Last few years have seen a surge in competition among brands to deliver end-to-end customer experience (CX). The exponential increase in online users, along with the ever improving connectivity between businesses and consumers, are the prime factors that have forced enterprises to focus on digital customer experience. Apparently, it has evolved as one of the ideal methods to keep pace with the target audience. Moreover, digitalization has also opened up many opportunities for businesses to surge ahead of their competitors.

However, brands looking to excel at digital customer experience(CX) have to deliver an aggregate of all experiences throughout the customer’s lifecycle. The process has to focus on maximizing customer loyalty, retention and brand propagation, which ultimately would increase the bottom line. Through gradual digitalization of business processes and initiatives, brands can turn data into insights and subsequently into actionable results. When performed regularly and with diligence, they can achieve digital operational excellence, which is the key to the superior digital customer experience.

Moreover, brands also have to focus on the evolving trends and keep improving steadily. It can be accomplished by adopting some of the key tips such as Flawless Scheduling, Contextual Relevance, Psychometric Perceptions, and Existential Authenticity.

Impeccable Scheduling

When customers are not prepared for promotional activities, pushing it on them could prove to be a detrimental experience on a whole. Brands must realize those individual customers have their perceptions about the things they wish to buy and engage with. In addition, they also wish to spend time on researching those products as per their own convenience. Marketers can utilize promotional campaigns to drive brand awareness, but trying to contact customers when they are busy with something else, would not help them get the appropriate response. Hence, it is important to determine the exact timing to engage with the customers and deliver the offering they need. The data can be derived using real-time analytics each time a customer interacts with your brand. Subsequently, you have to apply the information you’ve collected, analyze your options and shift the message/content in time to maintain their interest and customers can be approached at the most appropriate time, which would not just improve the overall experience but also maximize the conversion ratio.

For instance, in inbound channels, this means personalizing web and mobile-driven content during an interaction. With channels like email, it’s about customizing content when it’s opened by the customer, or as close to that moment as possible.

Contextual Relevance

Relevance to context is a critical component of CX. Hence, it’s important to talk to customers about the things they care about, and not just what you want to sell. If you can’t get this aspect right, then you would risk losing their attention. On a smaller scale, segmentation can be helpful to an extent. But, when you’ve got millions of customers, categorizing them into segments and mapping their unique interests can be a massive task. Instead, predictive analytics with propensity models can be deployed to identify the right offer or message to each customer. Mapping the model for digital use is the first part of the puzzle, and it’s important to keep the data fresh with routine updates.

Psychometric Perception

Companies are always are under the impression that consumers who engage with them are interested in buying their products. However, it’s important to understand that most of them are either looking out for a solution to a specific problem or seeking out information to solve it. When brands want to use this opportunity to sell their products to these consumers, most of them may not like it they’re not looking to be sold to. However, you could still pitch in but the focus needs to be on providing a solution, which probably can change the consumers’ perception.

To get a better idea of the consumers’ thought process enterprises can use digital channels to obtain questions from the prospect customers. By digitalizing the consumers’ context in real-time, businesses can shift to prioritize the problem, and earn long-term loyalty by providing a great experience. It’s important to note that selling opportunities can be created when the customer get the due respect before getting their problem resolved.

Existential Authenticity

Enlightened organizations let their customers interact across channels, without losing context. Whether the channel is outbound or inbound, paid or owned, there must be consistency in building a progressive series of experiences to create a sense of authenticity, and this is where digital can come into play. Be it an email, or a chat, companies must be able to align all the messages from a particular customer to offer an exceptional experience.

There are various constraints such as multiple accounts, data, and channel silos or disparate technologies make it difficult to create a centralized channel. However, intelligence and machine learning can be used to integrate the disconnected channels and customer interaction can be aligned to deliver a personalized experience.

While overhauling the traditional processes can never be a simple task, integrating consumable pieces to re-engineer your relationship with customers with one interaction at a time has turned into a necessity. Transcending these challenges by deploying these key tips could lead to huge gains in customer satisfaction, retention, conversions and ultimately boost the ROI.

Originally published at: www.orchestrate.com/blog/digitalization-of-customer-experience-four-key-steps-to-follow

Most businesses today rely heavily on data analytics. But, if you want to make spontaneous judgments based on the latest data that comes into the system, then Real-time analytics is what you need.

Real-time analytics is a process in which a system processes and analyzes data that’s loaded instantaneously. Usually, it takes not more than a minute to generate meaningful information, based on which a series of other actions can be taken. This simply means, the system effectually processes data as soon as it arrives, without storing and retrieving it at a later time. The system functions dynamically, using the available resources to perform data-capture, integration, analysis and reporting, all in real-time.

The roots of real-time business intelligence technologies originated from dynamically-functioning sectors like aviation, defense, and robotics. These sectors constantly evolved technologies that accessed live data in real-time to deliver highly responsive results.

However, the current business landscape that is highly dynamic in nature requires much more. Thus, when you apply cognitive computing technologies such as AI to enhance real-time analytics, then we can its potential can increase massively.

However, the current business landscape that is highly dynamic in nature requires much more. Thus, when you apply cognitive computing technologies such as AI to enhance real-time analytics, then we can its potential can increase massively.

Advantages

Data Management: Decision-making is an integral part of any business and data forms a crucial part of this process. Be it planning, forecasting or testing, it’s the data that they need. Real-time analytics has a significant part in the acceptance rates and lifecycle development of Big Data, which is still in its nascent stage. The pace of real-time is partially accredited to the prescriptive and predictive nature of advanced analytics.

AI can play a vital role in real-time analytics represents a decisive stage in the lifecycle of Big Data in the transition mode. As analytics turn more ubiquitous all through the Data Management landscape, their performances pace are credited to factors like in-memory computing, the multitasking competence of repositories to read and write data concurrently, along with functionalities of search tools on Big Data sets.

Instantaneous Retrieval: Improvement or innovation of new business intelligence technologies is imperative to capture this kind of data so that it can be quickly retrievable to support decision making. They have to cope with the huge scales of the data, and the role of real-time analytics becomes all the more exhaustive. However, the good news is that new and more advanced technologies are evolving to handle this kind of non-traditional and complex data. Advanced software frameworks have led the way for disruptive technologies that can produce qualitative information from disparate sources, and are also evolving to the next stage.

Adding AI, Real-time Big Data Analytics can maximize returns and reduce costs, it also heralds the era where machines can interact with each other over the Internet of Things (IoT) using real-time information to make intuitive decisions on their own.

Longevity: Most institutions and businesses store massive data for years. While data in the past was arranged neatly in the forms of tables, the explosion of data today in the form of weblogs, social media content, census reports, customer service records, etc., is mostly unstructured or semi-structured. Artificial Intelligence can combine with real-time analytics through techniques such as Massive parallel programming (MPP) to maximize its durability. Moreover, it can also help in a quicker restructuring of Big data to increase its volume, velocity, and variety.

Progression & Validation: Through continuous processing, AI can help Real-Time Analytics to perform concurrently across multiple systems and tools depending on the context. It can also quicken the process of extracting relevant features of the data that qualify for data-modeling. The irrelevant data can be filtered by integrating the unstructured data from disparate sources, while distilled data sets can be sent for processing.

Real-time scoring & Revival: Scoring is initiated by end-users using actions at the decision layer. AI can instantaneously manage the arranged scoring rules are alienated from the data to be deployed separately. It can constantly refresh the changing data as the scripts run the data and construct models which can be re-used to refresh the models in real-time.

Benefits

Quick Outcomes: By using AI to classify the data instantly when it is raw, enables queries to retrieve the suitable data, which allows the system to sort through it quickly. It helps in predicting the data trends and, thus, enables decision-making quicker and more efficient.

Cost-effective: Though initially, the cost of deploying AI systems may be high, the overall cost, in the long run, can be comparatively less. Moreover, the delays in receiving the information and usage of resources on dead-end results can be avoided, which itself will boost its value. Thus, multiple and constant benefits make it much more profitable.

Improved Precision: Real-time analytics aims at focused outcomes using instantaneous analyses that are always useful. AI can reduce the duration required for spending additional time on collecting data that might not be entirely relevant for the business, which can be used to recheck the results. This, in turn, improves its accuracy.

AI can be used with real-time analytics, especially in Cloud-based CRMs, which are capable of providing ultra-quick results. The up-to-the-minute information about customers and their demographics, purchase history, and preferences help make quicker business decisions. Real-time analytics can refresh the sales and customer-support dashboards instantly drive enhanced customer experience.

Originally published at: www.orchestrate.com/blog/the-role-of-artificial-intelligence-in-real-time-analytics

We know that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has something to do with machine learning and so does business intelligence (BI) with statistical modeling and data science. However, the details about the key differences can be difficult to understand. If you can comprehend how each of these technologies works, then it can be a lot easier for us to recognize these differences or know how they are interrelated.

When a machine learns by itself using advanced algorithms that analyze data automatically, it is termed as machine learning. Basically, it can be termed as the subcategory of AI.

Machine Learning uses data science extensively to arrive at inferences and hypothesis. On the other hand, BI relies on historical records stored in the relational databases. The data is mostly derived from an organization’s business system and is collected in data warehouses before data scientists analyze and organize it to answer important business questions efficiently. The structure of the database and the warehouse often decides the type of questions that could be answered.

Difference between BI & Predictive Analysis

The main objective of BI is to make better and more accurate strategic decisions. It is highly analytical and serves as a diagnostic tool which answers ‘what happened’ for which we got the result.

Furthermore, the analysis of data can predict the probabilities which otherwise would need intuition. As the outcome of the decisions getting predictable, it led to the development of predictive analytics which can answer ‘what would happen if we take a certain action. It uses more scientific methods to investigate the unknown, conducting different experiments and forming hypothesizes.

Difference between BI & Data Science

BI’s objective is to improve the strategic decisions of a business, while data science develops laws, hypothesizes and algorithms that can drive more business success. To apply and benefit from data science businesses need highly automated processes where the advanced algorithms and hypothesizes can be used to get better business results.

Difference between BI & Machine Learning

Machine learning goes even one step ahead helps the machines to learn and handle unprecedented situations. A system can be termed as a learning system when its behavior is not coded, but through its decisions, actions, and recommendations it improves its functioning on its own as it is exposed to a larger amount of data and unprecedented situations.

Self-driven cars are a classic example of machine learning. The reason is the self-driven cars have to navigate new roads and terrains under varying weather conditions moving through the traffic, roads, and pedestrians that they have never witnessed before. Even then they can do it successfully.

But how does the learning happen? Is there any way in which the machines learn and are they different in varying situations? Yes, there are different categories of machine learning algorithms which vary according to the level of human interventions necessary. Broadly, machine learning can be categorized into four types. They are: a) Supervised learning, b)Unsupervised learning, c) Reinforced learning and d) Deep learning.

• Supervised Learning: The algorithm is fed with a set of data which contains labels on some portion of the observation. For instance, the data set being fed may contain labels on some of the data points identifying the ones that are valid, fraudulent and invalid or not fraudulent. From this data set, it will learn and formulate a general rule of classification of data which it can use to the other data sets. This is termed as supervised learning as data sets are being fed with labels which assist in building the cognitive system and learning.
• Unsupervised Learning: In the case of unsupervised learning there are no data labels fed, but instead, the algorithm itself goes ahead and detects patterns by identifying characteristics and clusters. For instance, an unsupervised machine learning algorithm can look for financial securities which are illiquid and are hard to price. Pricing of other securities can be used to price the illiquid security.
• Reinforced learning: It falls in between supervised and unsupervised machine learning where the algorithm is fed with an unlabeled set of data. It chooses an action plan for each cluster of the data point with an intervention of human feedback which helps the algorithm to learn. This kind of learning is seen in self-driven cars, game theory, and robotics.
• Deep Learning: Just like the human brain, deep learning uses layers of an algorithm whose structures are termed as artificial neural networks. Such layered algorithm can be used for all the three types of learning like supervised, unsupervised and reinforced machine learning. Deep learning employs a kind of a mathematical model which is rather disparate blocks of endowed cognitive ability which can be adjusted to refine the accuracy of the final outcome.

Thus, business intelligence and machine learning deploy different approaches to solve different problems. To put it simply — business intelligence is directed to understand, infer, and improve business situations by improvising better decision making, while machine learning automates this entire process of decision making.

Originally published at: www.orchestrate.com/blog/how-bi-is-different-from-machine-learning/

Internet of Things (IoT) is a seamless and massive platform through which different types of devices can connect with each other over the Internet, enabling them to share and exchange information. The devices can vary in forms and functionality, and all they need is the ability to transmit and receive data over a network. Through this, they would be able to perform useful tasks on their own without any human intervention.

For instance, if you’re stuck in a traffic jam, the sensor in your car will be able to auto-detect it and inform your smartphone about it on its own. By making use of this information, your smartphone will be able to figure out that you’d be late to a pre-scheduled meeting with a particular client based on a message sent to it through your laptop.

Subsequently, it will send out a message to the client informing about the delay, and all of this happens automatically without you even having to press a single button. This is, perhaps, a simple demonstration of the power of IoT, because some of these devices are capable of performing a much more complex task on their own, which makes it such an interesting prospect.

As it can virtually connect almost every device in the world through the Internet, IoT is deemed to have a huge potential. Going ahead, here are some of the ways in which it will be able to lead us into the smart future.

Smart Factories

One of the sectors that would extract maximum benefits from IoT is the manufacturing industry. It’s because every factory comprises of multiple departments that have to work in tandem to produce the end-product. For instance, the warehouse has to keep track of every single piece of inventory that comes in and goes out. Similarly, the Production floor and the Packaging departments also have to follow a complex process of keeping track every single product that gets produced and packaged. In factories that produce a huge number of products in a day, tracking and accounting can be highly monotonous.

Here is where IoT has a huge scope and can help in making the process much simpler.

By deploying sensors to collect and store information of each piece of inventory and every finished product, factories can be converted into smart facilities. Additionally, by using predictive analytics and telematics in a device-to-cloud connectivity model, the manufacturing units can become much more efficient. It would not only help in maximizing the output but also lead to saving huge cost and resources.

Smart Dwellings

Our homes constitute a number of domestic appliances such as washing machine, refrigerator, microwave ovens, etc. Together they can form a functional network that would essentially turn our homes into smart homes and could completely change the way we live today. They would not only make our lives easier but will also reduce the unwanted wastage of energy, which will help in saving costs.

For instance, the motion sensor would be able to track our movement in the house and would inform about our presence in the room to lights, fans or AC. The lights will then switch off automatically when there’s no one in the room, which in turn will help in reducing the energy consumption. Similarly, when the door-locking system is enabled to be controlled using our smartphones, it would add to our security.

Smart Townships

IoT will have a huge impact on the connectivity within our cities and towns. By giving the ability to the devices that help in managing the traffic, street lights or vigilance cameras in public places, the cities and towns would get smarter and better. The adoption of sensor-based surveillance for elderly monitoring and virtual city navigation will be a huge advantage for both the city authorities and citizens. These connected devices and applications which will thus improve the urban living experience by helping in boosting infrastructure while also minimizing crime rate in the cities and towns.

In short, the IoT revolution will minimize the efforts that we have to put in doing trivial things that result in the wastage of our time. The smarter factories, homes, and cities, would also ensure massive savings in power and fuel while operating at an optimal level with minimal intervention from human beings.

Originally published at: www.orchestrate.com/blog/how-iot-will-lead-us-into-the-smart-future/

The app store, which is a repository of mobile apps, has numerous third-party apps. While many are free, few of them charge you a fee, and some are available in freemium versions. (The freemium apps have only the basic version available for free, and if you want the full version, then you have to pay for it.)

So, whenever you’re in need of a third-party app, all you’ve got to do is to search for it in the app store by keying in the features in the search box. However, you’d find more than one app with similar features performing similar tasks in the result-list. Therefore, you’d have to make a decision on which to choose, and the apps that are on the top of the list are the ones that are usually selected by the users.

For this reason, App Store Optimization has emerged as one of the essential mobile marketing techniques. It’s a relatively new process that can be presumed as a logical extension of SEO meant for mobile platforms.

The technique is all about optimizing a mobile app in a way that it ranks higher in search results performed by a user in an app store. There are many advantages when your app ranks higher in an app store’s search results. One of them is that it is the first to be visible to the potential customers who are searching for an app with similar features. If they find your app first and are satisfied with its features, they may stop looking further and install your app.

How does it work?

ASO is a practical procedure that depends on three basic elements to achieve the desired results. First of them is the keywords, which determine how many of the potential customers are able to find you. Next comes the appropriate usage of these keywords in your listing. Finally, it’s the reviews and comments that are appreciated by the algorithms. When each of these elements works in tandem, then the chances of your app appearing on top of the search-results lists increase automatically.

In short, ASO can help your app avoid the stumbling-blocks and make it visible to the right audiences. Discussed below are some of the advantages of this increased long-term exposure for your app.

More Downloads

When your app appears on top of the list of the search results, users also feel confident about downloading it. They might compare it against the other listed apps on the basis of ratings. However, if your app has everything that is taken to satisfy the users, then even your app would have a high rating. Apparently, being at the top of the list with a high rating will only entice the users to go for your app, which in turn will increase the number of downloads.

Boost in Rankings

When your app gets downloaded more often than others in the list as a result of successful ASO, the sheer number of it subscribers is bound to increase. Subsequently, when your app gets high ratings and has much more visibility, then it is ranking in the app store will receive a huge boost. As this happens, it would inevitably get listed on the top of the result list and get into a cycle that will continue to improve its rankings.

Higher Revenue

There are many ways in which a popular and highly rated app can make money. While Subscription fee is the major source of income for paid apps, free apps can also earn huge revenue from advertising material such as display ads and banners as well as in-app purchases and sponsorships. Once even your app attains a high ranking with millions of subscribers resulting from effective ASO, it can easily become a perennial stream of revenue.

Thus, building a strong ASO profile is necessary to get your app ranked in searches and make it discoverable to the target audience. Once the app’s listing is well optimized and it continues to get high rank for all major keywords, the number of downloads will keep increasing without you having to pump in money.

Originally published at: www.orchestrate.com/blog/what-is-app-store-optimization-aso/

According to a research study, the time spent by users on mobile phones has increased by seven minutes taking the total to 3 hours 15 minutes per day in 2017. This means adopting responsive web design (RWD) isn’t optional anymore but a mandatory requirement. Furthermore, if you want your site to be visible in the search results, RWD is a must as a website’s mobile viewing experience is factored in the SEO algorithm of Google which makes it even more significant.

As per different reports, every month mobile usage is on the rise adding customers who would view your site from mobile devices. This indicates, if the visitor’s experience of viewing and interacting with your site is not satisfactory, they won’t be favoring your brand extending an advantage to the competitors.

It is true that millions of people still use computers to browse the internet, but the fact that usage of smartphones is on the rise can’t be ignored. Statistics predict that as market penetration efforts continues to grow, access of internet through the smartphone will proportionately increase. This inevitably means that if a site does not have responsive web design (RWD), it will drive the potential customers and visitors away, due to poor experience. Simultaneously, if your web design is responsive, it comes with myriad benefits opening new doors for your business. Here are the reasons why your site has to be responsive in design and the benefits it would accrue if you make it one.

Fosters Trust Factor

According to a study conducted by Tyton Media, 94% of the people surveyed, opined that web design is the main factor for which they mistrusted or rejected a website. If the design is inconvenient or outdated, the users may feel that the business lacks the deployment of the latest tools and technologies to deliver the best of experiences to its customers. This may create a lack of trust in the product or the service, the business offers. Thus creating a simple, easy-to-use and responsive design may help visitors to infer that the company uses contemporary technologies and techniques and cares about its customers.

Boosts Engagement and Search Ranking

As access to smartphones is on the rise, a non-responsive website would increase the bounce rate adversely affecting search engine rankings. Lower bounce rate and a higher user engagement would help in gaining higher ranks in the search pages.

Site engagement is one of the important criteria for Google’s search algorithm and more the engagement, the more the chances of higher ranking on search engines. Thus, if you are not making your design responsive, you would lose a hefty amount of traffic as the search engine would lower the ranking of your site owing to high bounce rate and lower engagement rates.

On the contrary, if the design is responsive and visitors spend more time on your website lowering the bounce rate, it would rank high on search pages increasing traffic and conversion rates.

Boosts Social Media Engagement

Responsive website design can boost content sharing on multiple devices and interfaces by making it easier as most of the popular social media have phone apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. With a responsively designed site, it is easier to share content and links with friends on social media increasing engagement irrespective of the device used. This would boost social media following simultaneously increasing website traffic. Research studies show that 62% of the businesses having mobile phone responsive designs increased their sales and 64% of the businesses which designed the sites for tablets reported an increase in sales.

Enhances Video Viewing

Videos are increasingly viewed and preferred by the users, and they invariably surge the user engagement and helps in boosting the brand loyalty. If the design of the site is not responsive to the changing sizes of the browsers, users won’t be able to watch videos on different devices. The videos on your websites have to be responsive too, as the smartphones allow the videos to be viewed on a full screen when phones are turned horizontally.

No doubt, there are numerous benefits for a responsively designed website, but there are several elements to take into consideration as well. The best practice is to think like a user and assess what attracts you to the site and what repels you away. Find out ways that would make browsing and viewing easier and optimize every element of the site to enhance engagement levels with improvement in user experience and traffic.

The Challenges

If RWD has numerous business advantages, it has its challenges too. Adjusting paragraphs of texts for different sizes of browsers may be comparatively easy, but it’s difficult to adjust large data tables. Adjusting images with smaller screen sizes may also pose problems. Converting a non-responsive website to a responsive site may also appear to be challenging and cumbersome. Let’s look at the ways these challenges can be overcome.

How to cope with the challenges?

Adopt fluid layouts so that the page is scaled according to the browser and users can view all information by scrolling up and down. Adoptable columns can also be used in the fluid layouts of the websites so that the information is vertically stacked and assumes the proportion of the screens, it’s viewed on. The font size of the text also needs to be adjusted, and it should be readable too. The images are of high importance, and they should adjust accordingly when the screen size gets smaller or bigger.

Images should be scaled, and too big and oversized images may deter the load speed of a site and make scrolling difficult. Care should be taken in making the embedded videos responsive so that they can be viewed on all devices. The buttons also need to be large enough to be maneuvered by fingers and tapping. The CTA buttons should be large enough and can be easily tapped by the thumb, which will help increase conversion rates.

While these components of the site are necessary, they are not exhaustive and paying attention to them for higher usability would help users to navigate quickly. Increased responsivity would inevitably ease navigation, surge engagement and help in building trust and loyalty. Higher engagement levels would propel search engine rankings and in turn, will increase traffic stimulating conversion rates. As the trend suggests, responsive web design can no longer be an option but a necessity to stay relevant in the digital marketing eco space.

Key Takeaways

• If the visitor’s experience of viewing and interacting with your site is not satisfactory, they won’t be favoring your brand extending an advantage to the competitors
• As access to smartphones is on the rise, a non-responsive website would increase the bounce rate adversely affecting search engine rankings.
• As the trend suggests, responsive web design can no longer be an option but a necessity to stay relevant in the digital marketing eco space.

Originally published at: www.orchestrate.com/blog/responsive-web-design-key-higher-engagement/

Mistakes can be used as the stepping stones to success. The same notion can also be used as a reference in the context of designing. Trying out various options till you find the most satisfying result is the ideal way to enhance the user experience (UX) of a software application.

Gone are the times when businesses, especially the ones that enjoyed a monopoly, gave minimal importance to how the end-user felt while using their product. However, the times have changed, and today businesses are focused on delivering an exceptional UX to their customers.

User experience has become a vital aspect of any development project because if the end-product falls short of essential user-expectations, the entire process of creating the product itself would turn futile. Be it the lack of time to optimize the UX or lack of clarity on the ROI from it, leaving it on a back burner is no longer the option.

Listed below are some of the common UX mistakes the stakeholders and the key players including the designers and developers commit. Also, outlined are some of the easy and effective options they could follow to avoid the pitfalls.

Focusing on UX right from the beginning

Some companies wait for the customer feedback on the UX, and when the response is negative, they bring in the UX designers to make their product more user-friendly. However, the specialists may or may not be able to solve the issue. Such desperate attempts will not only lead to increased cost but may also risk the rejection of the product by the users. Therefore, it is important to focus on the UX at the initial development stage of the product itself. This will also ensure a much better return on the investment.

Creating a fool-proof Design plans

Companies that tend to focus on the UX right from the initial phase might also commit a crucial mistake. They jump directly into the design mode without proper planning. The process has to be followed step by step and it is important to start it with considerable planning and research. As the UX is all about users, it makes sense to approach the end-users first and understand their specific requirements. The subsequent step is about gathering those user reviews and feedbacks and coming up with novel design ideas based on them. Once the ideas are in the place, selecting the user requirement and analyzing them can help the designers come up with exceptionally designed products. However, before these designs are implemented into the final product, validating them against the practical requirements of the users is important.

Developing Preliminary Design Models

It is apparent that creating wireframes or prototypes is an ideal way to design the right UX. A properly designed gives the end users the exact idea of how the product would look and feel like, while they can also get familiar with its functionality. It also gives the designers the much-needed understanding of the exact requirements of the users. They can also use the model to derive the feasibility of the end product.

However, prototypes are bound to get changed over a period of time and their validity lasts only until the start of the development of the original product. Hence, spending too much time to in creating detailed features on the prototype itself could lead to wastage of time and resources.

There are numerous advanced prototyping tools in the market today that can be used to create some amazing models. While they could be really useful when it comes to serving the purpose of developing effective models, the tools can also help the designers to do this quickly, and without wasting precious time.

Using these tools also solves the issue of avoiding the prototype from turning too complex. A simplified model will not just help the users understand the features in a better way, but will also help the designers to make use of the model to configure the end product easily and effectively.

Conceiving Innovative Design Attributes

One of the common mistakes is to copy the design and features from similar products or applications. The usual justification given is the reusability and better utilization of the resources that have already been spent on the existing design. While this might sound practical, problems arise when the new product is aimed at solving some unique issues.

Copying the features from the existing product that was designed to solve the different needs could lead to a major pitfall. Another reason to avoid this is to ensure the shortfalls and bugs from the existing product are not repeated in the new one. Hence, making an originally designed with novel features that suffice the specific needs of the users is necessary.

Creating an innovative product requires the combined effort of all the members of the team. So it is important to keep the teams together, especially the ones that research on the UX and the teams that implement the design. The integrated arrangement ensures seamless communication between the teams and any type of misconceptions can be easily avoided.

While, these are some of the ways the end-product can ensure an optimal UX, the list not exhaustive in itself. There are of course various other ways to avoid the pitfalls. Yet, these suggestions can be really helpful while dealing with some of the most common mistakes in UI.

Key Takeaways

• In today’s highly competitive business scenario, most companies are focused on delivering an exceptional UX to the customers.
• While mistakes are bound to happen, some easy and effective options can be followed to avoid the common pitfalls in UX.

Originally published at: www.orchestrate.com/blog/five-steps-to-optimize-your-ux-strategy

The conversion rate is an ideal means to measure the efficiency of a business. A company can have one of the best offerings in the market, yet most its prospects abandon the purchase and hesitate to convert into customers. Inefficient customer service has often been one of the primary reasons for low conversion.

However, it’s essential to view the whole context before coming to a conclusion. There are numerous statistics and facts to prove that focusing on customer-service can yield high dividends. However, it is also true that it’s a mix of many other things, with customer service being the primary component, is what it takes to deliver the goods that churn out a greater conversion.

The possibility of conversion rate is highly dependent on the value proposition, which makes it a crucial conversion factor. Value Proposition can ideally be defined as the single most important reason you would give to your prospective customer to buy from you.

If you want your customer service to improve the numbers related to the conversion rate, then it has to be your unique selling proposition. It means, when you compare all other factors like the product, price, etc., with your competitors, it’s your customer service that has to be the on top of the list.

Also, when you talk about customer service, one must also take into considerations the various channels and methodologies that essentially go into increasing the conversion rates. Here are some of the ideal methods that can go in improving the conversion rates with customer service.

Make it easy for the customers

When you ask customers to do things which they do not like, it can reduce the overall Customer Experience. For instance, if you are selling a product that requires a considerable amount of assembling, then the customer may not like the idea. But when you assure them of providing the required support, it might reduce their inhibitions.

Again, the kind of support you provide to reduce the efforts can play a vital role. A demo manual along with easily accessible online demonstration will further reduce the efforts on the part of the customer. Moreover, when the customer still doesn’t get it right, sending one of your technicians to get the product assembled is sure to add to the experience. When your potential customers are aware of this exceptional service, they will have enough reasons to buy from you, rather than your competitors. This, in turn, will help boost your conversion rate.

Build a DIY/knowledge-base with FAQs

It can become difficult for firms to manage the increasing number of queries. The ideal way to deal with it is to give your customers free access to your knowledge base that answers their queries. If you have your staff answering the same questions time and again, it will lead to exhaustion of valuable resources.

If you wish to improve your online channels to deliver enhanced customer service, then you can provide your customers with web self-service tools. Easy access to FAQs and their answers on each product page, with efficient tools to easily find other information, is an ideal way to deal with growing knowledge-based queries.

Instead of picking up the phone to get their queries answered, customers can get instant answers using such self-service techniques. This not only improves customer experience but also lowers the customer support costs along with product page abandonment rates.

Initiate trust-building measures

When you want your customer service to increase conversion rates, it’s important that the potential customers trust your team. For instance, let’s consider a customer calls into compare your product with your competitor’s. When he gets to hear only bad things about the other products while everything is just perfect for your product, the chances are that he might not trust you. For this reason, giving a true evaluation of your product, while also accepting the evident positives of your competitor’s product is important to build trust.

As per a renowned sales expert, there are only four reasons why one wouldn’t buy from you. People don’t need your product, or they can’t afford it, or they are busy, or they simply don’t trust you. Nothing much can be done about the first three, but as a customer service team, you can do your bit to build the trust factor. We can’t do much about the first three reasons, but we can build trust. Add trust elements to your website and see your conversions increase.

Additionally, you can showcase the different avenues through which you can be accessed, along with your presence on various social media channels. If you have listed a telephone number, it is also important to ensure that someone in your team answers the incoming calls. Furthermore, when a customer is in need of specific information, directing him or her to the right channels in your company to get those queries answered is important.

These are some of the primary techniques that can be followed to enhance customer experience through customer service, which in turn leads to better conversion rate. At the end, Sales personnel can do their best to drive the leads through Sales funnel, but it is still left to customer service to retain the customers and improve the overall bottom-line of the company.

Key Takeaways

• Numerous stats and facts prove that focusing on customer-service can yield high dividends.
• Offering customer service to reduce overall customer-effort can help boost conversions.
• Easy-to-access FAQs on each product page, with efficient tools to easily find other information, is an ideal way to deal with growing customer queries.
• When you want your customer service team to increase conversion rates, it’s important that your team is trusted by the potential customers.

Originally published at: www.orchestrate.com/blog/how-customer-service-can-maximize-sales-conversions

There are various steps taken by digital marketers to convert the website visitors into customers. However, with the ever-changing web environment, the techniques for conversion rate optimization (CRO) also have to evolve and keep up with the new trends. Otherwise, the mundane digital initiatives can end up making the brand irrelevant.

Types of conversions

Before we discuss the options for CRO, let’s understand that the conversion is broadly categorized as 1) Micro-conversions and 2) Macro-conversions.

The micro conversions ensure the visitors perform the intended goal at the micro level. They are usually the preliminary step performed before the visitors are driven to the final objective, and could include goals such as- Adding a product to the cart, or Creation of an account. The Macro-conversions are the ones that have a more profound effect on the ROI. These usually include the ‘Online Sale of the product’ or ‘Request for a Quote’ from the visitors.

Calculation and Goal-setting

The conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of times a user completes the intended goal by the total number of visitors in a given period. For instance, if ‘making a purchase’ is the goal, then a single user buy a product at each of three visits made to the website is calculated as a single conversion. This is achieved by dividing the number of conversions by the number of unique sessions. In case the goal is to get a subscription, then conversion rate can be calculated by simply dividing the number of subscribers by the number of visitors.

Tracking and Analysis

Quantitative data analysis can be utilized to track the conversion rate, which also takes into account the actions performed by the users on the site. A web analytics platform such as Google Analytics can be used to perform these analyses. The following are some of the questions that can be answered through quantitative analysis –

• What is the most preferred entry point to a site, which either could be the home page or any other landing page with a subscription form
• Which page of the website do the visitors spend most of their time, which could be the blog or any other resource section with valuable information; on an e-commerce portal, it could also be the page exhibiting the most popular product
• What is the most common source of the traffic, which could either be a referrer’s website or a social media channel that drives visitors to the website
• What are the most preferred devices and browsers used by the visitors to browse your website
• What is the most common huddle on the website that leads the visitors to abandon the conversion funnel, or which task on the site do you need to simplify to ensure the users make the intended actions

Best Practices for CRO

While CRO can be done in many ways, the result may not be the same. The following are some of the practices that could be followed to get the ideal results.

#1. Building Trust

It’s not easy to turn first-time visitors into subscribers or customers instantly. The website needs to contain many features that can build trust, because only if the new visitors trust the site would they be ready to perform the intended actions. One of the best ways to build trust is to utilize the user-generated content to promote your own brand. This can be done by getting the existing customers to describe their positive experience on the testimonial page.

To ensure its much more visible, the testimonial section can even be placed on the homepage. The primary reason behind this practice is that people usually believe other customers, and a statement of positive experience with the brand can play a critical role in building the required trust to increase the conversion rate.

#2. Providing Personalized Experience

As an online retailer, there’s a better chance of getting noticed if you are able to look different from the crowd. Having a website that is only as good as the competitors may not be able to improve the conversion rates. The ability to deliver a personalized experience is what lets the site achieve the differentiating factor. When the customers get to enjoy a sense of personalization, they feel coveted, which encourages them to buy your product or subscribe to your email list. It even helps in improving the visitor’s perception of the brand, and can also reduce the churn rate.

#3. Simplifying Navigation & Browsing

Most online shoppers are the ones who are looking to reduce their effort of traveling to a store, which can save them time. Hence, it’s important to build a website that adds to their convenience with hassle-free navigation and browsing experience. When the site is able to ensure they get what they want with much ease, it only increases the conversion chances.

Most of the time it all comes down to the checkout page, which is a critical aspect of the online sales funnel. The page has many factors that determine the final conversion; and even if the users navigate all the way through, any mistake during the checkout process can make them change their mind. Therefore, a website with simplified navigation, along with real-time communication channels such as ‘Help through Live Chat’, can achieve the desired CRO.

#4. Automating Site-Optimization

Website issues, ranging from the biggest to smallest, can be identified using the Machine learning algorithms. The tools can analyze thousands of website sessions at all times, which can also help in tracking the behavior and preferences of the visitors. The automation will not only reduce the time taken to identify the issues, but it also maximizes the accuracy, which can have a direct impact on the conversion rate.

These are some of the prominent techniques, which can be mixed and matched to get the desired results. Together, they help to improve the factors that can maximize the chances of converting the visitors into customers.

Originally published at: www.orchestratedigital.com/blog/top-practices-conversion-rate-optimization-2018

Call center agents answer the incoming calls of the customers or place outgoing calls remotely without meeting the customers face-to-face. In doing so, it may be obvious for them to lose sight of the bigger picture which may turn out to be a hindrance in working towards the company’s goals. In such a work setting an effective performance management system removes any guesswork and introduces clear and shared goals promoting success with the timely achievement of objectives.

A properly planned operational performance strategy and its efficient execution endow credibility to the management processes by creating consistency in the operational procedures of an organization. This goes a long way in building trust, loyalty, justice, equality, and ownership among all the stakeholders upholding the rights of the team members and employees. It also creates an organization jubilant with enthusiasm with a dynamic, cooperative, and a conducive work culture. Here are few steps to follow to create an effective operational strategy for optimal performance.

Review Past Performance

It is imperative to gauge where improvements are necessary to create a plan for improvement. This can be arrived at by reviewing the past performance of the agents, supervisors, and managers. The productivity records should be scanned to benchmark areas of improvement and the aspects to focus on with renewed effort.

Set realistic goals

After the areas of improvement are bench marked, set the goals with new targets which are realistic yet challenging. Care should be taken with proper assessment of performance keeping in mind the goals set are not too challenging and neither too easy as easy goals create a false sense of achievement, and too difficult goals lead to frustration.

Translate goals into operational metrics

In order to achieve the set goals and objectives, the operational metrics have to be decided upon, the attainment of which will help in achieving the objectives. Find out what has to be measured and what are the best ways of measurement of those metrics. The Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) has also to be set accordingly with the secondary indicators as well. According to the key performance indicators and the performance metrics, the expectations from each team member has also to be arrived at with respective slabs of expectation levels. The KPIs and the metrics have to reflect the needs of all the stakeholders and the team members, and this has to be documented. This is an important document as later this would be important in assessing the performance of the employees.

Innovate ways to attain objectives

The next step is to brainstorm different means of reaching the projected goals. Hold meetings with the team managers, leaders and the employees to enlist the ways to formulate a strategy to reach the objectives in the shortest possible time. Stress on all the areas like productivity, quality, customer satisfaction scores, and business performance to come up with a comprehensive plan in all the operational areas which would help in attaining the objectives and the set goals. Gather information and ask for suggestions from employees to come with ways for improvement as they may have a better insight into the process and probable plans for improvement.

Document the operational plan

Collate all the information and layout a documented strategy for the operations which would lay the foundation for the functioning of the call center. List all the steps for all the operational processes explaining each of the steps clearly in the document with the exceptions as well along with the persons responsible to take these steps. When the documented plan for operational excellence is ready, present it to the respective departments and teams for execution.

Originally published at: www.orchestrate.com/blog/plan-effective-operational-performance-strategy-call-center