How to Use IVR Systems to Increase Sales IVR is not a replacement for your sales force, but it can be used to enhance your current one. As IVR technology becomes more efficient, some companies are using IVR systems to automate simple tasks, lowering costs and increasing sales. According to Bill Gates, “The first rule […]
Amazon’s cloud computing business and Apple’s Macs are increasingly using the companies’ homegrown chips. SAN FRANCISCO — For close to a decade, supporters of the chip technology that powers mobile phones vowed to shake up the market for computers. For the most part, they made little headway. Now that finally seems to be changing, in […]
Our parents warned us the internet would break our brains. It broke theirs instead. Illustrated | iStock, Wikimedia Commons November 25, 2020 Sign Up for Our free email newsletters 10 things you need to know today Today’s best articles Today’s top cartoons The good news newsletter The week’s best photojournalism Daily business briefing Daily gossip […]
Google is still an advertising company. But as ad growth gets tougher, there are plenty of signs that it sees subscriptions as a big part of its future. There are two ways to look at Google’s recent announcement that it will discontinue unlimited Google Photos storage starting next June. The first is Google’s official explanation: […]
Albert Einstein reportedly said that if he had an hour to solve a problem, he’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions. But Einstein wasn’t trying to run a company in the midst of a pandemic, when most of us are working longer hours and making new decisions each […]
Reports in state media signal an intensifying propaganda effort to place the birth of the virus in other countries. A man with what was then a mystery illness is brought into a Wuhan hospital in January this year. Photograph: HĂ©ctor Retamal/AFP/Getty ImagesEmma Graham-Harrison and Robin McKieSun 29 Nov 2020 07.15 GMT Nearly a year after […]
Raise your hand if you no longer trust yourself to remember everything you need to do. Keep your hand up if you’re so entrenched in knee-jerk reaction mode that the moment a “quick little task” pops into your head, you drop whatever you’re doing and take care of it right away lest it slip through […]
If you’re working to improve your leadership capability, what exactly should you be trying to develop? The experience of the 2020 pandemic offers a powerful lesson: A critical skill a leader must bring to the table is the ability to figure out what kind of thinking is required to address a given challenge. Bring the […]
Excessive screen time can be harmful to our well-being, but we can free ourselves from tech’s hooks with goals, rules and boundaries. When is enough enough? Even though the presidential election is over, we’re still doomscrolling through gloomy news about the coronavirus surge. The rest of your daily routine is probably something like mine while […]
Experts in problem solving emphasize the importance of deeply understanding the problem before implementing countermeasures. And many cite Charles Kettering’s maxim that “A problem well-framed is a problem half-solved.” But what, precisely, is a “well-framed” problem? I’ve written before about some of the obvious errors to avoid — couching a solution in the form of […]