Did you know businesses lose a not insignificant amount of revenue each year due to communication disruptions and inefficiencies? Failing to communicate with your customers adequately can send the wrong message, making them feel neglected or undervalued. Conversely, communicating consistently and effectively with customers can enhance loyalty.
Modern businesses must diligently nurture concrete relationships with customers to build retention in today's cut-throat business space. They must also ensure exceptional quality in their offerings and maintain efficiency across the board. Usually, this is a tall order, but automation allows them to meet these growing demands.
In today's post, we'll explore the ways through which automation can drive sales and bolster customer retention. We'll also highlight some of the most effective business automation tools and how you can use them to your advantage.
Simply put, customer retention is the quality of retaining customers. It's a measure of a business's ability to keep customers coming back and also a useful indicator of customer satisfaction, engagement, and brand loyalty.
While growing your customer base is certainly important, retaining your existing customers has better ROI. Attracting new customers is expensive, usually requiring considerable investment in time and resources. Furthermore, loyal customers are more likely to engage in word-of-mouth marketing and speak positively about your business.
Automation relieves employees from mundane and repetitive tasks so they can channel their energy into more strategy-focused endeavours. That way, businesses can streamline communication with customers, personalise their messaging, and respond to inquiries and complaints promptly and appropriately.
With that in mind, here are a couple of ways automation improves customer retention and sales:
According to Sender, 78% of consumers say personalised messages enhanced their consideration of a particular brand and made them more likely to make repeat purchases. While remembering customer names and preferences may be easy for small businesses, it gets a lot more difficult as they grow.
With automation, you can easily personalise communication at scale. Artificial intelligence systems can categorise your customer base based on their behaviour, purchase history, and preferences. This allows you to send targeted and relevant messages that align with each customer demographic or particular category. What's more, it lets you automatically deliver these messages at the most opportune time after considering factors like market dynamics, trends, and engagement patterns.
Customer service is a considerable challenge for many businesses in the UK. The impulse reaction for many business owners when their customer service struggles is to expand their customer support teams. However, the outcome is the same because the issue isn't a numbers problem but a disconnect between customer expectations and reality.
Businesses can automate their customer service using chatbots and virtual assistants. These AI-powered tools are excellent for handling routine inquiries, providing immediate responses, and guiding customers through common issues or questions. By automating these tasks, businesses can ensure round-the-clock availability and consistency in customer interactions, regardless of the volume of inquiries.
No, we don't mean automating tools can help you stalk your customers. Rather, these tools can help you follow up on their purchases, understand their experiences with your products, and even predict their future needs.
Making your customers feel valued and important is a tried-and-tested method of enhancing customer loyalty. To show your appreciation, you can automate simple "thank you" messages after they purchase your product. Alternatively, you can automate personalised offers or discounts based on their purchase history or preferences.
Marketing automation is also a great way to track your conversations with customers. You can use automated emails to remind them about upcoming events, promotions, or simply a reminder that you are still there. The best part is you don't have to engage with the said customers in any capacity. The automated systems will use data from previous interactions and other sources to ensure relevant and impactful communication.
There are plenty of automating or business process automation (BPA) tools for you to choose from.
Zapier is arguably one of the most popular automation tools for small-to-medium-sized businesses. This nifty tool is incredibly versatile and seamlessly integrates with both native and third-party apps. According to Zapier's website, this automation tool integrates with over 3,000 apps, including Mailchimp, Slack, and Notion.
Zapier's free plan is ideal for startups and is a great way to learn about the tool's features and functionality. However, if you need full-fledged workflow automation, you might have to get the paid plans available in different tiers, with higher tiers boasting more features.
Make is a cheaper alternative to Zapier, but it only supports over a thousand integrations. Still, it supports most, if not all, popular business apps, including Microsoft Office Suite, Kartra, and Slack, to name a few. Its free plan also contains more features than Zapier's. Make it great for small business needs but may not suffice for larger businesses.
If you're looking for an all-in-one workflow automation platform with extensive tools and features, consider Kissflow. This tool has an intuitive, easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface that lets you create and customise workflows to your preference.
Kisflow can automate approvals, notifications, reminders, and escalations. Users can define their own rules, parameters, and conditions. It also integrates with other third-party applications and facilitates seamless collaboration among team members by providing a central hub for communicating and sharing documents.
MailChimp is one of the most recognised email marketing automation tools. With MailChimp, you can end relevant emails to your customers based on their previous engagements with your business. Some of the app's most notable features include behavioural targeting, surveys, and analytics. The platform's free plan has generous limits capped at 500 contacts. Paid tiers have more robust features and allow up to 50,000 contacts.
By effectively utilising automation tools, businesses can enhance customer retention and drive sales through personalised communication, efficient customer service, and strategic engagement. This improves operational efficiency by reducing manual workload and cultivates deeper, more meaningful relationships with customers.
Explore the different automation tools (free or paid) and pick the best one for your business's needs. While you’re at it, don't forget to check out our other blog posts for more informative and insightful posts on digital marketing and technology.
