7 Best Practices to Streamline Contactless Workflows for your Business
Automation
Contactless workflows and automations are the dream for many business owners. For others, they might be headache-inducing, confusing, and overwhelming.
Aleksandra Pietrzak
1.25.2021
•
5 min read
Contactless workflows and automations are the dream for many business owners. For others, they might be headache-inducing, confusing, and overwhelming.
But dream or nightmare, any solid workflow comes with some challenges. And to help you overcome them, we’ll show you 7 best practices and some helpful examples. No fluff, just the essentials.
#1 Automate communication with clients and customers
In today’s digitalized world, customers don’t like to wait. They’re used to the instant-paced communication of social media and mobile apps. If your business doesn’t offer that kind of communication too, you’ll be left in the shade by competitors.
That’s why apps like Waitwhile are so helpful — you can automate your waitlists and streamline every contact point with customers. You can even send notifications via SMS or email with details about their upcoming visit. This won’t only make your customers happier, but will also save you tons of time.
#2 Automate repetitive work
Some studies predict that 81% of workforces will soon reach a breaking point if they don’t adopt automation to tackle their increasing volume of work. If you don’t want to be part of them, you need to identify your most repetitive processes and tap AI to automate them.
For example, for a service-based company offering a white-label service — like these SEO resellers — it’s important to automate business processes to serve clients on a large enough scale and still be profitable.
But this isn’t just important for service-based businesses. If you’re selling products on Amazon, you could use an Amazon repricer to adapt your prices to the marketplace automatically. Or if you’re selling goods of any kind, having a purchase and order management software to handle your sales process is a good practice to improve your productivity.
In short, you should analyze where you’re currently spending most of your productive time and look for ways to automate those processes. This way, you can repurpose that otherwise wasted time into more profitable initiatives.
#3 Product/service comparisons
When customers visit your website, they expect to find specific information. If they don’t find it quickly, they’ll either leave your site or call your customer support team to get the info they need. One of the best ways to reduce this “friction” is to add product/service comparisons that help users understand what you offer. This will help them decide faster and with far less contact points.
For example, if you take a look at Medical Alert Buyers Guide, you’ll find they’re pretty good at this. They compare different medical alert systems and showcase the most relevant information of each of them so you can pick the one that fits your needs much quicker.
Finances and accounting are crucial for your business. There’s no doubt about it. The problem is that keeping on track with taxes and books is really time-consuming, especially for small businesses with no defined processes.
So, streamlining your finances through an accounting software like FreshBooks empowers you to spend less time on bookkeeping and more time doing what matters. You can automate invoicing, track expenses, and manage your money in less time.
Automating workflows might seem like a daunting task, but using low code workflow automation software can be a great option to simplify processes for small businesses without a budget for developers.
The first step is identifying the most crucial operations and processes in your business. You can lean on the Pareto principle to identify the 20% of activities that produce 80% of results in your business. Then, look for ways to automate them, if possible.
For example, the best credit repair companies have mastered this process. They’ve automated their customer acquisition operations to create a viable service-based business model. By using different software to acquire and manage customers, these companies can serve more clients in less time while improving their bottom line.
According to Harvard Business Review, acquiring new customers and clients is 5-25% more expensive than getting repetitive business. And great customer service plays a crucial role in brand loyalty. That’s one of the reasons you should streamline your customer support processes.
The first step, of course, is making your team accessible to users. The website below is a great example of how you can do it. By placing a visible, click-to-call button on your website, people can call your support line faster.
You may also need to streamline the reception of inquiries and map out the entire strategy so every support executive on your team knows exactly what to say at every stage of the process.
#7 Streamline your design processes
Now, a nice website design that resonates with your target audience can improve user experience. And having a consistent design across your pages is a must for any brand. But starting from scratch every time you need to create a new page can be time-consuming and expensive.
That’s why streamlining your design processes is vital for your business. For example, if you look at JoyOrganics products, you’ll notice that all their pages have the same design. By mimicking this practice, your marketing team can just copy those pages on the backend when there’s a new one to add. This will allow you to move faster and save money at the same time.
No matter what type of business you run, a contactless workflow is a surefire way to increase productivity and better use your resources.
How about you?
Ready to automate your processes? Ready to stop wasting so much time on repetitive work and start delivering a better service to your customers?
Author: Ezekiel Cohen
Contactless workflows and automations are the dream for many business owners. For others, they might be headache-inducing, confusing, and overwhelming.
But dream or nightmare, any solid workflow comes with some challenges. And to help you overcome them, we’ll show you 7 best practices and some helpful examples. No fluff, just the essentials.
#1 Automate communication with clients and customers
In today’s digitalized world, customers don’t like to wait. They’re used to the instant-paced communication of social media and mobile apps. If your business doesn’t offer that kind of communication too, you’ll be left in the shade by competitors.
That’s why apps like Waitwhile are so helpful — you can automate your waitlists and streamline every contact point with customers. You can even send notifications via SMS or email with details about their upcoming visit. This won’t only make your customers happier, but will also save you tons of time.
#2 Automate repetitive work
Some studies predict that 81% of workforces will soon reach a breaking point if they don’t adopt automation to tackle their increasing volume of work. If you don’t want to be part of them, you need to identify your most repetitive processes and tap AI to automate them.
For example, for a service-based company offering a white-label service — like these SEO resellers — it’s important to automate business processes to serve clients on a large enough scale and still be profitable.
But this isn’t just important for service-based businesses. If you’re selling products on Amazon, you could use an Amazon repricer to adapt your prices to the marketplace automatically. Or if you’re selling goods of any kind, having a purchase and order management software to handle your sales process is a good practice to improve your productivity.
In short, you should analyze where you’re currently spending most of your productive time and look for ways to automate those processes. This way, you can repurpose that otherwise wasted time into more profitable initiatives.
#3 Product/service comparisons
When customers visit your website, they expect to find specific information. If they don’t find it quickly, they’ll either leave your site or call your customer support team to get the info they need. One of the best ways to reduce this “friction” is to add product/service comparisons that help users understand what you offer. This will help them decide faster and with far less contact points.
For example, if you take a look at Medical Alert Buyers Guide, you’ll find they’re pretty good at this. They compare different medical alert systems and showcase the most relevant information of each of them so you can pick the one that fits your needs much quicker.
Finances and accounting are crucial for your business. There’s no doubt about it. The problem is that keeping on track with taxes and books is really time-consuming, especially for small businesses with no defined processes.
So, streamlining your finances through an accounting software like FreshBooks empowers you to spend less time on bookkeeping and more time doing what matters. You can automate invoicing, track expenses, and manage your money in less time.
Automating workflows might seem like a daunting task, but using low code workflow automation software can be a great option to simplify processes for small businesses without a budget for developers.
The first step is identifying the most crucial operations and processes in your business. You can lean on the Pareto principle to identify the 20% of activities that produce 80% of results in your business. Then, look for ways to automate them, if possible.
For example, the best credit repair companies have mastered this process. They’ve automated their customer acquisition operations to create a viable service-based business model. By using different software to acquire and manage customers, these companies can serve more clients in less time while improving their bottom line.
According to Harvard Business Review, acquiring new customers and clients is 5-25% more expensive than getting repetitive business. And great customer service plays a crucial role in brand loyalty. That’s one of the reasons you should streamline your customer support processes.
The first step, of course, is making your team accessible to users. The website below is a great example of how you can do it. By placing a visible, click-to-call button on your website, people can call your support line faster.
You may also need to streamline the reception of inquiries and map out the entire strategy so every support executive on your team knows exactly what to say at every stage of the process.
#7 Streamline your design processes
Now, a nice website design that resonates with your target audience can improve user experience. And having a consistent design across your pages is a must for any brand. But starting from scratch every time you need to create a new page can be time-consuming and expensive.
That’s why streamlining your design processes is vital for your business. For example, if you look at JoyOrganics products, you’ll notice that all their pages have the same design. By mimicking this practice, your marketing team can just copy those pages on the backend when there’s a new one to add. This will allow you to move faster and save money at the same time.
