Taking too long to communicate with clients? Here’s what you need to do

It can take time and resources to communicate effectively with your clients and, while communication is key to a successful business, sometimes you might feel like you’re getting held up by all those messages you’re sending, notifications you’re writing and payments you’re authorising.

In the internet age, businesses are taking more and more of their services online. The rise of social media has seen an increase in customer engagement, and the very current Covid-19 crisis has accelerated a trend of making purchases online.

Around one month into the United Kingdom’s lockdown, online shopping rates had grown by 129% across the UK and Europe, with the Covid-19 and the Consumer Report from Astound Commerce also finding that customers’ expectations of convenience in online shopping will be accelerated by the pandemic.

Make Payment Easy

These reports point towards a post-Covid-19 increase in online shopping, as people continue to try and live socially distanced and home-based lifestyles going forward. It’s just one of the many reasons that automating your business will make you a more attractive option to the customer and make your life easier as demand grows.

Making payments easy, such as with 1-click ordering, automated transaction validation or debt recovery, improves customer experience, reduces your workload, and encourages customers to return to your business, as they found it easy to understand and use – something everybody could do with right now.

Automated emails

Of course, it isn’t just transactions you could automate when trying to optimise your business’s time and resources. Customer or client reviews on websites such as Yelp or TripAdvisor can be a godsend to your business, and reviewing and responding to these reviews can help humanise your company and create a bond between provider and consumer.

Therefore, automating an email alert to members or online customers asking them to leave you a review once they have made a purchase would save you time and effort convincing them to do so.

Improve your messaging process

External marketing strategy and internal communications could also be automated in order to send bulk messages, whether that be offering discounts, informing stakeholders of key information, or encouraging a one-time customer to return for more. Setting up these systems will be of a long-term benefit, but it’s also essential that your staff are trained to use them. There’s more advice at boomerangmessaging.com about how to carry out multi-channel messaging successfully.

Carry out automated training

The beauty of this is that training is just one of many other aspects of your business that can be automated. Online, automated training is an effective way to enhance your employee’s learning and advance them professionally through videos and quizzes designed to take their development to the next level.

If you’re a business who delivers, allowing your customer to manage the delivery and select alternative options will reduce the number of failed drop-offs or collections. In the case of unavoidable failed deliveries, automating the re-scheduling of the items will save both you and the customer hassle.

Conclusion

In an increasingly automated world, your business should not be left behind. Automating aspects of it will allow you, your colleagues, your staff, and your partners more time to do all the jobs that are best left to humans. What’s more, with Covid-19 accelerating these changes, getting ahead of the game on communication and transaction automation will help you move into what is sure to be the very different business climate to come.