When you build your own business, you will soon discover that an obscene amount of time is spent on specific processes. This takes up precious time and energy, distracts attention, reduces productivity, and brings other inconveniences. In the past, all companies were more or less in the same situation. But now, with the advent of technology, some organizations quickly rode the wave of automation and went up the hill, while others still can’t or won’t do it for various reasons. The events of the coronavirus settled who was and was not correct. Larger companies have been able to stay afloat much easier than medium or small organizations, all because they’ve been using business automation more proactively. In this blog, we’ll look at why automation benefits small and medium-sized businesses, in what areas, and how exactly you can automate your business processes.

Should business companies use automation?

The need for IT processes is at its peak right now. Therefore, many entrepreneurs have begun to wonder if they should plug in automation solutions for their business processes today. The answer to such a question may sound like this:

“It should have been done yesterday!”

It is best to start thinking through automation processes while creating your website. This will help formulate your business promotion strategy and gradually build up a good reputation. However, you can think about automation at any other stage. Depending on your needs, IT professionals are ready to handle any task.

Automation allows a business to remain flexible and efficient and provide better services. It avoids human error, which can often happen during manual processes. However, small and medium-sized companies usually hesitate implementing business process automation software. Here are a few examples of cases where automation can make your life a few times easier:

Your business is expanding rapidly, and the amount of work is increasing. It would help if you optimized the result of your employees
Your business processes involve a lot of routines, repetitive work, as well as urgent and voluminous tasks
You need to improve the quality of client service. You are speeding up the processing and forwarding of requests to the appropriate department
You want to optimize the management of a high volume of documentation

Small and medium-sized businesses face labor-intensive tasks only because they have fewer employees, but the volume of functions goes nowhere.

Types of automation, in what areas of work can it be applied?

Automation affects many business processes. By working with IT professionals, you can come up with a unique solution that will help increase productivity and reduce costs and workloads in such business areas:

Marketing and e-commerce

Small business marketing automation allows you to collect and process customer data for a better client experience. This will enable you to provide timely assistance, pick the correct response and forward the message to the right place several times more accurately and faster, thereby retaining customers. Chatbots are one of the best ways to conduct automated ai customer services, which we’ll talk about in more detail later.

Automation of repetitive processes

Automating repetitive processes increases employee productivity and will allow you to save on payroll because your subordinates will spend far fewer hours at work. So you can automate accounting processes such as billing, time off request forms, data transfers, file transfers, reminders, and other mechanical tasks.

Inventory management

Small business operations management can allow you to integrate with your supplier’s system to automate the flow of information to your commercial website. This will enable you to improve the quality of your purchases and better organize your site processes, such as order cancellations, product updates, etc.

The experts at Centum-D can help make your business better. We advise customers in detail about their questions and, ultimately, come up with a winning solution. We actively leverage AI and machine learning technologies to develop chatbots for customer service, CRM, and e-marketing systems.

The benefits of automation for small and medium-sized businesses

Every business owner understands that automation entails some investment in IT. To maximize your company’s future growth, you need to identify the area of your operation or several that need automation the most. Below, we’ll highlight the key benefits of automation for small businesses.

Adaptation to market demand

All events in the world are directly reflected in the market and its demand. So companies must be at least partially prepared for any scenario so that they do not slow down against competitors, not hire additional employees to cope with consumer demand, etc. Automation can help you manage even large volumes of orders, and this can be done with the help of CRM systems and chatbots.

Lower Employee Costs

Small companies spend a significant portion of their budget hiring employees who will do time-consuming and routine work that doesn’t benefit the business but only keeps it organized. Automation kills two birds with one stone, you do not need to increase your staff and costs for them, but your chores are still well-organized and maybe even better than before since the risk of human error factor is always present.

Optimize your workforce allocation

Automation allows you to focus on what’s important, taking all the manual work to yourself, so you can focus more on the bigger things. Also, workforce management programs offer helpful analytics, allowing you to distribute responsibilities evenly among your employees.

Improving the marketing component

Many automation tools can help you improve your marketing process, resulting in customer retention, increasing profits, and optimizing your promotional strategy.

Automation allows you to process, analyze and organize your client data. This makes life much easier for your marketing professionals, allowing them to implement personalization strategies more accurately and quickly.

Remote Workforce Capability

Smaller companies can’t trade in low-performing employees, but what if no one in their district is suitable for the role? Now every company has access to global hiring, so you can find talent and hire from anywhere. Automation allows remote employees to do their tasks without being in the office while improving collaboration. With such tools, your whole company can go online; a much-needed opportunity, as coronavirus events show. Both remote employees and a fully remote office allow you to save on overhead costs.

Giving you a quality customer experience and support

With automation, you can distribute orders much faster, provide after-sales service and answer all client questions 7 days a week, around the clock. Technologies such as chatbots in customer service have become natural helpers in this endeavor. Today, chatbots are even more intelligent; therefore, the results of customer interactions are even better.

Find out how does chatbot work and what benefits it can bring to your business below.

What are chatbots, and why are they needed?

The year 2020 has encouraged humanity to use the Internet even more, contributing to the more rapid development of technology. Artificial intelligence has changed the usual business processes for the better, and this applies in particular to client support. Companies can now ensure that their customers are cared for even if none of the people are at the workplace; for this purpose, organizations are actively using IM bots. So, what’s a chatbot? A chatbot is an AI and machine learning-based bot that automates most of the work of managers. They independently communicate and answer customers’ questions in a particular business messenger. They use your company’s existing data, such as the question-answer section, to correctly answer all the questions posed.

Modern IM bots can change the tone of their messages, depending on the type of client, accurately answer the same questions but with different wording, and generate other answers. If you doubt whether you need a talk bot feature, you can look at what are chatbots used for most often. If you encounter the same processes daily, then you should definitely get this tool:

Your customer base is increasing, you have customers in multiple countries, and they all need multilingual support 24 hours a day
Your after-sales service team works in numerous ways like both website and social media
You have the financial challenges of running your own after-sales service team 24/7
You’re looking for a more efficient way to support your clients, and you need to reduce the cost of that part of your job

Nevertheless, it is worth remembering that no machine can replace human communication, so an artificial conversation entity cannot fully replace the manager; it can only help him to do his job more effectively.

How do they do that? Let’s take a look below:

Instant solutions -chatbots can answer a customer’s question before the customer has even finished typing their appeal
Gives 24/7 after-sales service without holidays and weekends – clients are not limited by timeframes, and all their requests get a prompt response
Chatbots are constantly learning new things – machine learning for chatbots happens all the time. For example, if a talk bot knows how to add a user to the system, it knows exactly where to add him because these questions are closely related. Companies can teach chatbots on their own. For example, you can make a list of possible questions from customers to improve the AI’s response
You can tailor responses to different types of clients -Chatbots can solve customer problems in a way that’s as customer-centric as possible, and they use extra information from the customer database to do so
You accumulate more information about your clients – When a talk bot contacts a prospective customer, information about that customer will already be got in your system. After talking to the chatbots, your agents will have enough data to provide clients with the services they need

Top best chatbot examples

Many good chatbots examples can be the basis for creating a talk bot for your business. Below, we will provide some of them:

Tidio – it is an excellent chatbot for customer service. It handles inquiries, collects contact information, and increases customer engagement incredibly
Mina by Google – it is a very advanced chatbot that tries to come up with accurate, logical, and lively answers as it talks to clients
77 Plastic Surgery – also focuses on providing a live user experience, not unlike a real agent
Square 2 – provides 24/7 help by answering simple questions. If the situation is beyond its expertise, redirect to a stage to contact a real after-sales service agent
UrbanStems – the IM bot displays FAQ and offers customers to find a solution among them; if you cannot meet your needs, then you can click on “live chat” and go to a dialogue with a real agent

Chatbots are automated tools that speed up several stages of customer interaction. It solves many problems for small and medium-sized businesses, both financially and strategically. If you want to make your site more accessible and user-friendly for both yourself and your visitors, a chatbot would be a great option.

Business automation for small and mid-sized businesses: Customer service chatbot & its benefits

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