In the bustling world of ecommerce and retail, automation tools are emerging as crucial game-changers. They’re helping brands streamline their processes, reduce manual workload, and ultimately increase efficiency. Indeed, the scale of their impact is reflected in recent data.
Businesses have offloaded 1.1 billion workflows onto automated platforms to save over a thousand years’ worth of time. These workflows represent a myriad of processes previously operated manually — a testament to the power of automation.
Unsurprisingly, businesses across the board are rapidly elevating their processes with these tools to stay ahead in the market. For instance, the retail automation market reached a staggering value of 12.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2021, reflecting the high demand and the immense benefits these technologies provide.
It’s evident that automation tools are not just optional extras but necessary assets for thriving in the competitive ecommerce and retail sectors.
In this article, we’ll be delving into the top must-have automation tools for ecommerce and retail business owners such as recurring billing systems and customer complaint-handling software, that will revolutionise your workflows and get you ahead of the competition.
1. Recurring Billing Software
A major challenge faced by many ecommerce and retail businesses is managing recurring billing.
In the absence of efficient management systems, businesses often grapple with inaccurate billing, delayed payments, and poor cash flow. Such mishaps can lead to frustrated customers, revenue losses, and a tainted brand reputation — consequences no business can afford.
Picture this: You run an online business, selling a subscription service for an enterprise-grade educational software. One of the common troubles is keeping tabs on when customers’ credit cards are about to expire. If a subscription stops because a payment fails, it can annoy customers and even lose their trust.
Recurring billing software, such as DealHub, Zoho Invoice, or ChargeOver, helps solve this problem. It sends reminders to customers about soon-to-expire cards, so they can update their details. This means subscriptions keep rolling without a hitch and customers stay happy.
2. Inventory management software
Keeping track of inventory can be a real headache for ecommerce and retail business owners.
From mismanaged stock levels to problems with fulfilment, these challenges can disrupt your operations and lead to unhappy customers. An inventory management software can prove to be a lifesaver, providing real-time stock updates, managing reorder levels, and avoiding overselling.
Imagine you’re an ecommerce retailer who sells handmade crafts. If your popular items suddenly run out of stock, it could disappoint your customers and potentially harm your reputation.
With a tool like Fishbowl Inventory, Katana, or Trunk, you can have an accurate view of your inventory levels at all times. This means you can reorder in time and keep your stock levels optimal, ensuring that you never disappoint your customers.
3. Local SEO and PPC management tool
Local SEO and PPC (Pay-Per-Click) are essential strategies for increasing the visibility of your ecommerce or retail business online. While local SEO focuses on improving your website’s organic search ranking in specific locations, PPC helps attract customers through paid online ads. These strategies can significantly boost your traffic, sales, and overall growth.
As your business grows, keeping track of keyword rankings, ad performances, competition, and the ever-changing landscape of search engine algorithms can be a formidable challenge. Local SEO and PPC management tools can prove instrumental here.
These solutions simplify the task by automating the monitoring and analysis of keyword rankings and ad performance, allowing for more efficient optimisation of your marketing campaigns.
Consider an ecommerce clothing brand trying to rank for ‘women’s dresses in London’. A tool like Moz Pro, Semrush, or Ahrefs could automate keyword tracking, providing insight into how well they’re ranking for that term and what they can do to improve.
Similarly, for a local retail store using PPC to promote a sale, these tools can automate ad performance tracking, helping to identify which ads are driving traffic and sales, and which may need to be tweaked.
The insights offered by these tools can help businesses make informed decisions, optimise their campaigns, and ultimately drive better results.
4. B2C marketing automation platform
Engaging with customers in the modern era of ecommerce and retail can be a complex task. The need for personalised messaging, consistent omnichannel presence, and timely communication are among the challenges that can often overwhelm a marketing team.
Let’s consider an ecommerce clothing store which needs to send personalised emails to customers based on their shopping behaviour. A B2C marketing automation platform can segment customers based on their purchase history, browsing behaviour, and demographic data.
It can then automate sending tailored email campaigns that promote products that each segment is likely to be interested in.
In a retail setting, imagine a supermarket that wants to reach customers across multiple channels. A marketing automation tool can coordinate promotional efforts across email, social media, and mobile apps, ensuring a seamless and consistent message is delivered to the customers.
By taking advantage of tools like SocialPilot, ActiveCampaign, or Sendinblue, businesses can automate these tasks, improve customer engagement, and ultimately, enhance their overall marketing efficiency.
5. Customer complaints management
Fast and satisfactory resolution of customer complaints is fundamental to the success of ecommerce and retail businesses. Effective complaint management reduces churn, builds customer trust, and fosters loyalty.
However, as the business grows and the customer base expands, manually handling a high volume of customer queries can become a substantial challenge.
Consider a retail business, like a department store, that might receive customer complaints across various channels — in-store, phone calls, emails, and social media. A comprehensive customer complaints management tool can collate all these complaints into a single dashboard, enabling a streamlined response system and ensuring consistent service across all platforms.
By integrating tools such as SalesBabu, Zendesk, or LiveAgent, businesses can streamline their complaints handling process, ensuring quick and satisfactory resolutions, thereby enhancing their customer service reputation.
Wrapping up
Ecommerce and retail businesses need to automate various processes of their workflow to get ahead of the curve while delivering great experiences to their customers. To encapsulate:
- Recurring Billing Software: Keeps your finances in check by managing recurring payments efficiently, ensuring customer satisfaction and steady revenue.
- Inventory Management Software: Streamlines your inventory tracking, avoids overselling, and ensures your popular items are always available for customers.
- Local SEO and PPC Management Tool: Boosts your online presence by optimising your search rankings and ad performance, ultimately driving increased traffic and sales.
- B2C Marketing Automation Platform: Enhances customer engagement by enabling personalised communication across various channels, improving your overall marketing efficiency.
- Customer Complaints Management System: Ensures prompt and effective resolution of customer complaints, building customer trust and loyalty, and enhancing your reputation.
These automation tools aren’t just trendy add-ons; they’re powerful allies that can reduce your workload, streamline operations, and drive your business to new heights of success.
