Computers continue growing smarter and people continually spend more time online interacting with them. As such, there’s more data available out there than ever before. Regardless of your position in the business world, you understand the relevance and importance of this information. Properly managing it is the only way to truly harness its power though. […]
Customer Service
5 Tips for Wowing VIP Prospects and Clients
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 […]
Have You Generated Your Consumer Insights from IoT?
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 […]
The Importance of Customer Feedback And 5 Ways To Obtain It
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, […]
4 Ways for Companies to Remain Authentic in the Age of Technology
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 […]
Increasing Customer Engagement: Five Tactics to Use
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 […]
4 Email Personalization Tactics That Are Sure to Get Clicks
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 […]
Meet the AI-Chatbot Bandwagon Which Shows no Sign of Slowing Down
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. […]
Is Cold Calling Becoming Obsolete?
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 […]
Can Brick-and-Mortar Retailers Compete With E-commerce Stores?
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 […]
How Tech Can Help You Tap into Substantial Millennial Spending Power
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 […]
The Hidden Growth Area that Successful Companies Are Investing In
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 […]
Not a Luxury Anymore — Why Tech Is Necessary to Control Costs
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, […]
The Customer Care Bar Has Never Been Higher, so Brands Must Automate to Keep Up
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 […]
Killer Marketing Plan For Startup Entrepreneurs
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 […]
Dancing in the Co-Economy: Are you Square Dancing or Foxtrotting?
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 […]
3 Ways to Reap the Business Benefits of Gratitude
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, […]
A Look at the Future of Chatbots in Customer Service
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 […]
Why Omnichannel is Important for Customer Experience
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 […]
How IoT is Impacting the Brick-and-Mortar Retail Experience
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 […]
Can AI Bring Customer Service Into the 21st Century? Thankful Thinks So
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 […]
To Bolster Trust, Businesses Must Act With Humanity
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 […]
The Best Indicator of a Tech Company’s Prowess? It Might Just Be Customer Reviews
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 […]
CRM and GDPR Compliance in 2019 for Startups
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 […]
Reimagining the Employee Experience in an Age of AI
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 […]
The Hidden Growth Area that Successful Companies Are Investing In
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 […]
Can Brick-and-Mortar Retailers Compete With E-commerce Stores?
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 […]
Why Omnichannel is Important for Customer Experience
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 […]
How IoT is Impacting the Brick-and-Mortar Retail Experience
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 […]
A Look at the Future of Chatbots in Customer Service
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 […]
3 Ways to Reap the Business Benefits of Gratitude
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, […]
Dancing in the Co-Economy: Are you Square Dancing or Foxtrotting?
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 […]
4 Email Personalization Tactics That Are Sure to Get Clicks
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 […]
Meet the AI-Chatbot Bandwagon Which Shows no Sign of Slowing Down
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. […]
Is Cold Calling Becoming Obsolete?
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 […]
Not a Luxury Anymore — Why Tech Is Necessary to Control Costs
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, […]
How Tech Can Help You Tap into Substantial Millennial Spending Power
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 […]
Killer Marketing Plan For Startup Entrepreneurs
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 […]
The Customer Care Bar Has Never Been Higher, so Brands Must Automate to Keep Up
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 […]
Increasing Customer Engagement: Five Tactics to Use
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 […]