4 Simple Ways to Save Time With Automation

If you find yourself spending a lot of time doing repetitive tasks, you can most likely reduce some of your workload using automation. Automation can save businesses a lot of time which can then be spent on more important work.

I’ve identified four ways to get started with automation in your business. Each of these four types of automation can be implemented in your business very quickly and have an immediate impact on your workload.

Data Entry Automation

Manual data entry has traditionally been a slow, time-consuming process for businesses. You either spend hours doing it yourself or pay someone to do it for you. One of the most popular forms of automated data entry is invoice processing automation.

By using a tool like EzzyBills, Receipt Bank or Auto Entry, many businesses are able to save hours or days every month. Instead of manually entering data from invoices into accounting software, you can simply upload your invoices into one of these tools, which uses OCR and AI technology to extract the invoice data then export it to your accounting system.

For accountants, bookkeepers and businesses with a high volume of invoices, automating invoice processing can lead to serious time saving.

Automate Workflows With Zapier or Integromat

Using automation apps like Zapier or Integromat allows you to connect two or more apps that you use with each other. This means you can automate processes you would normally need to do manually.

For example, you might use Google Forms to collect information from your customers or run surveys. Maybe you’re manually following up with each person who fills out your form by sending them an email. Using Zapier, you can create an automated workflow which sends an email immediately to each person who fills out your form.

This is just one example of thousands of tasks that could be automated using Zapier or Integromat. Using these applications to automate tasks can save a lot of time and also make the apps you’re already using far more powerful.

Both Zapier and Integromat require no coding or API knowledge, making them perfect for anyone with limited technical expertise.

Think about the applications you regularly use in your business. Maybe it’s Slack, Evernote, Gmail. Now go to Zapier or Integromat and search for these applications. For most popular apps, you will find dozens of automation possibilities you can use to save time. You can see more examples of ways to use Zapier to automate tasks here.

Automate Customer Service With Bots

According to IBM, up to 80% of routine customer service questions could be handled by bots. Bots can trained to respond to customer service questions in a chat interface.

If you receive a high volume of repetitive questions from customers, a bot could help to dramatically reduce your workload. Even if a bot could respond to 20% of your customer service questions, this would represent a major time saving. For any questions the bot is unable to answer, it can refer the customer to one of your human support agents.

Aside from saving time, customer service bots can operate 24 hours a day and answer questions instantly. This can help to improve customer satisfaction levels if customers aren’t kept waiting to receive responses. The average response time to customer service queries is over 12 hours. Having a bot that can reply to customer service queries instantly, can give you a major advantage over competitors who are taking much longer to send responses.

There are many live chat platforms which can be integrated with your website, allowing you to create automated responses. This includes Drift and Olark.

Agencies like All Chat Solutions specialize in helping businesses leverage the power of chatbots.

Online Marketing Automation

To save time on social media posts and sending out emails, you can schedule posts and emails in advance.

Facebook has their own built in post scheduling tool, or you can use a tool like Hootsuite or Sprout Social to schedule posts for multiple platforms. Posts can be scheduled weeks or even months in advance. This means you don’t need to log in every day to keep scheduling posts.

Using email automation tools like Drip and Sendin Blue, you can automate part of your email marketing. For example, you might create a sequence of emails that are sent to new subscribers over two weeks. This only needs to be set up once and then is automatically activated each time you get a new email subscriber. This can save you time on manually following up with new subscribers or customers.

Email automation services can also be used to send automated emails to users on your website who take a specific action, such as visiting a certain page of your website. Or you could set up automated customised emails to be sent out on customer’s birthdays or anniversaries.