate your marketing efforts. You probably already know that current customers tend to yield more revenue than new ones. So lean into that customer lifetime value by leveraging automation in your retention marketing.
Ask customers to enter their mobile phone numbers on the POS screen to get a 10% discount. You can then use that information to send them targeted offers. If they are regular customers, you could offer them a loyalty discount for spreading the word. Or if they only came in once, you can lure them back in with a hot deal.
These days, no discussion of marketing should fail to mention social media marketing, which can also be highly automated. After you create a batch of posts, a social media management tool can post them on multiple platforms at the best times. Not only will these apps tell you the optimal days and times to post, they’ll provide data on which campaigns performed best. You’ll see how many times a link was clicked, which posts were saved or shared most, and which promotions produced the highest sales.
4. Improve Customer Service
Once you get the word out about your products and services and people start buying, there will be questions. And if there’s one thing customers hate in this instantaneous world, it’s waiting on the phone for a representative. This is where automated customer service can help your business.
Chatbots today are trained well thanks to artificial intelligence. When engaging with a chatbot, many consumers don’t even feel like they are talking to a machine. They will address the automated CS agent by name and even ask how their day is going. Chatbots never lose patience and are available to answer customer questions instantly 24/7 throughout the year.
Most of the usual customer queries like order status and returns can easily be handled through automation. If there is a complex issue, then a live person may be needed, but even here automated CS systems can help. They can route consumer queries to the most qualified agents and provide support materials that enable them to resolve issues quickly and accurately. If nothing else, the majority of the repetitive questions will have been weeded out!
Using Automation to Maintain a Competitive Edge
Automation does not mean everything will run like clockwork and no humans will be needed. However, you can use technology to handle a large chunk of your workload for you. This will give you an edge over your competitors and help your bottom line.