With more than 25 trillion in the retail market in 2020, e-commerce has been growing exponentially and by 2022, it is expected to make up about 20% of the worldwide retail market share.
Infrastructure servicing the e-commerce industry, such as e-commerce automation tools, will follow this growth pattern. This means that the companies that choose to invest some time, money, and effort into optimizing their business processes with the help of modern automation solutions will manage to stay competitive and continue making profits.
But which ones should you choose? There are so many options available on the market that it can be very hard to figure out how to choose them.
To help you make an informed decision, we’ve compiled a list of the top 5 e-commerce automation tools your team should be using right now.
1. Inventory Management Systems
When it comes to growing your e-commerce store, one of the main challenges is managing the inventory. As the order volume increases and you begin to expand into new markets and across new sales channels, trying to manage your operations manually will become almost impossible. Attempting to do so will most likely result in a human error, which could lead to a damaged reputation and cause significant revenue losses.
Using an inventory management system will help you minimize the risk of human error by automating your business processes. It will also allow you to synchronize your inventory and orders, making sure that stock levels are adjusted every time you make a sale. Finally, with access to inventory metrics and reporting features, inventory management software equips you with the tools needed to make strategic decisions. If you want to learn more about inventory management systems you might find this ApparelMagic guide really helpful.
2. Customer Service Software
In this day and age, if a business wants to succeed, it needs to treat its customer like a king. In 2017, nearly 65% of Americans contacted some form of customer service and more than 50% of people around the globe believe that companies need to take action on feedback provided by their customers.
Customer expectations are constantly growing, so delivering seamless and effortless customer service has to be a top priority. A study by Forrester found that more than 70% of businesses are already putting customer experience at the top of their lists.
However, in order to interact with your customers, it’s important to be able to understand their problems in a better way. That’s where customer service software comes in.
Customer service platforms help companies track customer queries and store all information related to customer service, which can be used to draw valuable business insights. In addition, repetitive and slow processes like routing, ticket sorting, routine reporting, queuing, and other administrative tasks become handy and self-operating. Finally, customer service software provides a clear picture of how your agents perform, making it easy to measure if your customer service is improving or getting worse.
3. Email Automation Software
Email is definitely one of the most popular communication channel and information exchange for modern consumers. This is because emails are very easy to create and send, but they also cost less than other traditional channels of communication like SMS.
When it comes to e-commerce, where the competition is fierce and brands are striving to attract more new customers, email marketing has proven itself to be a potent tool. With the number of emails sent and received daily expected to reach over 346 billion by 2023, email marketing will keep reigning supreme as the most affordable and efficient tactic to expand your customer base and boost your sales.
4. Social Media Management Automation
Social media is a dynamic and exciting environment with millions of prospective customers and a huge number of different markets. If you know how to harness the power of social media as the most abundant source of data, your e-commerce businesses can significantly benefit from running marketing campaigns on social media.
Social media automation can help your e-commerce business in a number of ways. It reduces the amount of effort it takes to engage with your customers, saving you tons of time. It also improves your organization and increases your online presence. Automation brings numerous benefits that enable you to plan your online activities in order to stay ahead of your competition.
5. Collaboration Tools
Communication between employers, managers, team members, and customers is crucial for the accomplishment of any operation.
Collaboration tools have a number of project tracking abilities that make it easy for the members to monitor the progress of a specific project from the very beginning. You can check future schedules to get an idea about the milestones and deadlines, making sure that everyone is on track. They also make it easier to access all the important documents, regardless of the physical location.
In addition, collaboration tools help you form closer and more profitable relationships with your customers. So long as your employees have an internet connection, they can work remotely from any location in the world in an organized way.
Final Words
For busy professionals in the e-commerce sector, there’s just not enough time in the day to finish everything. Luckily, automation tools can make your life easier by handling the necessary but daunting tasks that take up so much time. If you want to work smarter but find yourself overwhelmed by all the options available on the market, then start with these five automation tools, and go from there.
