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#73 How to Scale Your Ecommerce Quickly and Safely   

The top piece of advice you’ll hear from ecommerce experts is: know your tools. And, boy, there is a heck of a lot of them! Let’s talk about turning your business into an automated scaling machine.

Trevor Limis the CEO of Atomatic, an agency that synchronizes ecommerce tools to optimize efficiency and allow business owners to focus on what’s important: growth.

Tune in to hear Trevor and our podcast host and CEO Daniel Budai discuss systemizing your business, scaling your ecommerce, and:

✔️ Making Your Customer Support Team Your Sales Team

✔️ The 4 Levels of Company Autonomy

✔️ Tools to Manage Company Growth

✔️ Hiring Great Team Members

✔️ 3 Ways of Tackling Q4 While Managing Growth

Making Your Customer Support Team Your Sales Team 

Marketing is all very well and good, but if your ecommerce has bad customer support, your customers aren’t coming back. And they’re going to discourage others from doing the same.

So how do we create a customer support system?

Trevor says that many companies turn to scripts and create a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to do this. Scripts are fantastic - but Trevor advises against relying solely on strict scripts and SOP. This puts your company at risk of focusing more on the following SOP than actually resolving their customers’ problems.

Team members should not just be trained how to follow SOPs word for word, they need to know how to use them in the right way, equipped with the tools to address individual problems.

Take this a step further to train your customer service team in sales. A good customer experience is an ideal opportunity to upsell. When a problem or request is solved, train your customer service team to suggest complementary products or subscriptions.

The 4 Levels of Company Autonomy 

Before we dive into Trevor’s Autonomy principles, let’s talk about what company autonomy actually is.

Trevor defines company autonomy as a company’s ability to fully function without excessive input from management. That is, every single team member has the initiative to make the right decisions for their company’s growth.

Let’s dive in:

• Level 0: Zero Autonomy. Everything is done manually.
• Level 1: This is a step up from level 0. This is where a company begins making use of tools and software to help automate parts of its business.
• Level 2: Semi autonomous. When your team members are following a set of systems or SOPs to operate tools and software for basic processes.
• Level 3: Fully autonomous. Team members are able to respond to given situations quickly and efficiently using tools, software, and SOPs. They also have some understanding as to how their company will function differently in the future. 

Achieving autonomy, Trevor says, is ultimately about synchronising software and company systems to achieve optimal efficiency.

Tools to Manage Company Growth 

Trevor warns against over-automation. It’s easy to get so carried away with all these different company tools that you forget the most important thing about using them: synchronization.

Atomatic is all about getting everything smoothly running together in harmony.

So what ecommerce tools does Trevor recommend?

Start with a project management tool. This could be ClickUp, Trello, or Monday.com. Plotting your processes in line for your team members to see is crucial to running a business. Project management tools make it easy to see clearly which team member is doing what.

In terms of team communication - there’s no need to make this complicated. Slack and WhatsApp work perfectly well.

Trevor is a strong advocate for Gorgias - a customer service software designed purely for ecommerce. With Q4 quickly approaching, it’s good to think about automating some of those customer service replies the right way. Gorgias makes use of AI and machine learning to not only respond to queries in a relevant way, but even upsell in the process.

Klaviyo, of course, a Budai Media favorite, is a fantastic tool for email marketing.

Trevor’s top tip? Know your tools, and keep it simple.

Hiring Great Team Members 

If you’re thinking about hiring, both Trevor and Daniel recommend beginning the hiring process before Q4. This will allow for enough time for training before your business’s busiest season.

Do bear in mind that things will calm down in Q1 and make sure to hire people with a varied skill set. This means that they can continue to help your company grow beyond hard sales at the end of the year.

3 Ways to Tackle Q4 While Managing Company Growth 

1. If you’re a dropshipper, do as much product research as possible before Q4 officially begins. This is so you don’t waste precious time on product research during such a critical period for your business. This is a time for scaling ads, efforts, and handling the increased number of customers.
2. Look for partners. Look towards multiple suppliers in case communication breaks down or product fulfilment slows down. Have a few back up plans so that products reach your customers on time.
3. Automate Customer Service as much as possible. The less time your team members need to work on the customer service side of things, the faster problems will be resolved. Make sure that all your tools are verified and tested to minimize the possibility of technical issues. 

TL;DR: Know how to automate your ecommerce as much as possible. Keep it simple, and make sure you’re prepared for Q4!

Visit Atomatic or connect with Trevor on LinkedIn or Facebook to find out more about turning your ecom systems into a fully optimized scaling machine.

Follow Daniel Budai:

Daniel's LinkedIn

Daniel's Facebook

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