Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

The Future of Workspace in the Age of Adaptability

Most global cities are taking a long time to recover their pre-pandemic vibrancy, and that’s in large part to ongoing low utilization of corporate office space. As shared in ManpowerGroup’s Age of Adaptability research, organizations are experiencing a culture revolution in which the traditional office environment takes a back seat to more dynamic, flexible places of work.

Leaders accustomed to rigid, in-person workplaces and schedules may wish for the world to return to the way it was (hence the return-to-office or RTO wars), but workforce futurists believe that ongoing societal disruptions and employee pushback are likely to change the model permanently.

Let’s examine what’s happening and why, and how the question of the future of workspace is likely to be answered in the end.

The State of Office Space in 2025

Pervasive corporate office vacancies speak for themselves. And according to CBRE’s Office Occupier Sentiment survey, more than half of executives anticipate further reductions of their office footprints to trim unoccupied space, with most executing this upon lease expirations that will occur within the next few years. Similarly, Altus Group found that the cumulative volume of 2023 office transactions was 43% below 2020 levels, and 57% below the 10-year average over the same period. 

In a conversation I had with Brad Serot, vice chairman at commercial real estate consultancy CBRE, I learned that many organizations are still committed to an office-centric approach. But a majority of CBRE’s survey respondents are seeking flexibility in lease agreements, including more latitude to expand or contract their total space, and shared building services and amenities.

The research picked up on a trend toward “flight to quality,” in which organizations are relocating to newer and more desirable buildings – of which there’s a limited supply. The highest-performing options today combine walkability as well as housing and high-end experiential retail.

Serot said that rather than just telling their workforces how things will be, smart leaders work alongside employees to design spaces that provide the appropriate structure and technology support based on geographic, industry, and company-specific norms as well as employee choice.   

This model works best when each corporate-sponsored physical office has a designated purpose – such as hosting in-person meetings, offering individual employee hoteling space, or placing team members on the same schedule in a neighborhood-type environment.

International Workplace Group CEO & Founder Mark Dixon himself described modern office space planning as a “hub and spoke model, with smaller central offices, more regional hubs, and growing numbers of local satellite offices.” He said that the concept of the 15-minute city – the idea that any place a person would need to go would be within a 15-minute walk or bike ride of one’s home – saves time, is good for individuals’ health, and fosters community.

The Rise of Third Places 

I’ve been working in coffee shops since 2005. Once upon a time, I was the only person with a laptop in the store. Now, the preference to work at coffee places is so pervasive that some have had to implement “no laptop” policies to keep their establishments from being turned into mini-offices. 

In sociology, the third place refers to social surroundings that are separate from the two usual social environments of home and the workplace. Third places require either direct or indirect social interaction with other people and are also defined by the fact that no one is forcing you to be there. Besides coffee shops, popular third places for remote and hybrid workers include libraries, clubhouses, and conference centers. Coworking spaces like WeWork and Regus are good examples of businesses built on the premise of the third place. 

Some employees find third places desirable because they boost motivation and productivity, may have fewer distractions, and may also encourage them to get out of the house and look presentable. And given their popularity, leaders need to weigh whether it’s better for remote and hybrid employees to work in an independent third place or in the aforementioned regional hubs or local satellite offices.

Certainly, thorny issues like skill-building, confidentiality, privacy, and data security are easier to solve when an employee is working under a company-sponsored roof. Company-sponsored workspaces that are close to home may also boost connection and relationship building because one can see coworkers in person while working at the same location.

For the rest of the piece, check out the ManpowerGroup full blog series.

Talent Intelligence Platforms Use Deep Learning to Close Skills Gaps

The HR community is enthralled by the idea that artificial intelligence (AI) can provide tangible benefits in the quest to effectively source and hire in a tight labor market. But how does this work in practice? 
 
It starts by understanding a branch of AI called deep learning. Deep-learning algorithms, which are inspired by the actions of the human brain, continuously analyze data with a given logical structure. This structure encompasses multiple layers of algorithms called neural networks. 
 
Deep-learning algorithms can’t predict the future or give answers that a human would agree with 100%. Yet they are still valuable. If you’ve ever used a modern search engine and been amazed by the results or if you’ve ever watched the perfect show recommended by your streaming network of choice, you have experienced the power of deep learning. 
 
The main challenge of deep learning is data — specifically, the massive amount required. The talent space alone needs billions of data points about people, career trajectories, skills, and experiences. 
 
But while AI’s reach was once limited by computing power and the availability of data, that’s no longer the case. Today, global neural nets can identify more than a million skills across the world’s 8 billion people. 
 
Then, using this data, AI engineers can develop deep-learning algorithms to determine the best answers to a defined class of questions. In the case of deep talent, such questions might include: Who is the best fit for this specific job requirement? What job is this individual most likely to hold next in their career? 
 
Understanding deep learning’s ability to harness a massive amount of data is only the first step, however. Next, we must explore how deep learning can help us identify skills and transform how we hire people. 
 
The Power of Skills Adjacency 
 
Skills adjacency refers to the inference that a person good at skill A often excels at skill B, and it helps us complete our picture of a human’s true potential and the transferable skills they possess. 
 
In my recent book, “Deep Talent,” my co-authors and I tell the story of Nico Iannotti, a top sales engineer in Europe. Nico wasn’t always involved with either sales or technology. He was, however, previously involved with customer service as a sommelier and waiter. As he put it, skills are interchangeable assets that individuals can leverage in a variety of industry roles and life situations. 
 
“Many of the skills I acquired prior to my corporate career have been very helpful in my role as a client-relationship manager and solution engineer,” he told us. “What is the link between pairing wines and selling software? Both are customer-facing roles, and both provide solutions to a customer’s problem. In both cases, you are building relationships, demonstrating empathy, and selling an emotional experience based on a specific budget. It’s just a change of context, not a completely different skillset.” 

For the rest of the piece, head over to the UKG Workforce Institute.

Don't Be Intimidated by Job Redesign

The need for job redesign is on most HR leaders’ radars in 2024. But in most organizations, it still seems to be more of a talking point than a reality. However, given that Dayforce’s 14^th Annual Pulse of Talent survey found that 37% of respondents said there is a different role with their current employer that better matches their skillset, the process seems ripe with opportunity.

Job redesign is the process of rearranging or replacing tasks to better align work with evolving conditions both inside and outside the organization. And it’s really nothing new. For example, the telegraphist or telegraph operator was one of the first tech-related jobs of the 19^th century. The telegraphist used the most modern equipment available at the time to send and receive Morse code via radio and telephone.

In the 1970s, the telegraph was mostly replaced by telex, a communications network to send text-based messages. So, if you were a telegraphist and you wanted to remain gainfully employed, you had to adapt and learn telex. In other words, the telegraphist job was redesigned with a lot of the same skills and responsibilities – minus the telegraph.

Job redesign may feel more complex and overwhelming today because the pace of technology is faster and has a broader impact in terms of affected occupations. In particular, the arrival of generative AI has leaders wondering exactly how to execute job redesign to incorporate the benefits of this technology.

Before we get into how to make the process more turnkey, let’s address what job redesign is NOT. For example, job redesign is not bringing in a new piece of automation and letting go of all the human employees previously involved in the job targeted by the automation. When integration of automation is done well, the technology takes over more straightforward, repetitive tasks while human employees provide the necessary strategic input, creativity, judgment, and oversight. And that’s where job redesign comes in.

Three practical steps for job redesign
In most knowledge-driven and in many frontline worker occupations, shifting business requirements and emerging technologies mean that employees need new skillsets. Therefore, the process of job redesign involves understanding the individual tasks that encompass the work being done, and then matching or training for skills necessary for those tasks.

Step one: Engage in task analysis

Target a small category of jobs to start, and then assemble a diverse group of stakeholders from across the organization. Make sure this group includes people across levels, and not just leadership, so you have representation from those who are close to the work.

Document the critical tasks currently associated with each job, and note where there are redundancies, areas where technology could be efficiently deployed, and places where you can build a job to become more flexible in structure and environment. You can also rank your tasks according to importance, how often they are performed, how long they take, and the skills required or how people learn how to do each task.

Step two: Create new job titles and descriptions

Next, based on your analysis, group related tasks into new job buckets. With smart technology now helping in new ways with some tasks, there may be room to remove or combine previous jobs. This may involve creating new “super jobs” that cross departmental lines. For example, the new job of people analytics manager might be technically housed in HR but include tasks traditionally housed in IT such as selecting appropriate technology applications, ensuring data quality, and communicating data-related insights to leaders and other constituents.

You can also use this exercise as an opportunity to standardize jobs titles and descriptions across the organization.

For the rest of the piece, head over to the Dayforce blog.

Strategic Foresight in Practice in the HR Space

 In the summer of 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic raging, everyone across the globe waited to see what would happen next.

The employment world was no different. In my role as a workforce futurist, I help organizations anticipate and prepare for near-future disruptions. As part of ongoing work with the US government, I produced a summer 2020 forecast for 2022-25. I asked: what impact would the pandemic have on employment two to five years forward?

Futurist professionals use a combination of methodologies to make our forecasts, including environmental scanning for emerging changes, trend analysis, and scenario planning. Although COVID-19 was in some ways an unprecedented event, similar crises had befallen the world before. Futurists examine published public and private sector research as well as media and expert commentary to try to extrapolate what those outcomes might mean for the current situation. The U.S. government was very interested in this expertise when faced with the first global pandemic in more than one hundred years.

In addition to the permanent installation of distributed work (which was fairly obvious even in 2020), I guessed that between 2022 and 2025, the world would be plagued by mass layoffs –due to potential economic instability resulting from the pandemic crisis.

Plus, I anticipated an escalating mental health crisis among workers after suffering the collective trauma of isolation during COVID-19.

Over the next few years, I kept my eye on whether the forecasted twindemic of layoffs and rising mental health issues was actually coming to fruition.

As of mid-2023, Zippia reported that 40% of all Americans had been laid off from a job at least once, and nearly one-third had been laid off within the last two years.

In the first ten months of 2023, the technology industry alone laid off a quarter million people. And, available unemployment solutions continued to underperform, resulting in the average unemployed citizen being out of work for 23 weeks, according to 2022 Statista research.

Most importantly, a 2023 study based on surveys in 29 nations published by Harvard Medical School in The Lancet Psychiatry journal found that in the post-pandemic era, one out of every two people in the world will develop a mental health disorder in their lifetime.

 

Organizations Answer the Call for Employee Health Support

 

Many global organizations did recognize the psychological impact the pandemic was having on employees and stepped-up efforts to help them. For example, at Pinterest, employees who lost childcare or were caring for an ill family member could receive financial compensation for up to four weeks. And JPMorgan Chase implemented a well-being app to query employees about their mental health and stress levels on a weekly basis.  By monitoring the app’s data, HR could provide struggling teams with customized support.

 

As the pandemic progressed, my research team noted a general increase in technology-based mental health offerings.

 

Two notable programs include the Spring Health mobile app – which prompts employees to take a guided mental health assessment and then matches them with a dedicated care navigator – and the Flourish DX app, which collects and reports employee mental health assessments to health and safety professionals as well as HR staff.

Similarly, there’s Lyra, a service that offers employees access to individualized care including self-guided programming, mental health coaching, and medication management. Lyra’s leaders claim that an astounding 88% of program users improve with care.

Given the frequency and severity with which layoffs and mergers are taking place – as the Zippia and Statistica data shows – it is clear that organizations need to continue to support their former employees.

And to a degree, thanks to stellar outplacement services firms like LHH, Right Management, and Mercer, this is happening. Mercer, for instance, claims that its outplacement services offerings help transitioning employees and displaced employees land a new job nearly 2.5X faster than the national average.

LHH’s outplacement services programs with Rexam were in part responsible for the business saving £22 million during an acquisition. And Right Management guided a global technology corporation employing over 400,000 people in more than 175 countries through an outplacement program that resulted in 81% of released candidates moving into a new role.

The trouble is, mental health and extensive job search support for laid off employees tends to be reserved for those at more senior levels. And economists say that more senior individuals are less vulnerable to the cascading effects of unemployment and can often afford to private services out of their own pocket.

The Far-Reaching Consequences of Unemployment

The long-term effects of unemployment on personal wellbeing are noted in several studies summarized by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.

In short, unemployed individuals face reduced income, compromised physical health, strained relationships, poor academic performance for their children, and sometimes a permanent loss of self-esteem, self-worth, and intrinsic motivation.

This decrease in motivation subsequently creates a decrease in job seeking behavior, which means the problem then becomes a vicious cycle leading to prolonged periods of unemployment.

Unemployed individuals, especially those in lower to middle income brackets, are less likely to have the money and resources to spend on coaching and therapy that will help them get back on their feet.

A Futurist’s Forecast Leads to Tangible Action

Yes, forecasts are part of my job as a futurist, but the ideal is for my work to not just be theoretical.

I want to use my forecasts to actively generate solutions that can make the world of work better – so back in the summer of 2020, my consulting organization alongside academics at Northwestern University and the Feinberg School of Medicine put together a grant proposal with the National Institute of Mental Health, a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The result was DRIVEN – an experiential platform designed to guide high-risk workers back to employment while supporting them through what is often a deeply worrying and traumatic time.

DRIVEN’s six-week program is app-based and combines evidence-based cognitive behavioral techniques (CBT) with traditional job search strategies. Although CBT has entered the public’s awareness thanks to self-serve mental health apps, these techniques have not been traditionally leveraged in the career development and coaching space despite employment’s obvious impact on emotional well-being.

The program includes a range of tools including videos, exercises, and live coaching – because we believe the structure and accountability provided by a human partner is critical to success and that’s what a lot of today’s mental health apps are missing.

Every time a newly unemployed worker engages with the program, they encounter diversity of age, race, and ethnicity because we want our participants to see themselves reflected in every video host, coach, video, image, and animation they come across in DRIVEN.

When we first received our grant, our hope was that the resulting program would be in development and efficacy testing via clinical trial for three years, and by the time it was ready, the world would need it more than ever.

Now, as we near the end of that tenure, we hope that DRIVEN serves as an example of how forecasting can be used to produce tools that genuinely have an immediate impact on the health of the global workforce.

At its core, strategic foresight is an exercise in imagination, and the good news is, anyone with expertise and experience in a given industry, organization, or company can use it to shape policy, plan effective interventions, and avoid risk. HR professionals next must take the courageous step of looking likely futures in the eye and developing strategies that may seem “ahead of their time” now but may prove essential later.

This post was originally published on UNLEASH.

 

Announcing My New Book, DEEP TALENT (in Partnership with Eightfold AI)

The world is at a societal and technological inflection point. Business leaders cite talent recruitment and development as top challenges due to talent shortages, long hiring times, and high turnover. Meanwhile, key challenges for engagement and retention include managing employee expectations in line with post-pandemic norms.

We know from research and experience that nearly 50% of top talent leaves within two years, but also that most individuals would happily stay if given the right learning and growth opportunities. But as companies grow and gain thousands of employees, CEOs tend to lose track of their workforce’s abilities. They don’t know what skills employees have already acquired at work, what skills employees are well-equipped to master next, or how certain skills can be used to grow individual careers.

We talk often about the global skills gap, but what's really behind this? After all, the jobs are there and the people are there. It turns out there's not an HR or a workflow problem, but rather a matching problem between the best people and the most critical jobs you need to fill.

Having studied the talent gap for more than a decade, I was intrigued when I learned that there is technology available today that can solve this matching problem at scale. And that's why I was so excited to have the chance to write a book with Ashu and Kamal, who have a company, Eightfold, that makes one of the most promising talent intelligence platforms available today.

That book, DEEP TALENT: How to Transform Your Organization and Empower Your Employees Through AI, is now available everywhere books are sold. You'll leave us with an understanding of how to use talent intelligence and deep learning (AI) to assess skills adjacency (if you are good at skill A, you will also be good at skill B) to open non-traditional pathways for candidates who don’t have the experience doing the exact job needed but have every ounce of capability required. You'll also be able to determine your current organizational capabilities and future needs by taking into account a global dataset of standardized job descriptions and requirements.

Although the future is uncertain, we have reason to be optimistic, because talent intelligence has the potential to facilitate a meaningful career for everyone in the world. If we’re looking, talent intelligence will show us the work to take on next to feed our skills and passions and the careers we’ve always wanted but haven’t known how to find.

 

Managing Your Data in the New Normal

Amid social distancing, stringent lockdowns and a second surge of COVID-19 cases, business owners can no longer rely on splashy launch events, mom-and-pop friendliness or a dynamite location to build customer relationships. Today, every business is competing for eyeballs and purchases made on digital channels.

Data-based approaches can help you stand out more effectively.

To successfully stand out, you’ll need to understand data optimization basics, including gathering customer information, responding to real-time feedback and reducing inefficiencies that lose revenue and diminish trust.

Gathering Customer Information

Data optimization commonly refers to collecting all the information at your disposal and maximizing the speed and comprehensiveness with which business-critical information can be extracted and analyzed.

If you have a website, this could be the most sensible place to start data collection. You likely have a handle on how many people are visiting and what pages they’re viewing, but are you using an analytics tool to assess where they are coming from, the content they spend the most time reading, and which page prompts them to leave? Do you know where your most active visitors live, how old they are and what products or services they most frequently purchase? These questions form the foundation of your business, and therefore are critical to your data-optimization efforts.

Feedback forms or emails are essential, but in today’s climate you’ll likely want to be more proactive about seeking out qualitative information about how customers value your offerings and their experience with your organization.

You don’t have to invest in a pricey or unwieldy customer survey to do this. Instead, try pushing a few questions to targeted visitors based on the defining characteristics above. You can also use analytics features embedded in the big four social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter) to ascertain what people are saying and the general sentiment around your brand.

If your customer relationships are rich with engagement points, CRM software can be a wise investment. These tools help monitor your interaction with current and potential customers, leverage data analytics to track customer history and details and suggest data-driven strategies to grow relationships.

For more where this came from, check out the full article at AMEX Business.

Becoming a Remote-First Organization

Companies looking to improve their work-from-home (WFH) productivity may want to adopt some of the principles of distributed work.

The most evolved version of work from home, distributed work refers to operations that are remote-first rather than office planned. Companies like WordPress and Zapier have been 100 percent distributed for years, with all of their employees — from their executives to HR to sales and marketing — working from their homes and offices around the globe.

Having entered this situation so suddenly, it's no surprise that many business owners have been winging WFH. But given that working from home and distributed workforces will continue even as we emerge from COVID-19, business owners can use the pandemic as a catalyst to permanently transform work for the better. According to a March 2020 Gartner survey of 317 CFOs, "74 percent of respondents said they will move at least 5 percent of their previously on-site workforce to permanently remote positions post-COVID 19."

Being strategic about distributed work demands a wider lens. Now is the time for businesses to adopt some of the principles of distributed to prepare for a remote-friendly future.

1. Get comfortable with managing remote teams.

To fully realize the benefit of distributed work, small-business owners must get away from a strong preference for employees to work onsite and use company space and equipment at scheduled times. If you only allow remote work in an emergency, you won't have the necessary infrastructure in place to support fully distributed work, and employee access will likely be slow and clunky. 

Being comfortable with distributed work requires trusting your employees. You can cultivate trust by stepping up communication and letting your people know you support them and are giving them the freedom to do their jobs when and how they feel it is most appropriate and effective. 

Boost your comfort level by tracking the productivity of WFH employees during the pandemic. You don't have to use software to record their every keystroke or micromanage their daily tasks — it's more about having a concrete idea of whether employees are achieving their goals as efficiently at home as they did in the office.

When it comes time to ease restrictions, seek employee feedback about an onsite schedule that makes sense. By using a survey tool or individual interviews to collect this information on a broad scale, you may find that some employees are more comfortable with returning to the workplace than others. This can help guide your decision regarding how distributed your post-COVID organization will be.

2. Embrace asynchronous work.

Accepting that closings will be long term, many companies have simply moved in-person activities online. Tools like Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Google Hangouts facilitate real-time meetings. Employees can access share drives, email and company applications remotely, but everyone is largely working the same hours whether they have distractions (e.g. children doing eLearning) or not.

On a recent podcast, Automattic CEO and WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg shared a secret for effective distributed work: a move from synchronous (everyone performs work tasks at the same time) to asynchronous processes (employees work on their own time). For instance, a synchronous process might require people to travel, sit in a meeting room and provide immediate reactions to an idea. An asynchronous process might involve presenting an issue via instant message, prompting team members to think through it in detail and then respond within a predetermined deadline.  

Organizations can shift to asynchronous processes by first evaluating whether set business hours are necessary, and if so, for whom (e.g. customer service staff). Consider how you might change your performance model to evaluate employees on the quality of their contributions rather than the time it took to produce them. For example, an agile performance management system relies on continuous feedback to establish, accomplish and reconfigure goals that align with business needs, and employees are measured on their progress against these goals in real time. 

When you stop relying on synchrony, you have the freedom to source talent across the globe. Think about assembling teams based not on who is geographically proximal, but who is best for the job. This way, you can move operations forward 24 hours a day as employees "pass the baton" to overseas colleagues.

For the rest of the post, head over to the AMEX Business site.

Are You Using These Retention Strategies?

Customer retention is the strategy of engaging customers so that they're motivated to continue purchasing from you. As a business owner, you may have tried many approaches to improve your business, but have you looked at your customer engagement efforts? While customer retention isn't an exact science, these innovative customer retention programs are worth a look. Just be sure to look at all strategies through the COVID lens of grace and sensitivity.

#1: Education

In a world where individuals are increasingly responsible for their own professional development, people will be grateful to your organization if you’re able to help them keep their knowledge fresh.

Education offerings can take a variety of forms, from online courses and podcasts to information repositories and access to subject matter experts. I know of a company that provides free sales and marketing training videos and certifications for customers and partners who want to grow their skills.

You can measure the success of customer retention programs involving education by tracking your Customer Retention Rate (CRR) before and after implementation, as well as ascertaining how completing educational initiatives correlates with repeat purchases.

#2: Pop-Up Engagements

"Surprise reciprocity" refers to the act of giving unexpected and delightful thanks to your most valuable customers in the form of a memorable gift or note.

Your offering need not be pricey if it's delivered with care and thought. Some of the best examples of surprise reciprocity are highly personal. If you run a toy store, you may send your customer’s child a handwritten birthday card with a free gift voucher enclosed. And if you have a pet supply store, you might send your customers a painting or cartoon of their beloved dog or cat.

Customer retention is the strategy of engaging customers so that they're motivated to continue purchasing from you. As a business owner, you may have tried many approaches to improve your business, but have you looked at your customer engagement efforts? While customer retention isn't an exact science, these innovative customer retention programs are worth a look.

#1: Education

In a world where individuals are increasingly responsible for their own professional development, people will be grateful to your organization if you’re able to help them keep their knowledge fresh.

Education offerings can take a variety of forms, from online courses and podcasts to information repositories and access to subject matter experts. I know of a company that provides free sales and marketing training videos and certifications for customers and partners who want to grow their skills.

You can measure the success of customer retention programs involving education by tracking your Customer Retention Rate (CRR) before and after implementation, as well as ascertaining how completing educational initiatives correlates with repeat purchases.

#2: Pop-Up Engagements

"Surprise reciprocity" refers to the act of giving unexpected and delightful thanks to your most valuable customers in the form of a memorable gift or note.

Your offering need not be pricey if it's delivered with care and thought. Some of the best examples of surprise reciprocity are highly personal. If you run a toy store, you may send your customer’s child a handwritten birthday card with a free gift voucher enclosed. And if you have a pet supply store, you might send your customers a painting or cartoon of their beloved dog or cat.

For the rest of my list, head over to the AMEX Business site.

Customer Retention Tools for 2020

Customer retention analytics programs that measure reach and impact can go a long way in helping business owners improve marketing campaigns as well as products and services overall.

They can also help make it easier to cross- and upsell existing customers, and to keep them over the long haul. (As we know, it's far less expensive to retain a customer than to recruit a new one.)

Top Customer Retention Analytics Tools

Fortunately, technology innovation over the last several years has enhanced the cadre of available tools that target customer retention.

Learning about customer retention analytics can help you stretch your marketing dollars and keep your most valuable business.

#1. Optimizely

An A/B test is a customer retention technique that prompts customers to choose what they prefer most about your product, service, website or marketing campaign.

Using a tool like Optimizely, you can rapidly test an A/B hypothesis for every aspect of your offering, allowing you to refine it based on what customers find most appealing or helpful.

Optimizely's features contribute to both the customer retention rate metric and the repeat purchase probability metric, which I describe in more detail below. It offers a variety of pricing arrangements ranging from a few thousand dollars a year for the basic offering to $200K a year for the enterprise plan.

#2. Google Analytics

Many business owners already use Google Analytics for customer retention statistics on their websites, such as traffic numbers and most frequently visited pages. However, a closer look also reveals your most and least popular website pages by time of day, and which customers visit repeatedly.

Google Analytics' basic features are available in the free version, but much larger businesses can take advantage of Google Analytics 360, which costs $150K annually and provides advanced machine learning features that derive sophisticated insights from customer data.

For more where this came from, check out the full piece on the AMEX Business website.

Conduct Market Research on a Budget

Business success today depends on understanding what market trends are most prominent, what your customers need and what types of competitive strategies are the most effective. After all, there's nothing worse than spending precious resources launching a new product or service that ultimately flops in the marketplace.

Fortunately, advancing technology makes it possible to conduct competitive market research more rapidly than in the past. Let's explore how to conduct a market analysis efficiently, as well as strategies that facilitate quick learning of key market trends.

Conducting a Customer Needs Analysis

The first step in mastering market trends is getting to know your customers. You should use any information and feedback collected to divide your customers into segments. Segments should share a common characteristic (such as age or location) and be large enough to warrant individual marketing attention.

Within each segment, it's helpful to develop buyer profiles. Picturing your customer as a human being, you'll describe:

• their demographics and background,
• motivations and challenges,
• what they spend their lives doing,
• how they communicate with the businesses they patronize and
• the messages that are most likely to appeal to them.

Your last customer needs analysis step will be connecting each target buyer's needs to a product or service. Call out your benefits, why the target buyer would or would not choose you over a competitor. If there are holes, consider refining your offerings to better address critical customer pain points.

For the rest of the article head over to the AMEX Business site.