A personalized, VIP experience can mean that customers are 80% more likely to purchase from your store. While gearing up your e-commerce site to take on personalization can be a daunting task, you can start taking small steps now by employing a chatbot as a greeter on your online store.

Since 70% of shoppers will probably abandon their cart, recovering even half of these can mean a lot of sales for your business.

Far from being a transactional tool to speed up the sales or support process, chatbots can help build customer loyalty and solidify your brand. Take the time to streamline your chatbot, just like any team member you have--a little investment in time and strategy can mean a lot.

While having a stellar product is important for brand loyalty, there are other key drivers for loyalty. Some of the biggest trends in driving loyalty include:

Consider making your brand's advocacies and purpose resonate through your chatbot's personality. Don't fall prey to forgetting about personality when it comes to programming your chatbot. Use your chatbot's personality to drive home your brand's image as well as your vision and mission.

Sentiment analysis is important when it comes to chatbots. When this is a challenge for some AI engines, the ability to quickly flag a conversation to handoff to a human customer care personnel is important.

Consider using keyword and phrase triggers to determine when a customer needs to be handed over to a human being. An effective transition helps in keeping customers happy without sacrificing responsiveness for your overall brand.

If you're finding it hard to keep up with inquiries, consider investing in a chatbot to make sure that your brand is not seen as unresponsive. A snappy answer and a friendly chatbot can tell customers your brand is serious about customer experience and that they can rely on you for what they need.

Even if they didn't complete their order with you, they still deserve a message! Look into sending recovery emails or messages when you have abandoned carts. Recovering a good chunk of these can help you boost sales.

Don't be pushy, but give them the option of signing up for further updates through a mailing list or an SMS list. If you have a website for your products and can set up membership for your customers, even better. Make sure they know the perks of building a better relationship with your brand: saving their details for faster checkouts, accessing past orders, remembering their favorite products, and so on.

Don't underestimate the power of lead magnets. These are offers, promotions, or other incentives that you can give potential customers in exchange for email address or phone number.

An alternative is using a cloud-based attendance tracking software like Load One's solution (ask us about it!), to formalize the process and free up your managers' time from needing to manually track and report attendance.

For 2020: It's a challenge when teams are not able to meet face to face. Make sure you address issues with a phone call at the very least--a video call would be better. Many subtle cues can get lost with a voice call, much less an impersonal email. It's also good to remember that there are unique challenges in today's world. Leading with understanding and kindness can help you maintain your employees' loyalty and morale.

While there is no silver bullet when it comes to tackling attendance issues, communicating with your team will help. Starting with the basics can help you improve employee attendance and engagement, and therefore uplift your business.

It's important to separate work and relaxation for remote workers. The brain associates certain places with certain activities, so encourage your staff to work on a table or desk, and not in their beds!

While remote work is great for flexibility, sometimes, a few rules and guidelines actually work better for us. A consistent routine helps our brains get ready for work, so encouraging your staff in maintaining a routine is great, too.

Perhaps allow them to set when they start work, so sleepyheads can get a little more sleep or people who love cooking and having hearty breakfasts have a little more time to prepare. Remote attendance tracking software like the one Load One offers can help you track when they "clock in" remotely, but can also help them--the act of checking in for the day of work can signal their brain that it's time to get busy.

Host fun, interactive meetings that encourage friendliness. Perhaps set a theme for your Zoom backgrounds and show off your staff's creativity. Hold a meeting in costume. Have a few drinks (perhaps give them a little budget or allowance!). These fun activities can help raise their engagement at work.

A good attendance tracking system that allows for remote tracking will help ease micro management and boost productivity, since managers will have real-time visibility on employees' time in and time out. Even better, ones with biometric or facial recognition time-in functionality will prevent "buddy system" abuses and ensure that employees are present working when they punch in.

For remote workers, a remote tracker also serves as a great signal for when they need to start work. When employees are able to mentally prepare themselves for the tasks that your business needs, they are more productive and effective at their jobs.

Perhaps an employee taking more unexpected leaves has personal issues at home they need to address, and may appreciate being able to work remotely for the time being. Such a move may help mitigate workflow blocks and increase morale.

An efficient, streamlined process like Load One’s attendance tracking solution alleviates much uncertainty and stress from your managers and staff alike. It helps your management make decisions and become more proactive in taking care of their teams both inside and outside of work.

Don’t fall prey to pay errors, micro management, and low employee productivity when you can help your teams work effectively by providing them the tools they need. Get in touch with us if you need help.

Helping them transition to alternative channels of selling and servicing may also be needed so they can boost their numbers. Providing them education and guidance on important aspects of transitioning to online selling, for example, may help them maintain a healthy business.

Businesses who can be kind to their customers often earn their customers' goodwill and support for the long-term. If your franchisees have a little more leeway in offering special deals to their customers, it helps build relationships and loyalty and may boost morale both ways.

If you have potential partners who are hesitant, it may help them to know that many similar-minded people have good projections on starting their businesses. Franchise Insights conducted a buyer sentiment survey last March that shows over 55% of respondents agree that now is a good time to start a business.

It is important that franchisors take the reins inmoving forward through the economic crisis for their franchisees. Shared input and cooperation from your partners are important. But now, more than ever, a united front that is quick to establish guidelines and adopt better ways of doing business during the pandemic can turn the tide of business for the whole organization.

Email, one of the most popular communication tools in marketing, only has a 15-20% open rate, while text messages are opened anywhere from 82.1% to 98%. You would sooner find people with zero unread text messages than zero unread email, and for good reason.

Businesses can use this in more ways than providing delivery updates and reservation confirmations. Perhaps offering mobile exclusives can help build a loyal audience (as long as recipients have opted into your offerings). Building more intimate relationships will help you retain and grow your customer base.

Oftentimes, we take for granted that our teams understand the company’s goals and where they fit into it. Unfortunately, only 40% actually know what the goals of the company are. 60% of your employees are investing time and effort into doing their jobs but possibly aren’t contributing to the company focus.

In a time when people can’t see each other regularly and nonverbal communication is challenging, ensuring approachable channels are available is important in engaging employees. Video conferencing calls are good for regular catch-ups. Chat programs might be seen as a distraction, but for remote workers, the casual, conversational vibe of a Slack channel or Google hangout is more conducive to group discussions.

It’s also important to provide more frequent feedback for employees working remotely. It may have been a practice that is relegated to annual performance reviews in more traditional settings, but when you don’t see your team on a daily basis, it’s easy to drift away and be detached from them. Frequent and regular one-on-one meetings, no matter how quick, can help keep working relationships healthy.

While access to these are important (as well as appropriate training, if alternatives are used), other tools to collaborate and facilitate work is also important. With the necessary popularity of remote work now, this is a great time to look into tools that can help you facilitate remote collaboration.

Tracking employees’ Net Promoter Scores as well as taking pulse surveys can point out to you where to improve and where you are doing well in terms of engaging your employees. It can help you realign your resources to activities and initiatives that work better for your remote employees.