Every business transforms through the development of a relationship between the seller and the buyer. When we go to buy a coffee or a gadget, in the back of our mind we have a preference or expectation that is developed through previous experience (our own or others’). This expectation helps to evaluate the quality of interaction with the seller which describes how he was treated as a customer.

“We think our job is to take responsibility for the complete user experience. And if it’s not up to par, it’s our fault, plain and simple.” – Steve Jobs 

It is not something that any company offers without any intention. That’s right, whatever services or treatment you got was according to the plan to nurture a client from a seller’s perspective. There are ways of building a good relationship with your customer. Here we will talk about improve customer relations through automation.

Improve customer relations through automation

In order to achieve long-term success and competitiveness, a crucial element for your company is creating, maintaining and developing a loyal client base. In Forrester’s opinion, automation is the next major innovation in digital transformation. 

Various meanings can be attributed to this term. For companies just beginning their digital transformation, automation may mean sending an email, sms or a brochure to customers as part of their marketing strategy. However, companies looking to grow big use automation in all areas of their business, including finance, HR, sales, and marketing.  

Automation will be beneficial for companies towards advanced digital transformation (e.g., companies with CRMs and data management tools). Among the topics to be discussed are how to improve follow up of a lead, how to automate sales operation and how we can avoid sales errors by implementing automation.

Our aim here is to give an idea on how automation can help to nurture a lead and improve customer relations and journey with the company.

Improve the follow-up on a lead

Automation offers many opportunities for improvement at various levels.

Let’s look at tracking a lead’s life cycle to illustrate the potential for automation to improve customer satisfaction. This is a crucial topic for many companies. It allows them to determine the impact of different sales, marketing, and communication actions on the number of leads within a B2B customer relationship.

Starting to pursue a lead

• The assignment of the lead is the first level. This involves assigning the professional’s contact details (company name, designation, etc.) then followed by marketing or communication actions. Leads can come by various channels and marketing efforts. Automation tools will help to integrate note book records along with other relevant info of the client. Going forward, this will lead the prospect through the complete sales funnel and show updates where he belongs now in the buyer’s journey. 
• After successfully assigning leads, the automation system will allow you to monitor the interactions and measure the lead’s progress. It allows the professionals to understand the actions taken, as well as help him to get organized. 
• The next step is to offer him services that are tailored to his working needs. By having accurate contact information and details about the client’s business you can make quicker decisions such as reassigning leads and fixing support issues. The goal is to increase the efficiency in taking control of a lead and thus improve the customer relationship.

Efficiency Assessment and Improving Relationship

Assessing each lead is vital. A proper lead can generate numerous opportunities. This happens only when you take your service to such a level where the customers feel that you own their business. For this improving the  

• Automation will allow you to audit the life cycle of a lead through data sorting,client contact details, number of conversations with the lead and average decision-making speed, etc.
• The complete monitoring and analysis of the lead’s entire life cycle will allow it to reconcile the number, commercial, selling, and communication actions in progress. This includes the impact of marketing campaigns, sales, and actions on social media networks.
• Automation will allow us to monitor our customers’ satisfaction levels by analyzing their responses to surveys. We can then use this feedback to improve our services and products.
• We are able to analyze how satisfied or dissatisfied each client is at any given time. By doing so we can identify which clients need more attention from us and what they want most from us.
• Automated lead scoring helps you identify the right leads at the right time. It also helps you prioritize your sales efforts so that you are focusing on the highest value leads first.
• This allows us to make changes that will increase our chances of retaining them as future clients.
• The lead will see an improvement in the quality and speed of information delivery. This will also impact the customer relationship, positively.

Automating sales processes

The integration of automation solutions can be disruptive to the day-to-day operations of sales teams. However, it is an extremely useful tool in improving customer relations.

Automation of sales processes has many benefits. Some of which are listed below:

• Improvement of the prospect qualification phase
• Reduced time spent on certain tasks (completion files, costing quotes, etc.).
• Transparency in exchanges with prospect/customer

Improvement of the prospect qualification phase

Not all prospects are the same, different prospects need different approaches. You will need to adjust your actions if a prospect is nearing to purchase or has first impressions of the product. It is vital to know where prospects are in the sales funnel. This information will help you to decide how much time you need to spend with them at this particular moment. As a result this will make it easier for salespeople to identify the most important prospects and determine who they should contact.

Let’s imagine a scenario where a salesperson is going to meet with a client whom he persuaded before and now both parties want to exchange their windows further. Sales automation tools ensure that the salesperson knows what specifications and details a client shared before, so that he can quickly go through it and understands their needs, thus approaching them in an organized manner. As a result, the meeting is smooth and successful, with all customer queries  being overcome. 

Reduced time spent on certain tasks 

Sales automation tools speed up  both before and after sales processes by simplifying the management of all customer interactions, interactions between sales representatives and their customers, information and orders.

As a result, the sales process is accelerated and you can get an accurate idea of which leads convert best, so that you can focus your efforts accordingly. In addition, you’ll have access to detailed reports about the performance of individual contacts, including conversion rates, revenue generated from those conversions, and other metrics.

Transparency in pursuing prospect/customer

Sales automation helps increase transparency within companies. The data collected during the process makes it possible to understand exactly what happened throughout each stage of the sale.

For example, let’s say there was a lead generation campaign conducted over several months. During that period, the company received hundreds of emails containing various pieces of information regarding the target audience. Now, thanks to the use of automated tools, we can see everything that took place ,even down to the smallest detail.

Eliminate sales errors derived from manual processes

Manual processes mean that a lot of data is spread across disparate systems. These manual processes make it difficult for account management teams to keep track of information and are time consuming to report and track important information. Here are some sales errors that, you can eliminate with automation:

1) Sales order  – Incorrect product quantity entered into system .This could lead to an inaccurate invoice being generated.

2) Invoice generation – Incorrect pricing/taxes applied to invoices. If this happens, your company will have to pay additional taxes at tax time.

3) Data Entry: It takes a lot of effort to enter data manually so it becomes difficult to maintain consistency across all records. This leads to inaccurate information being stored within the database.

4) Order fulfillment – Order processing times vary greatly depending uponHow the order is being handled. Incorrect order fulfillment  will result in huge returns and hence it is very important that we should take care of these issues before they occur.

We can easily solve these problems with a central solution that automates all aspects of your business process. The solution should be able to  eliminate human errors, track any duplication of data, notify mistakes and bring visibility into sales operations. 

Wrapping Up

The goal of any automation system is to create a seamless experience across multiple channels. Therefore make sure that the whole sales process is on the right track. Doing so, as a whole, will ensure consistency throughout the entire organization.

Automation also allows for continuous improvement and monitoring. Both salespeople and managers can monitor and analyze their performance together. As a result problems in the sales channel are easily identified and  It is easier to solve potential problems and take corrective action.