Do you wish to learn about the Top 5 useful business processes? If yes, go ahead and grab some interesting and core best business strategies followed by Small and Medium sized businesses.
Usually when we talk about business automation, it’s implied by default that we are talking about a big company with their own complex production and organised structure.
But, even small companies have these processes full of routine with a lot of choices to be made, that needs to be always under control.
So, here are 5 easy and incredibly useful business processes to help medium and small businesses.
Business Processes for Small Businesses
5. Tasks to Auto call clients
This business process solves the problem of forgetful managers and prevents from losing clients. That is true for both new (lead) and regular clients.
It works like that.
Business Process Scheme 1
For example, if managers often “lose” leads because they forget or have not enough time, you can tune in the business process to call them back. There will be trigger of incoming call from the lead, that didn’t end in a 3 days at a “sending an offer” state. Then there is a created sequence for this trigger, for example, a new task for a manager to call client back. So, the manager won’t forget and ignore any task. Hence, the lead won’t be lost and eventually will be completed.
Trigger for starting a business process can be done with any client activity.
For example, if you need to motivate clients and increase the amount of sales, it’s possible to categorize the clients by their average check and products they buy. It is made to understand what people buy and how much they usually pay.
Business Process Scheme 2
Then, we need to tune in auto-task for managers to auto call this group of people, with a trigger of the product they probably buy hitting the stock.
If John often buys a lot of accessories for plumbing, and the stock is hit with the new ones – business process starts and manager Anthony is getting a task in CRM to call John back.
4. Creating an Offer with Trigger of Opening a Letter
Usually, after the client was sent an offer, manager makes a mark to call him back or send him another letter after 1 or 2 days to specify if it was read, answer some questions of the potential client, motivate him to buy and increase the conversion. It is important to call back fast, when client still remembers the offer. So, the faster client reads the offer, the faster manager should call him back.
How to understand the ideal time for a call?
Business Process Scheme 3
You can tune in business process to send instant notifications to managers after the client has read the offer.
When client opens the letter, the business process starts. And, the manager receives a notification about it with a remark to call back. It is very useful, because managers don’t need to:
- Remind themselves about calling back.
- Count or even guess the ideal time to call back.
- Call a lot of times, because client haven`t read the offer yet.
- Send the offer additional time/s, because client already forgot about it.
This business process doesn’t give client a time to forget about an offer.
But, if your clients don’t like to be called back immediately or you don’t want to be intrusive or the average check is not that high to spend a lot of time to call back, you should tune in your business process. As a result, after opening the first letter, the second one will be sent automatically with predefined template.
This template can have a lot of uses. For example, it is possible to send another letter after 2 days without the answer, if the client hasn’t done some action (write or call back).
An example:
<Have a nice day … Two days ago I sent you an offer but did not get an answer. It is possible, that you did not see it, so I am sending it again. If you have any questions, I will be happy to answer them by the phone or by person.
Maybe on Saturday, what do you think?>
3. Automation of Customer Service
It is very useful to collect reviews in business. Because you can understand if clients are satisfied with the company. Further, you can improve your product/service flaws, if you have any. When everything is fine, client probably won’t leave a review. The negative ones are more frequent.
You can collect reviews manually:
- Manager can send a review form after the deal is done, or
- Simply ask for it by phone.
It is not very effective, because it needs time and resources. And also, your workers can forget to receive it or even ask for it.
How Business Processes can be done automatically?
Business Process Scheme 4
You can set up a business process to automatically call client in form of “rate our managers work, by choosing a rating from 1 to 5”.
So, the end result will be posted in client’s card in CRM. You can change it how you want, for example, by calling immediately after the deal, or within a week, or on any other period of time.
Important things:
- Questions shouldn’t be too long. Also, there shouldn’t be a lot of them to not spend a lot of client’s time and receive a guaranteed answer.
- Optimal period is 1-2 days, when client still remembers you.
Moreover, it is also possible to auto send an email or SMS form for the poll/review after the deal has ended.
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2. Notifying the Client of the State of his Offer or Deal
<Michael’s company usually manufactures and sets up modular kitchens. Usually needed components are already in the stock and the order completion is about 3 to 5 days. If there are none or this is an individual project, the time could be one month or even more. Michael often works with unsatisfied clients and every time tells them why it takes so long.>
Sometimes the deal needs client to be the part of it.
<Sara is the owner of the real estate agency and sometimes she does some deals all by herself. Sometimes, she and her agents have a problem, when clients are late or simply forget about the deal and agency should change their schedule, call other clients and delay some of their deals. And in some cases, it gets out of control by the agents themselves, they can forget about the meeting or mix up meeting places because of their tight schedule.>
In cases like that, when the deal is complicated and have more then one step, you need to notify client of the status of their deal. It can help you avoid misunderstanding and will make clients more calm about it.
Set up your business process to auto notify your clients via email, SMS, social networks and messengers. The choice should be made by understanding your core audience.
Scheme 5
When a manager changes the phase of the deal or it is done automatically, one of the business processes activates. Therefore, the client receives notification on his private messages, his messenger or any other preferred channel (SMS, email).
Message is formed by the predetermined form. For example, your order is ready to be shipped, or your order is shipped. For real estate agency: every participant of the deal will receive the message with address and time of the meeting.
Pros:
- There is transparency of the service.
- You get more loyal customers.
- In addition, you save a lot of time for the managers and other workers.
1. Auto creation of the Lead:
The most important business process involves auto creation of incoming deal. This can be through email, form on the landing/site, by phone and getting it done.
To get the new leads companies make a lot of effort and spend finances to find advertising platforms and measures to call them in. But, often it does not do what it should, because managers may not create new contact in time or simply forget about them. For example, the client called, manager gave him some answers, but forgot to seal the deal. This process better be automated to minimize potential lose of the lead.
This is how it works.
Business Process Scheme 6
If the new client called and after the deal has ended, manager forgot to create the lead`s card, he (manager, not the client) will receive a notification in pop-up window with 2 buttons: “create the contact” and “decline”. When the first button is clicked – manager will create the lead card. If the call was not from the client – manager will click the “decline” button and the call will be ignored for the system.
Small Business Processes: The Bottom Line
Remember, there is no more such a thing as a forgetful manager. The leader can trace with the statistics who of the managers really forgot to add a new lead, and who does it because of their laziness or incompetence.
Automazation is not only for big companies, in middle and small business it also does a lot:
- You save a lot of time by cutting routine and redirecting it to more important tasks.
- Your business has more productive workers and better control over everything.
- Further, you have and can deliver more quality products and services to the clients.
What’s your take on this? Do you feel automated business processes and good CRM also prove fruitful for small scale enterprises? Feel free to discuss.
This is a guest post by Andrew Lyashchenko, CEO of APRO CRM, one of the leading CRM systems for small and medium businesses.
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