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The word ‘automation’ is one that still scares a lot of people. It doesn’t necessarily mean letting your business be run by an army of little robots, despite what the sci-fi films might tell you. It’s more about using software to organize and automate basic and repetitive things so that you don’t have to dedicate your time and energy to them in the office each day. It might not be quite as cool as little robots, but it’s what automation means for most small businesses, and it’s worth embracing.
Help Your Customers Help Themselves
Your customers might want to find something or learn something about what you offer, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they need to rely on you the whole time. With the right customer support applications that automate things for you, you’ll be able to help your customers effectively help themselves. It means that there’s less work for you and your customer service team to deal with too.
Metrics Reports
Metrics reports should come in pretty regularly. That way, you can see how your business is doing and ways in which it still needs to improve. There’s no reason why these shouldn’t be automated too. You can use software that generates the reports and then sends them right to you on a regular basis. It really could not be easier.
Online Advertising
Online advertising is one of those things that businesses can’t really avoid these days. If you want your business to be successful in the modern landscape, you have to find a way of being successful online. You can Save hours from your Adwords workflow with the right automation solutions, so this doesn’t need to take up all of your time either.
Social Media Posts
Social media posts really are important in this day in age. You need to be posting regularly so that people don’t simply forget that your business exists. However, that can take up a lot of time. You can schedule and automate certain kinds of posts containing links to your site though, so you might want to make the most of that. It helps to ensure your social media profiles don’t simply go cold for extended periods of time.
Fast Email Responses
When customers email you and want to find out an answer to a question they have, they expect a response. Of course, when your business has a lot to do, responding quickly is not always easy. But you can very easily set up an automated response that at least lets the customer know that you’ve received their email and how long they can expect to wait before getting a direct response.
If your business hasn’t yet made the kinds of changes we’ve discussed above, now is the time to start thinking about what they could do for you. With the right planning and decision-making, your business will really benefit from automation and your time will be freed up to focus on other things.
