As part of Access’ HCM point solution being added to the Gartner Hype Cycle, we promoted the hype cycle through email, driving people to download the report. Results: 50 MQLs in the first day.
Access Named a Sample Vendor in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Human Capital Management Technology, 2019
“By 2020, 30% of global midmarket and large enterprises will have invested in a cloud-deployed human capital management (HCM) suite for administrative HR and talent management, but will still need to source 20% to 30% of their HCM requirements via point solutions.”
-Gartner, Hype Cycle for Human Capital Management Technology, 2019. Published 23 July 2019 – ID G00371398.
No matter what your HR technology stack looks like, if your documents are still in paper or in multiple formats and solutions, you can’t transform your processes.
Digital document management, and a partner who can manage the paper to digital conversion from end to end, may be one of those point solutions you need to round out your functional requirements.Whether your team is embarking on a search for a cloud HCM or has had one for some time, we believe the Gartner Hype Cycle for Human Capital Management Technology, 2019 will give you insight into the rapidly changing HR technology landscape.
Email Promotion
Gartner has reported that “digitization of HR documents can result in process productivity savings of 15% or greater.”
We’ve seen proof of statement first hand, working with HR teams as they make the leap to digital HR document management.
No matter where you are in your move to cloud HCM, the Hype Cycle offers a wealth of information about HCM suites and point solutions that complete those suites. We’re happy to offer access to this valuable report for a limited time.
Every email, tweet, click, post, like, search, purchase, stream, and swipe is recorded somewhere by some system.
In fact, by the time you finish this sentence, another million bytes of data has been created.
2.5 quintillion more will be created by the end of today.
Even if you only focus on your company’s social media channels, there’s an enormous amount of information. If you add in your competitors, keywords, and topics, it can quickly outgrow a human’s ability to keep track of it all.
That’s why leveraging an AI powered platform to sift through all that data to provide actionable insights from all the channels can help your brand become a leader in the conversation.
Here are three reasons to consider leveraging an AI-powered platform in your social media channels and analytics:
1. AI can help you make better informed decisions
The data may be available but how useful is it? Information itself isn’t inherently valuable, not unless it can help you make a better business decision or guide your organization toward success. With Sentiment Analysis, an AI-powered platform plugged into your social media channels will be able to sort through the massive amount of data and interactions and not only understand the thoughts and emotions behind the interactions but provide actionable insights. That way, you’ll be able to decide which situation is most urgent and requires your team to prioritize it. How accurate is this technology? The most powerful platforms can tell the difference between an angry customer and a mere troll.
2. With AI, you can be everywhere
One of the biggest benefits of using AI in social media is a process known as Social Listening. According to HootSuite, Social Listening “helps monitor social media channels for mentions of your brand, competitors, product, and any keywords relevant to your business”. In other words, AI can help ensure you can never miss a mention again and have your social media team responding within minutes to mentions or other requests for customer service. Plus, platforms like Datalytics24 make it easy to segment mentions into positive, negative, or neutral, so you can make more informed decisions and take immediate corrective action.
3. AI can save time for your team
AI can drastically reduce the time required for your team to find the data they are looking for. This includes searching through massive amounts of data to know what your team needs to respond to or figuring out what time of day your customers are most likely to interact. That’s right, no more cumbersome, time-consuming analytics. AI-powered platforms like Datalytics24 can do it on autopilot while you sleep. Your team will spend less time trying to sort through massive amounts of noise and more time interacting with your audience.
What’s next?
AI is the way of the future. Machine learning and intelligent technology will help even the smallest of social media teams do more, better, and at a quicker rate than ever before. With that investment is the caveat that AI-powered technology is not “set it and forget it”. Even the best program will require highly skilled teams acting appropriately on the information provided to connect with your audience, build relationships, and continue to boost your brand.
Introduction The reality is this: if you’re a business and you have customers; you will eventually have angry customers.
Addressing their issues may not mean answering emails or the phone—social media has become its own sort of customer service channel.
The stakes are high in dealing with angry customers via your social media channels. The wrong tweet or post can go viral and have you in the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
Being able to deal with complaints calmly and successfully is a hallmark of effective customer service, regardless of which medium they’re delivered through.
Here are four important steps to keep in mind when responding to angry customers through your social media channels.
Pause, reflect, respond…but quickly When you receive a complaint, the clock starts ticking. According to research, customers expect a response online within at least five minutes, if not instantly. It’s important though, to take a step to really understand what the person’s grievance is.
Do they have a valid complaint? Are they a potential troll? Not sure?
In some cases, you’ll want to direct more personal requests to a private channel like email or direct messaging. If the best way to proceed is publicly on social media, the next step is to craft your answer.
Talk like a person, not a brand Empathy is the word of the day when it comes to dealing with upset customers. It’s an essential skill when dealing with people. There’s no situation that’s not made better by just understanding where the other person is coming from (that includes trolls). The key to empathetic response isn’t talking in corporate jargon but talking like a person. The first step in that matter is to learn how to cultivate empathy. In the event your company or organization was at fault, really truly apologize for the situation they are in. Not “I’m sorry this happened” but taking responsibility for what happened. Only after a real apology can you move on to finding a real solution for their issue.
Find a solution that fits While empathy goes a long way in disarming anger, it is still important to find a solution that fits your customers’ needs. Setting things right is not only a key to good customer service but can pay back through improved customer retention and reduced churn, not to mention the good PR that comes from disarming an upset customer. A sincere apology coupled with a solution that fixes the issue can turn them from a customer into a fan. Unfortunately, the previous three steps are all for naught if you don’t even know what your customers are saying.
Can’t respond to what you don’t hear One of the more dangerous aspects of social media can be summed up as “what you don’t know can most certainly hurt you”. There is no ‘casual’ social media use when it comes to your brand. If your brand is present on a platform, it should be monitored constantly and consistently for any mentions of your brand or customer complaints or comments. With so many platforms nowadays, it’s near impossible to keep up. We at Datalytics24 make it easy to find and contact the people who are talking about you, positively, negatively, or neutrally, so you can react accordingly.
Conclusion Dealing with customer service requests or complaints on your social media channels requires a great deal of delicacy or you risk bad press and PR. That’s why it’s so important to be ready to deal with requests like these and be aware of any that arise across all of your channels.
What will the gas station of the future look like?
Electric, hybrid and driverless cars are forcing a revolution in how, and how often, we fill ‘er up
BY BRYAN GROVER | January 17, 2017
Milk. Eggs. Pretzels. Gum. Mints. Oh, and fill ‘er up with regular.
With the rise of electric and hybrid cars, and a possible future filled with driverless cars, what’s in store for one of the most mundane, necessary habits we conduct every week: the humble, ubiquitous act of visiting the gas station? The industry’s evolution is already well underway, as more stations turn themselves into convenience stores that happen to sell gas, rather than gas stations that sell conveniences.
But will that be enough?
Jay Patel, owner of New World Gas, a New England-based gas and convenience retail franchise, says convenience stores and restaurants help keep the gas station industry afloat and profitable.
“You can only keep the price so low on gas,” Patel said, “but putting in a Dunkin’ Donuts or Honey Dew is always a big draw to get people to come for more than just gas.” Turning a profit now relies on giving a consumer something to do or purchase while their car is filling up.
A glimpse of the gas station of the future has popped up in Akron, Ohio, where a filling station is unmanned and has stations that let drivers refill with compressed natural gas or charge their electric cars. A mobile phone app called chargepoint lets Ohio drivers access the electric charging stations, while the natural gas side is entirely self-serve with credit card slots.
Adapt or die. In this age of technology, countless conventional objects and habits have become obsolete. VCRs were replaced by DVDs, and DVDs by streaming. Folding maps vanished with GPS devices. And when was the last time you actually answered your home telephone?
The gas station has had a long, healthy existence, so change was inevitable. After World War II, Americans took to the roads in droves, and this is when gas stations reached their peak—with over 236,000 gas stations dotting roads across the nation. Now, barely 100,000 remain, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The industry’s struggles can be blamed on many things, from increased competition to more regulations and a decrease in profit margins. Allowing people to pump their own gas and slip a credit card into the pump, rather than interact with an attendant, also removed any personal interaction from the transaction.
In many cases, land itself has become more valuable than the gas station that stands on it. As a result, stations have been forced to merge or shutter. Now owners like Patel survive not on profits from gasoline, which continue to decline, but with the stuff they sell inside by the cash register.
Advancing car technology has played a part in this decline. Every year, car manufacturers release new models that go farther on less gas—if they use gas at all. In 1990, the first widely available hybrid car hit the market and was followed, within two decades, with the first electric car, which instead of a pump needs a plug.
Electric car owners can recharge wherever they can find a station. It might be a mall parking lot, or at work, or their garage at home. Even college campuses, such as Salem State University, have begun to install charging stations for electric vehicles. Building owners can install these easily, freeing them from the typical burdens of gas station owners, like expensive underground tanks, late deliveries, and fluctuating crude oil prices.
But at least those cars need drivers.
Driverless cars seem to pose an entirely new threat to gas stations. While they aren’t approved yet for road use, tests, like the one in South Boston a few weeks ago, show they are coming. It’s not hard to imagine a fleet of automated, driverless taxis roving city streets trafficking people from one side to another before returning home to be refueled by an attendant, or plugged in and recharged.
There’s still time for the gas station industry. Electric cars only account for one-tenth of one percent of vehicles, according to Bloomberg. It will take until around 2020 to get more than one million of these cars on the road; meanwhile, a 2016 study estimated that charging stations will grow by more than 1 million globally each year through 2020. As for driverless cars, they have a long road ahead to regulatory approval.
And while the price of an electric car can be almost double that of their gas or hybrid counterparts, they may only travel 75 to 100 miles per charge. Plus, even with the fastest electric chargers, it takes about 30 minutes to charge a Nissan Leaf to 80 percent capacity.
John Paul from AAA Northeast predicts it will take five more years before the electric car is anything more than a luxury vehicle, but eventually that day will come.
“At the turn of the 20th century if you went to buy a car, it could be powered by diesel or gasoline,” Paul said. “In the near future, it could be a choice between diesel, gasoline, hybrid, and electric.”
A smart gas station owner should be ready to handle all of them.
“The gas station industry is a special kind of customer business,” Patel said. “It’s not just wait and see what the customer wants. You have to stay on top of the competition.”
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