Customer Service

For startups and young businesses, the opportunity to work with a VIP client is something you can’t afford to swing and miss on. That’s why it’s imperative that you understand how to nail the first impression and continue impressing over the duration of your relationship. How to Wow Your VIP Clients Every client your business […]

Well, have you? Have you generated your consumer insights from IoT?  Or even should you? The answer is a resounding ‘Yes ‘ – you must! If you don’t then somebody else will! It is becoming increasingly more important to use the internet to obtain ‘Micro Data’ to give yourself a business advantage. There is a […]

Customer feedback is one of the easiest ways for a business to learn more about what their customers want, don’t want, like, and don’t like. It’s easy to read articles online and listen to podcasts on the way to work that make educated guesses on what people want, but those guesses are often generalized and, […]

A few weeks ago, Google presented a demo of a new AI system called Duplex. Duplex is an extension of Google Assistant that has the ability to communicate eerily like a human being. Listening to the recordings, there were times I wasn’t quite sure which speaker was human and which was a computer. Of course, robotic […]

Stop for a second and think about how nice it would be if you could boost your company’s profits by 95 percent. Or let’s be conservative and ask for a smaller number like 25 percent. The truth is that all it takes is a 5 percent increase in your customer retention rates, according to research […]

Email is a notoriously fickle channel. Something as simple as tweaking the subject line can be the difference between an 8 percent or an 80 percent open rate. Companies that get it right earn an average of $38 per dollar spent, the most of any marketing channel. But for every success story, there are half […]

Anybody walking on the street can identify how technology is changing at a whiplash-inducing pace. But do you know what the worst part is? Which of these technologies specifically are about to hit big. AI, machine learning, augmented reality, chatbots, have not just grabbed headlines  — but are successfully infiltrating every aspect of our world. […]

Tech enthusiasts joke that if Alexander Graham Bell had known about the telemarketing and cold calling he was about to unleash on the world with the invention of the telephone, he never would have released it. Ten years ago, we declared, “Cold calling is dead.” Inc. has called it “a waste of time,” and sales […]

E-commerce is experiencing massive growth year after year, shattering records while doing so. There was a time when brick-and-mortar stores were not merely profitable, but also highly influential.   Take, for example, Sears. If there were ever a legacy brand that defined American capitalism, it would have been this one. First opened in 1892, Sears […]

Retailers can tap into an immense source of spending power if they can successfully market to Millennials, who currently make up more than a third of American workers. Not surprisingly, considering the world in which this generation has come of age, creative uses of technology are proving to be very effective in accomplishing this. According […]

What would you guess is the world’s most in-demand field? Healthcare? Data science? Accounting? Believe it or not, it’s customer success. According to LinkedIn data, the ratio of jobs to current workers is 32.5 percent for customer success managers. For perspective, that ratio is 31 percent for data scientists and barely 1 percent for mature […]

No matter what industry you’re in, staying profitable is always a priority. Reducing overhead costs is vital to this goal, and most advice for doing so these days involves technology. But investing in new tech can seem like a luxury that companies only engage in when they have capital to burn. In today’s technology-centric landscape, […]

Product and price have been the foundational differentiators in retail for decades. However, in a world plagued with ever-evolving consumer expectations and innovative new competitors, relying on these differentiators is no longer giving brands the competitive advantage they need to thrive among the fierce competition. It’s easier than ever for consumers to perform price comparisons […]

Why break the bank for your marketing needs when you can brainstorm your way to a killer marketing plan? The best marketing ideas come simple and cheap but these ideas do not come out of the blue. Your actual business plan will require an out-of-the-box, innovative thought process. You’ll want to get your marketing wheels […]

Have you ever been to a fast-moving square dance? Partners dance together, spin around a time or two, and then move onto new partners. As the dance progresses, some people return to their original partners, while others will dance once and leave the floor. If you pay attention, this resembles a fast-emerging business strategy that […]

With Thanksgiving just behind you — and what you’re thankful for still top of mind — it’s only natural to be thinking about gratitude and giving back. Giving Tuesday, which is just three days away, is vital for nonprofits. If organizations prepare for Giving Tuesday well, they’ll raise more money during this annual fundraising day, […]

There has been a lot of progress within the customer interaction space. This includes both in the skill sets for customer service personnel, and in the development of chatbots that mimic human conversations. The chatbots are built upon artificial intelligence technologies. Massive paradigm shifts have already occurred in how customers interact with businesses, and now chatbots […]

Retailers have to get with the times if they want to compete in the online marketplace. That means evolving to meet customer needs, managing change, and matching the pace of modern consumers. Luckily, there’s a whole world of IoT opportunities available to retailers. There are options for customer engagement, process optimization, and internal audit tools […]

Successful businesses are always going out of their way to figure out how to improve the overall customer experience. All indications at this time have found that omnichannel is important for customer experience. This implementation is a powerful way to optimize every channel by catering to the customer’s specific needs. There’s a strong “must-do” for […]

GPS and location data allows you to track items, people, and even shipments. At any given time, you can see where something is, how long it might take to reach a particular destination, and also how fast it’s traveling. On a consumer level, the information is relatively limited. You can see a phone’s — and […]

We live in a “long tail” world. That means that mass-market products are no longer able to satisfy consumers who ask for tailor-made solutions. This trend has emerged from online retail, specifically Jeff Bezos’ idea of having a million different shops for a million different consumers. In essence, it all boils down to building the […]

One of the issues facing people who need a new pair of glasses is that the buyer often doesn’t have their prescription. Maybe the glasses buyer is purchasing eyewear online because they want several pair to trade-off and match their clothing — maybe the purchaser just broke the glasses they love or possibly they need […]

Never have enterprise firms had such a short shelf life. Innosight’s 2018 Corporate Longevity Forecast found that, if the current churn rate holds, fully half of S&P 500 companies will be replaced in the coming decade. Could half of the S&P 500 companies be replaced in the coming 10 years? While 80 percent of executives […]

Every part of our business world is being changed by AI — even the way in which we communicate. Here’s how this is occurring today. In today’s business world, face-to-face communication and interactions don’t happen as frequently as they did in the past. We rely more on conference calls, email, and social media to make communication faster, […]

If you’re like most Americans, you’ve probably got a ballpark idea of your credit score. But what about your auto insurance score? Say Insurance is betting that you don’t know about this three-digit score with a similar impact on your financial life. As part of its “car insurance made simple” mission, the division of Shelter […]

Why is it that customer service never seems to get any innovation attention? For decades, providing great customer service has been a constant challenge and expense, yet relatively few technologies exist to ease the difficulty or cost. Sales and marketing see new software arrive every year, yet customer support has scarcely changed in the last […]

Barely half of consumers trust for-profit companies to do the right thing. More than three-quarters of them, however, look to those same firms as sources of social progress. Those seemingly contradictory findings come from Edelman’s latest Trust Barometer. Published this past January, the study shows 56 percent of American adults trust the business community. But […]

Tech is a difficult — and fickle — beast to manage these days. Many companies are focused on building something flashy or rendering their competitors obsolete. That’s great in terms of elevating competition and pushing the industry as a whole toward innovation. As long as brands are in the business of getting press, something new […]

Are you planning to get a new customer retention management (CRM) platform for managing all your customers? Here’s a short explanation on how to make this process legal and safe. GDRP protects users from unauthorized data collection and further processing for commercial purposes. If you have a customer retention management program that is not really […]

Artificial intelligence (AI) has entered our lives in an almost unnoticeable way. We’ve invited AI into our homes for convenience and the “coolness factor.” Using basic voice assistants we move from playing music on demand to cars that park themselves. As consumers, we have grown accustomed to AI guiding our journey in the form of […]

What would you guess is the world’s most in-demand field? Healthcare? Data science? Accounting? Believe it or not, it’s customer success. According to LinkedIn data, the ratio of jobs to current workers is 32.5 percent for customer success managers. For perspective, that ratio is 31 percent for data scientists and barely 1 percent for mature […]

E-commerce is experiencing massive growth year after year, shattering records while doing so. There was a time when brick-and-mortar stores were not merely profitable, but also highly influential.   Take, for example, Sears. If there were ever a legacy brand that defined American capitalism, it would have been this one. First opened in 1892, Sears […]

Successful businesses are always going out of their way to figure out how to improve the overall customer experience. All indications at this time have found that omnichannel is important for customer experience. This implementation is a powerful way to optimize every channel by catering to the customer’s specific needs. There’s a strong “must-do” for […]

Retailers have to get with the times if they want to compete in the online marketplace. That means evolving to meet customer needs, managing change, and matching the pace of modern consumers. Luckily, there’s a whole world of IoT opportunities available to retailers. There are options for customer engagement, process optimization, and internal audit tools […]

There has been a lot of progress within the customer interaction space. This includes both in the skill sets for customer service personnel, and in the development of chatbots that mimic human conversations. The chatbots are built upon artificial intelligence technologies. Massive paradigm shifts have already occurred in how customers interact with businesses, and now chatbots […]

With Thanksgiving just behind you — and what you’re thankful for still top of mind — it’s only natural to be thinking about gratitude and giving back. Giving Tuesday, which is just three days away, is vital for nonprofits. If organizations prepare for Giving Tuesday well, they’ll raise more money during this annual fundraising day, […]

Have you ever been to a fast-moving square dance? Partners dance together, spin around a time or two, and then move onto new partners. As the dance progresses, some people return to their original partners, while others will dance once and leave the floor. If you pay attention, this resembles a fast-emerging business strategy that […]

Email is a notoriously fickle channel. Something as simple as tweaking the subject line can be the difference between an 8 percent or an 80 percent open rate. Companies that get it right earn an average of $38 per dollar spent, the most of any marketing channel. But for every success story, there are half […]

Anybody walking on the street can identify how technology is changing at a whiplash-inducing pace. But do you know what the worst part is? Which of these technologies specifically are about to hit big. AI, machine learning, augmented reality, chatbots, have not just grabbed headlines  — but are successfully infiltrating every aspect of our world. […]