Time is perhaps the most precious asset to any business owner. Everybody knows the old adage “time equals money”. You should take advantage of any technology that will help you save time. Think of how much more work your employees can spend on work if they didn’t have to return emails or answer phone calls all day.
Here’s a list of 7 tasks that you should be automating if you’re not currently doing so:
Replying to emails – Many of the emails businesses receive on a daily basis are similar in nature. Even if you copy and paste the same response, you’re still wasting time. Canned responses are very easy to create – especially with Gmail. Outlook also offers email templates.
Customer support communication – Things can get confusing fast if you’re not using automated software to keep track of all communication with customers, including order inquiries, feedback, questions, complaints, assistance, returns, etc. Use helpdesk software or ticketing systems to get all of these communications in a central place, automatically notifying the appropriate team member.
Handling billing – It’s easy to automate invoices if you bill the same people for the same amount of money each month. Also, if you have a subscription service, you can use automation to charge each customer’s credit card every month. Not only does a billing or accounting software system like Freshbooks or SimplyBill make bill/invoice management easy, it also keeps the information organized.
Employee onboarding/offboarding – Whenever you bring a new employee in or let them go, a lot of information is involved. Different departments (finance, operations, IT, etc…) need to take certain actions to ensure that the new employee’s entrance into the company is a smooth process. When it’s time for them to leave, critical steps are involved in separating that employee from the organization. If everything is handled manually, things can get a bit messy. This is where HR software like Gusto comes in.
Hiring and screening – Before you even bring new employees onboard, you still need to hire them. Jibe.com offers resources to help you calculate just how much money recruiting employees can cost you. It’s not just hiring new employees that costs money, replacing them can cost you as well. If your hiring process isn’t streamlined, you could end up hiring the wrong people and will have to spend even more money replacing them. With hiring/recruiting software, the entire process can be tracked from beginning to end. Many of the tasks involved are automated. It’s much easier to make hiring decisions when all of the correct information is already there prepared for you.
Social media tasks – Participating in social media has become a vital part of brand-building and internet marketing. Every business, regardless of size and industry type, should be involved in it. If you don’t have the money to outsource the work, you might want to consider automating some of it. The popular social media platforms make it easy to automate certain things, like front loading content and scheduling its release in advance.
Web/mobile app development – Every business has a website, and most businesses have apps. You can make your web/app development team’s jobs even easier with automation tools like Selenium. It’s designed to automate browsers during the development process for testing purposes. Your site should run smoothly in all browsers and on all devices. It’s a very time-consuming process to test everything manually.
The great thing about automation software and tools is that they are inexpensive for the most part. Some are even available as a monthly subscription, with varying prices depending on which plan you choose. Perfecto Mobile even offers a free trial.
