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Cheat Sheet / Updated 04-12-2024
Everyone hates having debt, but most people can’t feasibly make a big purchase or handle a crisis without taking on some kind of debt, like student loans, auto loans, and credit cards. Debt happens to everyone at some point. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about it. Here you find some tips to start getting out of debt.
View Cheat SheetCheat Sheet / Updated 04-12-2024
From managing to marketing and everything in between, the world of small business can be both exciting and overwhelming. It’s a place where no two workdays are exactly the same and where unpredictable things happen. If you’re thinking about starting (or you already run and manage) your own business, check out the following list of tips to improve your chances of success.
View Cheat SheetCheat Sheet / Updated 04-12-2024
Entering the financing world can be a confusing place at first. One way to get a handle on it all is to master the common financing and investing terms. It always helps to know what everyone is talking about!
View Cheat SheetArticle / Updated 03-28-2024
Everything is digital these days, and the digital experience (DX) should be more effective and downright delightful than ever before. Its evolution is critical for the future of delivering exceptional customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX) strategies. This digital-first approach to CX is particularly important as new technologies emerge. One such technology is artificial intelligence (AI) — you may have heard of it. AI can be used to create world-class experiences that drive customer loyalty, employee satisfaction and engagement, and a reduction in operating costs. In this article, you discover the essential pieces of a digital-first CX strategy and the steps you need to take to implement your own. Implementing a digital-first strategy The future of CX is moving away from voice channels and toward digital channels. Voice channels are still in use, of course, but your DX strategy must seamlessly integrate digital channels to remain competitive. In fact, to deliver a stellar DX program, keep in mind these four considerations: Self-service should be an integral part of your DX activities. To supercharge agent productivity and self-service experiences, use the power of knowledge. Customers should be at the heart of your DX program. Deploy proactive engagement. For more information on these pillars, visit www.aberdeen.com/blog-posts/the-four-pillars-of-best-in-class-digital-experience-program. While keeping these key components in mind, follow the pointers in this section to start your digital-first strategy. Avoid focusing solely on CCaaS Today’s recipe to develop a crystal-clear focus on the customer is complex. You need several ingredients, and while choosing the right contact center as a solution (CCaaS) product is an important step for your customers’ digital-first experiences, it’s not everything. Would you make a cake with just flour? To ensure your DX strategy puts you ahead of the competition and delivers the delicious results you’re craving, mix together five ingredients to make up that “special sauce.” Manage digital assets In many companies, DX can include several teams and types of interactions, including social media, AI technologies, chat, and email. Eliminating silos means you can access a complete view of your customer history, interactions, and sentiment to provide the high-caliber service your customers deserve, no matter how they interact with your business. Conversational AI and chatbots Customers want self-service, but they also want to feel like they’re having conversations and communicating effectively in these self-service interactions. With AI-powered intelligent virtual agents and chatbots, your customers can have their cake and eat it, too! They can converse naturally and radically improve their automated experiences. If you’re interested in accelerating your self-service channels, visit www.nice.com/products/conversational-ai-and-chatbots to find out more. Promote a unified agent experience Your agents need unified sources of organizational knowledge, product and feature updates, and customer data to easily stay up to date. Without this unified experience, they may experience constant slowdowns to complete trainings or take too long to search for the latest information. This experience empowers your workforce and creates time needed for complex tasks, and it increases confidence, accuracy, and efficiency — all adding up to greater job enjoyment. Provide the omnichannel journey Your customers’ typical journeys are non-linear, so you need to support them through self-service, the contact center, and any combination of channels through to resolution. Varying customer preferences underscores the need for omnichannel support. That includes seamless integration of emerging channels as they become available. Optimize AI for self-service Self-service capabilities powered by AI optimize digital channels by beginning with simple and repetitive use cases that generate high value. You can also use intelligent routing to enable collaboration between live agents and self-service tools. Partner with AI AI has been a supporting role for CX for a while now, but AI in customer interactions is now taking center stage as the main character. AI has the potential to revolutionize every facet of CX across digital industries, so partnering with AI now is crucial. Through this enhanced technology, you can provide a more personalized experience and immerse your customers in AI for unparalleled convenience and satisfaction. AI also upskills your employees and allows them to perform more advanced tasks and increase their impact and value to your organization. When agents trust the system that evaluates their performance, job satisfaction and engagement increase. To advance your company’s future, use AI to maximize employment loyalty and engagement while delivering amazing experiences for their customers. Make experiences flow Your organization — no matter the size or location — can create extraordinary customer experiences while meeting your business goals. If you need help along the way, look to NICE CXone, a cloud-native, customer-experience platform. NICE is a leader in AI-powered self-service and agent-assisted CX software for the contact center — and beyond. Elevate every customer interaction. Find out more at get.nice.com/digital-self-service.html.
View ArticleArticle / Updated 03-20-2024
In mechanics of materials, Hooke's law is the relationship that connects stresses to strains. Although Hooke's original law was developed for uniaxial stresses, you can use a generalized version of Hooke's law to connect stress and strain in three-dimensional objects, as well. Eventually, Hooke's law helps you relate stresses (which are based on loads) to strains (which are based on deformations). For a three-dimensional state of stress, the normal strain in a given direction (such as x) is a function of the stresses in all three orthogonal directions (usually the Cartesian x-, y-, and z-directions), as shown by this equation: where E is the modulus of elasticity and ν is Poisson's ratio for the material. For a uniaxial stress, two of the stresses in the equation are zero. For a biaxial stress condition, one of the stresses in this equation is zero. The generalized relationship for Hooke's law for shear in the XY plane can be given as
View ArticleArticle / Updated 03-20-2024
Bitcoin is an alternative type of payment system that is sometimes mentioned in the media. Is it "Internet" or "digital" money? Is it a way to conduct business outside the mainstream financial infrastructure? Is it a new way of life that could transform multiple aspects of society in the future? The answer is yes. Origins: Bitcoin was created by developer Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008. Purpose: Bitcoin provides a viable decentralized alternative to the current mainstream financial infrastructure. Method: Bitcoin enables spending with full transparency through a publicly available ledger known as the blockchain. Security: A bitcoin transaction involves both a public key, which is generally known to everyone, and a private key known only to the bitcoin user. No coins can be spent without knowing the private key.
View ArticleCheat Sheet / Updated 03-14-2024
Artificial intelligence (otherwise known as AI) can save you lots of money and help you do things that were either costly or a pipe dream only a few years ago — and that includes helping you with investing and financial pursuits.
View Cheat SheetArticle / Updated 03-07-2024
Here are some things you can begin to do for a new marketing campaign for your small business. Before you hire professionals, see what you can do yourself. Compare your approach to that of your competitors When you compare your marketing approach to competitors, you easily find out what customers like best. Make a list of the things that your competitors do differently than you. Does one of them price higher? Does another give away free samples? Do some of them offer money-back guarantees? Make a list of at least five points of difference between your business and its major competitors based on an analysis of marketing practices. Now ask ten of your best customers to review this list and tell you what they prefer — your way or one of the alternatives — and ask them why. Keep a tally. You may find that all your customers vote in favor of doing something differently than the way you do it now. Create a customer profile Collect or take photographs of people (from Facebook or email thumbnails, and with the individuals’ permission) who you characterize as your typical customers. Post these pictures on a bulletin board — either a real one or a virtual one like Pinterest (set this board to private because it’s definitely not for sharing beyond your marketing team) — and add any facts or information you can collect about these people. Consider this board your customer database. Whenever you aren’t sure what to do about any marketing decision, sit down in front of your bulletin board and use it to help you tune in to your customers and what they do and don’t like. Entertain customers to get their input Entertaining your customers puts you in contact with them in a relaxed setting where they’re happy to share their views. Hold a customer appreciation event or invite good customers to a lunch or dinner. Use such occasions to ask for suggestions and reactions. Bounce a new product idea off these good customers, or find out what features they’d most like to see improved. Your customers can provide an expert panel for your informal research — you just have to provide the food! After they get to know you, they may be happy to give you ongoing quick feedback via a chat room, Twitter, or a group text message, especially if they use these media routinely themselves. Use email to do one-question surveys If you market to businesses, you probably have email addresses for many of your customers. Try emailing 20 or more of them for a quick opinion on a question. The result? Instant survey! If a clear majority of respondents say they prefer using a corporate credit card to being invoiced because the card is more convenient, well, you’ve just gotten a useful research result that may help you revise your marketing approach. Always ask people for their email addresses whenever you interact with them, through your website or in person, so as to build a large email list. Emailing your question to actual customers or users of your product is far better, by the way, than trying to poll users of social networking websites for their opinions. Sure, you may be able to get a bunch of responses from people on Twitter, but would those responses be representative of your actual customers? Probably not. Research government databases Many countries gather and post extensive data on individuals, households, and businesses, broken down into a variety of categories. In the United States, you can find out how many people earn above a certain annual income and live in a specific city or state — useful if you’re trying to figure out how big the regional market may be for a luxury product. Similarly, you can find out how many businesses operate in your industry and what their sales are in a specific city or state — useful if you’re trying to decide whether that city has a market big enough to warrant you moving into it. If you want to use the web to explore useful data compiled and posted by various agencies of the US government, visit the United States Census Bureau website and check out the data on households and businesses. This site is your portal to US data from the economic census (which goes out to 5 million businesses every five years) and the Survey of Business Owners. Establish a trend report Set up a trend report, a document that gives you a quick indication of a change in buying patterns, a new competitive move or threat, and any other changes that your marketing may need to respond to. You can compile one by emailing salespeople, distributors, customer service staff, repair staff, or friendly customers once a month, asking them for a quick list of any important trends they see in the market. (You flatter people by letting them know that you value their opinions, and email makes giving those opinions especially easy.) Print and file these reports from the field and go back over them every now and then for a long-term view of the effectiveness of your marketing strategies. If you don’t work for one of the handful of largest and best-funded companies in your industry, then your trend analysis should also include careful tracking of what those giants are doing because they may be setting marketing or product trends that affect the rest of their industry. Tracking media coverage is easy on Google or other search engines. Analyze competitors’ collateral Print out or clip and collect marketing materials (brochures, ads, web pages, and so on) from competitors and analyze them by using a claims table. Open up a spreadsheet (or draw a blank table on a piece of paper or poster board) and label the columns of this new table, one for each competitor. Label each row with a feature, benefit, or claim. Add key phrases or words from an ad in the appropriate cell. Include one to three of the most prominent or emphasized claims per competitor. When filled in, this claims table shows you, at a glance, what territory each competitor stakes out and how it does the staking. One may claim it’s the most efficient, another the most helpful, and so on. Compare your own claims with those of your competitors. Are you impressive by comparison, or does a more dominant and impressive competitor’s claims overshadow you? Do your claims stand out as unique, or are you lacking clear points of difference? Research your strengths Perhaps the most important element of any marketing plan or strategy is clearly recognizing what makes you especially good and appealing to customers. To research your strengths, find the simplest way to ask ten good customers this simple but powerful question: “What’s the best thing about our (fill in the name of your product or service), from your perspective?” The answers to this question usually focus on one or, at most, a few features or aspects of your business. Finding out how your customers identify your strengths is a boon to your marketing strategy. Investing in your strengths (versus your competitors’ strengths or your weaknesses) tends to grow your sales and profits more quickly and efficiently. Probe your customer records Most marketers fail to mine their own databases for all of the useful information those databases may contain. Study your customers with the goal of identifying three common traits that make them different or special. This goal helps you focus on what your ideal customer looks like so you can look for more of them. Test your marketing materials Whether you’re looking at a letter, catalog, web page, tear sheet, press release, or ad, you can improve the piece’s effectiveness by asking for reviews from a few customers, distributors, or others with knowledge of your business. Do they get the key message quickly and clearly? Do they think the piece is interesting and appealing? If they’re only lukewarm about it, then you know you need to edit or improve it before spending the money to publish and distribute it. Customer reviewers can tell you quickly whether you have real attention-getting wow-power in any marketing piece. Just ask a half dozen people to review a new marketing piece while it’s still in draft form. Interview defectors Your company’s records of past customers are an absolute gold mine of information that can be easily overlooked. Use these records to figure out what types of customers defect, when, and why. If you can’t pinpoint why a customer abandoned you (from a complaint or a note from the salesperson, for example), try to contact the lost customer and ask him directly. Ask kids about trends In consumer marketing, it’s best if customers think you’re cool and your competitors aren’t. Because kids lead the trends in modern society, why not ask them what those trends are? Ask them simple questions like, “What will the next big thing be in (name your product or service here)?” Or try asking kids this great question: “What’s cool and what’s not cool this year?” Why? Because they know, and you don’t. For example, if teenage girls know what the next cool color combo will be, the way to find out is simple: Ask them what colors they want their room to be. (Or visit social media sites that skew toward younger members and see how they’re decorating their pages.) Create custom web analytics Web analytics are readily available for your websites and blogs, but they’re mostly traffic counts of various kinds. You probably want to know about sales, not just visitors. What are the most meaningful indicators of success on the web? Just as you (hopefully) do off-line, track online sales, repeat sales, lead collection, quality of leads (measured by rate of conversion), sign-ups, use of offers (such as you may post on a business site on Facebook, for example), and overall revenue and returns from e-marketing. These numbers tell the story of your marketing successes and failures online and give you something to learn from as you go.
View ArticleArticle / Updated 03-06-2024
In finding a career, many people take career “tests,” struggle to get informational interviews, and even take career workshops. And despite all that, they end up far from sure they’ve made a wise choice of career. These steps can help you pick a career wisely: What career type are you? Which one or two of these are you: a word person, people person, Science-Technology-Engineering-Math (STEM) person, hands-on person, or entrepreneurial? Scan the options. Most people consider only a small fraction of worthy careers. A fast way to broaden your options is to scan books that profile lots of careers. Careers for Dummies provides a scoop on 340 good careers plus self-employment ideas. Also, the federal government publishes the Occupational Outlook Handbook, which offers more detailed (if drier) introductions to 250 careers. Embrace Google Search. Because Google Search is free, it’s easy to underestimate its potency. But it’s a remarkable curator of incomprehensibly large amounts of information. So do use Google Search to find articles and video introductions to careers that pique your interest. Particularly look for those that focus on a day in the life. These articles and videos are often more valid than an informational interview or three because each article or video may distill the experiences of multiple people in the field. Use a pros-and-cons list with a twist. Make pros- and-cons lists of two or three careers you’re now considering. Pick the one that feels best. How are you feeling about that? Now imagine that you picked the other career. Feeling better or worse? Now pick. Even if your top-choice career doesn’t feel perfect, it’s usually wiser to start preparing for that career. Most people who end up happy in their career feel that way after only they’ve become competent at it and have tailored and accessorized it to fit their preferences and strengths. If you wait on the sidelines for the perfect career to hit you upside your head, you may be waiting a long time. It’s wiser to pick a career sooner than later and then tweak as you go. Of course, the devil is the details. Careers for Dummies gives you all the details you need to wisely choose your career.
View ArticleCheat Sheet / Updated 02-26-2024
No matter if you're a quantitative finance novice or an expert, this Cheat Sheet can make sense of some equations and terms that you'll use on a regular basis. The following demystifies and explains some of the complexities and models. You can refer regularly to this information to help you in your quant adventures.
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