Melanie
The Monday Morning Marketing podcast is brought to you by Esther of IPA Group, bringing premier online promotion to your business.
Esther
And Melanie of STOMP Social Media Training, who empowers business owners to manage social media and marketing for themselves. And welcome back to another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing podcast. Today we're talking about automated responses, pros and cons.
Melanie
Now we will always advocate for ways on giving you your time back.
Esther
Love it.
Melanie
Being responsive, being accurate.
Esther
Using new technologies.
Melanie
Absolutely embracing new technologies because there's an awful lot of people out there that are using these tools, and that's why there's so many, because they appeal to different people at different times. But we have to be remaining objective for the podcast.
Esther
Yeah. With everything, with all new technologies and not so new technologies, there are pros and cons to using it, and pros and cons to using it for your business. I am a huge advocate for automations make life easier. They free up so much of your time. That would be one of the first things that I would say, obviously, once you get it set up, takes a long time to set up. But once you get it set up, then it can free up the monotonous replies of, Thank you for your message. How can we help you today. Thank you for your message. How can we help you today? So that's a big one.
Melanie
I mean, there are automations in lots of different formats as well these days. I mean, you would be the queen email marketing person. So you set up the funnels for email marketing. So when people sign up on a website or they download something, then they get this.
Esther
They get it, thank you for downloading. And that's an automated response. One of the main ones, though, that I think everybody would need or appreciate when they're running a business for an automated response is your out-of-office response. Somebody sends you an email and you're off on holiday, you don't want them thinking that you're ghosting them, that you're not answering them. You want them to know that there's a reason why you're not answering. So the automated response of, Thank you for your email, and currently on holiday, I'll get back to you after I'm back in the office on whatever date. That is one that everyone should have.
Melanie
That's basic. I mean, that's something that a lot of people can do, but just don't think too. But that wouldn't be suitable for everybody because I can't see many soul traders, especially service providers.
Esther
Going on holiday? No, we don't.
Melanie
Especially that, yeah. But they'd like to be responsive because they've got a competition. But there's all sorts of different ways. There's Zendesk. Zendesk is a fabulous tool, but they have built-in automations. Although they have a team of people, normally you have your staff round the clock on it because it's a European or international business. So you could have round the clock support on Zendesk. But there's still automations on it, because if you send a message to somebody and they've got Zendesk, then it will say an operator has been notified and we'll get back to you as soon as one is available. You've got phone automations as well, the same thing. There's all sorts of weird and wonderful automations that we can add and that have its place. But as you say, it can take an awful lot of time, and some of them take a huge amount of budget. And especially for the smaller start-up businesses, as much as they'd love to use these, that's quite an initial outlay.
Esther
Oh, yeah.
Melanie
And because it takes a while for it to even get started, that can be quite an off putting thing. So as a con, I would say, as great as it is, there's an initial outlay of time and money that not everybody has.
Esther
No, but on the money one there, there are some platforms that give it to you for free. So Facebook give you free option of adding in an automated response because there was a time, I think they've done away with it now, where they would praise you or give you extra stars for your fast responses.
Melanie
Oh yeah, 10 minutes.
Esther
People thought like, if you're running a business on the East Coast of America and somebody contacts you from the West Coast, but you've already left the office, gone home, gone to sleep, you would have lost that, congratulations, you are a fast responder, just because you were four or five hours ahead of them. Us here in Europe, we're about eight hours ahead of the West Coast of America. So people started setting up automations there to not lose their fast response.
Melanie
But the downside to that is... I used to achieve that fast response all the time and it would look good. So when people would come to the Facebook page, it would say this page responds quickly, and that would be like, kudos. But now they've done away with that particular icon, if you like. And now you've got automated responses. So you can put out questions. So can you show me the menu? What are your opening hours? Or anything else? Those are suggestions, but you can actually create your own ones as well. But when you use the automated responses through Messenger, if you're monitoring it like I would be in the past, then the automated response would go immediately out and the notification would disappear.
Esther
Yes, you wouldn't know unless you went into Messenger.
Melanie
So unless you physically checked on a regular basis, either Metabusiness Suite, which was actually wasn't there when it first started or Creator Studio, or go into the actual Messenger itself, you would never know.
Esther
Yeah.
Melanie
And so when I took over social media accounts, when I was managing, I'd switch the automation off. So at least when I opened up my phone or I'd hear a ding or phone vibrate, whatever, I would know.
Esther
Yeah.
Melanie
So I know it's a lovely idea, but if you want somebody to be monitoring that because you've asked a question and you can't just auto respond with a sentence, then you've lost them straight away.
Esther
Yes, you can, because not all the auto responses are asking them for more information. There's a few that I've seen that just, Thank you for your message. We'll be back to you as soon as we can. That doesn't give me a chance to continue the process. I quite like going into, say, as much as we complain as well, the banking app that I use, and it starts off with automated questions just so they can streamline you into the section that they want you to. So if you have an issue with your credit card or your debit card, you choose one of those, and then it knows which agent needs to respond to you or how that agent needs to respond to you. If they're starting off on a blank with have just, Thank you for your message, we'll be back, we'll be with you as soon as possible, then it takes that human person longer to get to the issue that you have. So if I want to go and study a masters in a university, I want to be able to go on and click the different options that I want and see some general information about it before someone phones me. Because if they phone me and go, so what is exactly that you would like to be interested in? What course are you thinking of? Then they're not the person or not the department. Then they have to, oh, well, hold on a minute and I'll transfer you to that department. They know better. You're wasting my time. So you have to think about your clients' time when you're setting up these automations. How can you...
Melanie
It's a customer journey, basically.
Esther
It is. It's the customer journey, but it's also helping you on the far end, on the opposite end, go right. They've already taught me that they need a new website, they want it as a brochure website. They don't need it to include a blog. They don't need it to have e-commerce. That's an easier conversation to have. Could I sell them to a different type of website? Once I talk to them? Possibly. But at least I know in the start, they're looking for a website or they're looking for social media or they're looking for graphic design. If I just get a phone call saying, What do you do? I'm going, How long do you have? Because the list of services that you provide could be super long and you'll lose them after the first four. But if you know what they're looking for, you can streamline your speech, your sales talk into what they need.
Melanie
And that's if you can put the set up the automation actively.
Esther
Yeah.
Melanie
So the other con I can see when it comes to automations is the accessibility issues. They're not great.
Esther
They're not.
Melanie
Although there are some that provide them, they're not across the board on every platform. They don't all do speech to text. There are some people who need to see sign language, actual hands move, and virtually no one does that. So they'll need an interpreter with them. Most of them, if they do do speech-to-text, don't allow for hearing loops. So there's accessibility when it comes to automations, aren't great.
Esther
No, but as a society, all accessibility issues are slowly being looked at. So I would say even as a society here in Ireland, UK, there are still a long way to go even in the infrastructure you see in the streets, in the towns and cities. We still, as people, have a long way to go to make those fully accessible. So the online world has a little bit of more catching up to do because it's younger. Some cities are hundreds or thousands of years old, and they need to make adjustments. So a website that's, or the internet that's, what, 30, 40 years old, it needs to catch up. It needs to have time to get to that point too. It'll probably happen faster online than it will in real life.
Melanie
Most definitely. So what have we come at the end of this? What has been the conclusion about automation, pros and cons? We've established that it is fast-moving, that there are people out there that are providing solutions, but they're just not quite there yet. That sometimes the solution creates a problem.
Esther
Yes, the customer. Always put the customer first on the journey because you can win or lose someone based on your automation. Because I have a love-hate relationship with automation. Some are fabulous, some are wonderful. They get me the information I need without even needing to speak to a human. Others are severely lacking and don't have even the flexibility to ask it a different question or to put in a different information because you'll just get the same, Thank you for your message, we'll reply as soon as we can. That needs to change.
Melanie
What I'd like to ask our listeners is we would love to hear your thoughts on the pros and cons of automations. We'd like to hear what you think works and what doesn't work. And maybe this discussion will help you actually think of an area where you could actually work to change things, to improve things, to speed things up. We never know we could have made a millionaire out of this podcast.
Esther
Could have. Just remember, like automation is great, but it doesn't take away the whole human interaction from the process. Humans will always be needed in-.
Melanie
Well, in automations.
Esther
In automations?
Melanie
Yes.
Esther
In every aspect of life, just making that clear. But you need to be hands on getting it set up and hands on making sure that it still works because there can be glitches in automations too, even when they've been running smoothly for weeks or months or years.
Melanie
And even when Esther run them.
Esther
Exactly. Because they're set up by humans and humans make mistakes. That's it for today, guys. Thanks again for listening. We'll be back next week with more Monday Morning Marketing. Until then, goodbye.
Melanie
Goodbye, guys. And we really do hope we hear from you soon. Just message the podcast.
