You're in the middle of a 5-day journey to automating your Shopify store, and saving at least 10 hours per week. If you need a recap, go back to Day 1 to learn about essential tools plus marketing automation tactics
Day 2: Streamline Your Operations: Automate Fulfillment, Inventory, and Reorders
Running an e-commerce store doesn’t have to mean drowning in operational chaos. Reordering products, managing inventory, and fulfilling orders can eat up hours—and not the highest ROI hours. These operational tasks are begging to be automated, we just need to define the systems!
1. Automate Order Fulfillment: Faster, Smoother, Easier
Why It Matters:
Fulfilling orders one by one wastes time and introduces errors. Automate fulfillment processes to reduce errors and save hours every week.
Shopify + ShipStation Integration
Consider this integration if your Shopify store has 200+ orders per month, or use multiple sales channels.
- What to Automate:
- Sync Shopify orders with ShipStation to automatically generate shipping labels, select carriers, and send tracking emails to customers.
- Automate carrier selection based on weight, destination, or shipping method requested.
- Quick Setup Tip:
- Use Shipstation’s batch feature to print order shipping labels and packing slips in bulk.
- Pro Tips:
- Use ShipStation’s rules to assign shipping methods based on predefined order criteria. E.g. “free shipping” orders are always sent via USPS Ground.
- Invest in a Zebra 4x6 thermal label printer with peel-and-stick labels. This will speed up your shipping prep process by 4X.
- Customize packing slip templates to stop pick and pack errors. I like to highlight the “Quantity” section of the packing slip and make the font for line items 2X normal font.
2. Inventory Management: Simplify Restocking and Tracking
Why It Matters:
Inventory mistakes cost money. Over-order, and you tie up cash in unsold stock. Under-order and you miss out on sales. Automate and eliminate the guesswork.
Real-Time Inventory Updates
- What to Automate:
- Automatically sync inventory levels across Shopify, Amazon, Etsy, and other sales channels using tools like ShipStation Inventory features or Shopify’s native integrations.
- Set up low-stock alerts to ensure you’re never caught without inventory.
- Pro Tip:
- Use a Shopify app like Thrive to manage complex inventory situations with multiple locations or channels. Thrive has automated reordering features so you never run out of stock.
- On a budget? You can automatically generate POs using Quickbooks (or Google Sheets) and Zapier
- Automate further: Use Zapier to automatically email the PO to your preferred vendor.
3. Streamline Returns and Exchanges
Why It Matters:
Returns and exchanges are inevitable in e-commerce, so why waste your time on a repeatable and predictable task? Automating these workflows improves the customer experience while saving your valuable time for other activities with higher ROI.
Automate the Returns Process
- What to Automate:
- Create a self-service return portal. Both Shopify and Shipstation have built-in options. Shipstation offers a branded portal that claims a 16% increase in conversions just by offering an easy returns feature.
- Quick Setup Tip:
- Set a return policy if you don’t already have one, and make sure your warehouse team has clear instructions on how to handle returns and exchanges.
- Pro Tip:
- Use return data to identify patterns and reduce returns (e.g., updating product descriptions to prevent sizing issues).
- Export your returns to Google Sheets to create a simple count of the most frequently returned products and reasons.
- Use Zapier to send your return data to ChatGPT to be analyzed monthly. Or use GPT For Sheets — a ChatGPT extension built right into your Google suite!
Call to Action
Create a self-service returns portal on Shopify or Shipstation. Define returns and exchanges rules on your Shopify store, and provide your customer service and warehouse team with a detailed process to follow for ALL returns or exchanges. Empower your team and remove yourself from making any decisions on this process.
Day 3: Automate Customer Service: Deliver Faster Responses with Less Effort
“Representative…REPRESENTATIVE!!”
Bad customer service loses customers. According to Zendesk research, it only takes two bad customer service experiences to lead to brand abandonment. AI is changing the customer service landscape, so let’s take advantage and ride this wave, and stop manually answering time-consuming, repetitive questions. Let’s automate the simple stuff, and delegate the rest.
1. Automate FAQs and Order Tracking
Why It Matters:
Customers ask the same questions over and over: “Where’s my order?” “How do I return this?” “Do you ship internationally?” Answering manually is a waste of time when automation can handle 90% of these queries.
Set Up a Self-Service FAQ
- What to Automate:
- Use Shopify apps like HelpCenter to create a searchable FAQ that answers common questions.
- Include topics like shipping times, return policies, and size guides.
- Quick Setup Tip:
- Analyze your most frequent support tickets to prioritize FAQ topics. Or send support tickets to ChatGPT and ask it to create FAQs for you!
- Pro Tip:
- Pair your FAQ with an AI-powered chatbot to guide customers to the right answers instantly. Are you using customer service software already? It likely offers this functionality.
Automate Order Tracking Notifications
- Pro Tip:
- Add a tracking page to your Shopify store where customers can check their order status directly, without emailing support. Link this page in all order confirmation emails.
- Send SMS order status updates if your customers opt in. SMS opt-ins can receive future marketing promotions directly via text. SMS marketing has an average 5X ROI.
2. Automate Ticket Routing for Complex Issues
Why It Matters:
Not every problem can be solved by a chatbot or FAQ. But that doesn’t justify answering customer service emails yourself. Find someone that can be trained to answer the more complex customer questions.
Set Up Ticket Automation
- What to Automate:
- If you’re using customer service software like Helpscout, route tickets based on keywords (e.g., “refund” or “damaged product”) to the right team or agent.
- Send automated responses to acknowledge receipt and provide initial troubleshooting steps.
- Quick Setup Tip:
- Create templates for common issues (e.g., shipping delays, product replacements) to speed up response times.
- Pro Tip:
- Always be adding to your FAQ! Train customer service reps to note repetitive inquiries, and to add to your FAQ without your input.
- Ask ChatGPT to pre-draft all responses for your service reps to save time. Use Zapier to send new support tickets to ChatGPT. Ask ChatGPT to act as your “Customer Service Assistant", and provide a response.
- Expert Tip: Create a custom “Customer Service” GPT in ChatGPT that is trained on your company's FAQ, knowledge base, and prior support conversations. Use this GPT to be the first line of support for all issues. Provide an escalation option for a human rep to step in.
3. Collect and Automate Customer Feedback
Why It Matters:
Humans are social creatures, and word-of-mouth marketing works better than any hard selling. Collect social proof, and display it on your home and product pages. Use it in your marketing and ads. This is low-hanging fruit.
Automate Review Requests
- What to Automate:
- Avoid adding to your SaaS spend by setting up an automated review collection in Klaviyo.
- Shopify app Loox is a great alternative that natively integrates on product and home pages.
- Include incentives like discounts for leaving reviews.
- Quick Setup Tip:
- Trigger review emails to be sent 5-7 days after delivery.
- Pro Tip:
- Highlight positive reviews automatically on your product pages to boost conversions.
- Use images and videos! Loox has an option to display user-provided images. Conversion rates increase 2X if user reviews are displayed on a product page and accompanied by an image or video.
Call to Action
Outsource Customer Service! If you’ve done that, work on beefing up your FAQ / Knowledge base and make it easy to find on your website.
Next Up
Jump to Days 4-5: Organize your finances and learn how to delegate like a pro. If it can't be automated, it's time to delegate!
