The power of B2C automation

Business-to-Customer (B2C) companies deal directly with consumers through a wide range of platforms, apps, and locations - this generates an enormous amount of work and vast amounts of data every day. What you do with this information, and how you schedule your time can determine whether or not your business grows as it should, or whether you miss out on opportunities. In this article, we are looking at automation for businesses in the B2C market, how it can give a competitive advantage, and what other benefits B2C automation brings to a B2C business.

How is automation affecting the B2C market?

Many B2C companies also use automation to improve customer communication, with automated emails based on time or action-based triggers, and these are often managed through a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform.

Instapage reveals that an average of 51% of companies are currently using automation for marketing, and that omnichannel marketing automation can produce 250% higher purchase and engagement rates than a single-channel marketing automation.

By automating various processes across the business, B2C companies are increasingly improving their processes, streamlining their procedures, developing more accurate data forecasting, and saving time, money, and effort in gaining the maximum impact and sales opportunities from their customers.

Can automation give businesses a competitive advantage?

Automation allows for considerably more work to be done during the working day. Instead of having your team focusing on repetitive tasks that are essentially housekeeping, the automated processes take care of this.

B2C automation allows for faster response times, improved engagement, more specific user targeting (both demographically and geographically), and a more personalised approach that encourages an emotional attachment with the brand – which is absolutely essential for recommendations, as Motista discovered, with 71% of customers recommending brands based on their emotional connection to it.

These processes can also be used as part of your competitor analysis – by evaluating customer sentiment, monitoring brand mentions, and reactions to promotions, it is possible to determine what is working (and what is not) for a competitor, and allow your brand to develop an appropriate strategy as a result.

The competitive advantages of automation (when done correctly) can be huge, both in terms of brand positioning and development, and customer engagement.

What benefits does automation have for B2C software and setups?

When you start implementing automation into your B2C business, there are immediate benefits before the software even goes live – namely, you will need to review the tools, applications, and software that you are currently using (in order to determine what should be automated), and this review is the perfect opportunity to do a deep dive into the structure of your business.

Doing an audit of your setup allows you to streamline your processes – you can examine what your team members are doing at each stage of the customer journey and eliminate any wasted steps, as well as any obsolete technologies.

Once the automation goes live, you can then benefit from improved functionality and process enhancement – with the right tools, you will likely have a dashboard or central hub to monitor your automation, which allows you to audit and review your processes in a single location, with automated alerts bringing issues to you, rather than having to manually search for them.

What are 5 benefits can you expect from B2C automation?

When it comes to making your decision regarding automation and adopting it for your B2C business, you need to carefully consider your existing structure, how far along you are in your digital transformation, and the way you are currently working.

But, when you implement B2C automation, you can expect to benefit from:

1. Increased productivity
   With your team removed from tedious repetitive daily housekeeping tasks, they can focus on bringing in more sales or engaging with customer service in a more meaningful manner.
   The automated tasks can also be completed more quickly due to AI and technological interaction, meaning more can get done in the same or shorter periods of time.
   
   
2. Data-driven marketing capabilities
   By using your data from your website, social media, emails, etc – you can learn vast amounts about your customers. Automated processes take the time and effort out of collating this, which means you can act faster and create pinpoint marketing campaigns, as well as streamlining quote management for ease of use.
   
   
3. Improved customer service
   Automation allows your customer service desk to be open 24/7, and urgent action tasks can be flagged and sent to specific team members who will be able to provide your customers with a better quality of service in a faster time.
   
   
4. Identification of new customer opportunities and demographics
   Bringing in new customers can be a difficult task, but when you automate your data collection and processes, you can determine who is looking at your products and pages, when they are viewing the content, and what channels they are using. This allows you to focus your advertising and content in the right places at the right times. You can also review sentiment and brand mentions and determine whether you are focusing on the right demographic and / or geographic location.
   
   
5. Efficient and effective lead management and increased sales
   By using automation and CRM tools, you can keep an eye on what your customers are doing, when they are contacting you, when you have been contacting them, and what promotions would appeal to your audience at particular times of the year.
   By managing your leads and engagement, you can retain your existing customers as well as bring in new clients.

Why TEB quote management software is an essential tool for you

Working directly with customers as a B2C industry will often see you creating quotes and needing to follow up with your clients on a regular basis. When you do this manually, you can often have a difficult time – missing deadlines, forgetting to follow up, having to spend a lot of time trying to find the details of what you have quote – the list of problems is not small, but they can all be solved by one simple step.

Using TEB’s quote management software allows you to automate your quote process, easily see what you have been offering each client (and when) and being alerted when you are due to follow up with them next.

When you use our quote management system, you can expect to benefit from:

• Master your lead management – Make lead management easy with drag-and-drop features, lead assigning, a holistic view of your sales funnels and more.
• Centralised quote data – Reduce the chance of a costly mistake happening with centralised easy to manage data
• Custom quote templates – Automate your processes and streamline your custom quotes by using a template that provides you with fewer manual tasks to complete, and a simple method that you can train your team to work with for faster results.
• Improved team collaboration – Assign your team members as suits your business needs, and see streamlined collaboration, efficiency, and improved levels of responsibility as you know who is working on what and when.

Find out more about TEB and how our range of software services and tools can be the perfect addition to your business, book a demonstration now, and take your B2C company to the next level.