Category: Business

Staying organized in a busy world can often feel like a herculean task, especially when it comes to maintaining a tidy office. Amid the hustle and bustle of work, the last thing you want to worry about is an untidy workspace. However, a clean office is more than just a visual pleasure; it also enhances productivity, reduces stress, and creates a positive impression.

But how can you achieve this seemingly elusive goal when you’re swamped with work? Here are some practical ways to maintain a clean and organized office even when you’re busy.

Plan and Prioritize

Just as you prioritize your daily tasks, you need to set aside time for cleaning. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to spend hours; even a few minutes each day can make a huge difference. Dedicate 10 minutes at the start or end of your day for cleaning. You can use this time to clear your desk, organize your documents, or sanitize your workspace.

Implement the ‘Clean As You Go’ Rule

Adopting the ‘clean as you go’ (CLAYGO) principle can significantly improve the tidiness of your workspace. It simply means cleaning up after yourself instead of waiting to do it later. For instance, when you finish a meeting, take a few moments to clear the table of cups, papers, or any other items. This rule ensures that messes do not accumulate, keeping your office tidy with minimal effort.

Digitalize Your Work

In the digital age, paper clutter can often be avoided. Whenever possible, digitalize your work. Store documents on cloud platforms, use digital note-taking apps, and send emails instead of paper memos. Not only will this reduce clutter, but it also makes it easier to find and organize your files.

Organize Your Desk

A clean desk often translates to a clean mind. Invest in desk organizers, use file holders, and keep only what you need on your desk. Everything else should be stored appropriately. Regularly clearing your desk of unnecessary items can help maintain a neat workspace.

Use Storage Solutions

Proper storage solutions can drastically improve the tidiness of your office. Invest in filing cabinets, bookshelves, and storage boxes to ensure every item has a home. Labeling these storage spaces can also help keep things organized and make it easier to find what you need when you need it.

Hire a Rubbish Disposal Company

Sometimes, the amount of rubbish in an office can be overwhelming, especially if you have a large office or if your work involves a lot of physical materials. In such cases, hiring a professional rubbish disposal company can be a lifesaver.

Rubbish disposal companies provide regular pick-ups and ensure that your office waste is disposed of properly. They can handle a wide range of waste, including paper, plastic, electronic waste, and more. By outsourcing this task, you can focus on your work and still maintain a clean and tidy office.

When choosing a rubbish disposal company, consider factors such as their recycling policies, service frequency, cost, and reliability. A good rubbish disposal company should not only help keep your office clean but also align with your environmental sustainability goals.

Delegate and Encourage Team Participation

Keeping an office tidy is not a one-person job. Encourage your team to participate in maintaining a clean workspace. Delegate cleaning tasks, encourage everyone to adhere to the CLAYGO principle, and make cleanliness a part of your office culture.

In conclusion, maintaining a tidy office even when you’re busy is achievable. It requires a bit of planning, the right strategies, and sometimes the help of professional services. Remember, a clean office is not just about appearances; it’s also about creating a conducive work environment that fosters productivity and a sense of well-being. With these tips, you can stay on top of your work and still enjoy a clean and organized workspace.

As messaging platforms become increasingly popular due to the advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence, chatbots have seen a massive surge in their usage. Today, they have grown integral to many business functions focused on enhancing customer experience and modernizing businesses.

According to a study, chatbots are predicted to save more than $8 billion in business costs globally by 2022, while offering lower turnaround time, round-the-clock customer service, and faster resolution. Due to their consumer-facing benefits, chatbots have many serviceable areas across industries, particularly in insurance processes, these bots are poised to introduce incredible value across the insurance chain.

In doing so, these advanced AI bots promise to simplify the sophisticated nature of insurance transactions, most of which are have been conventionally characterized by long and arduous processes, such as answering long-winded questionnaires, filling in forms manually, conducting time-intensive background checks, delivering satisfactory levels of customer service. As insurance companies increasingly espouse the chances AI offers for innovation, they stand to win the hearts of their customers.

The Need & Use Case of Chatbots in the Insurance Industry

There are a host of factors and colluding circumstances that are shaping up and fueling the growth of chatbots today, including the rise of digital transformation, the superabundance of apps causing an explosion in the ecosystem, and groundbreaking advancements in cognitive computing and other related technologies like AI and ML. Coupled with user fascination of automated workflows and conversational UIs, these bots have increasingly caught on, causing the global chatbot market to soar in value at a CAGR of 24.3% while being expected to reach a total market value of USD $1.25 billion by 2025.

With such a volatile start, experts predict the evolution of chatbots will bring about a complete reimagining of the insurance industry over the course of the next decade. A perfect use case in line with the coming times would look like the scenario below:

Dave is visiting his cousins and is therefore out of town. While booking his tickets, his personal digital assistant collates different travel insurance estimates, cooperates with the chatbot of the travel insurer, shows a premium to Dave and, after receiving confirmation, makes the payment. The digital assistant also makes arrangements for a vehicle for Dave to drive once he lands at his destination by cooperating with the chatbot of the auto insurer’s agent and offers Dave a quote for the same.

After getting off at his destination, Dave begins to drive to his cousins’ and meets with a minor accident while parking the car in a parking lot. When Dave stops driving the car as a result of it, he receives a call from the chatbot of the auto insurer. The chatbot then apprises Dave of the next steps that he should take like taking pictures of the area of the car impacted by the accident and the surrounding area.

As soon as Dave resume driving the car, his personal digital assistant informs him of the total damage and also notifies him that the claim has been approved. Since the car didn’t undergo heavy damage and could still be driven comfortably, Dave makes it to his cousins safe and sound without having to worry about if his claim was going to be approved or not.

The Possibilities of Chatbot Implementation for Automated Workflows

It is evident that chatbots help solve one of the most crucial and important issues of any customer-facing business — they provide them with an effective communication channel for the clients without having to set up a dedicated support team for handling their service requests. Chatbots help you avoid the massive costs of setting up the infrastructure and housing a great number of qualified agents to handle those service requests. Smart enough to know where the limit of their capabilities, these bots can reroute more sophisticated requests to live agents as well, minimizing their need and thus allowing for a much lesser expense.

This way, automated insurance agents or conversational interfaces can be a huge boost to medium and large-sized insurance companies, many of whom are often short on providing a great customer experience. Arriving on the back of insurance tech advancements, the automated insurance agent is the beacon of great client service that insurance organizations can utilize to remain significant in the market. And, as popular notion since the arrival of the chatbot technology has suggested, businesses that utilize these bots smartly for client support will enjoy elevated levels of operational execution and a huge boost in their bottom line.

Machine Learning Applications for Data

For automated insurance agents to take the next step forward in the industry, businesses will have to drive their utilization, and better enjoy the benefits of artificial intelligence to examine and collect data from numerous channels like emails, social media, and online postings to offer consumers more targeted and relevant insurance products.

These systems can thus assist insurance organizations in growing and improving their revenue, saving costs, and making informed decisions. These also help enhance the level of customer service provided and, as a result, inordinately boost customer experience by the function of reducing their wait times for getting responses to their queries or getting status updates about their claims.

Deploying and embedding machine learning tools within digital insurance agents help make more accurate predictions by analyzing available customer data and performing predictive analytics. Say, for example, if an insurance organization has the requisite data for online insurance policy purchases, then they can narrow down their offerings, making them more targeted in the process, by basing them on customer preferences or the demographics that they are meant for. The claims department of the organization can then evaluate the data patterns for any discrepancies and discover fraudulent activities.

Conclusion

The rise of the automated insurance agent is going to inevitable help insurance companies open up the market, save huge amounts of capital, and make way for new job positions. With companies increasingly implementing these automated agents, the need of marketers, digital analysts, and developers has seen a steep rise. Insurance organizations will also need technically-adept professionals with a firm grasp on machine learning, automation programs, and analytics to manage their online sales.

With advancements in technology taking place meteorically, insurance companies not oriented to automation are feeling the heat. The advancements in technology are also causing buyer expectations to soar and businesses wishing to remain significant in the years to come will have to adopt these new technologies lest they want to risk going out of business.

If you are new to the world of AI chatbots, you could be overwhelmed, to say the least.

While most internet users have probably interacted with one before, not many have built one yet.

Chatbots can completely revolutionize the way you do business online and boost your sales.

So, it only makes sense why so many people want to jump on the chatbot bandwagon.

The question is: how?

What are the Prerequisites for Building an AI Chatbot?

Here’s a piece of good news for you: building an AI chatbot neither needs technical knowledge, nor a big budget.

A few things you do need to have a good idea about are:

These are fairly simple questions that require little to no technical knowledge. Once you have this chalked out, you can move on to using one of the many AI chatbot platforms.

Many of them are incredibly easy to use and require no coding!

What are the Best AI Chatbot Platforms?

While there is a whole world of chatbot platforms on the internet. here are some of the good ones:

1. Pandorabots

One of the oldest chatbot hosting services, Pandorabots has created more than 325K chatbots to date. Its bots can improve customer experience at scale, and boost sales.

What’s more, Pandorabots allows users to make bots with coding as well as without coding! Both beginners and experts can use it to build their own bots seamlessly.

2. Flow XO

Flow XO offers a drag-and-drop editor, which makes it super easy to create bots.

Its bots help you communicate with your customers on a range of different sites, applications, and social media platforms.

What’s more, even its free version has several features to offer, making it a great deal for beginners!

3. Reply.ai

Reply.ai is another wonderful AI chatbot platform that requires minimal coding. It enables you to automate chats without compromising the customer experience.

Reply.ai also allows queries to be handed over to customer service companies like Zendesk, Kustomer, and Khoros.

In Conclusion

A lot of marketers and entrepreneurs find that developing a chatbot is in fact, a really underwhelming and straightforward process.

It’s all about choosing the right platform and keeping your business goals in mind.

While the above-mentioned platforms are great, this is anything but an exhaustive list. For more such tools, do give the infographic below a read.

Regardless of the type of business, you’re running or even the industry that you’re operating in, the core goals of project management remain the same. You’re still talking about the successful development of not only the initiation of a project but also the planning, execution, regulation and even closure.

The decisions you make in the early stages of project management can easily mean the difference between success and failure in terms of everything that you’re trying to accomplish. During the beginning of a project, you’re setting goals and agreeing on critical factors like scope, time, quality and even budget. Naturally, keeping everyone on the same page and moving in the same direction is of paramount importance.

Which, of course, is a lot easier said than done.

Project management can be difficult in general – to say nothing of how hard things become when more people are suddenly working remotely than ever. But it is still possible to use these early moments in a project’s development lifecycle to set the foundation upon which everything else will be built. You just need to keep a few key things in mind while you do it.

The Art of Project Management: Breaking Things Down

By far, the most important step you can take in terms of successful project management in the modern era involves making sure that you have the right tools by your side at the beginning of the process.

The types of project tools that you embrace need to give you access to a few core features, regardless of which particular piece of software you choose. For the absolute best results, your tools should:

• Allow your users to create and store data almost entirely in the cloud. People should be able to be just as productive in their own home as they can be in the comfort of their office at work – especially these days, for obvious reasons. Therefore, any tool that you select needs to allow them to accomplish precisely that.
• Your tools should also give real-time reports to project managers into the status of ALL projects, regardless of how many are in progress at the same time. This is the best way to make sure that everyone is keeping up with their duties. It also gives project managers a chance to stop a small problem now before it has a chance to become a much bigger one down the road.
• Your tools should also streamline workflows in a way that project managers can see how EVERY person on the team is performing. Not only that, but they should also provide invaluable metrics so that you can see how projects are moving along. This level of insight can help make sure that if any adjustments are needed they can be executed immediately, all so that you don’t even have to worry about missing your estimated completion date.

The point about the cloud is particularly important in terms of creative project management software, as so many people on your team will essentially be drawing from the same resources at the same time. By embracing a tool that acts as a centralized location for all project-related tasks, files and documents, you’re doing your part to help boost productivity as much as possible. Communications and discussions become easier than ever and collaboration essentially becomes a forgone conclusion. All of this will pay dividends as your project moves farther down the line towards completion every single day.

Another key factor that you’ll want to keep in mind ultimately comes down to the type of support documentation that you’re creating along the way. For the sake of example, let’s say your current project involves getting an upcoming product ready for launch. You and your teams have worked tirelessly for months on getting this right – now, you’re just a few short weeks away from unleashing it on the entire world.

Don’t wait until the end of the project to start thinking about the types of support documentation that your users will need to get the most out of their purchase. These materials shouldn’t be an afterthought – they should be a natural part of the project management and development process from as early as possible.

All of this is to say that you should use a pie chart maker like Visme (which I founded) to create those visual “help” documents that people are going to need while you’re still going through the project, not after it is complete. This will allow you to proactively answer questions and address potential concerns while they’re all still fresh in your mind – thus leading to more accurate information that people can actually use.

Likewise, you should be going to sites like Respona on a regular basis to research the types of topics that the people in your audience actually care about. If you do this while the project is still in the development stages, it can actually clue you in on certain features and other benefits to embrace that will further act as your value differentiator in the market at large.

Think about it like this. Let’s say you and your teamwork on your upcoming product and it’s (thankfully) totally finished. Then, you head to Respona for topic research and find out that a lot of your potential customers have the same core problem that they’re trying to solve. You could easily include a feature that helps them meet that challenge… or you could have if you’d have learned this information while you were still knee-deep in development.

If you were conducting this level of research while things were still fluid, you definitely would have been in a better position to pivot and capitalize on an opportunity instead of allowing it to pass you by.

This is why it’s important to think of these things not as an afterthought, but as a critical element of what you’re doing. You never know where inspiration is going to come from and no matter what, you need to be in a position to listen to it and adapt to it whenever possible. This is the part of project management that far too many people don’t pay enough attention to until it’s too late.

Finally, one of the most important elements of successful project management involves keeping scope creep in check whenever you can. Every project has constraints – regardless of how many people are working with you or how large your budget is. But if your scope begins to shift in the wrong direction, things will slowly begin to fall apart before you know it. If things change too drastically, you could be dealing with budget overruns and you could easily lose buy-in from the stakeholders you’re going to need when everything is said and done.

Therefore, you must make it a priority to manage scope creep in a proactive way. Don’t think about it at the end of each month or at the end of the week. Keep it in the back of your mind every single day and don’t be afraid to confront it when necessary.

If you’re able to keep all of these things in mind during the project management process, there’s truly no limit to what you and your colleagues will be able to accomplish.

A modern business needs a lot of things to be successful. 

High-quality products that capture the attention of your target market are an excellent first start. However, you also need robust marketing strategies, a strong team of dedicated workers, and a plan for continued growth and evolution. 

A good company is like a well-oiled machine. One cog turning out of time could bring your entire enterprise grinding to a halt. That’s why it’s so important to be aware of the things that are slowing down your crucial processes and preventing your company from reaching its true potential. 

Today, we’re going to be looking at some of the things that could be hampering your everyday business processes, so that you can make a valuable change. 

#1 Multitasking

How many people in your business are wearing multiple hats? 

The chances are that if you’re a small and growing company, you have endless executives and employees rushing from one task to another. You may even be asking your team members to take part in activities that aren’t closely connected to their job roles. 

While it’s fine for everyone in your organization to pitch in a little extra at times, it’s important to make sure that this doesn’t give way to constant multitasking. 

Research proves that multitasking kills productivity and reduces the quality of the work produced. That’s because when you’re multitasking, you’re continually forcing your brain to switch from one thing to another, so you can’t truly focus on anything. 

If multitasking is a common problem in your organization, then it might be time to reassess your workflow and see where you can create more focused teams. Try to give the right task to the right people to prevent inefficiencies. 

Maybe allowing your senior leaders to delegate more of their work will make them more successful. Perhaps taking extra jobs away from lower employees and keeping everyone focused on their areas of expertise will help. 

The last thing you want for your business is that your employees don’t have time to do the job they were hired for.

If you have to switch employees between different tasks frequently and it’s slowing down work progress, maybe it’s time to add a new employee to your team. Alternatively, look if some processes can be outsourced to a company or a freelancer.

#2 Inefficient Meetings

Increasingly, companies are beginning to feel as though most meetings are nothing more than a waste of time. For years, we relied on face-to-face interactions in boardrooms to make sure that everyone in our team remained on the same page. 

However, by now, we have learned that this kind of disruptive activity is no longer necessary. 

Although the occasional meeting can be useful to connect your employees and bring people together in a more intimate environment, most of the time, you can switch a meeting out for broadcast on a collaboration app. 

You could even consider allowing your employees to dial into a video meeting so that they don’t have to leave their office. 

Pulling your team members out of their workflow so that they can take part in meetings when you could have shared the same information in an email is a dangerous waste of time. 

The next time you’re planning a meeting, ask yourself whether it’s necessary to bring people together in a conventional sense. If it is, ensure that you’re only inviting the most relevant people to the room.

Once they leave the meeting room, everyone should know exactly why their input was required and what are the next steps they need to take. 

#3 Lack of Insights

Let’s face it – data makes the world go around. We’re living in an era where information is everywhere, and it’s crucial to making our companies more effective. 

The good news is that the majority of today’s companies have systems in place that allow them to capture intelligence information from everything from their sales calls to their marketing campaigns. 

The bad news is that most organizations simply don’t know how to use their insights to improve their business operations. If you’re not taking advantage of the benefits of real-time and historical data analysis yet, it could be the perfect time to get started. 

Sit down with the other leaders in your team and figure out some goals that you want to accomplish. From there, you can determine what kind of information you need to reach your goals. 

For instance, if you want to make your marketing campaigns more successful, it makes sense to look at the marketing initiatives that have worked for you in the past. 

You might also want to tap into information about your target audiences and their pain points too. This data could help you identify areas that you can improve to offer your customers an excellent experience at every touchpoint with your business.

#4 Preventable IT Issues

Finally, another thing that we’ve come to recognize in the digital era is that IT can either be your friend or your enemy. In many cases, the right technology in your company’s landscape can accelerate growth and generate new opportunities. 

Knowing how to make the most of the assets at your disposal can significantly improve daily business operations. Implementing some new solutions can help you get there, too.

AI and machine learning are no longer terms out of science fiction novels. People have taught robots to interact with each other and with other people, and solve problems in the process. 

For a great example of how this achievement can speed up daily business operations, just look at chatbots. Chatbots can drastically reduce the time it takes to answer repeat customer questions and queries. Your employees could spend this time on more important tasks and projects. 

Also, chatbots can work around the clock. There’s no denying that having a 24/7 customer service is a great asset to your business. However, due to the high costs of maintaining a contact center, in most cases, it’s not a viable solution.

In such scenarios, chatbots can step in, respond to simple queries, and redirect more complicated issues to a human. 

Chatbots enable you to reduce time, money, and human labour, which you can then reallocate into growing your business.

If you have enough people on your team, offering live chat is another way to bypass long workflow procedures and ticketing systems that might be annoying to your customers. An agent can handle more than one chat at a time and still give the customer a personalized approach. 

The list of benefits of a live chat for a business is long. It boosts customer convenience, satisfaction, and loyalty, helps your business respond to their pain points faster and opens another channel for upselling.

However, there’s also a chance that poorly-managed technology could slow your business down and stop your team from completing their goals. Remote working trends or bring your own device trend (BYOD) are especially sensitive to these issues.  

While it’s always possible that IT issues might happen in your workforce, you can put strategies in place to protect yourself from any major downtime or disruptions. 

For instance, teaching your team members how to manage work equipment on their own, and providing them with the knowledge to troubleshoot any issues they face means that you can keep your organization running smoothly. 

At the same time, this frees up time for your IT employees, who can focus on finding ways for you to use technology to accelerate your business growth, rather than just responding to the same old preventable problems. 

Time to Speed up Your Business Growth

A company is a dynamic and ever-changing thing. Unfortunately, it’s also very fragile. When something as small as a single process doesn’t work properly for your company, you begin to see negative repercussions everywhere. 

The good news is that taking the time to examine your business workflow and figure out areas where systems can be improved can make your venture more efficient and successful. 

From working on preventable IT issues to reducing the number of meaningless meetings your team members are exposed to, there are plenty of ways that you can make your company into the well-oiled machine that it needs to be.