If you could automate all the things that kept you from doing the work that you loved most, you would, right? Us too.
We get it, running a small and medium-sized business (SMB) or startup can be demanding. Keeping up is tough — with customer expectations, managing sales, marketing, and day-to-day operations, it can feel like juggling balls of fire on a unicycle. But automation can be a game-changer and is no longer limited to enterprise. Entreprenuers everywhere are using automation to boost all parts of their business.
Here are some tools and tips that can help your business grow so you can get back to doing what you love, without a ton of money out of pocket.
What we’ll cover:
Why SMBs need automation
Automation is one of the basic requirements of modern businesses today. There are countless benefits derived from it. Overall, automation creates a smoother experience for your customers, keeping them coming back for more.
Save up to 15 hours a week
Automation saves time by simplifying repetitive tasks, especially the boring ones. In fact, we found that 78% of businesses use automation to reduce manual tasks. By reducing the burden of routine labor like tedious data entry, email responses, and report generation, business owners can focus on what’s more important for business — their customers.
Reduce overall costs by 30%
Automation reduces the need for physical labor. Which brings down operating costs of any type of business. By automating certain processes, human interference is less, which means lower workforce expenses and reduced costly mistakes. With fewer errors, companies save time and money by avoiding rework.
Become virtually error-free
AI and automation enhance precision and uniformity by cutting down on human errors. This reduces task variation, helps spot trends in data, and offers live corrections. Thanks to AI forecasting models, businesses can make informed decisions.
Level up your customer experience
Automation of service processes guarantees consistent and professional customer support. Build customer trust and loyalty with the same steady service, every time they interact with you. Businesses that use customer relationship management (CRM) have reported a 32% increase in customer satisfaction.
AI Tools for Small Business
Automate these areas of your small business today
Wondering where to start? Here are some specific functions for your business that can be enhanced by automation and artificial intelligence (AI):
Marketing automation
Email marketing: Sending manual emails is tiresome and time-consuming. With Starter Suite’s built-in marketing automation powered by Flow Builder, it’s easy to set up email journeys triggered by customer actions. AI steps in to help personalize these messages so they’re relevant, whether it’s a welcome email, abandoned cart reminder, or birthday celebration.
Social media management: Keep your followers engaged without constantly being on your phone. With the help of automation you can schedule posts, respond to comments, and track engagement. AI tools can even suggest the ideal posting times and highlight trending topics, ensuring your content remains relevant to your audience.
Lead generation: Let automation capture and qualify leads so you can skip the spreadsheet marathon. AI helps by assigning scores to leads based on their likelihood to convert, allowing you to jump straight into closing deals.
Sales automation
CRM integration: A centralized platform for all customer related information saves time and helps avoid searching through emails to recall who is who. Salesforce AppExchange offers a wide range of integrations that bring together all the tools needed in one place. AI takes this further by analyzing customer behaviors, allowing you to anticipate needs and provide personalized recommendations.
Sales pipeline management: Automation can help you manage your sales pipeline more effectively. With Salesforce’s built-in opportunity management, you can keep track of each lead’s journey, focus on the right deals, and know exactly when they’re ready to close.
Automated follow-ups: Let automation handle daily reminders while AI figures out the best times to reach your customers. Together, they ensure your messages go out at the right time with the right words, keeping your customers happy.
Just get started.
No matter where you are on your journey as a small business owner, you can get started with Starter Suite — the all-in-one AI CRM your SMB needs.
Customer service automation
Chatbots and virtual assistants: Chatbots are capable of answering frequently asked questions within seconds, or qualifying answers to get the customer to the right agent. Thanks to AI, these bots learn from customer interactions and provide better responses over time.
Ticket management: Manual processes often lead to confusion, but automation manages and prioritizes all incoming support tickets, ensuring no problem goes unnoticed. AI-powered sentiment analysis helps identify unhappy customers so responders can act quickly.
Automated follow-ups: Automated surveys gather useful data and insights and tells you exactly what people love or don’t. AI spots patterns, guiding improvements and highlighting potential new services customers may want.
Operations automation
Inventory management: Automate stock monitoring in order avoid the surprise of ‘out of stock’. Based on sales trends, AI provides demand predictions, helping you maintain optimal stock levels.
Project management: Automation keeps everyone on track with their tasks, while AI identifies potential roadblocks before they become issues. This lets you take suitable action before problems arise.
Employee onboarding: Onboarding new employees is made simple with automated checklists and training materials. AI creates tailored learning paths for new hires, ensuring they’re up to speed quickly.
Commerce automation
Sales management: Manage all your channels, including your website, social media, and commerce storefront from one platform. When an item is sold on your website, inventory automatically updates across all channels, so there’s no need to manually adjust stock levels.
Enhance customer experience: Provide a persoanlized shopping experience for your customers by leveraging automation. Based on pevious purchases, you can recommend products each customer is likely to enjoy. The seamless and responsive layout of your online store makes purchasing easy from any device.
Scale your commerce shop: As your business grows, you can integrate marketing, sales, or customer support without barriers. For example, if you launch a digital storefront, your orders and customer data will sync across your platform, keeping everything organized in one place.
Automation tools can be of great assistance to small enterprises to stay competitive in an already saturated market. These tools are designed to improve sales, customer service, and marketing, among other business processes. Here are some of the more popular tools, which can help keep your business run smoother.
Starter Suite is a customer relationship management tool that helps growing businesses manage interactions with customers. It automates lead capturing, follow-ups, and provides performance analytics, with built-in AI, Starter Suite offers insights that enhance lead scoring and offer actionable insights.
Hootsuite is a social media management tool that helps schedule and monitor posts across platforms. It automates post scheduling and utilizes AI-enhanced analytics to provide insights that improve content performance.
Trello is a visual project management tool that helps teams organize tasks using boards and cards. It includes automation features like Butler to streamline repetitive workflows and increase productivity.
QuickBooks is accounting software that automates financial tasks such as invoicing, expense tracking, and payroll. It also provides real-time financial insights, leveraging automation to keep businesses on top of their finances.
Writer.com is an AI writing assistant that helps create high-quality content. From blog posts to social media updates and marketing campaigns, it keeps the brand voice consistent and optimize content creation, all while maintaining quality
Wrike is a work management platform that allows teams to plan, collaborate, and track projects. With automation features, it assigns tasks and sends deadline reminders to help teams stay organized and efficient.
Kickstart your SMB with Starter Suite
Get started with CRM and see results from day one with Starter Suite — the all-in-one suite with the marketing, sales, service, and commerce tools you need to succeed.
Key AI trends shaping small business automation
AI is transforming the way small businesses operate, helping automate tasks, enhance customer interactions, and make informed decisions. According to our latest report, 89% of business leaders see AI strategy as critical when choosing a CRM, and a growing number of businesses are implementing AI-driven CRM features to stay competitive.
The Small and Medium Business Trends Report highlights key AI-driven automation trends for small businesses:
- AI in content creation: 30% of small businesses implement AI tools. For example, using ChatGPT for content creation can increase both productivity and output
- Customer service automation: Cost savings can be substantial, as AI chatbots can answer up to 80% of customer queries, reducing that expenditure by 50%.
- Targeted marketing: 74% of businesses state that they see elevated levels of interaction, with conversion rates up by 30% as a result of targeted advertising with the help of artificial intelligence.
- Operational efficiency: 56% of companies have implemented artificial intelligence for the optimizations of day-to-day operations and have reported a time reduction of about 30%.
- Sentiment analysis: 67% of businesses adopt artificial intelligence for active customer feedback, which facilitates decision-making processes.
With specialized tools like Agentforce, small-scale enterprises can automate and maintain closer ties with customers, which is key to scale in this market.
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Discover Agentforce
Agentforce provides always-on support to employees or customers. Learn how Agentforce can help your company today.
Step into the future with small business automation and AI
For small businesses, the importance of automation and AI isn’t limited to making work easier for employees. It improves the effectiveness of the entire business. Customers need to be kept engaged based on how competitive the market is. AI and automation can help businesses create unique customer experiences that stand out and are tough for competitors to match.
Automate your small business with Starter Suite by trying it out for free.
