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Your business is not fully digitalized, but you’re looking for some new ways to satisfy your customer and win the market? Here’s what we can recommend to you.
1. CRM systems
Relationship is one of the core things in any business, whenever it is a communication with customers or a communication between employees. This sphere has to be perfectly organized. The CRM concept gives different tools that can be connected in one integral system.
It also involves a lot of automation: invoices, renewal of the contract, task management of your employees, their progression etc. Instead of piles of documents and rushing through the office looking for appropriate information, you have everything centralized in one place.
It makes your employees' lives easier in their daily routine and accelerates the process of making right decisions or eliminating errors.
The software for it shouldn’t always be developed from scratch. When you have a very small business, you may pick one of the many existing resources and digital tools. There are cases when everything you need is simply Google Spreadsheet.
There probably will be a moment when you grow enough and existing tools will not accomplish you anymore, because of the uniqueness of your processes. This will be the moment when you’ll have to think about how to optimize your business by developing your own software.
2. Automated customer engagement
There are things that will help you to stay in touch with your customer in a more efficient way, like email marketing campaigns, different messengers and chatbots.
You may feel it's a waste of time because of your own experience like archiving, marking as spam for swiping left (we all do this in our inbox). But think about the companies whose products you enjoy, whose emails you will never lose in your inbox.
A study from Forrester Research shows that 85% of US retailers recognize email marketing as one of the most efficient customer engagement tools, especially for small and medium businesses.
It converts missed opportunities into real opportunities, it builds stronger customer relationships and increases conversion. There shouldn’t be some blanket emails with marketing information: here it is important to understand the habits of your target audience, to know what they look for and what they want to hear from you.
3. Special nudges and gamification
Let’s think about one example. Visiting a hairdresser is a tough thing: you have to make an appointment, not to forget about it and then, which is most important, be also satisfied with the result, as it is literally impossible to fix things without waiting, sometimes for a long time.
It would be super cool for a hairdresser to have an app, which would remind clients about their appointments, remember when usually they need a haircut or when their wives have birthdays (so they must look handsome).
This app may also include an augmented reality option to try some haircut on in advance. Things like this app may be implemented in lots of spheres and show customers that business really cares about them.
4. A community organization
The value and power of the online-community should not be underestimated, especially today. If you create a community for your business, you will receive ambassadors who will talk about your business, your brand, and your product, or about your industry in general.
It will give a big value because such people will share their experiences and achievements, communicate and promote you to other people.
5. Internet of Things integrations
You can start with opening some kind of China website and check for white label devices, like GPS trackers, for example. These are the devices, which you can program the way you need.
Imagine you walk in the museum. When you’re inside the place, it's too hard to track the GPS location, because it's not super accurate. But if you have this small tool called iBeacon, which works not by GPS location but by Bluetooth, you can come close to, for example, Mona Lisa, and the device will tell you who this is.
You shouldn’t have a big company like Adidas or Nike to use IoT kind of stuff, it can be implemented even for something small as well.
To sum up: you can use some IoT hand device, which will be connected to the super cool customer app, which will give people a great experience with gamification and nudges, they will receive automated marketing emails, and it will all be integrated with your CRM system.
It may seem complicated, but if you have a proper partner, it will make your business work as a single good machine. Find out more by listening to our podcast.