Categories
Business Trends

Changing Customer Relations In A Post Covid World 

Undoubtedly, COVID-19 has rocked the economy. The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) World Economic Outlookpredicts the cumulative loss to the world’s GDP from 2020 to 2021 will be approximately $9 trillion. That’s more than the combined economies of Germany and Japan.

But the crisis has disrupted more than global markets; it has changed peoples’ lives, needs, priorities and spending behaviors. Approximately 40 per cent of Australians are feeling financially insecure, and as a result, professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that household consumption will decline by $37.9 billion within the next year.

In harsh economic conditions, consumers become more discerning with where and how they spend their money—for businesses, this creates a new set of challenges.
Customer-centricity is a term that has been used since the 1960s, but it has never been more relevant than in today’s business landscape. In such extreme environments, customers want more than the best offering or the lowest price; they seek dependability, confidence and trust in the brands they choose to do business with.

The end goal for a customer-centric business is customer loyalty. A dedicated customer base is key to surviving disruption, as they will continue to depend on your services even in challenging climates. But true customer-centricity is no set-and-forget solution. Retaining loyalty is about adapting your offering depending on the changing needs of your customers, and in some instances, knowing what they want before they do. This is where the modern reality of customer-centricity starts to connect operations with experiences, creating new dimensions of customer excellence.

So how are businesses expected to predict or adjust to evolving customer expectations? It begins with understanding how your company operates and what you need to change to keep your loyal customer base as close as possible.

Here are three ways businesses can adapt to changing customer relationships, in light of COVID-19.

Let growth goals take a backseat

If growing your customer base is a priority for your business right now, take a moment to reflect on the long-term cost of that growth, both reputation-wise and financially, to determine whether it is a sustainable pathway.

Few businesses have been left untouched, if not unscathed, by COVID-19. Consequently, many companies have been forced to refocus their priorities, resources and goals to survive the crisis. If your business has not considered the immediate or future economic impact of the pandemic and how it could affect your organization, you need to start doing so now.

Part of evaluating this impact is looking at factors you can control, or at the very least maintain, to ensure you keep as close to ‘business as usual’ as possible. A central element of your survival strategy is maintaining your existing customer base.

Focusing on customer acquisition to the detriment of your existing ones can create a funnel effect, whereby a stream of new business comes in, while just as many customers go elsewhere. This can force companies into a spiral of deeper and deeper discounts to attract new consumers to their pool, which eventually runs dry along with their revenue streams.

Research by Forrester shows that new customers can cost five times more to convert than existing customers, indicating that it is much easier to expand and build-on existing loyalty than it is to tap into new client bases, especially during tough times.

Do not fear missing out on opportunities for growth; rather, consider this crisis a chance to cement the fundamental processes and market share that make your business scalable.

Always remember; there is no point investing in your business’ continuity if you have no customers on the other side.

Focus on operational excellence, but keep it customer-centric

Historically, a continuous improvement mindset revolved around things such as standardized costs, stable operations and meeting compliance expectations. While these are all critical elements of running a business, somewhere along the way, these companies lost their grip on the bigger picture and realized their product was no longer relevant to the customer.

Operational excellence is important, but carrying out a process 10 per cent better than the previous year does not matter if you miss the mark with your customer base.

More recently, businesses have started tapping into a different mindset that sees the customer experience translated throughout an end-to-end process. For truly customer-centric organizations, every decision and ambition has a customer-focused outcome in mind, be that improved experience or lasting sentiment.

Continuous improvement no longer exists in an echo-chamber; the convergence of process excellence and customer experience is the new north star, and this mindset is embedded into the very structure of a business and its team.

Data-driven for precision 

In a post-pandemic era, digital marketing and social communication channels are the name of the game, and when used correctly, can offer more specific insights into your customers’ behaviors.

Utilizing customer data can be as simple as surveying your existing customer base to gain actionable insights. The more data you have, the more accurate these insights will be.

Consider every digital touchpoint of your customers’ experiences as though they are leaving behind a fingerprint, containing a goldmine of DNA or data that helps you better understand their needs, expectations and concerns.

To develop a comprehensive customer excellence picture, it helps to combine each touchpoint into what is known as journey maps; a high-level, intuitively readable diagram that enables you to view the user experience from an outside-in perspective—across all your personas. The journey visualization will increasingly identify areas for persona-centric process improvement, while empowering business mapping, change, and operational transformation.

Keeping your finger on the customers’ pulse means you are on the front foot when it comes to evolving patterns of behavior. Immediate access to data-driven insights allow you to adapt your processes and keep customers’ satisfied, even in rapidly changing environments, boosting loyalty and retention rates.

Using these adaptations, businesses can come out of this crisis with the right fundamentals in place—rather than a set of lowest common denominators that damage your brand in the long term.

3 Ways Customer Relationships Will Change Forever In Light Of COVID-19 [Entreprenuer]

About Our GE Network Expert - Min Tang

Categories
Planning & Management

8 Essential Tools to Manage A Remote Workforce

This article will examine 8 types of workforce platforms and recommend specific tools that are essential to get the most out of your remote team.

Remote work is becoming the new normal for many businesses all over the world. Many managers are now faced with the struggle to manage remote teams for the first time. Managing remote teams is not the same as managing teams in a traditional office setting. The lack of face-to-face interaction may cause communication issues. The need to facilitate collaboration with team members across multiple time zones can get messy. Fortunately, there are tools and resources that help managers stay on top of their telecommuting employees and maximize their production.

To help determine the best tools for your business, we have categorized them by 8 functions.

  1. Video Conferencing

Video conferencing allows remote employees to visually interact with each other. Face to face interaction is important to build a stronger connection between coworkers and allows attendees to communicate via visual cues. When communication is restricted to only verbal or written, a portion of the message could be lost because people communicate with visual cues. Managers have the opportunity to see discomfort or hesitation in their team and can address the issue immediately.

Google Meet is a solution that allows employees to communicate visually with coworkers all around the globe. The application integrates other Google applications such as Calendar and Gmail to enable users to present and collaborate with viewers across all devices. 

Zoom has become the go to solution for video conferencing. The program is user friendly and allows attendees to join with video or dial in with a phone connection, share their screen and record the meeting to be reviewed at a later time.

  1. Instant Messaging

Instant messaging allows team members to quickly and instantly chat with each other. There are status settings that allow coworkers to know when other coworkers are available, away, in a meeting or any other status. This is ideal for teammates to communicate and find answers from each other quickly without drafting a formal email.

Skype is one of the oldest instant messaging systems around. With Skype, users can host virtual meetings and create group chats. VOIP options are also available to quickly call and verbally chat with a teammate or make voice calls. 

Slack has become popular for instant messaging. Users can create group chats called “channels” and when there is too much traffic within a channel, it can be sectioned off into smaller channels. Slack also integrates with Google Docs and DropBox and the API allows developers to tailor apps for specific needs within the team.

  1. Project Management

Project management software is now more important than ever because it allows managers to setup projects, assign tasks to team members and monitor the progress of a project. Managers can setup a task within a project and assign it to their employee and ensure the task is completed within the schedule assigned to the employee. 

Asana is a powerful project management tool that goes beyond task management and collaboration. It features workflow management which allows managers to take point and draw a project map. This allows managers to fix plans, spot errors and ensure no tasks are lost. The timeline feature also allows managers to ensure tasks are completed within their scheduled time frame.

Basecamp is very popular because it features a highly intuitive interface. It provides the basics of project management such as task management, messaging, filesharing, arrange meetings and search. The dashboard provides managers a bird’s eye view of all ongoing projects.

  1. Employee Monitoring

Managers have the ongoing responsibility to ensure their team is constantly improving its performance. This is especially important to businesses with sales or customer service call centers because sales training and coaching to improve performance is key to the company’s success. To properly coach a sales or customer service call center, employee monitoring is necessary and this includes both a call recording solution and screen capture software.

VSLogger is a powerful call recording software program by Versadial Solutions. VSLogger goes beyond a basic call recording system and features in-depth call reports to determine when call volume is highest for businesses to properly staff their call centers, a book-marking system to silence or extract a portion of a call for further review, the ability to monitor, download, search and playback both live and recorded calls.

Screen Capture is a computer screen recorder program to capture the activity on an employee’s computer. The program may run in the background of an employee’s computer and take snapshots of the screen. The manager can also setup the program to record the computer screen activity like a video and setup triggers to begin recording such as microphone or speaker activity.

Businesses can setup both VSLogger and Screen Capture to work in tandem and save the activity into a single audio / video file.

  1. File Collaboration

File collaboration on the cloud is the perfect tool for businesses to share files with remote teams. Collaboration of files can be stored in a centralized location that can be easily accessed over the internet.

Google Suite (G Suite) offers a platform to allow teams to collaborate using their Google Docs platform. Tools such as word processing, spreadsheets, presentation slides and more are included in the platform. Managers can create folders, store files and provide read or edit access to these folders or files for any team member.

Microsoft Office 365 offers the same cloud storage, file sharing and collaboration features as G Suite. Microsoft takes it to another level by allowing team members to download software apps such as Word, Excel and Power Point to their local computer. This frees the employee from requiring an internet connection to work on a file. Microsoft also has a type of version control to allow users to checkout a file, make changes and check the file back into the system. Managers can view the changes and restore an earlier version of a document.

  1. Cloud Storage and File Management

Cloud storage is also a great tool for businesses to transfer files to remote teams. Access to multimedia files and documents that are too large to be sent by email can be stored in a centralized location.

Google Drive is a cloud storage platform to store all of your business’ files. Google drive syncs with each team member’s local drive to ensure the entire team has access to the most recent files. When managers pair the file collaboration feature in G Suite, they can control and provide different levels of access to folders to each employee.

Drop Box offers cloud storage and file sharing. The program is highly intuitive, can be downloaded easily onto the employee’s desktop and provides a drag and drop feature for file sharing. Managers may also setup auto-sync to ensure every team member is working on the latest files.

  1. Time Zone Monitoring

One of the greatest benefits for businesses with telecommuting employees is hiring talent all around the globe. This does create an issue for managers because they will need to facilitate collaboration between team members in different time zones.

World Time Buddy allows managers to add multiple time zones in a single view. The program integrates with Google Calendar to help managers find an open time slot to schedule a meeting. World Time Buddy also features tabbing to group different teams together.

Every Time Zone offers a user friendly and intuitive interface. The work schedules of the team can be entered into the system. Managers can then choose a date and the system will provide recommended times when each team member may be able attend a meeting. The manager can then setup the meeting, download a file and email it out to each meeting member. The file can integrate into each attendee’s respective calendar.

  1. Password Vaults

Security is essential for all businesses and when employees are spread all around the globe, managers need to ensure shared systems have secured passwords. Password Vaults allow managers to generate strong passwords and store them into a central location. Users can log into the system and retrieve the passwords from a single location. 

1Password features the ability to secure workstations both in the office and remote locations. It also allows managers to choose which team member gets access with multi-authentication.  1Password provides a watchtower that alerts users of security breaches.

Lastpass features a Sharing Center to share notes and passwords to an unlimited number of users and provides a security level check to let users know the level of safety in the passwords they choose.

Conclusion

This article has listed many tools and it may be difficult to decide which tool is the right fit. Every business is unique and a solution that works best for one company may not work well for another. It is up to the business to furnish their employees with the right resources to help them be as productive when they are working remotely as they are working in a traditional office.

About the Author

Jim Shay is the Senior Copywriter at Versadial Solutions, a software company that provides powerful call recording solutions to government, manufacturing, telecommunications, call centers, public safety, financial services and many other industries.

Categories
Entrepreneurs

Leadership Lessons From Steve Jobs

Everyone knows Steve Jobs ; or, at least, they know of its existence. Or, of the innovations he made in the world of technology.

Steve Paul Jobs, such his full name, perhaps never imagined the global impact generated by being a leading entrepreneur in the computer world: he was the creator of sophisticated and easy-to-use products, the founder of Apple, a world leader in its sector.

His different biographies emphasize the thick line on his character and the way of leading. Everyone recognizes him for having had visionary ideas, which made momentous contributions in the field of personal computers, cell phones and music in digital format.

Undoubtedly, like all great minds, it is loved and hated in equal measure. Bill Gates , his Microsoft competitor, once noted his admiration for the way of telling and creating empathy between the person (Jobs) and the products through their presentations; and many of those who worked alongside him at Apple in those years remember him as a true genius.

As a legacy, in addition to his products, he left 10 practical leadership lessons that emerge from his business experience:

  1. Focus: eliminate distractions. After he was fired from his own company, Steve Jobs returned and one of the first decisions he made was to cut projects and leave only the top four. He said “Let’s do four things and do them spectacularly well.”
  2. Simplify everything. In today’s world, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Optimize resources and value the essential; leave the superfluous.
  3. Take responsibility. If you lead, you are responsible for the entire process; so much so that Apple always created products that, in general, are not directly compatible with other brands; He argued that it was the only way to take full responsibility for the process, flow, operation, and experience of each user.  
  4. If you fall behind, take a leap forward. Mac computers didn’t come with CD recorders, which its Windows competitor Microsoft did. Jobs and team went ahead by creating iTunes, a multi-device storage system that changed the music industry.
  5. Think products first, before profit. The origin of every great idea is the idea itself, and the money will come in addition. Steve said, “Focus on creating a great product, the benefits will follow.”
  6. Focus group just there. At one point, Jobs claimed that he felt a bit enslaved by product review groups. And then his famous phrase emerged: “People don’t know what they want, until you show it to them.” The human mind tends to immediately associate with its previous experience. Without disregarding market research, if you just stick to that you will be doing more of the same, that is, what people know.
  7. Distort reality to tear down the impossible in your life. One time Jobs was with Woz ( Stephen Gary Wozniak ), Apple’s co-founder, who he forced to break with something that seemed impossible: “Do you need 6 months to develop that? You can do it in 4 days! ”. And Woz did it. This means that mental models and self-imposed limits are often the greatest impediments to leaders.
  8. It transmits permanently. Everything communicates and adds value, or not. In the case of Apple products, the experience is transmitted from the moment the consumer yearns to have your product; packaging – design pieces themselves – and even typefaces and graphic design – something Jobs discovered almost by chance when he dropped out of systems studies at Reeds University and took calligraphy classes, which ended up being Another hallmark of their products: thousands of different letters versus a few that Microsoft offered.
  9. Demand excellence as high as possible. Never less than that. While the concept of perfection that Jobs alluded to is not achieved on this physical plane, he made sure that products were not released until everything is checked and they have passed through all possible controls and tests.
  10. Hire the best for your team. He simply admitted that every project he undertook would not have been successful without the team he had in each case. The key to being a leader is knowing how to surround yourself with people who are better than you, with more experience in certain fields, and let them shine.

    And finally, one of his most famous phrases: “Stay hungry, stay foolish. Go for more. Question, Discover, Believe. ”, Excerpt from the famous speech he gave at Stanford University to the students who admired, perplexed, that thin man, weakened by his illness, and who transmitted to them what he did best: the passion for turn your dream into reality.

    10 practical leadership lessons from Steve Jobs [Entreprenuer]

About Our GE Network Expert - Min Tang

Categories
Entrepreneurship

3 Business Advice No One Ever Discussed with You as a Business Owner

Every business owner seeks advice in one way or the other, the belief is that advice usually is a thoughtful statement, and when acted upon, there is a result to show. When it comes to advice, you have the right to choose which one to ditch or follow. Often, this is a long and confusing process. However, it is well-deserving and demonstrates a new way to act in the future. So, we have gathered some relevant business advice in this article.

First, Always Announce your Business 

One major challenge most business owners face is that they do not have selling skills. Especially if they are new to the business world, however, it is inarguable that selling a product or service can be quite difficult, but it takes conscious and consistent efforts to get it right. If you are discouraged about what people will think about your business when you announce, you need to build confidence in what you sell. Anyone who needs to succeed can’t afford to be shy; instead, be keen on always facing your worst fear. Speak confidently about your business anytime, anywhere you find yourself and any day.

Be a Problem Solver

A business is much easier to run if it is set out to solve a significant problem, making it easy to gain a solid customer base. When your business focuses on a specific niche fixing a problem, then, you’ve successfully created a brand. Know the problem that your target customers are facing, and what is critical is how you can solve them. 

Have a Comprehensive Database

Countless businesses lose it all when it comes to keeping a comprehensive database. This is critical for every business because they help communicate information about income, expenditure, assets, customers, and marketing activities. Having a database is beyond possessing a skill in the accounting niche because it outweighs that course. A comprehensive database can help to determine a better strategy channeled towards the growth of your business. To read more business advice follow this link.

Categories
Finance & Capital

Japan’s Cashless Vision Is Arriving 

Cash has always been king in Japan—and continues to be the primary payment method used. But over the past year, the country has made inroads into becoming more of a cashless society via significant investments in the mobile payments space.

We forecast there will be 23.9 million proximity mobile payment users in Japan this year, making up 21.5% of the country’s population. That’s a sizable increase from 2019, when 19.1 million people in Japan made a mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) transaction.

By 2023, that figure will grow to 27.6 million, which means that a quarter of the population will have used their device to complete an mPOS transaction.

This shift is captured in polling by Line Research published in February 2020. Roughly 38% of smartphone users in Japan surveyed said they used their mobile device to make a payment at a physical store in 2019. That’s an increase of 25 percentage points from the year prior.

While it certainly seems that many consumers in Japan are becoming more comfortable with transacting this way, there’s a lot of room for growth. According to the same Line Research poll, the number of respondents who reported using cash at physical stores decreased by nearly 10 percentage points in 2019 from 2018, but a sizable 62% of respondents said they still used this payment method as of December 2019.

The Japanese government has taken steps to encourage consumers to use mobile payments—like its cashless rebate program, which it rolled out last year. “The rewards program was launched to offset the impact of the consumption tax hike in October 2019,” said Cindy Liu, eMarketer senior forecasting analyst at Insider Intelligence. “Under the program, consumers who used cashless payments at specified outlets could receive cash back or reward points worth up to 5% of the value of those transactions.”

QR code payment systems, including PayPay and Line Pay, are also driving growth.

“Japan is betting big on QR codes as consumer payment preferences begin to change,” Liu said. “QR codes don’t require huge investments from vendors, and it is also simple and easy to use for consumers.”

This year was supposed to be Japan’s big cashless push, with the Summer Olympics and its partnership with Visa aimed at bolstering mobile payment adoption in Tokyo and the rest of the country. Due to the pandemic, however, the games have been postponed to 2021.

“COVID-19 has accelerated the push toward cashless payments as consumers avoid the use of cash and plastic cards,” Liu said. “And with the Olympics pushed back to 2021, we can expect the Japanese government to continue to invest in mobile payment technology as part of its measures to keep the games safe.”

Japan’s Cashless Vision Is Starting to Come to Fruition [E Marketer]

About Our GE Network Expert - Min Tang