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A new year can provide an ideal opportunity to reflect on your business, whether that’s with growth plans for the year ahead, finding more time for yourself or creating an easier and superior customer experience.
What are your goals for the year ahead? Have you set any?
If not, this article from Forbes could help you get you thinking on the right track: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2021/11/18/how-to-set-effective-new-years-goals-for-2022/?sh=3c551d9d433c
Here are the top 6 business priorities that we’ve identified from our customer base:
1. Improve the customer experience
This could be achieved through digital transformation. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes, are the touch points and processes smooth, easy to understand and necessary? Is your system set-up fully to have a broad oversight of all your customers? Consider widening your communication options, such as chatbots and conversational AI, which can be easily added to any website, with a range of costs and features to help businesses of all sizes and types.
Did you know... 1.4 billion people are using chatbots to interact with businesses on a regular basis, with over 55% of all customers opting to use this when possible.
2. Enable growth
Understand your customers and their interactions with you using real-time reporting, and customer insights. This can be achieved by utilising your CRM system to the max, and the outcomes can then help to refine your marketing and sales strategies for the year ahead.
Embrace the digital options which will allow you to respond quickly to leads and sale opportunities, along with seeing lost leads, whether they’re abandoned carts, dormant prospects or returning but not yet converted custom. Understanding which customers aren’t buying from you can be as beneficial as knowing the ones that are.
According to several resources, it takes 6-8 touchpoints to convert a sale, so it’s important to keep track of those that haven’t yet reached that number.
3.Attract new customers
This ties in nicely with enabling growth; new customers may be new to you, but you may already be familiar with them. So, converting existing leads is crucial, cost-effective, and streamlined using digital processes.
Do you know how prospects want to communicate with you? You can integrate chatbots, lead forms, video conferencing and mobile apps into one digital platform to allow for consistent messaging, however your customer wants to get in touch with you.
4. Improve the employee experience
Engaged employees are motivated employees. In this age of hybrid working, are you optimising the communication platforms available? Ensuring that communication channels are open and consistent will allow for higher engagement and positive feelings. Collaboration is also a really successful tool, not only for team morale, but to get the best of team performance for all, including the best possible outcomes for a business.
When considering communication and consistency with remote working, making sure your digital processes are in place can be key to success.
5. Increase profits and reduce costs
By streamlining customer processes, you will naturally encourage repeat business – such as an easier booking system. By using digital analytics and tracking cart abandonment and lost leads, you will encourage a higher sales conversion rate. But when it comes to reducing costs, by investing in technology, you could save money in the long run.
Using integrated software and cloud-based storage, you could save on the day-to-day IT costs, whilst improving your digital position as a company.
6. Minimise risk
When running a business, there are plenty of risks your company will be faced with on a daily basis, whether that’s compliance with GDPR and tax, HR or general health and safety.
Digital processes can help with them all. Not only will your employees have 360 access to the right tools, but an enhanced CRM system, linked to your email provider, can add a layer of protection when it comes to GDPR, not to mention your own data security. An employee app could hold all the data in one place, so things like health and safety videos and forms, holiday requests, complaints and FAQs can all be easily accessed.
In this era of instant communication, multiple platforms for customer entry and remote working, any digital transformation of a business can reap huge awards, no matter what your business goals for 2022 might be.
Whilst for SME’s, the concept of changing processes might seem overwhelming, if you set goals, prioritise, and partner with someone who will be working with you, rather than for you, it may be easier, and more cost-effective than you might think.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your businesses processes and digital platforms shouldn’t be completely destroyed and rebuilt all at once. The important thing is to simply start, and then build scalable software solutions so that you can manage your time and budget to set a baseline which you can then build from. Digital transformation is never an overnight solution, but it is a manageable, agenda-based solution to many of your business challenges.
Here at Cariboo Digital, we build big business software for small budgets, helping SMEs to access enterprise level software without any intimidating jargon, sky-high costs or complex project plans.
If you think your business could benefit from digital transformation in 2022, give us a call and let’s start the journey together. https://www.cariboodigital.com/contact-us
Sources:
https://www.chatbot.com/blog/chatbot-statistics/
https://www.salesforce.com/blog/takes-6-8-touches-generate-viable-sales-lead-heres-why-gp/
