Market commentators are fond of their buzzwords, and none has been more popular in recent years than the GREAT RESIGNATION. So-called, because workers have been abandoning their jobs in the highest numbers since the Great Suffragette Movement of the early 1900s.
Power to the people is good, but how can small businesses buck the trend and keep their people happy and engaged? How can they find good people to fill the rapidly rising vacancies, especially in a period of super-low unemployment?
With existing technology or E-Commerce 2.0 as it is often called, small business is wasting the time of their people and their customers. In frustrating back and forth looking for the right data to serve customers. It costs money and eventually will cost you good talent as people leave in search of less frustrating and more rewarding roles.
But there is a second benefit and that is efficiency and effectiveness. With E-Commerce 3.0 you’ll be able to deploy your people to more valuable customer facing roles and let technology and integrated systems shoulder a lot more of the load.
Data is easier to find, you own it, and you can therefore service customers more easily and even forecast their needs ahead of time. All whilst your team finds it much easier to answer queries, handle orders, and deliver.
An E-Commerce 3.0 solution is one that integrates all the elements of e-commerce and CRM together in a seamless and single source of truth.
The last thing a small business owner wants to do is roll out a tech solution that then requires them to pay people to get one computer to talk to another. This is the main criticism of old-school, e-comm 2.0 systems – they don’t integrate and in fact can often override or seek to correct each other’s data, resulting in confusion and wasted time trying to get true data.
E-Commerce 3.0 systems are integrated:
- there is a single source of truth as all data sits in the same platform with website, POS and e-commerce all integrated
- employees will spend less time finding data
- follow up messages or order updates can be automated saving valuable employee time
- surveys can be automated
- customers can be categorized and can get products at their ‘price’ without having to speak to a staff member
- customers will get better service as the small business will have the latest information at hand
- all parts of the business from sales to operations to customer service to delivery will all be working from the same songbook on a customer
E-Commerce 3.0 solutions are also a smart move for anyone investing in a business because they will improve profit and short and long-term returns as well as make a business more valuable to any purchaser.
Being a customer of an E-Commerce 3.0 business is a vastly more positive experience and the customer will see better more accurate and faster service. Doing business will be easier and this will attract customers to do more business with that organization. It is a positive reinforcement cycle.
Of course, most of the above discussion is about the business and its current customers, but let’s also make mention that all this data and the availability of bulk email and mail merge systems allows onboarding and marketing to new customers and prospects simple, targeted, and powerful.
In summary, E-Commerce 3.0 offers value to small businesses in streamlining systems, but it also offers a great solution to closing any organizational gaps in terms of employees by increasing the productivity per employee and the time spent on needless administrative work.
This can lead to increased employee retention as they find more value in their daily work, and the value of the small business will boom when that silver lining is found.
Author’s Bio
Mikel Lindsaar, CEO and founder of StoreConnect, is an experienced technology entrepreneur whose mission is to infuse small and medium-sized businesses with the power to be successful in eCommerce 3.0 and scale to meet growing demand. Small businesses can’t waste time setting up their business on a platform only to repeat the process by changing platforms when they want to scale, nor do they want to waste time figuring out how to integrate multiple platforms. StoreConnect (built on the World’s Number 1 CRM, Salesforce) gives clients a complete, powerful, configurable eCommerce and CRM solution where they can manage their website, online and in-store sales, provide amazing customer service, run all their digital marketing campaigns, and have up-to-date detailed metrics, reporting and full understanding of their customer. They were awarded Salesforce’s 2021 International Partner Innovation Award of the year for the Retail sector and are changing the ease with which small businesses are run ─ with a manageable price tag. StoreConnect is Time. Well spent.
Visit getStoreConnect.com.
