Running a successful e-commerce business involves a lot of factors and time is a significant one.
From fulfilling orders and payments round the clock to efficient marketing campaigns, there are many things to consider. That too in a short period.
Simultaneously, scaling up means bringing in more customers. Inevitably, an increase in online consumers also means a ton of pressure on the customer support teams.
All of these can be solved with e-commerce automation, which is the future. With lots of automation tools made available for the eCommerce business now, there are many choices.
However, with the following few ways, you can seamlessly automate your e-commerce.
1. Automate abandoned cart emails
Did you know that 75% of shopping carts on e-commerce sites get abandoned? As such using abandoned cart emails can help in re-engaging buyers midway. It cannot be denied that an optimized email marketing strategy can work wonders to regain lost customers.
Believe it or not, customers will appreciate you making the effort of reaching out to them. Email marketing must therefore be used to promote new offers. Additionally, when you send relevant information via newsletters, it also helps you build better brand awareness and gets you more traffic on your site.
Now wondering how automation helps here?
Well by using modern email marketing platforms you can create an automated workflow. This includes scheduling messages after gaining customer activity insight. It lets you mark the important dates for the emails to be sent automatically.
Here’s how it works.
- The customer is prompted regarding the abandoned cart where the items are usually left as it is
- The email contains a link to the checkout page where the customer can complete the purchase
- This makes it easy and quick for the customer to simply click and select the payment option to complete the process
- You can even use integrated features, like BigCommerce, to retrieve abandoned cart cases
2. Automate reviews
Online buyers tend to rely heavily on testimonials and reviews by previous customers. Almost 60% of buyers refer to product performance information during the purchase.
Ecommerce businesses must therefore automate consumer feedback and prompt them to leave an honest review about the product for this proves highly useful for every e-commerce business.
So, to do this, you can set up an email workflow that automatically sends follow-up emails after a stipulated time.
It requires email marketing automation tools, like Mailchimp. You can take a cue from Shopify, and WooCommerce, regarding the integration.
Although this may take some time to become effective, in time, you will gather enough customer attention without being actively involved.
Additionally, you should also cater to negative reviews. Setting up an automation system that raises tickets whenever a 1-star review is given is a good idea. By integrating your helpdesk software with the automation tool, you can reach out to customers more quickly. It will also make the consumers feel heard.
3. Use auto-reply systems for customer queries and grievances
Your customers may have queries after placing the order. These could be very common doubts regarding the whereabouts of their order, cancellation, refund, or exchange. Whatever the issue, you need to address them all.
You can very well identify the common issues regarding the product and use an auto-responder to handle them. This is where e-commerce automation tools, like a help desk system, come in handy.
You can simply acquire customer inquiries from various channels, such as social media platforms, email, or texts. Thereafter, the help desk system can show you all of it in one place. This will also help the customer support representatives as the inquiries will be shown as tickets.
The best part is that the customer will get an omnichannel experience. Whenever a customer raises a ticket, they will know that someone from customer support will answer it. This way you also ensure customer services round the clock.
4. Use external tools to improve e-commerce customer service
Your customer support team should know how to leverage multiple e-commerce automation tools for customer service. This can speed up the workflow tenfold for these tools allow numerous integrations across the web.
You can create an automated shipping update and improve customer experience with these. All you need to do is integrate the tool, like Zapier, with your shipping provider. Then you can use it to send emails to the customers.
Integrating the e-commerce automation tools can also help you identify when a loyal customer leaves. Tools like Gorgias will raise a ticket when a customer revokes their subscription.
5. Automate inventory management
When running an e-commerce business, one thing you should never let happen is running out of stock. Better inventory management, however, is a tedious task when you rely entirely on manual labor. This is where integrated automation systems prove helpful.
For instance, software like QuickBooks allows you to optimize account-related tasks, like purchase orders and invoicing quickly. It also provides you with a constant update on your number of products.
Lastly, you can avoid frustrating customers and avoid missing out on an opportunity to make sales, with this strategy. Tools like WooCommerce also send you notifications when you run low on specific items. They, therefore, ensure that you are always aware of which products to reorder to fill your inventory in time.
To wrap up
As you can see, using automation has many benefits for your e-commerce business. Moreover, there are plenty of ways to implement it. All you need to decide is your automation sweet spots, which is the workflow you choose to automate.
Automation can make things much easier, whether you decide to retain lost customers or simply keep a tab on your inventory. You just need to figure out the growth plan for each process.
Lastly, automating each segment of your e-commerce can even boost the traffic on your site.