Why Are Revenue-Driven Organizations Embracing the Augmented Workforce in Uncertain Times?
Why Are Revenue-Driven Organizations Embracing the Augmented Workforce in Uncertain Times?
It is unnecessary to point out that things have changed. Right now, you’re experiencing it. Many businesses are being compelled to cut all discretionary expenditure, indefinitely freeze recruiting, demonstrate a great return on investment from decreased marketing budgets, and decide how to best target critical and non-critical industries. That’s a lot of weight on your shoulders.
While COVID-19 and the resulting economic slowdown are unfavorable features of the current scenario, another transformation in the workplace is providing additional prospects for growth, improved visibility into the B2B buying process, and assuring better customer experience throughout the purchase cycle. This shift is being characterized by the entry of intelligent automation into the workplace, which we call the Augmented Workforce.
Rashmi Vittal (CMO at SimpSocial) and Jessie Johnson (principal analyst at SiriusDecisions) explored the influence artificial intelligence (AI) is having on the B2B selling process, as well as how AI is supporting revenue-generating teams compelled to accomplish more with less during our Why Revenue-Obsessed Teams Embrace the Augmented Workforce webinar. The following are a few key insights from that discussion.
The Business-to-Business (B2B) Selling Experience
Both B2B buyers and sellers have their own set of expectations. However, for these two groups to effectively relate to one another, it’s better if their expectations are in line. Fortunately, technological advancements are assisting B2B sellers in meeting buyer expectations and speeding up the customer acquisition process.
For example, instead of targeting individual leads, vendors are opting for a more holistic strategy of targeting buying groups. After all, rather than an individual, your business solutions will most likely be employed by a team within a corporation. AI advances enable sellers to put together digital body language (such as downloading an eBook, attending a webinar, or requesting a trial) from several prospects inside the same organization, allowing them to target them more effectively.
The prospect-to-conversion pathway is admittedly not as simple as vendors would like it to be. Yes, the milestones and destinations are the identical, but each member of the buying group may engage in slightly different activities. Prospects’ interest levels fluctuate throughout their lives, thus having a solution that understands these signals is essential. Smarter automation powered by AI and machine learning allows businesses to eliminate blind spots regarding their customers and have a better picture of who is involved in the buying process.
Increased visibility and adaptability are just a few of the advantages AI provides to B2B sellers. Let’s look at how artificial intelligence can help revenue-generating teams.
Workforce Augmentation
Marketers are being forced to respond, remix, and re-plan in order to rebound and recover from the current position. In this recuperation phase, an Augmented Workforce can be extremely helpful. But, first and foremost, what is an Augmented Workforce?
A workplace where business experts collaborate with artificial intelligence to improve business outcomes is referred to as an Augmented Workforce. An Intelligent Virtual Assistant is one such AI-driven solution that is transforming customer-facing departments such as Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success (IVA).
Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) are the next generation of intelligent automation, allowing businesses to scale human interactions in order to attract, acquire, and retain clients. Many redundant, repeating jobs that people don’t want to do or don’t do well are automated by IVAs, such as following up with each and every lead in a human-like manner to see whether they’re interested in setting up a meeting with your Sales team. This action takes a long time, which is why you should delegate it to an IVA so that your salespeople can focus on developing trusting relationships, serving as strategic partners to their clients, and finally closing deals.
What are your strategies for utilizing intelligent virtual assistants?
As leaders in marketing, sales, and customer success assess the current circumstances, they will be forced to make difficult decisions that will impact the near and long term. The fact of these unpredictable times is that we will eventually settle into a new normal—and if you want to survive today, revive tomorrow, and prosper into the future, it is better to prepare for a new normal on your own terms with an Augmented Workforce driven by Intelligent Virtual Assistants.
The capacity to promote top-line growth (71 percent), create better customer experiences (58 percent), and boost employee job satisfaction are the top benefits company executives identify with Intelligent Virtual Assistants, according to original study on the Augmented Workforce (50 percent). IVAs have applications in Customer Service, Marketing, Sales, HR, and Finance because highly scalable human-like interactions are useful to customer-facing employees. The capacity to provide full coverage over the customer lifecycle is the fundamental benefit of an IVA.
Intelligent Virtual Assistants help businesses get the most out of every dollar spent on marketing and sales campaigns. Here are several examples:
Increasing the effectiveness of digital initiatives, such as virtual event engagement and follow-up
Resurrecting dormant leads and ensuring no stone is left unturned are examples of good housekeeping.
Also, by sympathetic outreach and presenting critical information at scale, you can keep your existing customer base.
Here are a few examples of how IVAs are now being used to assist revenue-generating teams in putting their best foot forward while interacting with clients or identifying hot prospects.
Making the Most of Your Digital Investments
Marketers are reconsidering their strategies for engaging virtual event participants. Marketers’ most expensive investments, events and tradeshows, have vanished. Instead, marketing departments are investing in virtual events by holding their own or sponsoring third-party events. While virtual gatherings are less expensive than in-person conferences, they are still an investment that needs to be maximized.
Only 69 percent of companies have structured lead follow-up processes in place, which is surprising. Organizations must swiftly follow up with each registration and attendance after an event to make the most of every dollar spent. According to our findings, organizations have a 21-fold higher likelihood of qualifying a lead if they are called within 30 minutes of an event. Those few moments are critical.
Fortunately, IVAs may be utilized both before and after an event to increase engagement and drive contacts to take the next best action (such as registering for the event or scheduling a call with a Salesperson after the event to learn more).
Raising the profile of handraisers among digitally sourced leads: Marketers are increasingly focusing on content syndication, PPC advertising, and other digital programs and campaigns to generate leads. These leads have a reduced conversion rate in some cases. How can marketers ensure that leads acquired through digital channels are handled properly?
By providing 100% lead coverage, Intelligent Virtual Assistants alleviate concerns regarding lead quality. Prospects who are interested in speaking with Sales are routed to your BDR or Inside Sales team right away. If a prospect is unresponsive or simply not ready for a Sales encounter, the IVA understands such signals and takes appropriate action, such as persistent follow-up or lead nurturing.
Housekeeping is important.
Identifying potential in dormant or disqualified leads: Many firms are currently experiencing a period of stagnation. For better or worse, now is the greatest moment to rethink your processes, do some housekeeping, and use buckets of dormant/disqualified leads to boost handraisers you might have overlooked previously.
Salespeople, admittedly, do not relish following up on cold or forgotten prospects. It requires a significant amount of time, which they just do not have. You can prove the warm or hot leads without putting additional burden on your personnel by delegating this redundant and repetitive activity to an IVA.
IVAs sifting through dormant or ineligible leads have an average engagement rate of eight to fifteen percent. Handraisers can make up 12 to 21% of people who are engaged. In terms of pipeline push, IVAs outperform standard nurturing programs by 33 percent in terms of reengaging dormant prospects.
Keeping your current consumer base: An Augmented Workforce can also help you keep your current consumer base. In this economic climate, businesses want to keep as much money as possible, which includes providing the best possible customer experience. However, with many companies cutting employees and Customer Success teams dealing with more accounts than they can handle on a regular basis, firms must find ways to fill in the gaps.
Our customers are already using an Augmented Workforce to swiftly respond to their client base, informing them of how the current circumstance is affecting their business. While maintaining a compassionate, informative tone, an IVA can send the following types of messages:
To express what your firm is doing during this time, start with a polite and sympathetic introductory statement.
To address the current issue, include a P.S. statement in the signature.
An informational statement that addresses any changes that your consumers should be aware of, as well as contact information for people who have questions.
Conversation cadences that are easily adjustable to meet this highly fluid moment in time
During this time, SimpSocial customers made up 37% of the total.
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