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Expert Answers to Biz Questions
Listen in! Pick up some expert advice to a reader's question that we selected from CyberSchmooz.
3 Ways Customer Engagement Automation Will Come of Age in 2019
Nearly half of companies utilize marketing automation. The right automations can complete repetitive tasks, saving employees time and freeing them up to do more important, specialized work. Many business owners believe implementing automations is an expensive and timely process, but recent innovation has made setting up automations fast and inexpensive. With automations quickly becoming the norm, companies that do not adopt automations may be left behind.
Here are three automation trends that all entrepreneurs could utilize to improve their customer support, marketing and IT support.
1. Email Automation
Over the last three or four years, email automation has become somewhat of a buzzword- and for a good reason, 95% of companies using marketing automation launch email marketing campaigns.
With consumers bombarded with over a hundred emails a day, the need to send high-converting emails has never been greater. Luckily for you, there's an abundance of email marketing tools you can use to automate your email series. For example, Campaign Monitor, Marketo, MailChimp, and Aweber are all prime examples of top-notch automation programs entrepreneurs can use.
All these tools allow you to personalize email messages automatically. For example, emails can be set to automatically email customers on their birthday with a coupon, or to email a sales prospect who has not opened an email in the last month. Personalizing emails is essential because personalized emails boast an average 14% conversion rate, in comparison to standard emails that achieve less than a 10% conversion rate. Automating this task will save you and your team tons of time in the long run.
Some of the above programs even have drag-and-drop email builders and beautiful templates you can use to brand your content and better engage with customers.
2. Customer Support
When you think of automated customer support, you might immediately think of terrible robot phone support that requires you to listen to several options before connecting you to a human who can help.
However, these days, automated customer support is offering faster and more effective answers. For example, chatbots are increasingly being used to engage with customers via Facebook messenger and text messaging. Within a matter of seconds, customers can send in their questions, and they’ll receive an automated response with a solution.
If you have a large following on Facebook, consider using a plugin like ManyChat to send automated messages to your subscribers. You can utilize this software to send order confirmations, promote your upcoming events, advertise promotions, and answer FAQ’s.
Utilizing Chatbots to automatically follow up with prospects who sign up for a webinar has been shown to be one of most effective ways to optimize attendance. Using the automation, you can send a recorded version of the webinar to those who couldn't make it. By following up with each person, you are able to create an engaged community without spending tons of time.
By reaching out to customers like this, you give customers the opportunity to tell you why they want your products or services, and conversely, they have the chance to raise any concerns that prevent them from purchasing.
Additionally, Facebook chatbots aren’t just a great way of communicating with customers, but they also offer valuable insights into the nature of your target demographic. You can then use this info to enhance your marketing and business communications further.
Another way to leverage automation for customer care is to build an automatic text messaging system. The beauty of SMS messaging is that almost everyone has a phone, and open rates are extremely high. It is estimated that text messages have a 98% open rate, far ahead of emails which are only opened 20% of the time.
Text message automations can be used to provide an update on shipping, a coupon code, or to relay information about an appointment. For example, using a software like Service Titan your customer service team can send automated appointment reminders. Even better, if your business has a team of experts in the field who are making home appointment, the text message can include the name and photo of the technician who will be arriving. This can make the customer feel more comfortable with a stranger coming to their home. Text messages can also be automated to update the customer about order confirmations, and delivery times.
3. Remote IT Support
More and more businesses are opting for remote IT support over in-house teams. This is hardly surprising when you consider remote IT assistance can still handle technical issues quickly and effectively- without incurring the costs associated with hiring an on-site team.
The beauty of today's technology is that IT technicians can access your network from any location, so you’re not restricted by distance. In fact, 70-80% of all tech support can be completed remotely.
This is where services like Goverlan come into their own. With your permission, they can access your computer network with the aim of fixing whatever technical glitch you’re struggling with, which means you and your team can focus on other money-making activities. This IT solution can also be set up to automatically check for updates and ensure the latest software is on all machines in the system. By automatically updating computers remotely, you can proactively save your team time from expensive downtime. Additionally, automatic remote IT can help prevent cyber-attacks. By monitoring who is on the system and what they are doing, they can fight off hacker before they access valuable information.
Automation For Every Business
Leveraging software to automate repetitive tasks can be simple, fast and save you days and weeks in the long run. While we’ve outlined how automations can support marketing, customer support and IT, many businesses are finding ways to automate sales, HR activities and operations. While setting up an automation may take a bit of time at the beginning, it can pay off in the long run as customers will spend less time doing small tasks and can spend more of their time contributing to important business activities. Try a few of the solutions above and let us know what automations work best for your business.
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