Business owners are often overwhelmed by the amount of work ahead of them. So much so, that they often find themselves not starting it and finding other quicker less important tasks and doing those first. The reality is, if you want to free up your time, you should invest in automation where and when you can. Automation can mean many things from simple email lists to mechanical automation. Costs to implement will vary greatly also. Automation can be cumbersome to set up but once complete, saves you endless hours, days or months of work leaving you to deal with the most personalized tasks of your business. Typically it only requires minor tweaking to keep it up-to-date but is well worth it in the long run. Automation is one of the key factors in restoring your work-life balance. Not only that, automation can save you money eliminating the need for employees to spend time on these tasks which can otherwise be fully automated.

What factors of your business can be automated?

There are a vast variety of automation tools that you could apply to your business. Many tasks are repetitive and do not require the human touch to process them. Automation of these tasks can save time and money. Follow-up emails, thank you email, email marketing campaigns, customer pipeline processing etc. Admin tasks take up a substantial portion of many employee’s days. 

What are the benefits of automation?

Efficiency

The most obvious benefit is the efficiency of operation. Unlike humans, software usually doesn’t make mistakes which require more admin time to correct. In addition, software is less likely to get overwhelmed by a surge in interactions such as phone calls at peak hours. The benefit here is that customers may not need to be left on hold waiting for a representative to be available. Automation allows you to complete a number of tasks without requiring the use of an employee. Finally, software does not require vacation time, breaks, and is available 24 hours a day. 

Consistency

Software typically processes information in a standard and repetitive way, usually from templates created by the software designer which can be customized to your business’ needs. Once set up, automation processes everything the same way making variability low and providing you with useful information that could be used in evaluating your business model. 

Employee Morale

Its no surprise that removing repetitive monotonous tasks from an employee’s duties will be appreciated by the employee and lead to a happier employee. Since automation can handle the bulk of standard processes, employee-customer interactions are limited to out of the ordinary instances dramatically reducing the demand on employees and the waiting time for customers. 

With all these benefits, who can afford not to automate where possible. Let’s see how we can apply automation to your business and get you back to closing sales and growing your business. 

What are the steps to automation?

As always, research is the first step to anything. Take a step-back and look at your processes (whatever they may be). What tasks are repeated every day, week or month. Is it standardised? Can it be standardised? How much human interaction does it require? Is there a way to automate it? Does automation cost less than a designated employee doing the same work?

If after considering these factors, automation is a benefit to you, next we need to figure out what is the best way to implement it. 

What could you automate?

Of course, this is going to be heavily dependent on the business but there is a lot of overlap among businesses. Email lists are a common method of generating return customers, promoting events etc. Phone automation is common, especially among large companies in order to direct calls. A development of this can be phone sales, phone FAQ answering, order cancellation, order returns, appointment booking, invoice payments, surveys etc. 

Customer data entry and management is another admin aspect that can be automated. Customer records can automatically advance through the system and be available to all employees and complete automatically. This means that once the initial data is entered, automation takes over, the process occurs and completes without any need for human intervention. 

Chat Bots are a more recent occurrence where customers can talk to an artificial intelligence to achieve a wide variety of goals. answer many questions or provide referrals. Either vocally on the phone or typing into a chat box, bots are often very helpful in dealing with queries and reducing the reliance on human labor. They are very useful for high volumes of inquiries. 

What difficulties can you experience with automation?

Automation is great for saving you time but if not implemented correctly, it can reduce the customer experience. At some points along the sales process, customers want to feel values and automation can be both a difficulty and a benefit for this. Depending on the business, lack of human contact can make the sale feel cold. A personal approach is always a much better experience for the client. However, people typically don’t care that a courtesy appreciation email can be automatically generated so just find a nice balance between the two and you will not see a decline in sales. 

Another difficulty that can occur is the implementation of full automation right away. It is recommended to apply automation one step at a time. Unless all your automation comes from the same company, you could have automation compatibility issues. Not all software is created equal and some are just not compatible with each other. Applying automation one step at a time will ensure each step works and interacts with the next step. Applying everything at once can result in problems occurring and troubleshooting is more difficult with so many changes at once. 

What are you waiting for?

Automation can give you extra time every day to do what you want. It can also take away the dreaded mundane tasks from your daily schedule leaving you more time to work on productive projects or simply enjoy your life. If you have any questions about automation, contact David D’Silva for help and advice.