Business Automations – These Are Tasks You Don’t Want To Automate (Too Much)

Another Conversion Fanatics post, which you can check out here, talks about some of the top ways business automations can help your business in terms of increasing efficiency and staying organized.

And while, generally speaking, business automation does more good than harm, it is possible to automate too much. And that’s something you need to be mindful of.

So, in this post, you’ll learn several ways you can overdo business automation and actually hurt your relationship with your customers along with your bottom line.

Here Are The Top Ways Business Automation Can Hurt Your Business

Customer Service Lacks A Personal Touch

It can be useful to send automated customer service replies during non-business hours or as an initial response to let people know you’ll get back to them as soon as possible.

However, if you automate too much of your customer service, your customers feel as though you’ve swapped out human interaction in favor of robots, which definitely won’t earn you any approval points.

customer service robots

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You may get away with directing people to an FAQ some of the time. But you need to make sure your customer service also has a ready supply of the human touch (via live chat, email, or phone support) so customers can get personalized responses and feel like you really care.

Your Social Media Presence Is Less Engaging

Social media management tools like BufferApp, Hootsuite, and MeetEdgar can make your life a lot easier by enabling you to schedule your social media content in advance across multiple platforms.

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The concern, however, comes from relying on these services too much or exclusively. Because if you’re only posting drip-fed content to your social media accounts, you may come across as inauthentic. People want to see you engaging in real-time, forming connections.

People also want to see you post a variety of content. So you don’t want to have a one-sided social media presence. (Meaning, you share only your own blog posts or information about your business.)

Social media should be about interacting and creating dialogue. So, in addition to your drop-feed content, you need to reach out to your fans and followers and share other people’s content in addition to your own.

Your Finances Are Left Unchecked

You have a lot of tools at your disposal that can automate and simplify your financial management and bookkeeping processes. And while these tools can save you time and reduce the hassle of having to pay bills and process orders by hand, mistakes can and do occur—for example, by way of late or missed payments.

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So if you choose to automate any of your bookkeeping processes, don’t take a “set it and forget it” approach. Check in regularly to make sure everything is up to snuff.

And Lastly, The Overall Expense Of Automation

Using automation software can get pricey. And in some cases, the investment may not be worth it.

“Make sure to estimate the time/cost savings that automating a process will give and compare [that] to the time/cost it will take to actually automate that process,” says Matthew Kolb. And “make sure to prioritize automating the processes that will save the most time and have the biggest ROI.”

Your automation decisions should be data-based and address your business’ biggest workflow concerns. Automate processes from a problem-solving point of view and with a clear goal in mind.

What do you think? What tasks do you automate in your business? Has business automation been more helpful or hurtful? We love getting feedback from you. Please share your thoughts!