How mobile apps can streamline your business

‘Efficiency’ is a central buzzword in business today, with companies of all sizes continually improving and streamlining their working practices.

Do less to achieve more

In a world where we’re all being encouraged to keep things simple, we’re still in a pretty complicated place. To achieve the most streamlined of practices in your business, both in sales and customer care, you need to focus on simplicity, and which areas are costing you time or money, or both.

But simplicity doesn’t have to mean basic - just quicker and easier. If you can simplify or speed up any processes, essentially allowing your business to do less, but achieve more, you can save time, benefitting staff productivity, and money to increase your bottom line.

Digital sales

Whether you have a sales team visiting individuals or businesses five days a week or not, your mobile app can be a massive selling tool. With your digital sales collateral capable of reaching thousands of people every single day, you should be tapping into this resource as soon as you can.

Company brochures, instruction manuals, warranties, guarantees, they can all be digitised and incorporated into your app. Collectively, they’ll give your customer everything they need, whenever they need it right at their fingertips, however far along the sales path they are.

Sign-up forms, whether for information or mailing lists, and order forms can all be digitised and linked to your internal systems. Your admin or customer service teams could be saving hours in data entry, with reductions in human error and deciphering illegible handwriting.

Though you may not totally eliminate all your company printed material, a mobile app will certainly bring significant savings in physical print-buying. And it will make it far quicker and easier to correct or update any information in your digital files, saving you from expensive reprints.

Making your sales material digital will tick many boxes for today’s digitally-fuelled customers, whatever business you’re in. So reaching a whole new audience with a digital sales tool doing much of the work for you, can only give you the advantage.

But beyond using your app as a selling tool to engage new customers, you can also focus on existing customer retention, making their lives easier as well as yours.

Digital self-service

There’s been a definite shift in the way customers communicate with their favourite brands and service providers in recent years - digital tech has seen to that. The internet changed customers expectations of what ‘customer service’ means to them, and what it should be: nowadays it means 24/7/365 real-time support on their terms.  Difficult to achieve, but not unobtainable.

While telephone customer service is long established, web-based services have made it much easier for the end-user to deal with issues themselves.  Now they don't always have to navigate a multi-tiered phone system.  These days, tech is courting the advances of the mobile business app to deliver an all-round more convenient, engaging, and easier customer experience.

According to US tech analysts, Gartner, by 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationship with a company without interacting with a human[1]. A bold statement. So what can your mobile app experience offer your customers?

Let’s imagine you’re a team of solicitors managing the legal process of a house purchase on behalf of your client. A stressful time for them, and a busy time for you, as you field numerous phone calls asking for updates on progress - from surveys to contracts and completion dates.

Now imagine a reduction in phone calls that you and your team make and receive.  Imagine being able to update your client through a mobile app whenever there’s a status change. Rather than numerous calls, which could be missed or go to voicemail, app messages can go to and from the team whenever they’re ready, saving time and disruption, and making the client feel informed and in control of the process.

It all adds up to giving customers the service they need and expect from you to drive high levels of engagement and re-engagement. And of course it will improve your staff productivity, while easing pressure on well known customer service bottlenecks.

Getting your business processes enhanced and streamlined through an app can give you the opportunity to reach a whole new level of customer care and digital marketing. And we’re here to help you get there.

Get in touch with us today on 01752 395 404 or contact us to get started. And you can find out more about how your app can help you generate revenue, or market your business effectively.

Next up in this series, read our blog on "How mobile apps can make you money".

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[1]https://www.gartner.com/imagesrv/summits/docs/na/customer-360/C360_2011_brochure_FINAL.pdf