The past few years have seen exponential growth of eCommerce businesses. More people are now buying products online compared to visiting physical stores. With this growth, eCommerce operations can get complicated and messy for business owners.

If you asked an eCommerce store owner, they would tell you that an increase in customers means that they get repetitive and complex demands. This can lead to them getting overwhelmed as more orders are placed.

Fortunately, technology has come to their rescue. With the right technological tools and automation, eCommerce store owners can streamline their operations even as their businesses grow. 

Here are a few ways technology can help automate online stores and eCommerce businesses;

Customer Segmentation

Technology plays an important role when it comes to segmenting customers and helping eCommerce store owners serve them with the right messages. This helps when tailoring messages to match the different needs of their customers.

eCommerce business owners can group their customers automatically depending on attributes such as money spent on products, their location, or even the products they purchase.

With such segmentation, automated actions can be implemented. This might include things like customer retention strategies and cross-merchandise marketing. You can use CRM systems such as Salesforce and Zendesk.

Automatic Inventory Management in Real Time

One of the most important things for eCommerce business owners who value efficiency is an automatic inventory management system. Spark Shipping provides eCommerce business owners with automated software that they can plug into their stores to monitor stock levels.

This is important in saving time since store owners will not have to manually update their inventory numbers on spreadsheets. In addition, product counts are updated in real time when products are sold or new stock is added.

Automatic inventory management helps in eliminating human error. No matter the number of transactions that are done every day, your inventory is automatically updated. This would be difficult if handled manually.

Customer Support

Customer support can make or break your eCommerce business. Take, for instance, a situation where you cannot reach the customer support of a store where you want to buy a certain product. Chances are that you will look for other stores.

eCommerce businesses can automate their customer service using tools such as ChannelReply, Zendesk, and eDesk, among others. These tools manage customer queries automatically by suggesting responses to the customers.

You can also use automated chatbot tools or hire Python developers for a custom chatbot creation to streamline your customer support. These tools allow you to customize responses to commonly asked questions. They then respond to your customers and only engage a customer support agent when the need arises.

Order Management

Order management is one of the most important parts and can dictate the success of an eCommerce business. It can be defined as the process through which orders placed by customers are tracked from the time they are placed to the time they are delivered.

This process overlaps other processes such as customer service and project management, among others. eCommerce business owners can automate this process depending on the kind of products that they sell.

With the right management software, eCommerce businesses can add shipping labels to all products to track where each product in transit is. They can also reach out to customers notifying them about new products or abandoned carts.

Security

The past few years have seen an increase in ransomware attacks. As technology advances and new security measures are implemented, cybercriminals are also advancing and coming up with new ways to gain access to eCommerce businesses.

One of the main reasons why eCommerce businesses are a hot target is the fact that they store very sensitive data. For instance, an eCommerce store might have your credit card details and personal information including name and residential address.

Fortunately, eCommerce business owners can use tools such as Riskified and SEON that automatically detect malicious logins to their eCommerce sites. They then send messages automatically to the business owners notifying them about the logins so they can take action.

Accounting

This is a sensitive part of every business. Whether running an online or physical business, you need to make sure that your accounting books meet set regulations. Fortunately, eCommerce business owners can automate their accounting, reconciliation, and invoicing.

This can be done through tools such as Quickbooks Online or Xero that can be connected directly to an eCommerce store. Apart from tracking sales and purchases, these tools can also be connected to shipping and inventory to automatically track all expenses.

Technology is playing a crucial role in streamlining the operations of online stores and eCommerce businesses. As you can see above, you can automate different processes in an eCommerce business.