Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

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.

Stress and Anxiety Guidance from Northwestern's Chief Psychologist

Greetings, friends.

 

I hope everyone is staying safe and well during this unprecedented and challenging situation. As many of you know, my husband Stew Shankman is a Professor and Chief Psychologist at Northwestern Medical School. He provided some great advice to the media for coping with stress and anxiety of the pandemic and our current isolation procedures. It might be helpful to share with your families, friends, and teams.

 

NPR

CBS

NBC

The New York Times

WGN Chicago

         

Please let me know if Stew or I can help you in any way.

Learning Resources to Help You Keep Up With Your Growing Business

Effective strategies for managing a growing business change all the time—the onus is on the owner to develop a mindset of continuous education. It's in your best interest to identify learning resources in a few key areas that are critical for growing your business.

Let's focus on debt consolidation, business loan attainment, supply chain  management and sales and marketing tracking because they all affect your ability to generate positive cash flow and ensure that your operations solidly support your growth objectives.

Debt Consolidation

When growing pains hit your business, you could unexpectedly find yourself in a mountain of debt.

Rather than letting the situation get out of control, you might consider debt consolidation, which involves taking out a new loan to pay off the debt and associated interest across your accounts. Debt consolidation loans are typically installment-based, meaning you pay them off monthly over a set time period.

Provided you procure a loan with a lower interest rate than that of your other balances, debt consolidation may make sense for you. Learning resources that teach the ins and outs of debt consolidation include a local credit union, CreditKarma, Debt.org and NerdWallet.

Business Loan Attainment

Once upon a time, getting a business loan meant walking into your local bank branch and convincing the lender to take a chance on you. Fortunately, there are more online options than ever before, but you must know what to look for.

 

Your growing business can benefit from a variety of financing solutions with low interest rates. Some common solutions include term loans, in which a lender provides a lump sum that you may back over a specified time period of one to five years; and business lines of credit, in which you borrow a maximum credit limit and pay interest rates on only the capital borrowed from the credit line.

And unlike the loans of yesteryear, you don't have to wait very long. Most online business loans get you the money you need within a few days. If your business needs a capital infusion to keep up with industry changes, check out learning resources like the Small Business Administration and Fundera to identify the loan that best addresses your business requirements and unique financial situation.

For the rest of the piece, check out the AMEX Business site.

Keep Your Business Safe During a Natural Disaster

If it seems like natural disasters are increasing, it's not your imagination. And those disasters have a very real effect on company's bottom lines.

According to a 2018 report by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, direct economic losses due to climate-related disasters have increased 150 percent over the last 20 years. During the period of 1998-2017, disaster-hit countries reported direct economic losses of $2,908 billion. The United States was hit hardest at $945 billion. As you might expect, floods and storms are the two most frequently occurring disasters.

Given these numbers, every business owner today may want to consider proactively developing disaster strategies to protect human and material assets and maintain a healthy amount of working capital should trouble strike. 

Let's examine four solutions for natural disasters you might employ to keep your business safe and increase your peace of mind.

1. Practice strong working capital management.

Working capital is the difference between a company's current assets like cash, unpaid bills and inventories of raw materials and finished goods, and its current liabilities such as payroll and taxes. Business owners use working capital to measure operational efficiency and overall financial health. 

 

Just as smart business owners build working capital reserves during anticipated slow periods, you should develop a similar strategy to cope with natural disaster-related disruption. 

Ensuring that you have enough cash and liquid assets on hand to cover sudden expenses and/or loss of income can mean the difference between your business' survival and its demise.

2. Take a second look at your insurance.

Now is the time to review your insurance policies and assess how well (or not) you'd be covered in a natural disaster. 

Sometimes it isn't intuitive. Using the hurricane scenario as an example, your run-of-the-mill business policy might cover losses from broken glass that's the result of high winds and flooding that's the result of rain. But if you want to protect your location from flooding that comes from groundwater, you may require supplementary flood insurance. 

If you live in an area prone to hurricanes, you can expect to pay higher premiums, and some carriers may not insure you at all. For more detailed information on what's generally covered and where, review the Insurance Information Institute's website.

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

These Business Process Improvements Saved My Company

My business success depends on working efficiently with other companies and individuals. Still, in the past, I structured my business processes as if I were a lone wolf. Every time I developed a process that didn't take others into account and was effective for me alone, I risked catastrophe. Fortunately, as a business process improvement writer, I've been exposed to a bevy of tools that I've adapted for the size and scope of my business and used to future-proof my operations. 

I hope these innovations are as helpful for you as they've been for me!

Low Code App Development

Mobile apps are all the rage, but it never occurred to me that I could build one. Instead, I spent hours pouring over existing solutions that I could never quite customize the right way. 

Low or no-code application development involves leveraging a software solution to create an app that solves a specific business problem without prior coding or programming knowledge. 

I built my first app for financial reporting in less than two weeks. It's designed precisely for the way I work with my accountant, and greatly streamlines our interactions!

Workflow and Collaboration Tools

I work on multiple virtual teams, all with different workflows. Although I'm an organized person, using too many collaboration tools (or worse, no tools at all) was confusing and led to small tasks slipping into the ether. 

Today, I employ a tool that allows me to manage several teams and projects at once and do so according to individual needs. By updating and visually displaying tasks, communication and project goals in real time, I maintain a space shuttle view of my own master workflow and make it easy for team members to work with me no matter where in the world we are.

For more strategies, head over to the AMEX Business site.

Key Questions to Ask Your New Hires

Designing an effective onboarding experience requires some trial and error, and you can hone your approach by asking new hires some specific questions at each phase of the onboarding journey. Although new hires are usually ramped up to productivity quickly, taking time out to address these questions will provide valuable information, a sense of investment and caring, and the perception that continuous feedback is respected and rewarded.

Recruitment success doesn’t automatically ensure onboarding success, but if you don’t recruit well, the best onboarding strategies in the world can’t help you. Ask your new hires these questions to learn what’s working in your recruitment process – and what isn’t.

• Did our recruitment process teach you what you needed to know about coming to work here?
• Did our recruitment process present a clear vision of our company’s purpose and goals?
• Was anything about our recruitment process frustrating? If so, what?
• Why did you ultimately choose our company?

The next set of questions should be asked – either by an HR representative or the hiring manager – at the conclusion of the first week of employment. At this point, you are checking for assimilation or the degree to which the new hire has been integrated into your environment.

• Do you feel welcome here?
• Do you have a solid understanding of your role and your place in the organization?
• Have we provided the right level of access – to people, processes, technology, and other resources – that you will need to perform your job to the best of your ability?
• What could we have done to make your first week less stressful and more enjoyable?
• Going forward, what aspects of your job are you most looking forward to? What aspects concern you?

By the end of the second week, new hires should be well ensconced in their jobs. You still want to ensure that onboarding is proceeding smoothly, though, and can do so via the following questions.

• Does your job match the expectations set about it during the recruitment process?
• Do you now feel adequately prepared to perform your job responsibilities?
• Have you met a sufficient number of people to have an overall understanding of how our company operates and who you can tap for assistance?
• Are there any surprises that you wish you’d known about prior to starting the job?

The next questions can be addressed both at the one month and three month marks. At these junctures, you are assessing whether the new hire is satisfied and engaged, and whether he/she felt the onboarding process was successful.

• Is there additional training or knowledge you’d like to receive to become even more proficient at your job?
• Do you understand your near-term goals as they relate to this position? Are you motivated to achieve them?
• As of today, would you recommend our firm to a friend?
• Do you see yourself working here for a long time? Why or why not?
• What did you like best about our onboarding process? Least?

As you’ve no doubt gathered, at some point new hire interviews become stay interviews and the goal shifts from onboarding to retention. By orienting your new employees to a continuous feedback approach early, they will be accustomed to participating in a two-way dialogue throughout the course of their tenure with the organization.

Supply Chains of the Future: What You Need to Know

There's a significant amount of change taking place in business today, and it requires owners to avoid disruption to their supply chain strategy.

Supply chain management plans will need to take into account automation and tech innovation, new geographies and regional sourcing, increased regulation and climate change.

Automation and Tech Innovation

Extensive job automation can affect your supply chain strategy for the better because it allows organizations to reap the unique strengths of both humans and machines.

"Teaming together human creativity, abstract thinking and adaptive response together with machine precision gets you the best of both worlds, leaving machines in charge of what they do best—easy, repeatable tasks—and freeing humans to be the best they can be," says Dr. Gabriele Rizzo, a futurist adviser for private and public international defense organizations.

But businesses will need to work with labor unions and governments to transition workers into new roles and help them to re- and upskill, and to enforce the appropriate labor laws involving safety, wages and hours. They may also want to consider developing a means to collect worker feedback and adjust operations, so they meet employee needs throughout the march toward automation.

According to Rizzo, implementing automation and other emerging technologies are of utmost importance in building and maintaining an edge in supply chain operations.

"These technologies enable fine-grained gathering of operational data, advanced analysis of processes and impacts and faster decision making," she says.

A 2017 Gartner report predicted that by 2021, virtual customer assistants (VCAs) and chatbots will handle 20 percent of all customer service interactions. Although technology innovations such as VCAs and autonomous mobile robots are getting smarter, human workers are still needed to integrate and oversee their participation—and this often requires a highly specialized, but not always readily available, skillset.

If your supply chain strategy already incorporates data analytics, you're off to a great start. But even so, it's becoming even more important for owners to zero in on the information that's most useful and relevant to them.

Technology-based supplier audits are valuable, as are digital platforms and dashboards that assess the effectiveness of operations and worker sentiment in real time.

To fully leverage Big Data's potential, owners must determine the data science skills required for their operations, and work to source these either internally or externally.

For more where this came from, head over to the American Express Business site.

How Digital Automation Can Help Make Your Life Easier

While many fear digital automation, more software arrives every day that saves business owners a great deal of money year by lowering costs and increasing productivity and efficiency.

Let's look at a few business-related areas in which digital automation can help make your life easier.

Recruitment

Need to hire staff? Predictive analytics is transforming recruitment.

Predictive analytics is deriving business insights from data to uncover patterns and illustrate potential outcomes, and it can tell you how well your efforts are resonating with your desired candidates.

A variety of platforms, including LinkedIn, leverage data mining and digital automation to show the number of candidates in a specialty and/or geographic area based on the number of job listings in each city.

Unconscious bias is a huge problem in recruiting that keeps business owners up at night. If often keeps us from seeing recruits' true abilities and negatively affects hiring for diversity.

Consider exploring software that use “augmented writing" to allow owners to phrase job descriptions with neutral language, and, using digital automation, removes names from resumes so evaluators don't make assumptions about gender, race or ethnicity.

Paperwork

Most business owners are still mired in paperwork. And when you rely on paperwork, you risk misplacing important documents.

In the era of digital automation, you can leverage applications to simplify note-taking and document storage. There are digital note-taking tools that can help save your ideas, snippets you hear and things you see throughout the day as clipped notes. Some can also scan your paperwork papers directly to the cloud and/or your mobile device and computer of choice. If you're worried about security, some even has encryption features for sensitive documents.

As for all those business cards you constantly have in your briefcase or jacket pocket, try address book management app. These can help manage your address book so you're alerted when people change jobs or roles.

For the rest of the piece, check out the American Express Business site.

Best Practices for Engaging Training Webinars

In the last decade, webinars have become a popular vehicle for delivering training. It makes sense. Scores of software options make it possible to simultaneously showcase audio, video, slides, and other visuals to participants around the globe. Organizations don’t have to pay to send their people to one place, and those who can’t attend live have the option of viewing the material at their convenience.

In my career as a human resources and workforce consultant, I’ve conducted around 100 webinars. I enjoy doing them, but over the years I’ve learned that the skills and techniques necessary to deliver an effective in-person course are not the same as those required for an engaging webinar. Here are considerations to keep in mind as you dip your toes into webinar planning and execution.

Interactivity is Even More Important

In an in-person class, participants at least feel somewhat obligated to pay attention, or at least refrain from doing three other tasks at once. There are no such constraints with a webinar, however. Participants can do whatever they want, and the instructor is none the wiser. For this reason, it’s essential that you hold their interest by stopping every few minutes to ask a question, do a poll, or request a chat response. If you tell your participants at the beginning that you’re going to do this, you have an even better chance at keeping everyone on board throughout your remarks.

Beware the Super-Dense Presentation

Just as in an in-person course, less is often more. Not only are wordy slides harder to read on a computer screen (or god forbid a phone), but they will also tempt an instructor to read from them directly. You also run the risk of overwhelming your audience with too much information that they aren’t free to immediately ask questions about, and this may prompt them to zone out. Instead of trying to communicate everything you’ve got on a topic, select three main points, explain them succinctly, and use colorful case studies, statistics, and anecdotes to support them.

Keep Up With New Feature Releases

If you’re been using the same webinar software for a while, it’s easy to get complacent. You think you know the program like the back of your hand, and you don’t think to learn about fresh offerings that can further enhance your presentations. As an example, one program I use is now able to analyze audience chat and questions in real time to determine the topics that are of most significant interest, and/or the aspects of my remarks with which people are struggling or need clarification. This feature helps me enormously in zeroing in on an individual audience’s specific needs, but I never would have known about it if I didn’t regularly communicate with my vendor.

Train the Trainer

In-person corporate trainers often have education or work experience in instructional design and delivery, and many rehearse extensively prior to getting in front of a new audience. For some reason, though, webinar instructions are not always held to the same standards. Being across an Internet connection instead of a room does not remove your responsibility to be smooth and prepared (rather than awkward and stammery). If you are planning your first webinar, consider a trial run with colleagues or friends and collect feedback on strengths and areas for improvement.

Test and Backup Your Tech

In an ideal world, software and wireless connections would be foolproof. However, in delivering lots of webinars over the years, I’ve learned the hard way that this is not the case. Obviously, you cannot conduct a webinar if you are unable to log into the hosting system, so make sure you’ve tested your software in the exact physical location and using the exact hardware and connections that you will employ on the day of the live webinar. If something doesn’t work properly at go time, you may not have time to fix it, so have a backup plan for gaining quick access to your audience. For example, even if a webinar is supposed to run over Wi-Fi, I always make sure I have an available phone line just in case.

Webinars can be an efficient and cost-effective way of conveying experience and transferring knowledge, but don’t take their ease-of-use for granted. Adhere to these best practices and you’ll realize the full benefits of this learning platform.