CX and Contact Center Priorities and Technology Investments for 2023

Each year, DMG Consulting surveys our international customer base of enterprise, contact center, and IT leaders and asks them to share their customer experience (CX) and contact center goals, as well as related technology investment priorities for the upcoming year. Figure 1 shows the top 10 contact center priorities for 2023.

^{Source: DMG Consulting LLC, January 2023}

Improving the CX remains the top priority for companies of all sizes and was cited by 81.1% of survey participants, an increase from 76.4% of respondents who selected this item in the 2022 study. The remaining items in the chart reflect the various ways companies plan to enhance their CX. 55.7% of survey participants intend to improve their self-service systems. Since self-service has become consumers’ preferred method of assistance, it is great to see this priority near the top of the list. Reducing operating costs and improving productivity came in 3rd and 4th place, identified by 49.1% and 48.1% of survey respondents respectively. These two goals are typically near the top of contact center priorities, as companies need to keep their costs down. The emphasis on cost reduction and productivity improvement takes on even greater emphasis in tough economic times. This doesn’t mean that companies won’t invest in new systems and operational initiatives; it does mean that investments need to have a strong supporting business case and a rapid payback.

Improving employee engagement came in 5th place, chosen by 37.7% of survey participants. Enterprise executives increasingly appreciate the contributions of their employees in delivering a great CX. Updating contact center systems and technology came in 6th place, prioritized by 35.9% of respondents. This is a similar result to the 2022 edition of this study, which was 35.8%. Good systems and applications are needed to deliver a great CX at scale. In a related category, improving agent automation came in 7th place, identified by 30.2% of participants. Due to innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, solutions that provide real-time guidance and reduce the time agents spend writing after-call summaries can help decrease average handle time while improving the experience for customers and agents.

Undergoing a digital transformation came in 8th place, cited by 28.3% of survey respondents. This category was ranked much higher in the 2022 edition of the study, when 39.8% of survey participants selected it. Digital transformation remains a critical initiative for companies, but once it has started, many enterprises prioritize new initiatives while they work on the old ones. DMG expects to see organizations continue implementing various phases of their digital transformation for at least the next 5 years, as there is a lot of work still to be done.

Migrating systems to the cloud was the 9th place CX and contact center goal for 2023, identified by 19.8% of survey respondents, which was up from 15.5% in 2022. There is no longer a debate regarding whether to transition systems and applications to the cloud; the discussion now is when to make the move. The holdouts, which include the largest contact centers, have started the process. In some situations, this is because their premise-based vendors are actively encouraging them to migrate; in others, it is because companies are accepting that the future of CX and contact center technology involves cloud-based solutions, which is where most of the market innovation is happening.

The goal rounding out the top 10 for 2023 is adding new customer support channels. 18.9% of survey respondents identified this as a priority, compared to 26.8% in 2022. This is an area companies will continually need to address as long as there are new channels.

Final Thoughts

Companies are looking to the future by emphasizing and investing in improving their CX. It may take more time and effort to get a project approved in 2023 than it did in the first half of 2022, but initiatives with quantifiable benefits that also enhance the CX and employee engagement are expected to be top investment priorities this year. 

Essential Features for a Bot that Delivers Impressive Customer Experience (CX)

A bot can be a valuable addition to your customer experience (CX) strategy, but only if it has the necessary features and capabilities. Here are some key things to consider when evaluating whether your bot has what it takes for impressive CX:    

1. Personalization: Customers want to feel like they are receiving personalized attention, even when interacting with a bot. Your bot should be able to use data about the customer’s past interactions and preferences to provide tailored recommendations and responses.
2. Natural Language Processing: A bot that can only respond to specific keywords or phrases will frustrate customers who want to ask questions in their own words. A bot with strong natural language processing (NLP) capabilities can understand and respond to a wide variety of customer queries, increasing satisfaction and reducing frustration.
3. Contextual Awareness: A bot that can remember past interactions and understand the context of a customer’s current question or concern is better equipped to provide helpful responses. For example, if a customer has already provided their name and order number, a bot with contextual awareness can use that information to provide more personalized and relevant support.
4. Omnichannel Support: Customers expect to be able to interact with a brand through a variety of channels, including social media, email, and chat. Your bot should be able to seamlessly integrate with all of these channels to provide a consistent and unified experience.
5. Continuous Improvement: A bot that can learn from past interactions and continuously improve its responses is essential for long-term success. Your bot should be able to analyze customer feedback and adjust its responses accordingly, as well as use machine learning to identify patterns and improve over time. 

By ensuring that your bot has these features and capabilities, you can create an impressive CX that meets customer needs and exceeds their expectations.  Learn how to Build Smart Bots withEnlighten XO on April 25th

Changing Customer Service: The Impact of the Metaverse

Contributed article by Samantha Smith

Though the metaverse isn’t here yet, it is being developed, and parts of what will be in the metaverse are already being rolled out. For consumers, the metaverse promises to be a fun place to shop, connect with others, and a lot more. For businesses, the metaverse is changing how customer service works and what consumers might expect when they need to contact a business. Some of the ways the metaverse can change customer service include the following.

Stronger Relationships With Customers

The metaverse is similar to a virtual playground, where anyone can purchase virtual real estate and set up shop. Those who sell digital products like NFTs have the opportunity to create a metaverse gallery to display and sell their products. With this, companies are able to build stronger relationships with consumers. The business can interact with customers online, with it feeling like an in-person meeting, and provide more personalized assistance, which impacts how customers feel about their interactions with a company.

More Access for Customers

The metaverse combines technology to create unique spaces where almost anything is possible. Consumers don’t have to be local to be able to shop since everything is done virtually. Whether the company sells digital items or physical ones, consumers from all over the world are able to see and interact with the company prior to making a purchase. This unique experience gives consumers additional access they might not have from across the country, helping build the fanbase for any business.

Enhanced Shopping Spaces

Ever wonder what a pair of shoes would look like when wearing them? Companies like Nike are starting to use the metaverse with augmented reality to make shopping easier. From anywhere, consumers can stop by the store virtually and try on shoes, clothes, and anything else. Nike is one of the first companies to start using the metaverse in this way, but it’s expected to expand to other companies, as well. This provides consumers with a more personal experience online, giving them the chance to try things before they buy them, even if it’s virtually.

Easily Host Events to Connect

The metaverse isn’t just for shopping – it’s also a great way for companies to host events. Companies can create their own unique events for consumers, drawing in significant support for new releases. Consumers who wouldn’t be able to be there in person can take part in the virtual events from anywhere, allowing them to connect with the business and get access to new releases and other types of events. This connection can help build brands, draw in more leads, and help consumers have an amazing experience with the company.

Without being ready yet, the metaverse is already impacting customer service and changing it. Though there is still a lot to be done for the metaverse to be completely up and running, companies can start taking advantage of what’s available now, growing with the metaverse, so they can be ready when it’s available. With the right steps now, it’s possible to get started using the metaverse and taking advantage of the changes it will bring. 

How is Customer Relationship Management Helpful For Business

Customer relationship management (CRM) involves all the strategies, activities, and technologies businesses use to manage their interactions with potential and current customers. With CRM, companies can build a strong relationship with customers, which leads to brand loyalty and increases customer retention. However, both are factors affecting a company’s revenue, making CRM a vital management strategy to help businesses maximize their profits. 

A CRM tool usually has a simple data collection user interface that helps businesses recognize their customers and communicate with them in a scalable manner. This proves how important CRM is for companies. Some other benefits of CRM for organizations are: 

1. Create a reliable customer base

Businesses that use the outdated method of storing customer data in a spreadsheet make life harder for themselves. The spreadsheet may get lost or fall into the wrong hands, and the data can become compromised. This is why the switch to CRM software is essential for businesses. If you’re looking to keep an excellent overview of your customers, you need a CRM. You can also measure your growth, progress, financial gains and self-improvement over time. 

2. Register your contacts and leads

A customer relationship management software helps you separate your contacts and leads into categories like customers, prospects, potential partners, influencers, and suppliers. This allows you to implement several strategies to make you more data-efficient and your product more effective. You’re also able to follow customer interactions and share the contact groups with Share Google Contacts solutions to ensure efficient and secure communication among the company’s employees. 

3. Improve team productivity 

Your employees are the ones that use the CRM software mostly, and it has been challenging to handle since the software was introduced. However, since the creation of CRM mobile, there has been an increase in the use of CRMs. Therefore, mobile CRM increases the use of the software, but it also increases the productivity of your workforce. 

Expert research into the use of CRM found that there has been a massive improvement in the efficiency of business processes, and the productivity of companies using the CRM mobile app has increased significantly. Also, irrespective of the devices, every CRM software reduces the time necessary to input the data manually and search through confusing and untidy spreadsheets. Therefore, this helps save more time that can be invested in other activities required to improve overall productivity. 

4. Personalize your marketing strategy

An important priority in marketing these days is the customer experience. Businesses, nowadays, spend a considerable chunk of their marketing budget on email marketing. Companies spend an approximate sum of $350 million on email campaigns alone in the US alone. With CRM software, it’s easier for companies to improve their communication with customers. They need to accumulate accurate data to get a clearer insight into the previous interactions and habits of their customers. 

5. More leads and increased sales

The accurate data accumulated about customers through the CRM software can also be used to target other customers and put the appropriate effort in. Therefore, this increases the likelihood of making more sales. 

Additionally, the data collected can also be used to send personalized gifts and loyalty discounts, both aimed at ensuring customer retention. You can use web forms to increase the possibility of offering free products if they drop their email addresses. This is how you get more prospective customers. You can also use the software to analyze the level of customer satisfaction. This allows you to ask satisfied clients to refer the company to their friends, family, and acquaintances. 

6. Integrating with other tools

It is possible to integrate your CRM with other marketing software to help you create a more coherent marketing strategy to get more prospective customers. Integrating it with other tools such as email will automate the entire process involved. This makes it easier to see your precise ROI status for your marketing strategy. The social media interaction of customers with your brand can also be integrated into your CRM strategy to help increase your reach to new customers and improve your relationship with the current ones. It’s ideal to use CRM software with messaging ability to send customer loyalty texts, free incentives, and product tracking alerts. Finally, you can integrate it with telephony so that it’s easier and faster to make outbound calls. 

7. Achieve employee accountability

CRM allows you to distribute roles and responsibilities more appropriately among your employees and follow the direction they’re heading with their tasks. If one employee makes a mistake or falls behind, it’s easier to identify the problem and solve it quickly before harming the business. However, you must be careful not to use it to play the blame game. In contrast, the ability to identify the struggles of your employees and their problematic tasks should be used to ensure their growth. Since employees know what their weaknesses are, they can work through them better. 

Conclusion 

Customers are far more proactive these days than a few years ago. This is a reality that we must accept and get used to. They now research products and companies they want to patronize on different platforms before they arrive at the company’s website. They also have a wide range of choices in front of them. So, it’s essential that we also adapt our strategy to reach them better and be able to offer what they want. With CRM software, you have what you need to attract customers and retain them using a personalized and efficient service. As discussed in this article, there are several benefits of CRM for businesses and only a few were briefly explained in this article.

Author Bio

Thomas Jackson is a professional freelance content writer at an essay writing service and an active member of several writing clubs in New York, where he can provide help with research paper.

The 5 Latest Customer Service Trends You Need To Know In 2022

Contributed article by Wanda Lafond

Customer service has been changing rapidly in the past few years mostly due to the changing business landscape. This, of course, is the direct result of the global pandemic that forced some companies to shut down completely while others transitioned to hybrid or completely remote models of work.

Nevertheless, no matter what changes in the business world, companies need to keep up with these shifts in the industry and implement the necessary changes within their own organizations. Hence, here are the five latest customer service trends you need to know in 2022.

#1 Customer Support Delivered Through Social Media

With the rise of social media during the last decade, more and more companies started joining popular social media platforms to deliver content directly to their audiences. No doubt, social media makes it much easier to make important announcements, have product launches, and so on. Moreover, social media also provides many options for brands to go viral with their content while also establishing closer connections with dedicated customers.

Considering all of this, it was just a matter of time for social media platforms to become one of the primary channels for delivering customer support. Just a few years ago, there were still not that many businesses offering customer support on social media, but this has definitely changed. More and more businesses are offering customer support through multiple channels, both traditional and new ones such as social media.

The best part about offering customer support through social media is that it is clearly much easier to manage than some other channels. In fact, according to BrandWatch, the customer support offered through social media can be up to 12x cheaper than customer support via phone. It’s no wonder that more and more businesses are realizing that it’s a great opportunity to reduce their customer support costs and satisfy clients at the same time.

#2 Shorter Response Time and Round-The-Clock Availability

Nowadays, brands are increasingly focused on their customers. Many business decisions (including those related to customer support) directly depend on the data companies collect about their customers in an attempt to please customers in every way possible. This is probably why more and more customers now expect a much shorter response time when they send a request to customer support. On the other hand, businesses themselves are now prioritizing round-the-clock customer support availability to handle these requests.

For instance, according to Statista, 48% of consumers expect to get a response to their questions and complaints on social media within just 24 hours. This is probably why there are so many brands replying to tweets as fast as they can, especially if they see a customer complaining about something. It’s not just a way to handle the situation correctly when it’s already exposed to the public, but it’s also a way to show that they are proactive.

Another reason why round-the-clock availability is so important today is that globalization has expanded conventional notions of a target audience even for small businesses. Your customers could be located in a different time zone, so if their request needs to be processed quickly, your customer support will have to be available during irregular hours to do so. With 24/7 customer support, “irregular” hours are not even a thing because support can be delivered anytime.

#3 More Self-Service Options for Independent Customers

Even though customers have now become more demanding and expect businesses to deliver high-quality service to them, a lot of people are also quite independent in their own right and willing to take action themselves. This is why more businesses are now offering a wider variety of self-service options for customers who want to handle their own problems themselves.

On one hand, this is great for customers who want such autonomy. On the other hand, it’s also good for companies because they now have to handle fewer customer support requests with so many people doing the work themselves. For instance, one popular way to offer such self-service options is by having a knowledge base on your website rather than a simple FAQ section. A conventional FAQ section is quite limited in the amount of information it can provide, but a knowledge base with categories and good search and filtering features is perfect for customers who want to find questions to their answers themselves.

The only downside is that not every business has the time or resources to create a knowledge base like that. That’s why you can hire a professional writer from the custom writing reviews site Best Writers Online. This writer will create all the content for you after you provide them with all the necessary guidelines.

#4 Increased Personalization in Customer Interactions

As explained earlier, businesses are hyper-focused on their customers nowadays and always aim to deliver the best experiences no matter what. This is why most customers nowadays expect to see a fair amount of personalization in all the interactions they have with the brand. Not only does it show that the company values them, but it also makes the handling of requests faster.

Unfortunately, many businesses still don’t know how to create such personalized experiences which can result in customers leaving. In fact, according to Accenture, 33% of customers who cut short their relationship with a business in 2016 did so because personalization was lacking. Though this statistic is a few years old, many customers still stop purchasing from certain brands specifically for this reason even today.

So, how can businesses solve this problem? You can hire an expert writer from the writing services reviews site Writing Judge to create personalized content for your customers (e.g. emails). However, it’s your customer support team that needs to be trained to deliver better experiences to your customers when they make requests.

#5 An Automated Workflow with Increased Communication

Last but not least, one more trend evident in customer service is automation. Thanks to the newest technologies, businesses are able to use the newest digital tools to automate their workflows and increase communication with their customers. Chatbots can instantly respond to messages, automated emails can be triggered by certain customer actions, and the day-to-day activities of your customer support team can be done by programs entirely.

According to Microsoft, 30% of American consumers said chatbot interactions were “very effective” in dealing with customer support issues. That being said, chatbots still have a long way to go. Fortunately, the AI sector is rapidly developing which is why chatbots are being perfected every year and will likely be able to deliver high-quality customers support in the nearest future.

Final Thoughts  

To sum up, customer service is perhaps one of the most essential aspects of any business which is why paying attention to this department in your company is so important. Use the trends listed in this article to help you create your customer service strategy for the year and deliver high-quality experiences to your audience.

Contact Center Transformation: The Next Act

The contact center world is in the early days of a true metamorphosis, one that is going to impact all aspects of these service departments: people, process and technology. Driven by elevated customer and employee expectations, technical innovation, increasing globalization and scale, operational opportunities and the cloud, contact center executives are rethinking their strategies and reimagining the future of these essential customer-facing departments. DMG expects contact centers to undergo wholesale changes that position them to deliver a proactive and personalized service experience to an increasingly demanding customer base. 

It’s Time to Transform

Contact centers need to undergo the following transformations to position themselves to enhance the brand they represent:

1. From cost center to profit center – Sales and collections departments are profit centers, as their primary function is revenue generation. Customer service departments, even if they do not perform up-sell and cross-sell, should also be viewed as profit centers, as an essential aspect of their job is to build strong and “sticky” customer relationships. 
2. From phone center to omni-channel contact center – While a surprisingly large number of contact centers continue to support only voice interactions (which means they are still call centers), the pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital channels (minimally, email and chat). Unfortunately, too many contact centers added new channels without integrating them with each other or the existing voice-based activities. This means each channel is independent, so an agent that helps a customer in one channel cannot see what was done in another channel, obscuring the visibility into the customer journey and overall brand relationship. This approach makes it difficult for customers who want to use their preferred channel and also pivot easily from one channel to another, if necessary (e.g., if they need to escalate to a live agent). It also makes it difficult, time consuming and costly for agents who must ask customers to repeat their entire story. Contact centers should be fully integrated omni-channel (voice and digital) servicing environments, where agents have a single desktop and customer relationship management (CRM) system to handle all inquiries and can pivot between channels as often as needed.
3. From the title of agent to influencer or customer relationship advocate (CRA) – Agents perform an essential and often challenging function for their brand – they are the primary representatives of their company to the market. It’s a challenging job as customers are not always kind, and agents may not have access to all of the information they need due to system or operational limitations. Companies need to approach every contact as a “gift” when a customer or prospect reaches out to them. The customer-facing resources in contact centers need intelligent automation and tools to deliver an outstanding and personalized experience to every individual in every interaction, and they deserve a title that better reflects their importance and contribution to the brand. 
4. From blame point to chief customer officer – Contact centers clean up mistakes and problems originating “upstream” and “downstream” in companies. Because they must resolve a wide variety of issues, contact center employees know more about a company than the staff in almost any other department. An outstanding contact center leader will spend a significant portion of their day working with other departments to address issues identified by customers or contact center analytics. As a result, these leaders know a great deal about what customers think about the company and what it will take to enhance their perception of the brand. For these reasons, a contact center leader is well positioned to become a chief customer officer in their company.
5. From basic systems to artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled applications – Many contact centers are still using outdated servicing and CRM systems and applications as their primary information sources. Instead, contact center influencers need AI-enabled solutions that give them a view into each customer’s issue or predict the customer’s intention in contacting their brand. These solutions should proactively deliver all relevant data and next-best-action recommendations to resolve the current situation and “influence” the customer in a positive manner to enhance the relationship.

Final Thoughts

Contact centers have operated in similar ways for most of the 45+ years they have been in existence. Undoubtedly, there are major differences between companies, but the general approaches have been comparable. It’s well past time for change and transformation. Companies have to make enhancements and investments, at least as a starting point, or find themselves with unhappy (and fewer) customers and challenged to find the best candidates to staff their contact centers. While the required changes are significant and costly, they will position companies to fulfill their promise of delivering an outstanding customer experience, something most companies struggle to achieve today.

Guest Post from DMG Consulting

8 Best Yet Inexpensive Customer Appreciation Ideas

Most businesses consistently thank their customers for doing business with them. This simple act of demonstrating gratitude to consumers who support your business is not to be underestimated. Customers want to feel appreciated. And the more appreciated they feel, the more likely they are to become a return customer and recommend your business to others. If you want to show your customers your appreciation, here are eight great yet relatively cheap ideas to try.

Treat Them On Their Birthday

Many businesses offer some sort of birthday reward. To show your appreciation to a customer on their special day, you can offer them a free product or service. This can be something as small as a free beverage or free dessert on their birthday if you’re in the food industry.

Have A Customer Appreciation Sale

Sales are a great way to appreciate your customers and drive sale volumes. To express your gratitude for your most loyal customers, hold an exclusive sale just for them. The makeup retailer, Sephora, does an excellent job of rewarding their biggest spenders by granting them early access to sales and a higher discount than other customers.

Listen To Their Input

If customers have voiced concerns or made suggestions in the past, listen to their feedback. If their suggestions are a good idea or their concerns are valid, make the necessary change. The next time you see the customer, inform them of the changes you made and thank them for their feedback. This informs the customer that you value their opinion.

Connect With Customers

Taking the time to have a conversation with a customer can show them that you’re grateful for their business. It’s also a sure way to form a connection and convert them into a loyal customer. Perhaps, you have a shared interest or they shared details about their family with you. Make sure to remember these tidbits of information and ask about it the next time you talk to the customer.

Surprise Them With An Upgrade

Upgrading your customer’s product, service, or experience is a great way to show your appreciation. The costs of upgrading are typically cheaper than giving something away for free. If you manage a theatre or concert hall, you could surprise a customer by upgrading their seats to better ones at no cost on the day of the show. Those seats are going to be empty anyways. You might as well show a customer appreciation by improving their experience.

Give Them A Freebie

Delighting a customer with a free product or service is the ultimate way to show your appreciation. This is an amazing way to reward and encourage customer loyalty. If your products or services are quite expensive, this idea might not be as feasible. However, if you manage a business like a restaurant, you can show your appreciation by giving a regular customer their meal or dessert on the house once in a while.

Go Above And Beyond

While you might not always have the time to go out of your way for a customer when it’s busy, doing so when you have chance can show how much you appreciate them. For example, if an item the customer is looking for is out of stock, you could order it in specifically for them or help them track down the item at another location. On the other hand, if you know a customer orders the same thing every single day, you can have it prepared and ready for them as soon as they enter your store.

Provide Personalized Service

It takes little to no effort to provide personalized service to a customer, and yet, it can make their day. If you know your customer’s name, ensure you greet them by their name. If you conversed with the customer before about an interest or a hobby, ask them about it. Providing a customer with a personalized service can make them feel special. It also lets them know that you care enough to actually listen and remember facts about them.

Conclusion

As a business, customers are at the heart of what you do. Making your customers appreciated not only makes their day, but it can also greatly benefit your business. With so many ways to show your customers gratitude, there’s really no excuse not to.

Christina Lee is a business development manager at College paper and Essay help. She writes about business growth and customer engagement strategies for such services, as OX Essays, and others.

9 Easy Hacks To Increase Customer Engagement And Slash Your Bounce Rate

When it comes to getting people to your website and keeping them there, the key is engagement. If your visitors aren’t engaged with what you are offering them, they are highly likely to bounce onto the next website that is able to capture their engagement.

A customer is considered to be ‘bouncing’ from your website when they decide not to go further than the home page. What this typically means is that they weren’t interested enough to stay on your site, or found it too difficult to find what they were looking for. But, how can you optimize the level of customer engagement and prevent them from hopping off your site and onto another? Here are 9 easy ways to keep your customers interested and increase your sales:

1. How User-Friendly Is Your Website?

When your customers enter your website, what does their experience look like? Is it easy to navigate and find the information, products or services they are looking for? Customers will get easily frustrated and quickly abandon your website if they encounter problems finding what they need. If customers are expressing frustration about navigating your website, listen! They are the ones who are using it, so their feedback matters.

2. Add Calls To Action In The Right Spots

Inspiring your online visitors to act means you’ll have to prompt them to take action. Add calls to action where appropriate, so that your customers can easily be guided to where they need to go in order to complete the transaction they need. And, keep your call to action honest – if you are offering something for free, then asking for credit card information, it can cause many users to feel misled and bounce.

3. Speed Up Your Site

In our fast-paced world, almost nothing will turn away a customer than a slow website. Ensuring that each page of your website is optimized for speed can help maintain a high level of customer engagement and prevent them from leaving. You would be shocked with how quickly someone will abandon your site if a page isn’t loading fast enough. In just a few seconds, customers will make their decision whether they are sticking with your site, or whether it’s too slow for them.

4. Do Some A/B Testing

Test out the performance of your pages by creating A/B tests. Different landing pages and calls to action will yield different results, so you can see which one gains better traction and implement the ones with the best results.

5. Include Engaging Videos

Videos can help explain a lot of information easily and quickly, and many users prefer to watch a short video than to read anything of length. Including short, informative videos can keep users engaged and moving through your website.

6. Highlight Lots Of Great Images

Images are highly engaging, and including high quality images in all the right places can help drop your bounce rates. Large, quality images are eye-catching and are being more widely utilized by companies looking to bump up the engagement of their customers. Either create your own images by hiring a professional photographer or utilize free stock images.

7. Let Others See What Your Customers Are Saying

One of the most effective ways to highlight what your potential customers can expect from you is by providing feedback from past customers. Customer feedback is an effective tool because it provides honest words from real people who have already utilized your products or services and found their experience so phenomenal that they needed to share with others.

8. Readability Is Key

You may have a great deal of informative and useful information throughout your website, but if it’s not easily readable, your visitors will quickly tune out. The visual setup and overall look of your website includes ensuring that all text is easily readable, no matter what device you are viewing on. Take into consideration font size, as well as style and color, to ensure that it’s legible and clear enough.

9. Demonstrate Yourself As A Credible Source

 Getting a new customer to put their trust in you can be asking quite a lot, so you’ve got to show them that you are trustworthy and capable of what you are proposing. Online customers are increasingly skeptical about trusting new companies with their business, so you will have to earn their trust as a credible source in order to hold their engagement.

Having your customers remain engaged while navigating your website is essential in growing your online success. Start implementing these 9 hacks, and start seeing the effects of higher customer engagement and lower bounce rates.

As an expert in boosting and growing customer engagement, Emily Henry shares her knowledge as a blogger at State Of Writing. She also contributes her expertise in the subject as an assignment writer at Essay Writing Service, where she hopes to help business owners optimize the success of their businesses.

If You Have to Fire an Employee

How to Address Moral Issues That Come with Firing an Employee

There’s a good probability you’ll have to fire an employee as a manager at some time in your career.

Regardless of the reasons why you’re letting someone go or who they are, the result is usually an awkward and emotional time afterwards, especially for the employees who are staying at your business. You could possibly be left with a bunch of disappointed, sorrowful employees who are concerned about their own job security once the individual bids his farewell.

A firing or mass layoff can have a big influence on the tone of the company, and current employee morale can suffer dramatically; and as a manager is vital that you take the steps necessary to boost morale and keep it high, but how do you do something like this? In this guide, we’re going to find out.

Describe why the firing happened (as much as you legally possible)

Firstly, it’s important to remember when giving an explanation for why an employee was fired; it’s best to be cautious for legal reasons. It may not be something that can or should be discussed publicly within an organisation in some instances.

You basically want to make sure that everyone on my team was on board Explain that a line was crossed and such red line guidelines need to be understood and respected by everyone on the team.”

“You may not be able to reveal too many details about the scenario because you must respect the privacy of the dismissed employee, but you can still give employees the opportunity to express their concerns, according to Hall. Ask open-ended questions to assist employees to identify what’s bothering them in one-on-one meetings, and focus on each employee’s contribution to the team,” shares Tina Marie, a project manager at Research papers UK.

Congratulate the remaining employees on their excellent performance

“This is also an excellent moment to express gratitude to people who are contributing significantly to the organisation—as long as you do so truly,” shares Jason Harper,  a business blogger at Draft Beyond and Writinity.

Give The Fired Or Laid-off Employee The Best Possible Treatment

Offer to submit a wonderful letter of recommendation and/or be a reference for an employee who was let go as part of a layoff—and they left the company through no fault of their own.

Treat them well not only because they deserve it but also because how you treat them will reverberate among your current staff. Being treated properly can lead to empathy for both the individual and the company. Existing employees will be enraged if individuals who were let go are treated badly.

Explore and Talk About the Next Steps

During a change like this, especially in a small business, the CEO’s role is not only to explain why the choice was made but also to build a picture of what will happen next—getting employees focused on the company’s future and how it will continue to grow despite the inevitable workforce changes.

Your staff need to understand the plan, where you’re going, and how you’re going to get there—sometimes without the assistance of a former teammate. The worst thing you can do is remain silent and presume your employees share your viewpoint. Keeping morale high after a staffing turnover requires open and honest communication.

Put a Smile on Your Face

Finally, try to find a way to lighten the atmosphere quickly after a layoff. One morning, bring in breakfast or coffee. Organise a lunch for the team. Lunch should be pizza. Make plans for a pleasant hour. Relax. Regroup. Refocus.

This also means you need to show compassion to the employees that have left and those who have stayed. Remember, people have families, and they work to pay their bills. You shouldn’t avoid the subject, nor should you just blank everything that’s happening or bad mouth the person who has been released. It’s about making the experience as positive as possible, even if someone has done something wrong.

Treat it as a lesson learned.

Jenny Williams is a Business analyst and writer at Paper writing service and Lucky Assignments Liverpool. She also writes for Gum Essays service blog and helps businesses to become the best versions of themselves.

Getting Started With AI at Your Business

It seems like artificial intelligence is getting a lot of attention lately. You read articles about it, see presentations that cover AI and you hear about a range of products and services that now have “smart” features. 

For today’s businesses, there are a lot of options for ways AI can be used. If you are looking for the most beneficial applications, AI applied to business intelligence has a lot of potential. Using an AI-powered BI tool, businesses can streamline their analytics operations and get deeper insights.

With AI data analytics having so much to offer businesses of all sizes, more companies are looking to introduce this technology to their teams. However, many people still do now fully understand what AI can do for their data and what they might need to do to start using AI.

What can AI do for analytics?

You probably already know what AI is: it is the science of making smart machines. With powerful AI systems, machines can be taught or programmed to perform complex tasks that used to require the intelligence of a human. Data analysis happens to be one of the tasks that AI performs well at.

With enough data, an AI algorithm can find meaningful patterns and relationships in the data. In many cases, AI systems can even learn as it is exposed to more data. This means that it can get smarter and better at its job the more it works.

As it concerns business applications, you could feed all of your business data to the AI-powered analytics tool. With automated analysis, it can find insights that might benefit a business in a number of ways. It might find waste in your operation, a missed revenue opportunity, a trend in the market, a group of customers that could be valuable or any number of things.

Even beyond insights about the past and present, AI can work well for forecasting. Using predictive analytics, the AI builds models based on historical data. It then runs data about the current condition to predict what may happen in the future. Many of these systems can even run various solutions or actions a business could take to respond to the prediction through the model to help leaders find the right path forward.

In the past, all of these functions required the skills of a data scientist. Not only that, it would often take an analytics team weeks to perform these functions. With AI applied to analytics, it can make data science teams more efficient and it can also offer some of these insights to people who do not have the skills of a data scientist.

The Implementation of AI 

Introducing AI to your business is not as simple as buying an AI analytics platform and feeding it some data. You need to take some time to assess the needs of your business and determine the goals you are trying to achieve.

Depending on the type of business you run and the goals you have, different analytics tools might work better for helping you reach your goals. You will need to find the right analytics tools and determine the types of resources your business will need to support those tools. 

Once you have the tools, it is not as simple as turning them loose on your company and its data. You are going to need to train employees on using the tools and make sure they understand how you expect them to use the tools. Make sure employees have the training they need and brief them on the types of goals you want them to achieve when they use them.

You might also need to spend a little time promoting the use of the tools. Some employees might not take to the tools as quickly as others. Teach employees about the benefits of using analytics tools and the ways AI can help them perform better at their jobs. Employees will be more likely to embrace the use of AI when they understand the benefits and have the training they need.

AI can be a valuable tool when businesses implement it in the right way. Making data-driven decisions can be a way to put your business ahead of the competition, and with features like predictive analytics, your business can be prepared for the future. For many businesses, their ability to adopt AI and integrate it with their operations will be the difference between success and failure.