In today’s day and age, more business professionals than ever before are focused on automation. They often head down this path for the first time with the idea of overcoming the competition.
For example, if you’re a small business owner or CEO, you’re interested in automation as a means of saving time and money. This allows you to work more effectively and efficiently.
Conversely, if you work at a company in which automation is becoming more common, you’re likely to have concerns about losing your job to automation. A 2017 report by the McKinsey Global Institute estimates that 23% of all United States work hours could be automated by 2030. But of course, some jobs will never be replaced by automation.
In other words, there’s no escaping it. Automation is here to stay, and it’s only going to become more common over the next decade.
How Automation Can Benefit Your Business
While there are many benefits of automation, the ability to use it to save your business money is at the top of the list. There’s no better feeling than that. There’s something about saving money that’s sure to put a smile on your face.
As a business owner, CEO, customer support agent, or marketing professional (among others), you should always be looking for ways to automate daily tasks.
Below are a handful of ways that automation can benefit your business, all while saving it money:
1. Improved Customer Support
Regardless of your business, customer support is the name of the game. When you make your customers feel wanted—no matter what it takes—there’s a greater chance that they’ll stick around for the long haul. And when that happens, your revenue has a better chance of climbing.
Here’s the problem: Providing top-notch customer support is easier said than done. Not only do you have to hire customer support agents, but you also have to train them (and hope they do their job). Adding to this, consistency can be an issue.
Through automation, such as chatbots, you’re able to replace some customer support workers. As a result, you cut out their salaries, leaving you with cost savings that you can invest in other areas of your business.
You may not be able to automate your entire customer support experience, but there are ways to strategically integrate it into your current system.
Remember this: More than 50% of Americans have abandoned a planned purchase due to poor customer service. Rather than take this risk, use automation technology to improve this area of your business.
2. Personalized Email Marketing
Personalization and customization are more important than ever, as this gives you a leg up on the competition. The problem with this is that personalized email marketing can eat into your resources.
This is where automation within your email marketing campaigns comes into play. For example, you can set up an auto-reply, based on the information you collect, to ensure that potential customers receive an immediate (and personalized) response. This greatly increases your chance of a sale.
Or maybe you want to better understand your audience so that you can provide them with more personalized information. Through artificial intelligence (AI), you can more efficiently classify your audience to better understand how, when, and why they use your website. This will impact future decisions.
With the right automation workflows in place, you can continue to send personalized emails and responses even as your list grows. This saves you money, saves time, and takes some stress off your marketing team.
3. Data Processing
Data, data, data. You know you need it to make informed decisions. You also know that it can take a lot of time to collect and analyze it.
There’s automation technology designed to ingest and analyze both structured and unstructured data, thus providing you with business intelligence to make more informed and confident decisions.
Yes, you could hire a team of data scientists to do all this work for you by hand. But even they would tell you that it’s better to use automation. It’s faster, more accurate, and more cost-effective—all three of which you’re looking for.
Final Thoughts on Business Automation
Businesses of all sizes, regardless of industry, use automation to perform repetitive tasks with great accuracy. There are very few limits on what you can automate in today’s world.
If you’ve yet to look into your options, there’s no better time than now to do so. You may soon realize that there are tasks you can automate to save money, save time, improve your business, and enhance the employee experience. And all the while, you can continue to employ professionals for other positions that require a personal touch.
Start by taking baby steps, get your feet wet, and take the time to truly understand how automation can save your business money. As your expenses decrease, your efficiency and revenue will increase—and that’s exactly what you want.
Guest post courtesy of Beau Peters