Multiply productivity by automating repetitive tasks
So much to do, so little time. If you’re a productivity nut like we are, you know the importance of focusing on important tasks rather than non-important ones, even if the latter may also be urgent. According to the Eisenhower Matrix, you should be delegating non-important tasks and keeping your eye on ones that will contribute to the betterment of your career, business, or goals.
If you have the funds, go ahead and hire an assistant or two. But a lean organization would need every human resource allocating their smarts and talent for initiatives on customer growth and pivoting the business in times like this.
Try delegating some of your repetitive tasks to these tireless applications and bots and watch your hours open up for more important things.
Perhaps it is important to you to send customized emails to each of your clients. Automating your emails does not necessarily mean sending exactly one kind of message to all. Tools like Mailchimp and Hubspot allow business owners to use information from their mailing list to customize messages to customers via segmentation.
You can send reminder emails to customers whose payments are already due. You can send a discount coupon to a list of emails who have bought a certain product before. Or a special offer to customers celebrating their birthdays this month. While it makes sense to do this yourself to your top 10 clients, you will have to delegate the rest to a more efficient system: email automation.
Data backup
Backing up your files is an oft-neglected but very important task. And it’s not just about work files in your laptop. It’s also your phone and your tablet. Cloud storage platforms like Google Drive and OneDrive offer ways to automatically sync your files to the cloud. You can also sync contacts and photos in your mobile device via your email provider. It’s best to set this up every 1 or 2 weeks. That way, backup processing times need not be long and tedious.
Automating your backup saves you time twice — you don’t have to do it yourself every time, and you won’t have downtime in case your files crash and you actually need to restore your backup.
Voice-based assistance
Beyond the usual web search and calendar setup by voice, voice-based assistants like Google and Amazon’s Alexa can also automate work and home tasks. These tasks may seem mundane now, but they’re much better done by these friendly house bots.
For example, you could be in a video call with the marketing team when you realize that you have to add something in your to-do list at home. All you need to do is, while on mute, ask Alexa to add the task in your to-do list. If you are not a fan of Alexa’s to-do interface in the app, no problem! You can set up an integration via IFTTT to your Trello account, and you will easily find your newest to-do card under the right list. The same can be done when you have to add something to your shopping list.
You can also set up location-based triggers like having Alexa turn on the airconditioning when you are almost home or turn it off at a certain time. The same goes for smart lights in different parts of the house. You can have it wake you up at a certain time and then read your calendar and the news headlines to you.
Responses to FAQs
Your team may have a lot of questions in their minds right now. This is understandable, and you definitely want to put your employees’ minds at ease. But it also takes a lot of time from you or your HR to answer them one by one. What you can do is set up a chatbot like Pez.AI’s Expert on your website or Slack platform. Via conversational exchanges, your employees get responses regarding work schedules, health coverage, and payroll quickly and at any time of the day.
All these without you or your HR team losing focus on the important things — getting your operations ready for the new normal.
Timekeeping
In your physical headquarters, you may have biometrics in order to log the hours of your individual team members. Now that you are working remote, you may have set up a temporary solution like manually logging in via Slack or via Google Sheets. As a temporary solution, it works. But if you have dozens of employees that need to log their hours for 3 months (and going), it will take up a lot of time for the Payroll team to consolidate logs, validate and correct errors, and finalize the timesheets for computing payments.
Pez.AI’s Expert for Remote Work solves this challenge exactly. From your Slack platform, it captures the active hours of individual team members and automatically records the information in Google Sheets, where your Finance team can simply read it in a usable format.
If you want to level up your productivity, delegate! To apps and bots, that is. If you are interested in how automation can improve your team’s processes, get Expert for free.
We’re a little ways down the road but we’d appreciate your feedback and comments. Let us know what you think or give us a clap. 👏
Pez.AI is a purveyor of data-driven transformation. Our chatbot solutions are built to combat inefficiencies and foster sustainable AI partnerships in the workplace. Automating knowledge-sharing and streamlining business processes eliminates transactional interactions giving time for more enriching activities that empower your workforce. Learn how our bots can increase your workplace productivity at www.pez.ai 🤖
