When it comes to your small business, you need to do everything you can to keep it ticking along without missing a beat. You have to make it work while balancing your space in your business while working on the business at the same time. Every business owner wants to achieve as much as possible while working a lesser amount of time, but there often isn’t enough time to turn those amazing ideas of yours into real opportunities.
You want to be able to have it all, but for that to be the case, you have to let go of your grip a little. Some businesses choose to outsource, others choose to automate and then there are businesses who do a combination of the two to have the best balance. You need to make your businesses move faster and we’ve got some awesome, easy ways that you can introduce automation into your business to get you started.
- Auto-Response. Have you considered not answering every single email that comes through on the first go? Everyone would love to be as efficient as that but it’s not always the best thing to do for your business. First impressions are important, sure, but you need to balance an awesome first impression with making time for everything else in your business. If you want to do that, you need to send an email to customers and clients automatically when they contact you. This acknowledges the emails, offers a timeframe in which you plan to get back to them, and it makes you look good.
- Keep Leads Moving. It’s important that you keep any good leads moving through your sales funnel as efficiently as possible, and you can do that when you assign any inbound leads directly to the sales team. Personalizing your automated response is vital, so if you have a team member in charge of enquiries, then make sure that those enquiries get directly to the right person.
- Log All Information. When was the last time you checked your business rolodex? Probably not for a while, because this is 2021 and a rolodex was the solution in the 80s! Every time your client hands you a business card, log the information into your customer relationship management software. This will enable you to get in touch easily, with their information to hand.
- Offer 24/7 Services. This isn’t as insane as it sounds, but a live chat for small business use is the perfect way to be able to answer questions around the clock without keeping your employees awake at all hours. A live chat function can answer key questions to your customers and ensure that they get the answers that they need when they need them!
- Make It Easy. The goal of automation is to make life easy for your customers and for your staff, and when you automate much of your customer process, you’re going to be able to answer questions and link your customers to the right places with ease.
