Your Website Should Run Without You

If your website and mobile app are doing their job, they should run on their own. As an entrepreneur or business owner, your goal should be to get your digital platforms to the point where you are primarily monitoring the activity. There may be certain tasks you want to carry out personally, but everything else should be automated.

Here are three ways to automate your digital presence effectively and efficiently.

• Predict the questions. Ideally your platform design and copy will make things crystal clear for the user. However, there will be some users who still have questions about the process or who will need assistance. You can save yourself time and energy by preempting these questions and requests before they escalate. For example, a “How-To” or “FAQ” section of your website will go a long way in addressing common concerns. Provide users with everything they need and make it easy for them to get their questions answered. Not only will this save you and your team time, but it can also make your users feel that your company cares about them and their experience with your platform.
• Create customer service scripts. If an FAQ or ready-made response doesn’t address a customer’s concerns and they feel the need to personally reach out to your team, develop scripts and protocol ahead of time so you can work through each issue in the most efficient way. It is a good idea to track your customer service data so that you know the common sticking points and can see which methods work best for resolution. This will help you refine your scripts over time to make them even more effective.
• Automate communication. If you invest some time and energy into making customer communication as automated as possible now, you will thank yourself later. From invoicing to billing to updates and announcements, everything can and should be automated. Your customers should be receiving regular communications from your company to keep them engaging with your brand. These communications could be in the form of newsletters, member emails, blog posts, social media posts, text messages or other formats.