Solopreneurs (and even small-team businesses) often hustle the hardest, work the longest hours, and feel the most overwhelmed. Sometimes, that’s unavoidable — building a business is a lot of work.
But…there are ways you can make it a heck of a lot less work for you and your team to keep all of your balls in the air. One of the easiest and most accessible ways to do that is through automation.
Before you click away, thinking, “Ugh…I don’t want my brand to become a robotic machine that no one can relate to,” I want you to know this:
You CAN automate and keep your soul, values, and personality intact.
It’s time for you and your biz to enter your Automation Era — and you can make every client feel as special as a front-row ticket holder at a Taylor Swift concert while you do it.
How You Benefit From Automating Client Communication
It’s a win-win situation when you effectively use automation in your business. First, let’s cover the benefits to you, and then we’ll cover the benefits to your clients.
Since you’ll want to do a time and task audit to determine what you can automate in your business, clarity is the first benefit you’ll gain. This audit will reveal your most repetitive tasks, which you could put on autopilot with the right software or tool.
Implementing automation in your client communications leads to more stable core processes, positions your business for streamlined scaling, and keeps connection consistent, i.e., creates client relationships with more longevity.
Once your automations have been running for a while, you’ll also be able to gather essential data from them about what’s working and what’s not working in your business. That means you’ll be primed to make better data-driven decisions in your business — always a plus!
How Your Clients Can Benefit From Your Automation
Even though it’s a common fear that automation will damage your personal relationships with clients, the opposite is true. There are ways to keep things real and relatable while you take a step back — we’ll cover those in just a few.
What I see over and over again in my client’s businesses is that clients are actually delighted by well-thought-out, well-timed, personalized automation. From the point where someone becomes a ‘lead’ to following up after a sale or service, there are many opportunities to ensure prompt and consistent communication. This shows your professionalism and ensures clients that you’re on top of delivering what you promise. Automation also makes your free resources as well as your paid products and services more accessible to clients so that they are getting what they need when they need it.
Client Communications to Consider Automating In Your Business
After your time and task audit is complete, you’ll want to evaluate certain client communication tasks and responsibilities to see where it makes the most sense to put your automation efforts first. Here’s an outline of the areas you can use automation and some ideas on how to get started.
1. Marketing Communications
From social media to weekly email newsletters, automation is easy to implement in your marketing process. This is worth a mention, but since this type of content still has to be created (or repurposed) regularly, the automation you can do mostly just saves you the time you’d normally be posting and sending emails manually.
2. Lead Generation
Once someone has signed up for your email list or inquired about your services, you have an opportunity to nurture them. This can include sharing with them more about your company, sending value-based content their way, and directing them to your most popular and useful free resources such as your blog, podcast, or YouTube channel.
Automation can also help you qualify leads so you’re not sorting through stacks of submissions and messages from people who would not be a fit for your services. You can accomplish this through intake forms and some CRMs that have more robust survey tools to ‘weed out’ less-than-ideal clients.
3. Sending Quotes and Proposals
If you’re a service provider who sends out quotes to potential clients, you may want to consider software that generates them and sends them to clients for you. This type of software can follow up with clients for you as well. If you’d like to go a simpler route for now, a simple spreadsheet with the right formulas can help generate a basic service quote and still take a lot of time out of your proposal process!
4. Personalizing the Buying Process
Many email marketing systems allow you to tag and segment your list so that you can communicate to each potential client according to where they are in the buying process. Some do this by tracking who is clicking links in your emails and engaging with your business in other ways. Once you have this system in place, you can create touchpoints with clients that personalize their experience with your brand.
5. Efficiently Onboarding New Clients
An onboarding sequence of emails is a great way to keep new clients on track and ensure that you receive everything you need from them and vice versa. Since onboarding is generally the same repeatable process for every client, this one should be easy to automate.
6. Customer Service
You can use a contact form or even employ a chatbot in your business to separate current client communications from general inquiries, questions from clients about new projects, and general information needs. Chatbots do not have to replace customer service entirely, but they can offer direction to the right blog post or FAQ on your website.
7. Following Up With Clients
Post-purchase follow-up is a great place to use automation as well. In these emails, you can ask your clients for feedback and then later ask for referrals. When this process is automated, there’s no room for error or forgetting to follow up — which, in the end, increases repeat business and continues to support your business’s reputation for quality service.
4 Ways to Keep it Front-Row and Feel-Good
1. Always Personalize Your Automation
The easiest way to make your automation just a touch warmer is to personalize them whenever possible. Almost all CRMs, email marketing software, and other appointment schedulers will have ‘fields’ you can add to emails to display the recipient’s name. You can also personalize with other pertinent information as your software allows.
2. Infuse Templates With Your Brand Voice
Templates are a time-saving treat, but they can be so darn boring! When you set up your appointment software, for instance, a stock email will go out confirming the appointment. It’s worth taking the time to customize your confirmation emails, follow-up emails, and any other piece of communication your clients will get from you. Make them sound like something you (or your brand) would actually write yourself.
3. Screen Record Tutorials
Tools like Loom allow you to quickly record screen-share videos with voiceover (and the option to display your face). These are incredibly handy when you’re automating communication. Use these videos to show clients around their dashboard or account with you, explain relevant SOPs, and even pass on a mini-training for their VA or another team member that will help your work together go smoothly.
4. Use Videos With Your Face in Them!
Gone are the days when every video published online was supposed to be perfectly lit, polished, and professionally edited. Everyone is getting comfortable with video that feels more like chatting with a friend on FaceTime. I share this because so many business owners are still video-shy or don’t even consider the power of a personal touch through video behind the scenes. You can record videos to welcome new email subscribers, new clients, and more. Get creative to connect!
September 12, 2023
