As a business owner, you likely have two main goals: to grow your business and provide excellent customer service.
What if I told you there is one tool that could make a big impact on both of these - while also saving you time and money?
That tool is automation.
You can streamline and automate your workflows so customers still receive a timely response and personal touch without ever feeling like they’re part of a robotic process.
For instance, I set up an automation so that each time someone submits their name and email address on my Wix website, their information will be automatically sent to Mailchimp, where the person is added to my email list and sent a personalized welcome email from me.
But don’t let this simple example fool you!
You can use automation programs like Zapier to streamline complex processes, speed up lengthy workflows, and ultimately, serve more customers and grow your business.
If I haven’t convinced you already, here are 4 reasons you need to automate your business:
1. Eliminate Errors
When you automatically send information from one program to another, you eliminate the potential for human error, like typos, missing information, and skipped steps.
Let’s say you have an onboarding process where new clients fill out an intake form on your Wix website to get started with you. From there, you add their contact information to your Google Contacts database, you add them to your email list in Mailchimp, and you add them to an Excel Spreadsheet so you can track your sales. You also send the new client a welcome email through Mailchimp and add an event to your Google Calendar so you’ll remember to check in with them after one month.
While this is a relatively simple workflow, there is a lot of room for potential typos, copy and paste errors, or being interrupted halfway through and forgetting to finish all of the steps.
When you automate this onboarding process, you can make sure the client’s information is immediately and accurately input into all of your systems. The data you need from the Wix intake form will be added into Google Contacts, Mailchimp, and the Excel Spreadsheet tracker. Plus, the client will receive their welcome email and their one-month check-in will be scheduled on your Google Calendar.
2. Free-Up Time
By automating your processes and workflows, you can cross items off your to-do list permanently!
Using the same example above with the onboarding process, I estimate it would take about 15 minutes for someone to complete all of these steps manually, without any interruptions. While this may not seem like a long time, at four new clients per week, you’d spend one hour every week onboarding clients.
If your business tripled, so would your time behind the computer, which makes it very difficult to scale and grow your business.
When you automate processes like this one, you save yourself the time and headache of doing everything manually, set your business up for continued growth, and allow yourself to focus on the work you love.
3. Improve Service
You can also use automation to improve customer service and make sure every client receives the same high-quality, personalized experience you desire.
For instance, with our onboarding process example, if you were performing each step manually, new clients would have to wait until someone can add their information into Mailchimp and send them the welcome email. This means anytime you’re sleeping, driving, vacationing, etc., customers would be waiting and unable to get started.
With an automated onboarding process, your customers can purchase, take action, get started, etc., while you sleep!
You can set up the precise action steps, decide the order of operation, and customize where the information goes throughout the automated process, to make sure each new client is served quickly and consistently.
Plus, you can go beyond this basic example and get as detailed as you'd like, creating items like personalized emails, custom price quotes, service agreements, and more based on your automated sequence of events.
4. Save Money
My fourth and favorite reason you should be using automation is to save money. If you already have a Zapier subscription (which starts at the free level) you can often create automations that help you avoid paying for other programs and additional personnel.
I recently helped a client set up an automation in Zapier so she didn’t need to upgrade her e-signature program and pay a higher monthly fee. I’ve also worked with lawyers to automate their document drafting process instead of paying for and figuring out new document creation programs.
You can also use automation to save money on employee and/or contractor hours. For instance, instead of having your virtual assistant add new clients to your databases, track sales, and send out new service agreements, you can automate the processes and cut back on hours.
If you’re currently a solopreneur, setting up automations allows you to get more work done without hiring anyone.
There are so many ways you can use automation to streamline and simplify your life. These examples I mentioned are just the tip of the iceberg.
I encourage you to visit the Zapier website to learn more about my favorite automation program and discover everything that’s possible.
If you’d like help setting up your first Zapier automation, schedule a Tackle My Tech Session and we'll do it together. Or, if you'd prefer to have me dive in and start automating your processes, schedule a Strategy Session and we'll get started.
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