Employees are the core of every business, but who says you cannot use cutting-edge technologies to boost their productivity? After all, we live in the 21st century and there’s no need to do everything manually with so many apps, tools, and plugins at your disposal.

Numerous studies prove this point, but we will highlight only a few of those here:

1. Some of the common factors that drive tech growth are the need to reach new customers, pick-up in business from the existing base, sell new business lines, and improve sales/marketing efforts.

2. By 2020, the amount of Internet-connected things will reach 50 billion, with $19 trillion in profits and cost savings coming from IoT over the next decade.

3. Amazon alone has 45 thousand robots operating across 20 warehouses.

In this post, we will show you five ways to innovate your organisation in 2020. Let’s take a look!

1. Chatbot-powered customer service

If there is one thing consumers really hate, it must be waiting for customer service agents to answer their replies. As much as 90 per cent of Americans use customer service as a factor in deciding whether or not to do business with a company.

Given the fact that businesses mainly fight on the customer service battlefield these days, having a slow and inefficient customer service can seriously undermine the entire organization very quickly.

This is exactly why so many companies are now building a chatbot-powered customer service team to ensure fast communication around the clock.

Over 70 per cent of consumers already report having positive chatbot experiences, but the figure is about to grow in 2020 and beyond. The chatbot technology is augmenting all sorts of businesses, from logistics and transportation to marketing and eCommerce.

Take the thesis writing service as an example. The agency relies on digital agents to interact with clients 24/7 and answer every question almost instantly. You can do the same thing and upgrade your business using chatbots.

Keep in mind that instant communication makes potential customers satisfied and prone to working with your company rather than your competitors. Besides growing the consumer base, chatbots can help you to increase customer loyalty long-term.

2. Personalisation

There are so many tools that can assist you in creating highly personalized offers for your prospects. It’s a critical milestone because modern purchasers don’t want “one size fits all” solutions anymore.

They are looking for tailored offers instead, so you better indulge them by embracing the concept of personalization in business.

How can you do it?

The easiest solution is to take advantage of website analytics to learn how each of your prospects behaves online.

A free tool such as Google Analytics will show you the browsing habits and interests of website visitors. Your job is to exploit this knowledge and provide your prospects with offers that match their style, needs, and preferences.

Personalisation is taking place every time you visit online stores like Amazon and notice product recommendations. Netflix is yet another amazing example here because its personalization engines help the company save over USD$1 billion a year through tailored recommendations.

Of course, Netflix is a genuine giant and you probably don’t expect to save the same amount of money each year, but even a small fraction could probably take your business to the whole new level of productivity.

3. Remote teams

Do you know that almost 60 million professionals in the US are active freelancers? It means that one in three workers are doing a full-time or side job remotely. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, this is a huge opportunity for you to augment the business by creating a remote team of employees.

What are the benefits of hiring freelancers to do some of your jobs? Here are some of the biggest advantages:

1. Freelancers are more productive because they enjoy greater life-work flexibility.

2. You don’t have to hire employees full-time.

3. It’s easy to find the perfect person to complete a given project.

Now, most employers are wondering where to find freelancers for their organizations, but the answer is quite simple – do it using popular freelancing platforms. For instance, Upwork is the largest freelancing network with over 16 million professionals from all over the world.

You can sign in as an employer and post job announcements easily. When freelancers apply to the job post, you can analyze each candidate and see their success scores, employers’ comments, portfolio, etc. All these features make it easy to select the right person for your remote team.

4. AR and VR

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are already reshaping the business as we know it, but the new form of technology is yet to make a more significant impact in 2020. Reports reveal that 171 million people use VR technology, while almost 80 per cent of Americans are already familiar with using it.

What makes AR and VR such valuable business tools? To put it simply, they can help you to showcase your products or services more realistically than ever before. The tactic is already in use across many different industries.

Take a look at IKEA Place for example. It’s an AR app that helps the most popular furniture manufacturer to attract more customers. The idea is simple – IKEA Place enables potential buyers to “virtually place true-to-scale 3D models in your very own space.” In other words, buying furniture gets easier than ever.

Another example comes from the Cleveland Clinic, a facility that uses VR technologies to teach cardiac surgery residents how to maintain ideal performance under the pressure of OR crises. The number of applications is unlimited, so it’s only up to you to find a way to use AR and VR to improve your business.

5. Content marketing tools

Content marketing should by no means be a novelty to any entrepreneur in 2020, especially because content creation costs 62 per cent less than traditional marketing and generates over three times as many leads.

However, the truth is that the Internet is filled with all sorts of more or less valuable content, which means that you can hardly leave an impression on target audiences if you are not publishing high-quality posts and using state of the art content creation tools.

You can find tons of precious apps, plugins, and program online, but some of our favourite solutions include the following:

1. Grammarly: The most popular editing and proofreading plugin analyzes textual posts and identifies mistakes within seconds.

2. CoSchedule Headline Analyzer: Use it to create eye-pleasing headlines for your posts.

3. Canva: It’s a simple but superior tool for the designers of visual content.

4. Place It Video Maker: If your plan is to create top-notch video content, this is the right tool for you.

5. Giphy: Adding a GIF or two to your post can make the content more entertaining and visually appealing.

6. Survey Monkey: This platform allows you to organize and launch online surveys quickly and effortlessly.

Conclusion

New technologies are emerging year after year and each one contributes to the overall development of business processes all over the world. If you are still not using any programs or tools to improve professional performance, you better do it quick.

In this article, we discussed five ways to innovate your organization in 2020. Have you already considered any of these methods? Let us know about it and feel free to share your ideas in comments!

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Image Credit: Miguel Á. Padriñán

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