As a start-up business, automation should be one of your best friends when starting out in the big wide world of commerce. Although fledgling entrepreneurs might consider automation to be an expensive luxury, the reality is that automated services yield a genuine return on investment in so many ways. It’s no longer a technology reserved solely for large-scale corporations.
If you’re dipping your toes into the water as a start-up business, consider the following five areas where automation could complement your business aspirations in 2022.
Simplify your funding rounds
Historically, growing businesses embarking on seed funding or Series A rounds to take things to the next level have had to rely heavily on third-party lawyers. However, today’s start-ups needn’t be beholden to traditional firms when it comes to managing their investment rounds. We now have, automated workflows in existence that can close funding rounds up to eight times faster than a conventional law firm. Tasks like finalising your agreements, terms and individual clauses that would historically take weeks (and a significant amount of money) for lawyers to finalise can now be created and automated in a matter of minutes.
Save time and resource with email automation
As a start-up business, it’s important to acknowledge the importance of speed when it comes to replying to enquiries and leads. It is said that the chance of converting a lead diminishes by 21 times with just a 30-minute delay in response times. Such is the need for instant communication and gratification in the world we live in. That’s why email automation software can be a game-changer to provide prompt, on-brand initial responses to start potentially profitable conversations.
Chatbots for always-on customer service
Building on the previous point and the need to deliver fast and inexpensive responses to customer queries, automation can save significant time and money in terms of human resources. AI-driven chatbots can be deployed to deliver simple answers to low-level frequently asked questions, leaving the customer service department to handle more complex issues and queries. Human customer service agents can also dip into the chatbot software to read the chat scripts with customers. This gives them a better handle on customers’ requests to deliver more relevant, valuable answers.
Scheduling of social media content for optimal engagement
Optimising and scheduling your brand’s social media activity is a crucial towards freeing up time and internal resources. We’re not talking about automating all aspects of social media marketing such as one-to-one interactions. We’re talking about scheduling a week’s worth of social posts on days and times that yield the best engagement rates, be it at the end of the day or during lunchtime when consumers are more likely to be active on their social media profiles.
Modernise and optimise your recruitment strategy
As an ambitious start-up, one of the keys to your sustainable long-term growth is the calibre of talent you can recruit. It’s not always easy to find and attract top talent to new businesses with little or no industry track record. But it is easy to automate the recruitment process to some extent by organising and managing suitable candidates for all vacancies within your business. There are automated recruitment tools that are designed to operate in the same way as sales automation software, driving engagement at every stage of the interview process.
Don’t be afraid to automate those repetitive, time-consuming tasks. It’s all about optimising your own time to focus on the issues that do require intensive human input and creativity to drive your business forward.