How To Turn Your Customer Base Into a Community To Help Your Business Succeed

How To Turn Your Customer Base Into a Community To Help Your Business Succeed

 

    gremlin | Getty Images

When people feel like part of a community, amazing things can happen. When people can gather — in person or virtually — they form relationships that keep them coming back for more. One example is the ever-growing — 1.4 million members currently — a Facebook group for the Instant Pot Community, where Instant Pot users share their favorite recipes and latest trials and errors.

People visit that page, sometimes multiple times a day. It’s a community. And people love it. There are ways that you can create this type of following for your product or service too. Bond your customers together so they keep you and your business top of mind by reminding one another. Here are some ways you can implement this.

1. Have a place where your customers or clients can connect and help one another

If your product or service solves a problem, there’s one thing all your customers have in common: They’re looking for a solution. And while that’s exactly what you provide, they can also mindshare and connect with like-minded people….Continue reading…

By Imran Tariq

Source: How to Turn Your Customer Base Into a Community To Help Your Business Succeed | Entrepreneur

 

#base #community #errors #facebook #favorite #group #happen #implement #member #people #pot #relationships #solution #businessandmanagement #onlinecommunities #virtually

 

 Critics:

The concept of customer relationship management started in the early 1970s, when customer satisfaction was evaluated using annual surveys or by front-line asking. At that time, businesses had to rely on standalone mainframe systems to automate sales, but the extent of technology allowed them to categorize customers in spreadsheets and lists. One of the best-known precursors of modern-day CRM is the Farley File.

Developed by Franklin Roosevelt’s campaign manager, James Farley, the Farley File was a comprehensive set of records detailing political and personal facts about people FDR and Farley met or were supposed to meet. Using it, people that FDR met were impressed by his “recall” of facts about their family and what they were doing professionally and politically. In 1982, Kate and Robert D. Kestenbaum introduced the concept of database marketing, namely applying statistical methods to analyze and gather customer data.

By 1986, Pat Sullivan and Mike Muhney had released a customer evaluation system called ACT! based on the principle of a digital Rolodex, which offered a contact management service for the first time. The trend was followed by numerous companies and independent developers trying to maximize lead potential, including Tom Siebel of Siebel Systems, who designed the first CRM product, Siebel Customer Relationship Management, in 1993.

In order to compete with these new and quickly growing stand-alone CRM solutions, established enterprise resource planning (ERP) software companies like Oracle, Zoho Corporation, SAP, Peoplesoft (an Oracle subsidiary as of 2005) and Navision started extending their sales, distribution and customer service capabilities with embedded CRM modules. This included embedding sales force automation or extended customer service (e.g. inquiry, activity management) as CRM features in their ERP.

Customer relationship management was popularized in 1997, due to the work of Siebel, Gartner, and IBM. Between 1997 and 2000, leading CRM products were enriched with shipping and marketing capabilities. Siebel introduced the first mobile CRM app called Siebel Sales Handheld in 1999. The idea of a stand-alone, cloud-hosted customer base was soon adopted by other leading providers at the time, including PeopleSoft (acquired by Oracle), Oracle, SAP and Salesforce.com.

The first open-source CRM system was developed by SugarCRM in 2004. During this period, CRM was rapidly migrating to the cloud, as a result of which it became accessible to sole entrepreneurs and small teams. This increase in accessibility generated a huge wave of price reduction. Around 2009, developers began considering the options to profit from social media’s momentum and designed tools to help companies become accessible on all users’ favourite networks.

Many startups at the time benefited from this trend to provide exclusively social CRM solutions, including Base and Nutshell. The same year, Gartner organized and held the first Customer Relationship Management Summit, and summarized the features systems should offer to be classified as CRM solutions. In 2013 and 2014, most of the popular CRM products were linked to business intelligence systems and communication software to improve corporate communication and end-users’ experience.

The leading trend is to replace standardized CRM solutions with industry-specific ones, or to make them customizable enough to meet the needs of every business. In November 2016, Forrester released a report where it “identified the nine most significant CRM suites from eight prominent vendors.

The primary goal of CRM systems is integration and automation of sales, marketing, and customer support. Therefore, these systems typically have a dashboard that gives an overall view of the three functions on a single customer view, a single page for each customer that a company may have. The dashboard may provide client information, past sales, previous marketing efforts, and more, summarizing all of the relationships between the customer and the firm. Operational CRM is made up of 3 main components: sales force automation, marketing automation, and service automation.

Sales force automation works with all stages in the sales cycle, from initially entering contact information to converting a prospective client into an actual client. It implements sales promotion analysis, automates the tracking of a client’s account history for repeated sales or future sales and coordinates sales, marketing, call centers, and retail outlets. It prevents duplicate efforts between a salesperson and a customer and also automatically tracks all contacts and follow-ups between both parties.

Marketing automation focuses on easing the overall marketing process to make it more effective and efficient. CRM tools with marketing automation capabilities can automate repeated tasks, for example, sending out automated marketing emails at certain times to customers, or posting marketing information on social media. The goal with marketing automation is to turn a sales lead into a full customer. CRM systems today also work on customer engagement through social media.

Service automation is the part of the CRM system that focuses on direct customer service technology. Through service automation, customers are supported through multiple channels such as phone, email, knowledge bases, ticketing portals, FAQs, and more.The role of analytical CRM systems is to analyze customer data collected through multiple sources and present it so that business managers can make more informed decisions.

Analytical CRM systems use techniques such as data mining, correlation, and pattern recognition to analyze customer data. These analytics help improve customer service by finding small problems which can be solved, perhaps by marketing to different parts of a consumer audience differently. For example, through the analysis of a customer base’s buying behavior, a company might see that this customer base has not been buying a lot of products recently.

After scanning through this data, the company might think to market to this subset of consumers differently, to best communicate how this company’s products might benefit this group specifically.

.

 

7 Ways Drugs & Alcohol Destroy Relationships

7 Ways Drugs & Alcohol Destroy Relationships:

Maintaining a good relationship, whether it’s romantic or between family and friends, requires time and attention in addition to compassion and love. An unexamined relationship could have underlying problems that won’t become apparent until stress occurs, such as from financial difficulties or the emergence of drug or alcohol abuse.

To help you avoid problems in your own life, or to recognize the signs of a fracturing bond, here are seven ways substance abuse can ruin relationships.

1. Secrets & Lies

When it comes to illegal drugs or using prescription drugs without authorization, your loved one may keep their use secret. Otherwise, they risk being shunned or stigmatized. In some cases, a person abusing alcohol or drugs will keep usage secret out of feelings of guilt and shame as well as not wanting to be judged. There is motivation to keep things under wraps, allowing secrets in the relationship to fester….Continue reading….

By: Kimberly Langdon M.D.

Source: 7 Ways Drugs & Alcohol Destroy Relationships – ARK Behavioral Health

#abuse #alcohol #apparent #authorization #compassion #destroy #difiiculties #drugs #emergence #family #finnacial #freinds #illegal #lies #love #relationships #secrtets #shame #stress #ways

 

Critics:

Alcoholism is the continued drinking of alcohol despite negative results.Problematic use of alcohol has been mentioned in the earliest historical records, such as in ancient Egypt and in the Bible, and remains widespread; the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated there were 283 million people with alcohol use disorders worldwide as of 2016.

The term alcoholism was first coined in 1852, but alcoholism and alcoholic are stigmatizing and discourage seeking treatment, so clinical diagnostic terms such as alcohol use disorder or alcohol dependence are used instead. Alcohol is addictive, and heavy long-term alcohol use results in many negative health and social consequences. It can damage all the organ systems, but especially affects the brain, heart, liver, pancreas and immune system.

Heavy alcohol usage can result in trouble sleeping, and severe cognitive issues like dementia, brain damage, or Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome. Physical effects include irregular heartbeat, an impaired immune response, liver cirrhosis, increased cancer risk, and severe withdrawal symptoms if stopped suddenly. These health effects can reduce life expectancy by 10 years.

Drinking during pregnancy may harm the child’s health, and drunk driving increases the risk of traffic accidents. Alcoholism is also associated with increases in violent and non-violent crime. While alcoholism directly resulted in 139,000 deaths in 2013, 3.3 million deaths may be attributable to alcohol. The development of alcoholism is attributed to both environment and genetics equally. The use of alcohol to self-medicate stress or anxiety can turn into alcoholism.

Someone with a parent or sibling with an alcohol use disorder is three to four times more likely to develop an alcohol use disorder themselves, but only a minority of them do. Environmental factors include social, cultural and behavioral influences. High stress levels and anxiety, as well as alcohol’s inexpensive cost and easy accessibility, increase the risk. People may continue to drink partly to prevent or improve symptoms of withdrawal.

After a person stops drinking alcohol, they may experience a low level of withdrawal lasting for months. Medically, alcoholism is considered both a physical and mental illness. Questionnaires are usually used to detect possible alcoholism.Further information is then collected to confirm the diagnosis. Treatment of alcoholism may take several forms. Due to medical problems that can occur during withdrawal, alcohol cessation should be controlled carefully.

One common method involves the use of benzodiazepine medications, such as diazepam. These can be taken while admitted to a health care institution or individually. The medications acamprosate or disulfiram may also be used to help prevent further drinking.Mental illness or other addictions may complicate treatment. Various individual or group therapy or support groups are used to attempt to keep a person from returning to alcoholism.

Among them is the abstinence based mutual aid fellowship Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). A 2020 scientific review found that clinical interventions encouraging increased participation in AA (AA/twelve step facilitation (AA/TSF))—resulted in higher abstinence rates over other clinical interventions, and most studies in the review found that AA/TSF led to lower health costs.

Many terms, some slurs and some informal, have been used to refer to people affected by alcoholism such as tippler, drunkard, dipsomaniac and souse. The risk of alcohol dependence begins at low levels of drinking and increases directly with both the volume of alcohol consumed and a pattern of drinking larger amounts on an occasion, to the point of intoxication, which is sometimes called binge drinking.

Some of the possible long-term effects of ethanol an individual may develop. Additionally, in pregnant women, alcohol can cause fetal alcohol syndrome. Alcoholism is characterised by an increased tolerance to alcohol – which means that an individual can consume more alcohol – and physical dependence on alcohol, which makes it hard for an individual to control their consumption.

The physical dependency caused by alcohol can lead to an affected individual having a very strong urge to drink alcohol. These characteristics play a role in decreasing the ability to stop drinking of an individual with an alcohol use disorder. Alcoholism can have adverse effects on mental health, contributing to psychiatric disorders and increasing the risk of suicide. A depressed mood is a common symptom of heavy alcohol drinkers.

Warning signs of alcoholism include the consumption of increasing amounts of alcohol and frequent intoxication, preoccupation with drinking to the exclusion of other activities, promises to quit drinking and failure to keep those promises, the inability to remember what was said or done while drinking (colloquially known as “blackouts”).

Personality changes associated with drinking, denial or the making of excuses for drinking, the refusal to admit excessive drinking, dysfunction or other problems at work or school, the loss of interest in personal appearance or hygiene, marital and economic problems, and the complaint of poor health, with loss of appetite, respiratory infections, or increased anxiety.

Having more than one drink a day for women or two drinks for men increases the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, atrial fibrillation, and stroke. Risk is greater with binge drinking, which may also result in violence or accidents. About 3.3 million deaths (5.9% of all deaths) are believed to be due to alcohol each year. Alcoholism reduces a person’s life expectancy by around ten years and alcohol use is the third leading cause of early death in the United States.

Long-term alcohol misuse can cause a number of physical symptoms, including cirrhosis of the liver, pancreatitis, epilepsy, polyneuropathy, alcoholic dementia, heart disease, nutritional deficiencies, peptic ulcers and sexual dysfunction, and can eventually be fatal. Other physical effects include an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease, malabsorption, alcoholic liver disease, and several cancers.

Damage to the central nervous system and peripheral nervous system can occur from sustained alcohol consumption. A wide range of immunologic defects can result and there may be a generalized skeletal fragility, in addition to a recognized tendency to accidental injury, resulting in a propensity for bone fractures…

 

5 Healthy Habits To Help With Your Addiction Recovery

5 Healthy Habits To Help With Your Addiction Recovery

Addiction can present itself in a person in many different forms. Whether it’s an addiction to drugs, gambling, food, or alcohol, to achieve long-term sobriety, it is important to adopt healthy habits for recovery. There are many ways to adjust your life after rehab and this article will advise healthy habits to adopt when going through addiction recovery.

1. Exercise

Exercise is a great way to boost physical and mental health. Physical movement can help combat addiction during recovery by reducing depression and anxiety, acting as a short-term distraction, releasing serotonin to the brain, and providing a positive focus.



During recovery, it is common to feel tired, and lethargic, and experience dramatic mood changes. Regular physical activity can provide increased energy levels, an improved mood through endorphin release, and result in a better quality of sleep….Continue reading…

Source: 5 Healthy Habits To Help With Your Addiction Recovery

#addiction #alcohol #anxiety #depression #distraction #drugs #exercise #focus #food #healthy #help #lethargic #mentalhealth #movement #physical #positive #recovery #serotonin #brain #sobriety


 

Critics:

Addiction is a neuropsychological disorder characterized by a persistent and intense urge to use a drug or engage in a behaviour that produces natural reward, despite substantial harm and other negative consequences. Repetitive drug use often alters brain function in ways that perpetuate craving, and weakens (but does not completely negate) self-control.

This phenomenon – drugs reshaping brain function – has led to an understanding of addiction as a brain disorder with a complex variety of psychosocial as well as neurobiological (and thus involuntary) factors that are implicated in addiction’s development. Classic signs of addiction include compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli, preoccupation with substances or behavior, and continued use despite negative consequences.



Habits and patterns associated with addiction are typically characterized by immediate gratification (short-term reward),coupled with delayed deleterious effects (long-term costs). Examples of drug (or more generally, substance) addictions include alcoholism, marijuana addiction, amphetamine addiction, cocaine addiction, nicotine addiction, opioid addiction, and eating or food addiction.

Alternatively, behavioral addictions may include gambling addiction, internet addiction, social media addiction, video game addiction and sexual addiction. The DSM-5 and ICD-10 only recognise gambling addictions as behavioural addictions, but the ICD-11 also recognises gaming addictions.

Addiction” and “addictive behaviour” are polysemes denoting a category of mental disorders, of neuropsychological symptoms, or of merely maladaptive/harmful habits and lifestyles. A common use of “addiction” in medicine is for neuropsychological symptoms denoting pervasive/excessive and intense urges to engage in a category of behavioural compulsions or impulses towards sensory rewards (e.g. alcohol, betel quid, drugs, sex, gambling, video gaming).

Addictive disorders or addiction disorders are mental disorders involving high intensities of addictions (as neuropsychological symptoms) that induce functional disabilities (i.e. limit subjects’ social/family and occupational activities); the two categories of such disorders are substance-use addictions and behavioural addictions.

However, there is no agreement on the exact definition of addiction in medicine. Indeed, Volkow et al. (2016) report that the DSM-5 defines addictions as the most severe degree of the addictive disorders, due to pervasive/excessive substance-use or behavioural compulsions/impulses. It is a definition that many scientific papers and reports use.



“Dependence” is also a polyseme denoting either neuropsychological symptoms or mental disorders. In the DSM-5, dependences differ from addictions and can even normally happen without addictions; besides, substance-use dependences are severe stages of substance-use addictions (i.e. mental disorders) involving withdrawal issues. In the ICD-11, “substance-use dependence” is a synonym of “substance-use addiction” (i.e. neuropsychological symptoms) that can but do not necessarily involve withdrawal issues.

Drug addiction, which belongs to the class of substance-related disorders, is a chronic and relapsing brain disorder that features drug seeking and drug abuse, despite their harmful effects. This form of addiction changes brain circuitry such that the brain’s reward system is compromised, causing functional consequences for stress management and self-control.Damage to the functions of the organs involved can persist throughout a lifetime and cause death if untreated.

Substances involved with drug addiction include alcohol, nicotine, marijuana, opioids, cocaine, amphetamines, and even foods with high fat and sugar content. Addictions can begin experimentally in social contexts^[29] and can arise from the use of prescribed medications or a variety of other measures.

Drug addiction has been shown to work in phenomenological, conditioning (operant and classical), cognitive models, and the cue reactivity model. However, no one model completely illustrates substance abuse.



Risk factors for addiction include:

• Aggressive behavior (particularly in childhood)
• Availability of substance
• Community economic status
• Experimentation
• Epigenetics
• Impulsivity (attentional, motor, or non-planning)
• Lack of parental supervision
• Lack of peer refusal skills
• Mental disorders
• Method substance is taken
• Usage of substance in youth

 

5 Things You Should Know About Capital Gains Tax

5 Things You Should Know About Capital Gains Tax

Capital gains aren’t just for rich people. Anyone who sells a capital asset should know that capital gains tax may apply. And as the Internal Revenue Service points out, just about everything you own qualifies as a capital asset. That’s the case whether you bought it as an investment, such as stocks or property, or something for personal use, such as a car or a big-screen TV.

If you sell something for more than your “cost basis” of the item, then the difference is a capital gain, and you’ll need to report that gain on your taxes. Your cost basis is usually what you paid for the item. It includes not only the price of the item, but any other costs you had to pay to acquire it, including:

• Sales taxes, excise taxes and other taxes and fees
• Shipping and handling costs
• Installation and setup charges

In addition, money spent on improvements that increase the value of the asset—such as a new addition to a building—can be added to your cost basis. Depreciation of an asset can reduce your cost basis….Continue reading..

By: TurboTax Expert 

Source: 5 Things You Should Know about Capital Gains Tax – TurboTax Tax Tips & Videos

 #apply #asset #basis #capital #capitalgaintax #charges #cost #depreciation #fees #handling #installation #item #paid #personal #revenue #rich #screen #service #shipping #tax #things #value

 

Critics:

A capital gains tax (CGT) is the tax on profits realized on the sale of a non-inventory asset. The most common capital gains are realized from the sale of stocks, bonds, precious metals, real estate, and property. Not all countries impose a capital gains tax and most have different rates of taxation for individuals compared to corporations. Countries that do not impose a capital gains tax include Bahrain, Barbados, Belize, the Cayman Islands, the Isle of Man, Jamaica, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Singapore, and others.

In some countries, such as New Zealand and Singapore, professional traders and those who trade frequently are taxed on such profits as a business income. In Sweden, the Investment Savings Account (ISK – Investeringssparkonto) was introduced in 2012 in response to a decision by Parliament to stimulate saving in funds and equities. There is no tax on capital gains in ISKs; instead, the saver pays an annual standard low rate of tax. Fund savers nowadays mainly choose to save in funds via investment savings accounts.

Capital gains taxes are payable on most valuable items or assets sold at a profit. Antiques, shares, precious metals and second homes could be all subject to the tax if the profit is large enough. This lower boundary of profit is set by the government. If the profit is lower than this limit it is tax-free. The profit is in most cases the difference between the amount (or value) an asset is sold for and the amount it was bought for.

The tax rate on capital gains may depend on the sellers income. For example, in the UK the CGT is currently (tax year 2021–22) 10% for incomes under £50,000 and 20% for higher incomes. There is an additional tax that adds 8% to the existing tax rate if the profit comes from residential property. If any property is sold at a loss, it is possible to offset it against annual gains.

The CGT allowance for one tax year in the UK is currently £12,300 for an individual and double (£24,600) for a married couple or in a civil partnership. For equities, national and state legislation often has a large array of fiscal obligations that must be respected regarding capital gains. Taxes are charged by the state over the transactions, dividends and capital gains on the stock market. However, these fiscal obligations may vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

The CGT can be considered a cost of selling which can be greater than, for example, transaction costs or provisions. The literature provides information that barriers for trading negatively affects the investors’ willingness to trade, which in turn can change assets prices. Companies with tax-sensitive customers are particularly reactive to capital gains tax and its change. CGT and changes to it affect trading and the stock market. Investors must be ready to react sensibly to these changes, taking into account the cumulative capital gains of their customers.

They are sales must be delayed due to an unfavorable market conditions caused by capital gains tax. A study by Li Jin (2006) showed that great capital gains discourage selling. On the contrary to this fact, small capital gains stimulate the trade and investors are more likely to sell. “It is easy to show that to be willing to sell now the investor must believe that the stock price will go down permanently. Thus, a capital gains tax can create a potentially large barrier to selling.

Of course, the foregoing calculation ignores the possibility that there might be another taxtiming option: Given capital gains tax rates fluctuate over time, it might be worthwhile to time the realization of capital gains and wait until a subsequent regime lowers the capital gains tax rate.” A capital tax influences an open economy in many ways. The international capital market that has hugely developed in the past few decades (in the 2nd half of the 20th century) is helping countries to deal with some gaps between investments and savings.

Funds for borrowing money from abroad are helping to decrease the difference between domestic savings and domestic investments. Borrowing money from foreigners is rising when the capital that flows to another country is taxed. This tax, however, does not influence domestic investment. In the long run, the country that has borrowed some money and has a debt, usually has to pay this debt for example by exporting some products abroad. It affects the standard of living in this country.

That is also why “the foreign capital is not a perfect substitute for domestic savings.” In 1982, the United States was the world’s greatest creditor; however it went from this stage to being the greatest debtor in the world in four years. In 1982, the U.S. owned $147 billion of assets that were excess over and above the value of U.S. assets owned by foreigners. In 1986, this value inverted to negative $250 billion.

Because capital gains are taxed only upon realization, an individual who owns a security that has increased in value may be reluctant to sell it. The seller knows that when sold, tax is levied on the positive difference of the price at which the security was bought and the price at which the security was sold. If the seller chooses not to sell, the tax is postponed to later date. The present discounted value of the tax liabilities is reduced by the postponement of the tax.

Therefore, the seller has an incentive to hold the securities longer. And this distortion caused by the capital gains tax has been called the locked-in effect or lock-in effect. Martin Feldstein, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan has claimed that the effect is so large that reducing the capital gains tax would lead individuals to sell securities that they previously had refused to sell, to such an extent that government revenues would actually increase. More recent estimates suggest that a permanent reduction in the capital gains tax rate would have little effect.