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AI is no longer the future of healthcare; it’s already reshaping how patients are diagnosed and treated. Some of the most interesting developments involve systems that sense and respond to human emotion. Cedars-Sinai’s Connect platform, for example, adapts care based on patient sentiment; CompanionMx interprets vocal and facial cues to detect anxiety; and Feel Therapeutics uses emotion-sensing wearables to tailor interventions in real time. At the same time, clinical tools are evolving. Hospitals are pairing large language models (LLMs) with AI note-taking apps such as Nabla and Heidi, which can listen, summarize, and respond to the nuances of doctor–patient conversations. Investment in medical scribing technologies alone hit around $800 million last year. A SHIFT TO AI ADAPTATION All of this points to a bigger shift from AI that automates tasks to AI that adapts. Traditional AI sped up paperwork and crunched data. Adaptive AI helps clinicians make better judgments, understand patients more deeply, and respond in context. You can already see this shift in breast cancer screening, genomics, and drug discovery, where high quality data and constant validation are driving real progress. Emotionally-aware tools, when designed responsibly, can strengthen the connection between clinicians and patients, personalize care, and ease pressure on overstretched systems. But as adaptive AI becomes more widely available, success depends less on technical brilliance and more on how systems are built. The tools that succeed will be able to flex around people, fitting patients’ needs, clinicians’ workflows, and the realities of care. Good AI needs to be anticipatory and sensitive to context, built for the full diversity of patients. Even the most empathetic AI cannot, of course, erase the imperfections of human systems. Recent studies, for example, show that medical AI tools and LLM‑based assistants routinely downplay symptoms in women and treat Black and Asian patients with less empathy than for white men. AI does not cleanse the biases of the real world; it carries them forward and often widens their impact. We have seen this pattern before. DEPLOYMENT MATTERS That’s why deployment conditions matter as much as technology. A system that mimics empathy does not automatically grasp nuance, context, or risk. Without firm ethical boundaries, so-called emotional intelligence can give a false sense of security. Clinicians still need to make the final calls, protecting patients and maintaining trust. AI can be a helpful care partner, but it cannot take on the weight of human responsibility. Building trust requires strengthening the foundations on which it is used. Involving patients, families, and carers from the start surfaces blind spots early and helps balance compassion with practicality. It also clarifies where automation should step back and human care needs to step in. Our Cancer Platform, developed with the Cancer Awareness Trust, illustrates this in practice, showing how empathetic design creates dependable, genuinely helpful tools. AI isn’t here to replace people. It’s here to support them in their expertise and scale their impact. Ideally we will build machines to handle complexity and pattern recognition, freeing clinicians to focus on what humans do best: exercise judgement, build connection, and provide care. Machines might learn to care, but it is up to us to create the ecosystem where that care is trustworthy, fair, and meaningful—a challenge, yes, but one full of opportunity. Nicki Sprinz is CEO of ustwo. View the full article

Beijing imposed sanctions on Friday against 20 U.S. defense-related companies and 10 executives, a week after Washington announced large-scale arms sales to Taiwan. The sanctions entail freezing the companies’ assets in China and banning individuals and organizations from dealing with them, according to the Chinese foreign ministry. The companies include Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation, L3Harris Maritime Services and Boeing in St. Louis, while defense firm Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey is one of the executives sanctioned, who can no longer do business in China and are barred from entering the country. Their assets in the East Asian country have also been frozen. The announcement of the U.S. arms-sale package, valued at more than $10 billion, has drawn an angry response from China, which claims Taiwan as its own and says it must come under its control. If approved by the American Congress, it would be the largest-ever U.S. weapons package to the self-ruled territory. “We stress once again that the Taiwan question is at the very core of China’s core interests and the first red line that must not be crossed in China－U.S. relations,” the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday. “Any company or individual who engages in arms sales to Taiwan will pay the price for the wrongdoing.” The ministry also urged the U.S. to stop what it called “the dangerous moves of arming Taiwan.” Taiwan is a major flashpoint in U.S.-China relations that analysts worry could explode into military conflict between the two powers. China says that the U.S. arms sales to Taiwan would violate diplomatic agreements between China and the U.S. China’s military has increased its presence in Taiwan’s skies and waters in the past few years, holding joint drills with its warships and fighter jets on a near-daily basis near the island. Under the American federal law, the U.S. is obligated to assist Taiwan with its self-defense, a point that has become increasingly contentious with China. Beijing already has strained ties with Washington over trade, technology and other human rights issues. —Associated Press View the full article

For the past three years, AI’s breakout moment has happened almost entirely through text. We type a prompt, get a response, and move to the next task. While this intuitive interaction style turned chatbots into a household tool overnight, it barely scratches the surface of what the most advanced technology of our time can actually do. This disconnect has created a significant gap in how consumers utilize AI. While the underlying models are rapidly becoming multimodal—capable of processing voice, visuals, and video in real time—most consumers are still using them as a search engine. Looking toward 2026, I believe the next wave of adoption won’t be about utility alone, but about evolving beyond static text into dynamic, immersive interactions. This is AI 2.0: not just retrieving information faster, but experiencing intelligence through sound, visuals, motion, and real-time context. AI adoption has reached a tipping point. In 2025, ChatGPT’s weekly user base doubled from roughly 400 million in February to 800 million by year’s end. Competitors like Gemini and Anthropic saw similar growth, yet most users still engage with LLMs primarily via text chatbots. In fact, Deloitte’s Connected Consumer Survey shows that despite over half (53%) of consumers experimenting with generative AI, most people still relegate AI to administrative tasks like writing, summarizing, and researching. Yet when you look at the digital behavior of consumers outside of AI, it’s clear consumers crave immersive experiences. According to Activate Consulting’s Tech & Media Outlook 2026, 43% of Gen Z prefer user-generated platforms like TikTok and YouTube over traditional TV or paid streaming, and they spend 54% more time on social video platforms than the average consumer, abandoning traditional media for interactive social platforms. This creates a fundamental mismatch: Consumers live in a multi-sensory world, but their AI tools are stuck delivering plain text. While the industry recognizes this gap and is investing to close it, I predict we’ll see a fundamental shift in how people use and create with AI. In AI 2.0, users will no longer simply consume AI-generated content but will instead leverage multimodal AI to bring voice, visuals, and text together, allowing them to shape and direct their experiences in real time. MULTIMODAL AI UNLOCKS IMMERSIVE STORYTELLING If AI 1.0 was about efficiency, AI 2.0 is about engagement. While text-based AI is limited in how deeply it can engage audiences, multimodal AI allows the user to become an active participant. Instead of reading a story, you can interact with a main character and take the plot in a new direction or build your own world where narratives and characters evolve with you. We can look to the $250 billion gaming industry as the blueprint for the potential that multimodal AI has. Video games combine visuals, audio, narrative, and real-time agency, creating an immersive experience that traditional entertainment can’t replicate. Platforms like Roblox and Minecraft let players inhabit content. Roblox alone reaches over 100 million daily users, who collectively spend tens of billions of hours a year immersed in these worlds; engagement that text alone could never generate. With the rise of multimodal AI, users everywhere will be able to create these types of experiences they’ve loved to participate in through gaming. By removing technical barriers, multimodal allows everyone to build experiences that not only feel authentic to the real world but also actively participate in them. Legacy media is also responding to this trend. Disney recently announced a $1 billion investment in OpenAI and a licensing deal that will let users create short clips with characters from Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars through the Sora platform. WHY MULTIMODAL AI CAN BE SAFER FOR YOUNGER USERS As AI becomes part of everyday life, safety—particularly for younger users—has become one of the most critical issues facing the industry. Moving from open-ended chat to structured, multimodal worlds allows us to design guardrails within the gameplay. Instead of relying on continuous unstructured prompts, these environments are built around characters, visuals, voices, and defined story worlds. Interaction is guided by the experience itself. That structure changes how and where safety is designed into the system. Educational AI demonstrates this approach. Platforms like Khan Academy Kids and Duolingo combine visuals, audio, and structured prompts to guide learning. The AI isn’t trying to be everything; it focuses on one task well. As multimodal AI evolves, one of its most meaningful opportunities may be this ability to balance creative freedom with thoughtful constraint. AI 2.0 presents a design shift that could give builders, educators, and families new ways to shape safer, more intentional digital spaces for the next generation. WHY MULTIMODAL AI IS THE NEXT FRONTIER In 2026, I predict that consumers won’t be prompting AI; it will be a more immersive interactive experience. This excites me because users won’t just passively receive outputs; they’ll actively shape experiences and influence how AI evolves in real time. We could see users remixing the series finale of their favorite TV show, or students learning history not by reading a textbook, but by actively debating a historically accurate AI simulation. For founders and creators, the next step is to stop building tools only for efficiency and start building environments for immersion and exploration. The winners of the next cycle won’t be the ones with the smartest models, but the ones who make AI feel less like a utility and more like a destination for rich, interactive experiences. Karandeep Anand is CEO of Character.AI View the full article

People used to seek sun, fresh air and respite — but we have forgotten the lost art of convalescence at our perilView the full article

Three Democratic Senators say Demotech's assessments "raise profound governance and reliability concerns" in letters to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. View the full article

The White House will unveil new details on President Donald The President’s planned East Wing ballroom during a hearing early next month, according to a federal commission tasked with reviewing the project. The new ballroom, which The President has said would cost $400 million and would dwarf the adjacent White House building, has been challenged in court by preservationists, while Democratic lawmakers have called it an abuse of power and are investigating which donors are supporting it. The National Capital Planning Commission, chartered by Congress to manage planning for Washington-area federal lands, said on its website that the White House will provide an “information presentation” on plans to rebuild the East Wing during a commission meeting on January 8. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The commission, chaired by a White House aide and onetime personal lawyer to The President, Will Scharf, has declined to review the demolition of the former East Wing, preparation activities at the site, or potential effects to historic properties, in what would mark the biggest change to the historic property in decades. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit organization chartered by Congress, is suing to halt the construction, arguing that the proposed 90,000 square foot (8,360 square meter) ballroom would dwarf the rest of the White House, at 55,000 square feet. The judge in the case earlier this month declined to issue a temporary restraining order against work on the project, noting among other things that the size, scale and other specifications had not been finalized. Another hearing is scheduled for next month. The president, a one-time real estate developer, has taken a hands-on role in what he has described as sprucing up the White House and the U.S. capital city ahead of celebrations next year marking the Declaration of Independence’s 250th anniversary. He has also proposed a new grand arch near Washington, while decorating the Oval Office extensively in gold leaf and installing plaques there offering his personal take on his predecessors’ legacies. The former East Wing was largely demolished in October, with comparatively little public notice or consultation. In a recent notice posted online, the planning commission said a formal review taking place this coming spring will consider topics including lines of sight, public space and landscapes. Members of the public will be allowed to submit comments or testify during the review, it said. —Trevor Hunnicutt, Reuters View the full article

To effectively boost revenue, you need to implement proven sales strategies that can drive growth. These include setting clear goals, targeting repeat customers, and refining your pricing plans. You should furthermore consider broadening your geographic reach, upselling products, and offering strategic discounts. Each strategy plays a vital role in enhancing your sales effectiveness. But how do you prioritize these strategies for maximum impact? Let’s explore these key approaches in more detail. Key Takeaways Set defined goals and regularly track KPIs to measure sales team performance and align efforts with organizational objectives. Focus on retaining repeat customers through personalized communication and loyalty programs to drive long-term revenue growth. Expand geographic reach by conducting market analysis to identify promising areas and integrating online sales for new locations. Regularly refine pricing strategies and implement tiered pricing to cater to different customer segments and enhance perceived value. Utilize upselling techniques by training staff and personalizing recommendations to encourage customers to choose higher-priced items or valuable add-ons. Set Defined Goals Setting defined goals is crucial for any sales team aiming to boost revenue, as it not only aids in creating specific and measurable objectives but also improves focus and accountability among team members. By establishing quantifiable targets, you’ll motivate your team to work for excellence, driving performance and increasing overall sales revenue. Regularly tracking progress in relation to these goals allows you to identify successful revenue growth strategies and areas needing adjustment. This agility enables you to respond effectively to market changes and customer needs. Research shows that companies with well-defined sales goals experience higher revenue growth compared to those without clear objectives. Implementing these growing sales strategies can greatly improve your sales team’s effectiveness and align their efforts with the organization’s overall goals. Target Repeat Customers Targeting repeat customers is essential for driving revenue growth, especially since retaining existing clients is often more cost-effective than acquiring new ones. To effectively engage these customers and learn how to increase sales turnover, consider the following strategies: Implement personalized communication, like customized emails or texts, to boost engagement. Create a loyalty program that rewards repeat purchases, as 79% of consumers prefer brands that offer rewards. Promote exclusive sales or new inventory to these customers, who are 60% more likely to buy again. Utilize customer retention metrics, such as repeat purchase rate and customer lifetime value, to assess your strategies. Grow Geographic Reach Broadening your geographic reach can open up new revenue streams and attract diverse customer bases. By opening new locations or increasing your delivery services, you can make your products and services accessible to more people, especially in underserved areas. Furthermore, leveraging data analytics to identify promising markets can help you strategically position your business for growth in these new regions. New Location Opportunities When businesses consider new location opportunities, they often find that tapping into previously unserved customer bases can greatly boost their market share and revenue potential. Broadening into new geographic locations can yield significant benefits. Here are four key strategies to keep in mind: Market Analysis: Assess demographic data and local competitors to identify promising areas for broadening. Sales Growth: New locations can experience an average sales increase of 15% in their first year, depending on demand. Targeted Advertising: Implement localized promotions, which can generate a 20% higher response rate in nearby markets. Online Sales Integration: Combining physical stores with online sales can improve reach, contributing up to 30% of total revenue for new locations. Expanded Delivery Services In today’s competitive market, enhancing delivery services can greatly broaden your geographic reach and attract new customers. By enlarging your delivery options, you can tap into new markets and considerably increase your customer base. With 57% of consumers willing to pay for faster delivery, optimizing your services is crucial. Implementing local delivery can reduce costs and increase customer satisfaction, with 90% preferring same-day options. Strategy Impact on Sales Enlarging Delivery Areas Up to 25% customer growth Offering Same-Day Delivery 90% consumer preference Partnering with Local Services Lower logistics costs Refine Your Pricing Plan How can you guarantee your pricing strategy keeps pace with changing market dynamics? Regularly refining your pricing plan is crucial for maximizing revenue. Here are four key strategies to evaluate: Reevaluate Pricing: Regularly assess your pricing strategy to align with market trends and customer expectations. Implement Tiered Pricing: Offer tiered pricing models to cater to various customer segments, appealing to both budget-conscious and premium buyers. Analyze Competitors: Study competitor pricing strategies to identify differentiation opportunities that improve your market positioning. Simplify Structures: Make subscription pricing straightforward; complex pricing can deter potential customers, whereas clear pricing promotes commitment. Additionally, conduct customer feedback surveys to guarantee perceived value matches pricing, allowing for necessary adjustments that boost satisfaction and retention. Add Products or Services Broadening your product or service offerings can greatly improve your business’s revenue potential. By introducing complementary products, such as a coffee shop adding gourmet food items, you can improve customer experience and increase average order value. Listening to customer feedback is vital; enlarging your product lines based on their needs helps attract new customers as well as keeping existing ones satisfied. Adding services alongside your current offerings allows you to capture larger market shares by addressing diverse preferences. Launching new products that improve overall customer experience can lead to increased sales, as 30% of consumers tend to try new offerings from brands they trust. Finally, exploring adjacent markets for new services can diversify revenue streams, potentially boosting revenue by up to 15%. Upsell Products and Services Upselling products and services is an influential strategy that can greatly improve your revenue by encouraging customers to choose higher-priced items or valuable add-ons. By highlighting premium options and training your sales staff on effective upselling techniques, you can increase your success rates and in the end boost average order values. Monitoring these strategies allows you to refine your approach and better align offerings with customer needs, resulting in greater satisfaction and higher sales. Effective Upselling Techniques When customers are ready to make a purchase, you have a prime opportunity to improve their shopping experience and boost your revenue through effective upselling techniques. Here are four strategies to contemplate: Train your sales staff to identify upselling opportunities, enhancing their ability to suggest higher-priced items or relevant add-ons. Utilize eye-catching displays and promotional materials that emphasize the benefits of premium products, capturing customer interest effectively. Implement personalized recommendations based on customers’ previous purchases or browsing behavior, making them feel understood and catered to. Monitor upsell success rates and adjust your strategies based on customer feedback and sales data, optimizing your approach for continuous revenue growth. Highlight Premium Options Highlighting premium options effectively can raise your sales strategy and provide customers with choices that improve their experience. Upselling involves promoting higher-priced products or premium versions, which can considerably increase your average order value. Research shows upselling can boost sales by 10-30%, making it a potent tool for profitability. To succeed, you need well-trained staff who can clearly communicate the benefits of these premium options. Knowledgeable reps are more successful at closing these deals. Furthermore, using visual displays and informative materials helps capture customer interest, creating more upsell opportunities. Monitor Success Rates Monitoring success rates for upsell products and services is crucial for optimizing your sales strategies and maximizing revenue. By tracking key performance indicators (KPIs), you can refine your approach for better outcomes. Here are four important aspects to take into account: Conversion Rates: Analyze how many customers accept your upsell offers, which can reveal the effectiveness of your strategies. Average Deal Size: Monitor changes in order value, as effective upselling can increase it by 10-30%. Customer Satisfaction: Evaluate feedback to verify that upselling improves the customer experience, nurturing loyalty. Behavior Trends: Regularly assess upsell performance to identify shifts in customer preferences, allowing you to tailor your offerings accordingly. Offer Subscriptions and Discounts Offering subscriptions and discounts can be a strategic way to boost your revenue while simultaneously improving customer loyalty. Implementing subscription services can create a steady revenue stream, increasing customer retention by 15-30% because of the convenience of regular deliveries. Discounts, rebates, and coupons attract new customers, with 60% of consumers more likely to purchase when offered a discount. By offering subscription discounts, you encourage long-term commitments, as 40% of consumers prefer subscription models for regularly used products. Furthermore, businesses using automated subscription billing have experienced a 25% rise in recurring revenue, streamlining payment management. Customer satisfaction likewise improves, with 70% of subscribers appreciating exclusive deals and early access to new products, making them feel valued. Frequently Asked Questions What Is the Best Strategy to Increase Sales? To increase sales, you should focus on personalization by developing detailed buyer personas. This helps target your marketing more effectively. Furthermore, offering multiple payment options can minimize shopping cart abandonment. Excellent customer service is crucial, as it promotes loyalty. Streamlining your sales processes and following up regularly with leads will improve engagement. Remember, consistent follow-up, like personalized emails, can greatly enhance conversion rates, eventually leading to increased sales performance. What Are the Four Methods to Increase Revenue? To increase revenue, you can consider four methods. First, expand your product or service offerings to meet diverse customer needs. Next, implement strategic price increases during the addition of value to retain loyalty. Third, improve customer retention by focusing on loyalty programs and exceptional service, making it more cost-effective than acquiring new customers. Finally, optimize sales channels, like improving your online presence, to reach a broader audience and create more sales opportunities. How to Increase Revenue by 5%? To increase revenue by 5%, focus on targeted marketing strategies that personalize customer messaging. Optimize payment options by offering various methods and incentives to reduce cart abandonment. Improve customer retention through loyalty programs and superior service, as it’s cheaper to keep existing customers. Analyze pricing strategies to align perceived value with slight price increases. Finally, nurture a sales-driven culture with ongoing training and recognition for high performers to boost productivity and sales. What Is the Most Successful Sales Strategy? The most successful sales strategy focuses on a customer-centric approach. You should guarantee every team member understands their role in enhancing customer outcomes, which boosts satisfaction and loyalty. Regularly assess sales performance metrics to identify improvement areas. Collaborate with cross-functional teams for better account management, and implement AI insights to track customer health. Finally, establish a robust follow-up strategy for leads, emphasizing personalized communication to convert prospects into paying customers effectively. Conclusion By implementing these seven proven sales strategies, you can effectively boost your revenue and improve your business’s overall performance. Setting defined goals allows you to track progress, as well as targeting repeat customers promotes loyalty. Broadening your geographic reach and refining your pricing plan keeps you competitive. Furthermore, adding products or services, upselling effectively, and offering subscriptions or discounts can maximize customer value. Adapting your offerings based on preferences guarantees you remain relevant in a dynamic market. Image via Google Gemini This article, "7 Proven Growing Sales Strategies to Boost Revenue" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

To effectively boost revenue, you need to implement proven sales strategies that can drive growth. These include setting clear goals, targeting repeat customers, and refining your pricing plans. You should furthermore consider broadening your geographic reach, upselling products, and offering strategic discounts. Each strategy plays a vital role in enhancing your sales effectiveness. But how do you prioritize these strategies for maximum impact? Let’s explore these key approaches in more detail. Key Takeaways Set defined goals and regularly track KPIs to measure sales team performance and align efforts with organizational objectives. Focus on retaining repeat customers through personalized communication and loyalty programs to drive long-term revenue growth. Expand geographic reach by conducting market analysis to identify promising areas and integrating online sales for new locations. Regularly refine pricing strategies and implement tiered pricing to cater to different customer segments and enhance perceived value. Utilize upselling techniques by training staff and personalizing recommendations to encourage customers to choose higher-priced items or valuable add-ons. Set Defined Goals Setting defined goals is crucial for any sales team aiming to boost revenue, as it not only aids in creating specific and measurable objectives but also improves focus and accountability among team members. By establishing quantifiable targets, you’ll motivate your team to work for excellence, driving performance and increasing overall sales revenue. Regularly tracking progress in relation to these goals allows you to identify successful revenue growth strategies and areas needing adjustment. This agility enables you to respond effectively to market changes and customer needs. Research shows that companies with well-defined sales goals experience higher revenue growth compared to those without clear objectives. Implementing these growing sales strategies can greatly improve your sales team’s effectiveness and align their efforts with the organization’s overall goals. Target Repeat Customers Targeting repeat customers is essential for driving revenue growth, especially since retaining existing clients is often more cost-effective than acquiring new ones. To effectively engage these customers and learn how to increase sales turnover, consider the following strategies: Implement personalized communication, like customized emails or texts, to boost engagement. Create a loyalty program that rewards repeat purchases, as 79% of consumers prefer brands that offer rewards. Promote exclusive sales or new inventory to these customers, who are 60% more likely to buy again. Utilize customer retention metrics, such as repeat purchase rate and customer lifetime value, to assess your strategies. Grow Geographic Reach Broadening your geographic reach can open up new revenue streams and attract diverse customer bases. By opening new locations or increasing your delivery services, you can make your products and services accessible to more people, especially in underserved areas. Furthermore, leveraging data analytics to identify promising markets can help you strategically position your business for growth in these new regions. New Location Opportunities When businesses consider new location opportunities, they often find that tapping into previously unserved customer bases can greatly boost their market share and revenue potential. Broadening into new geographic locations can yield significant benefits. Here are four key strategies to keep in mind: Market Analysis: Assess demographic data and local competitors to identify promising areas for broadening. Sales Growth: New locations can experience an average sales increase of 15% in their first year, depending on demand. Targeted Advertising: Implement localized promotions, which can generate a 20% higher response rate in nearby markets. Online Sales Integration: Combining physical stores with online sales can improve reach, contributing up to 30% of total revenue for new locations. Expanded Delivery Services In today’s competitive market, enhancing delivery services can greatly broaden your geographic reach and attract new customers. By enlarging your delivery options, you can tap into new markets and considerably increase your customer base. With 57% of consumers willing to pay for faster delivery, optimizing your services is crucial. Implementing local delivery can reduce costs and increase customer satisfaction, with 90% preferring same-day options. Strategy Impact on Sales Enlarging Delivery Areas Up to 25% customer growth Offering Same-Day Delivery 90% consumer preference Partnering with Local Services Lower logistics costs Refine Your Pricing Plan How can you guarantee your pricing strategy keeps pace with changing market dynamics? Regularly refining your pricing plan is crucial for maximizing revenue. Here are four key strategies to evaluate: Reevaluate Pricing: Regularly assess your pricing strategy to align with market trends and customer expectations. Implement Tiered Pricing: Offer tiered pricing models to cater to various customer segments, appealing to both budget-conscious and premium buyers. Analyze Competitors: Study competitor pricing strategies to identify differentiation opportunities that improve your market positioning. Simplify Structures: Make subscription pricing straightforward; complex pricing can deter potential customers, whereas clear pricing promotes commitment. Additionally, conduct customer feedback surveys to guarantee perceived value matches pricing, allowing for necessary adjustments that boost satisfaction and retention. Add Products or Services Broadening your product or service offerings can greatly improve your business’s revenue potential. By introducing complementary products, such as a coffee shop adding gourmet food items, you can improve customer experience and increase average order value. Listening to customer feedback is vital; enlarging your product lines based on their needs helps attract new customers as well as keeping existing ones satisfied. Adding services alongside your current offerings allows you to capture larger market shares by addressing diverse preferences. Launching new products that improve overall customer experience can lead to increased sales, as 30% of consumers tend to try new offerings from brands they trust. Finally, exploring adjacent markets for new services can diversify revenue streams, potentially boosting revenue by up to 15%. Upsell Products and Services Upselling products and services is an influential strategy that can greatly improve your revenue by encouraging customers to choose higher-priced items or valuable add-ons. By highlighting premium options and training your sales staff on effective upselling techniques, you can increase your success rates and in the end boost average order values. Monitoring these strategies allows you to refine your approach and better align offerings with customer needs, resulting in greater satisfaction and higher sales. Effective Upselling Techniques When customers are ready to make a purchase, you have a prime opportunity to improve their shopping experience and boost your revenue through effective upselling techniques. Here are four strategies to contemplate: Train your sales staff to identify upselling opportunities, enhancing their ability to suggest higher-priced items or relevant add-ons. Utilize eye-catching displays and promotional materials that emphasize the benefits of premium products, capturing customer interest effectively. Implement personalized recommendations based on customers’ previous purchases or browsing behavior, making them feel understood and catered to. Monitor upsell success rates and adjust your strategies based on customer feedback and sales data, optimizing your approach for continuous revenue growth. Highlight Premium Options Highlighting premium options effectively can raise your sales strategy and provide customers with choices that improve their experience. Upselling involves promoting higher-priced products or premium versions, which can considerably increase your average order value. Research shows upselling can boost sales by 10-30%, making it a potent tool for profitability. To succeed, you need well-trained staff who can clearly communicate the benefits of these premium options. Knowledgeable reps are more successful at closing these deals. Furthermore, using visual displays and informative materials helps capture customer interest, creating more upsell opportunities. Monitor Success Rates Monitoring success rates for upsell products and services is crucial for optimizing your sales strategies and maximizing revenue. By tracking key performance indicators (KPIs), you can refine your approach for better outcomes. Here are four important aspects to take into account: Conversion Rates: Analyze how many customers accept your upsell offers, which can reveal the effectiveness of your strategies. Average Deal Size: Monitor changes in order value, as effective upselling can increase it by 10-30%. Customer Satisfaction: Evaluate feedback to verify that upselling improves the customer experience, nurturing loyalty. Behavior Trends: Regularly assess upsell performance to identify shifts in customer preferences, allowing you to tailor your offerings accordingly. Offer Subscriptions and Discounts Offering subscriptions and discounts can be a strategic way to boost your revenue while simultaneously improving customer loyalty. Implementing subscription services can create a steady revenue stream, increasing customer retention by 15-30% because of the convenience of regular deliveries. Discounts, rebates, and coupons attract new customers, with 60% of consumers more likely to purchase when offered a discount. By offering subscription discounts, you encourage long-term commitments, as 40% of consumers prefer subscription models for regularly used products. Furthermore, businesses using automated subscription billing have experienced a 25% rise in recurring revenue, streamlining payment management. Customer satisfaction likewise improves, with 70% of subscribers appreciating exclusive deals and early access to new products, making them feel valued. Frequently Asked Questions What Is the Best Strategy to Increase Sales? To increase sales, you should focus on personalization by developing detailed buyer personas. This helps target your marketing more effectively. Furthermore, offering multiple payment options can minimize shopping cart abandonment. Excellent customer service is crucial, as it promotes loyalty. Streamlining your sales processes and following up regularly with leads will improve engagement. Remember, consistent follow-up, like personalized emails, can greatly enhance conversion rates, eventually leading to increased sales performance. What Are the Four Methods to Increase Revenue? To increase revenue, you can consider four methods. First, expand your product or service offerings to meet diverse customer needs. Next, implement strategic price increases during the addition of value to retain loyalty. Third, improve customer retention by focusing on loyalty programs and exceptional service, making it more cost-effective than acquiring new customers. Finally, optimize sales channels, like improving your online presence, to reach a broader audience and create more sales opportunities. How to Increase Revenue by 5%? To increase revenue by 5%, focus on targeted marketing strategies that personalize customer messaging. Optimize payment options by offering various methods and incentives to reduce cart abandonment. Improve customer retention through loyalty programs and superior service, as it’s cheaper to keep existing customers. Analyze pricing strategies to align perceived value with slight price increases. Finally, nurture a sales-driven culture with ongoing training and recognition for high performers to boost productivity and sales. What Is the Most Successful Sales Strategy? The most successful sales strategy focuses on a customer-centric approach. You should guarantee every team member understands their role in enhancing customer outcomes, which boosts satisfaction and loyalty. Regularly assess sales performance metrics to identify improvement areas. Collaborate with cross-functional teams for better account management, and implement AI insights to track customer health. Finally, establish a robust follow-up strategy for leads, emphasizing personalized communication to convert prospects into paying customers effectively. Conclusion By implementing these seven proven sales strategies, you can effectively boost your revenue and improve your business’s overall performance. Setting defined goals allows you to track progress, as well as targeting repeat customers promotes loyalty. Broadening your geographic reach and refining your pricing plan keeps you competitive. Furthermore, adding products or services, upselling effectively, and offering subscriptions or discounts can maximize customer value. Adapting your offerings based on preferences guarantees you remain relevant in a dynamic market. Image via Google Gemini This article, "7 Proven Growing Sales Strategies to Boost Revenue" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

California, soaked from days of relentless rain and recovering from mudslides in mountain towns, was hit with another powerful storm Christmas Day that led to evacuation warnings and high surf advisories. The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department in Southern California issued an evacuation warning for Wrightwood, a mountain town about 80 miles (130 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles, a day after rescuing people trapped in cars during a mud slide. The National Weather Service said waves near the San Francisco Bay Area could reach up to 25 feet (7.6 meters) Friday. Statewide, more than 70,000 people were without power Thursday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us. A day ago, heavy rain and fierce winds were blamed for at least two deaths. A major storm system moving toward the Midwest and Northeast was expected to interfere with travel, according to the National Weather Service. A mix of freezing rain and sleet could create icy conditions in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Maryland. Forecasters warned heavy ice could cause outages. Snow was expected to blanket the Northeast early Friday. Roads in the 5,000-resident California town of Wrightwood were covered in rocks, debris and thick mud on Thursday. With power out, a gas station and coffee shop running on generators were serving as hubs for residents and visitors. “It’s really a crazy Christmas,” said Jill Jenkins, who was spending the holiday with her 13-year-old grandson, Hunter Lopiccolo. Lopiccolo said the family almost evacuated the previous day, when water washed away a chunk of their backyard. But they decided to stay and still celebrated the holiday. Lopiccolo got a new snowboard and e-bike. “We just played card games all night with candles and flashlights,” he said. Davey Schneider hiked a mile and a half (1.6 kilometers) through rain and floodwater up to his shins from his Wrightwood residence Wednesday to rescue cats from his grandfather’s house. “I wanted to help them out because I wasn’t confident that they were going to live,” Schneider said Thursday. “Fortunately, they all lived. They’re all okay — just a little bit scared.” Arlene Corte said roads in town turned into rivers, but her house was not damaged. “It could be a whole lot worse,” she said. “We’re here talking.” With more rain on the way, more than 150 firefighters were stationed in the area, said San Bernardino County Fire spokesman Shawn Millerick. “We’re ready,” he said. “It’s all hands on deck at this point.” A falling tree killed a San Diego man Wednesday, news outlets reported. Farther north, a Sacramento sheriff’s deputy died in what appeared to be a weather-related crash. Areas along the coast, including Malibu, were under a flood watch until Friday afternoon, and wind and flood advisories were issued for much of the Sacramento Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. The storms were the result of atmospheric rivers carrying massive plumes of moisture from the tropics during one of the busiest travel weeks of the year. Southern California typically gets half an inch to 1 inch (1.3 to 2.5 centimeters) of rain this time of year, but this week many areas could see between 4 and 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters), with even more in the mountains, National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Wofford said. More heavy snow was expected in the Sierra Nevada, where gusts created “near white-out conditions” and made mountain pass travel treacherous. Officials said there was a “high” avalanche risk around Lake Tahoe and a winter storm warning was in effect through Friday. Ski resorts around Lake Tahoe recorded about 1 to 3 feet (30 to 91 centimeters) of snow overnight, said Tyler Salas, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Reno. Forecasters expect to see up to another 3 feet (91 centimeters) of snow through Friday, Salas said. The area could see 45-mph (72-kph) gusts in low elevation areas and 100-mph (161-kph) winds along mountain ridges. Gov. Gavin Newsom declared emergencies in six counties to allow state assistance. The state deployed resources and first responders to several coastal and Southern California counties, and the California National Guard was on standby. Associated Press writers Sophie Austin in Oakland, California, and Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City contributed. —Ty ONeil, Associated Press View the full article

What’s one thing most Americans likely don’t know? Demand for donor sperm is increasing. Initially established in the 1970s to help men undergoing vasectomies and facing cancer treatments, sperm banks today support people facing a wide range of challenges on their path to pregnancy. Alongside heterosexual couples dealing with infertility issues like azoospermia and young men facing cancer diagnosis, single mothers by choice, and same-sex couples are frequently turning to sperm banks in hopes of building their family. With approximately 1,500 sperm donors serving the entire United States, a new sperm bank, Premier Sperm Bank, is venturing to address modern family building needs with a commitment to research and ethically-minded practices. I caught up with John Jain, MD, the sperm bank’s founder, to understand more about the future of family building with donor sperm. Q: Why sperm and why now? Why enter the sperm bank industry? Jain: During my time running an egg bank in California, I took a real interest in male reproductive health, observing that very little research was being done even though sperm is 50% of the baby equation. So, it was sort of a natural progression for me, having run an egg bank, to open Premier Sperm Bank. And this is an exciting time to open a sperm bank, as the way people build their families has evolved and society is adapting with new technologies. We’re seeing increased rates of single mothers by choice, lesbian couples, and people of all identities wanting to be parents—and we can help these families by offering them a chance to self-inseminate in the privacy of their own home as an alternative to in-clinic insemination. Simultaneously, while launching Premier, I built a research center in Oxford, England to study the genetics and epigenetics of sperm. Q: Can you explain a little bit more about your research? How is that connected Premier Sperm Bank? Jain: The cornerstone for male fertility has been the semen analysis, a nearly 100-year-old test that was standardized in the 1930s that does not truly predict fertility. There have been no meaningful advances in sperm testing to connect the health of the sperm to fertility outcomes, and/or the health of the resulting children. This field is strangely quite nascent when compared to our understanding of female fertility. How does the DNA work, how do the epigenetics fit in? My research going forward is focused on epigenetics and how we better assess sperm to ensure we are optimizing for good fertility outcomes and healthy babies for families using donor sperm. Q: Your website mentions that you are the only sperm bank in the world that DNA verifies sperm. What does that mean? Jain: It means we have verified the identity of the donor by matching his sperm to his DNA profile. It’s important because the other methods of verification used by sperm banks depend on manual human processes or electronic medical witnessing systems. Clients want to know that they are receiving the correct sperm. DNA-verified is nearly 100% accurate and Premier is the only sperm bank in the world to offer the service. Q: What is your donor selection process? How do you select a donor? Jain: It’s pretty rigorous. We only accept 1.8% of donor applicants into our portfolio. While we consider physical characteristics, personal accomplishments, and check criminal and educational backgrounds, my role as a medical director is to assure quality sperm from healthy donors. We do that by performing an extensive 100-question family and medical history, FDA-mandated infectious disease tests, and sperm quarantine for 6 months. We also use a test that screens 500 genes to lower the risk of passing on a genetic disease. Q: Where do you see the industry in the next 10 to 20 years? Jain: I think there needs to be more acknowledgement about the needs of donor-conceived children and their families. Legacy sperm banks have not consistently monitored how many families have used a donor’s sperm; it is not uncommon to see donors whose sperm has resulted in dozens or even hundreds of donor-conceived children. Many donor-conceived children eventually want to meet their biological father. Anonymous donation is becoming a thing of the past, as we are now only accepting donors willing to disclose their identity once the child is 18. The next 10 to 20 years will also see the emergence of better tools to evaluate sperm and predict fertility and childhood health. My lab in Oxford was built with that purpose in mind. And then there’s germline gene editing, the intentional modification of DNA in sperm, eggs, and embryos, currently banned in most countries. I believe gene editing is inevitable as it brings the potential of eliminating serious diseases like cancer, but it does change the human genome and presents an ethical slippery slope that requires oversight. Maureen Brown is CEO and cofounder of Mosie Baby. View the full article

As 2025 comes to a close, business leaders are inevitably already planning how 2026 will shape up, particularly as the last year proved to be a tumultuous one. The so-called AI boom is still booming, corporate DEI initiatives have shrunk or disappeared altogether, and return-to-office mandates have tightened. No one has a crystal ball to predict emerging technologies, financial headwinds, political hurdles, and market trends for the next year. But that doesn’t mean that companies can sit back—there are steps to take now to help insulate your company against potential turbulence in the coming year, while simultaneously fostering success by focusing on the human aspects of technology and leadership. So, here are five things I’m thinking about as we head into 2026—and I welcome every other business leader to join me as we ring in yet another new year. 1. There is no AI bubble Some business leaders speak about AI like they did about the internet circa 1998. But while we saw a dotcom bubble burst in the stock market, consumer appetite for e-commerce only grew and grew. The same will be true for AI—although we may see tech company value corrections, there’s no bubble regarding user demand. What we’re seeing instead is a seismic shift in how humans and non-humans interact with each other. The only real risk is to the companies (choosing to be) left behind through inaction. 2. AI should be leveraged for growth—not cost saving Company leaders are approaching AI with a short-term lens—viewing it as a means to save money and drive shareholder value from a profitability perspective. This short-sighted way of planning means doing the same amount of work with less, leading to sacrifices from a product, process, or people perspective. Instead, C-suites should be looking at AI from a long-term growth lens by using it to augment and accelerate the work people are already doing. The goal should be to spend the same amount of money while increasing output, without hamstringing the quality of work. 3. Use AI to amplify creativity and critical thinking Implementing a solid AI strategy takes more than downloading the hottest new tool. Which leaders in your organization are ensuring that your culture of creativity and critical thinking is alive and well? To be truly successful with AI, the human element cannot be overlooked. Just like a parent governs their child’s technology use to foster growth, a successful leader implements AI in a way that is supportive—not stifling. 4. Abolish absolutism When a leader speaks in absolutes, it’s a huge red flag. “Everyone must be in the office five days a week,” or “We must do all this work in-house because that’s always best.” Leaders should remember that the future is hybrid in all its iterations. Not just in terms of how often employees are in an office, but in terms of staffing and how they leverage technology. The flexibility offered by hybrid thinking affords leaders an opportunity to diversify their business and find the most effective—and profitable—way to operate. With the world seemingly more uncertain than ever, building agility into your leadership style and business planning is increasingly important. 5. Check your ego It’s time that the C-suite remembers to embrace a bit more humility—or at least try to. No matter how senior you are, no one cares about your opinion unless you care about theirs. Successful leaders consistently recognize that their people are their greatest asset, whether they’re internal or external. I’m not saying a company should be run like a democracy, but it’s important to be collaborative about forming opinions. Remember: Your point of view isn’t the only one. Justin Tobin is founder and president of Gather. View the full article

A Powerball ticket purchased at a gas station outside Little Rock, Arkansas, won a $1.817 billion jackpot in Wednesday’s Christmas Eve drawing, ending the lottery game’s three-month stretch without a top-prize winner. The winning numbers were 04, 25, 31, 52 and 59, with the Powerball number being 19. The winning ticket was sold at a Murphy USA in Cabot, lottery officials in Arkansas said Thursday. No one answered the phone Thursday at the location, which was closed for Christmas. The community of roughly 27,000 people is 26 miles (42 kilometers) northeast of Little Rock. Final ticket sales pushed the jackpot higher than previous expected, making it the second-largest in U.S. history and the largest Powerball prize of 2025, according to www.powerball.com. The jackpot had a lump sum cash payment option of $834.9 million. “Congratulations to the newest Powerball jackpot winner! This is truly an extraordinary, life-changing prize,” Matt Strawn, Powerball Product Group Chair and Iowa Lottery CEO, was quoted as saying by the website. “We also want to thank all the players who joined in this jackpot streak — every ticket purchased helps support public programs and services across the country.” Lottery officials said they won’t know who won until at least Monday because winners must contact a claims center, which is closed for the holidays until then, according to Karen Reynolds, a spokesperson for the Arkansas lottery. The prize followed 46 consecutive drawings in which no one matched all six numbers. The last drawing with a jackpot winner was Sept. 6, when players in Missouri and Texas won $1.787 billion. Organizers said it is the second time the Powerball jackpot has been won by a ticket sold in Arkansas. It first happened in 2010. The last time someone won a Powerball jackpot on Christmas Eve was in 2011, Powerball said. The company added that the sweepstakes also has been won on Christmas Day four times, most recently in 2013. Powerball’s odds of 1 in 292.2 million are designed to generate big jackpots, with prizes growing as they roll over when no one wins. Lottery officials note that the odds are far better for the game’s many smaller prizes. “With the prize so high, I just bought one kind of impulsively. Why not?” Indianapolis glass artist Chris Winters said Wednesday. Tickets cost $2, and the game is offered in 45 states plus Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Associated Press videojournalist Obed Lamy in Indianapolis contributed. Olivia Diaz is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. —Olivia Diaz, Associated Press/Report for America View the full article

Improving customer service is vital for any business aiming to increase satisfaction and loyalty. By leveraging technology, like AI-powered chat systems, you can provide instant responses to customer inquiries. Furthermore, enhancing agent training with a focus on soft skills can greatly impact service quality. Exploring how these strategies can create a more effective customer experience is imperative. Let’s examine five innovative ideas that can transform your approach to customer service. Key Takeaways Implement AI-powered chatbots for instant responses, allowing agents to focus on complex inquiries and enhancing customer satisfaction. Use data analytics to identify pain points and proactively address customer needs, improving overall service quality. Foster a customer-centric culture by empowering employees to prioritize customer satisfaction and recognize exceptional service efforts. Streamline communication through integrated omnichannel platforms, ensuring a consistent brand voice and seamless customer experience. Invest in continuous training and development for agents, focusing on soft skills to enhance empathy and active listening in customer interactions. Leverage Technology to Streamline Processes As businesses aim to improve customer service, leveraging technology to streamline processes is essential for meeting consumer expectations. Implementing advanced phone systems like VoIP and IVR improves communication by enabling self-routing, which reduces call transfers and boosts response times. Online chat systems can provide instant responses to basic inquiries, aligning with the demand for rapid support. AI-powered tools analyze call transcripts in real time, giving immediate feedback that can inform customer service training topics, ensuring agents are well-prepared. Help desk software centralizes communication, allowing teams to track inquiries more effectively across multiple channels. Finally, integrating social listening software enables prompt responses to social media interactions, ensuring consistent engagement and support across all platforms. Enhance Agent Training and Development Effective agent training and development is vital for improving customer service, with studies showing that proper onboarding can boost retention rates by up to 25%. To enhance your team’s performance, consider implementing client service training ideas that focus on soft skills, like active listening and empathy. These skills can greatly improve agents’ ability to address customer needs effectively. Regular workshops and role-playing scenarios help keep agents engaged, leading to a 20% increase in customer satisfaction scores. Furthermore, investing in continuous learning opportunities reduces employee churn and increases handling time efficiency by 15%. Providing access to performance analytics and feedback tools encourages a growth mindset, empowering agents to identify areas for improvement and improve their overall service delivery. Foster a Customer-Centric Culture Building on the importance of agent training, cultivating a customer-centric culture is equally vital for enhancing overall service quality. Empower your employees to make decisions that prioritize customer satisfaction, nurturing a sense of ownership in their roles. Recognizing and rewarding exceptional customer service efforts can motivate teams to focus on delivering friendliness in customer service, which eventually improves brand loyalty. Encourage collaboration among departments to guarantee everyone is aligned in enhancing the customer experience. Regularly solicit and act on customer feedback to demonstrate your commitment to continuous improvement. Utilize Data Analytics for Continuous Improvement Utilizing data analytics allows businesses to make informed decisions that can considerably improve customer service. By analyzing trends in customer feedback, you can identify specific pain points that help a customer and target improvements effectively. This process can boost customer satisfaction rates by up to 20%. Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) provides actionable insights, enabling you to measure the success of your initiatives and adjust strategies as needed. Additionally, leveraging predictive analytics helps anticipate customer needs, leading to proactive support that can reduce churn by 25%. Regularly reviewing this data cultivates a culture of continuous improvement, ensuring your business remains adaptable to evolving expectations and consistently elevates the overall customer experience. Optimize the Omnichannel Experience As customers engage with your brand across various platforms, ensuring a seamless omnichannel experience becomes crucial for maintaining their satisfaction. To achieve this, integrate communication channels like phone, email, chat, and social media. This provides a unified brand voice, which is fundamental since 64% of consumers expect real-time support on their preferred platforms. Utilizing help desk software centralizes interactions, allowing your team to manage inquiries efficiently, leading to improved satisfaction rates. Implement social listening tools to monitor feedback across channels, enabling you to adapt quickly based on real-time insights. Frequently Asked Questions What Are the 5 C’s of Customer Service? The 5 C’s of customer service are Clarity, Consistency, Communication, Compassion, and Customer-centricity. Clarity helps you define processes and policies, ensuring customers understand what to expect. Consistency keeps service levels uniform across all platforms, building trust. Effective Communication involves listening to customer needs and providing timely responses. Compassion allows you to empathize with customers, turning negative experiences into positive ones. Focusing on these principles improves customer satisfaction and loyalty effectively. What Are the Innovations in Customer Service? Innovations in customer service include AI-powered chatbots that manage routine inquiries, letting human agents tackle complex issues. Predictive analytics helps anticipate customer needs, boosting satisfaction rates by 10-15%. Omnichannel support guarantees consistent service across platforms, as 90% of customers expect seamless changes. Self-service options like knowledge bases are preferred by 81% of customers, and advanced technologies, such as virtual reality, can improve engagement and increase conversion rates by up to 30%. What Improvements Could Be Made to Customer Service? To improve customer service, consider implementing advanced technology like AI chatbots to boost response times. Set clear, measurable goals and track performance indicators to monitor progress effectively. Offering multiple communication channels, such as online chat and social media, caters to diverse customer preferences. Regular training for representatives in empathy and active listening can lead to better interactions. Finally, actively seeking and acting on customer feedback can pinpoint areas needing improvement, ensuring a better overall experience. What Are the Ways to Improve Customer Service? To improve customer service, you can adopt several strategies. Start by implementing advanced technologies, like AI tools, to provide agents with real-time insights. Establish a culture of continuous training and feedback to boost agent performance. Utilize omnichannel support for seamless communication across platforms. Regularly gather customer feedback to identify areas for improvement. Finally, set clear performance metrics to monitor progress and guarantee alignment with your customer satisfaction goals. Conclusion Incorporating these innovative strategies can greatly improve your customer service efforts. By leveraging technology, improving agent training, encouraging a customer-centric culture, utilizing data analytics, and optimizing the omnichannel experience, you can create a more efficient and satisfying interaction for customers. These approaches not just address current challenges but likewise position your business for ongoing improvement and success. Prioritizing these elements will help you meet customer expectations and drive loyalty in a competitive market. Image via Google Gemini This article, "5 Innovative Ideas for Improving Customer Service" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Improving customer service is vital for any business aiming to increase satisfaction and loyalty. By leveraging technology, like AI-powered chat systems, you can provide instant responses to customer inquiries. Furthermore, enhancing agent training with a focus on soft skills can greatly impact service quality. Exploring how these strategies can create a more effective customer experience is imperative. Let’s examine five innovative ideas that can transform your approach to customer service. Key Takeaways Implement AI-powered chatbots for instant responses, allowing agents to focus on complex inquiries and enhancing customer satisfaction. Use data analytics to identify pain points and proactively address customer needs, improving overall service quality. Foster a customer-centric culture by empowering employees to prioritize customer satisfaction and recognize exceptional service efforts. Streamline communication through integrated omnichannel platforms, ensuring a consistent brand voice and seamless customer experience. Invest in continuous training and development for agents, focusing on soft skills to enhance empathy and active listening in customer interactions. Leverage Technology to Streamline Processes As businesses aim to improve customer service, leveraging technology to streamline processes is essential for meeting consumer expectations. Implementing advanced phone systems like VoIP and IVR improves communication by enabling self-routing, which reduces call transfers and boosts response times. Online chat systems can provide instant responses to basic inquiries, aligning with the demand for rapid support. AI-powered tools analyze call transcripts in real time, giving immediate feedback that can inform customer service training topics, ensuring agents are well-prepared. Help desk software centralizes communication, allowing teams to track inquiries more effectively across multiple channels. Finally, integrating social listening software enables prompt responses to social media interactions, ensuring consistent engagement and support across all platforms. Enhance Agent Training and Development Effective agent training and development is vital for improving customer service, with studies showing that proper onboarding can boost retention rates by up to 25%. To enhance your team’s performance, consider implementing client service training ideas that focus on soft skills, like active listening and empathy. These skills can greatly improve agents’ ability to address customer needs effectively. Regular workshops and role-playing scenarios help keep agents engaged, leading to a 20% increase in customer satisfaction scores. Furthermore, investing in continuous learning opportunities reduces employee churn and increases handling time efficiency by 15%. Providing access to performance analytics and feedback tools encourages a growth mindset, empowering agents to identify areas for improvement and improve their overall service delivery. Foster a Customer-Centric Culture Building on the importance of agent training, cultivating a customer-centric culture is equally vital for enhancing overall service quality. Empower your employees to make decisions that prioritize customer satisfaction, nurturing a sense of ownership in their roles. Recognizing and rewarding exceptional customer service efforts can motivate teams to focus on delivering friendliness in customer service, which eventually improves brand loyalty. Encourage collaboration among departments to guarantee everyone is aligned in enhancing the customer experience. Regularly solicit and act on customer feedback to demonstrate your commitment to continuous improvement. Utilize Data Analytics for Continuous Improvement Utilizing data analytics allows businesses to make informed decisions that can considerably improve customer service. By analyzing trends in customer feedback, you can identify specific pain points that help a customer and target improvements effectively. This process can boost customer satisfaction rates by up to 20%. Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) provides actionable insights, enabling you to measure the success of your initiatives and adjust strategies as needed. Additionally, leveraging predictive analytics helps anticipate customer needs, leading to proactive support that can reduce churn by 25%. Regularly reviewing this data cultivates a culture of continuous improvement, ensuring your business remains adaptable to evolving expectations and consistently elevates the overall customer experience. Optimize the Omnichannel Experience As customers engage with your brand across various platforms, ensuring a seamless omnichannel experience becomes crucial for maintaining their satisfaction. To achieve this, integrate communication channels like phone, email, chat, and social media. This provides a unified brand voice, which is fundamental since 64% of consumers expect real-time support on their preferred platforms. Utilizing help desk software centralizes interactions, allowing your team to manage inquiries efficiently, leading to improved satisfaction rates. Implement social listening tools to monitor feedback across channels, enabling you to adapt quickly based on real-time insights. Frequently Asked Questions What Are the 5 C’s of Customer Service? The 5 C’s of customer service are Clarity, Consistency, Communication, Compassion, and Customer-centricity. Clarity helps you define processes and policies, ensuring customers understand what to expect. Consistency keeps service levels uniform across all platforms, building trust. Effective Communication involves listening to customer needs and providing timely responses. Compassion allows you to empathize with customers, turning negative experiences into positive ones. Focusing on these principles improves customer satisfaction and loyalty effectively. What Are the Innovations in Customer Service? Innovations in customer service include AI-powered chatbots that manage routine inquiries, letting human agents tackle complex issues. Predictive analytics helps anticipate customer needs, boosting satisfaction rates by 10-15%. Omnichannel support guarantees consistent service across platforms, as 90% of customers expect seamless changes. Self-service options like knowledge bases are preferred by 81% of customers, and advanced technologies, such as virtual reality, can improve engagement and increase conversion rates by up to 30%. What Improvements Could Be Made to Customer Service? To improve customer service, consider implementing advanced technology like AI chatbots to boost response times. Set clear, measurable goals and track performance indicators to monitor progress effectively. Offering multiple communication channels, such as online chat and social media, caters to diverse customer preferences. Regular training for representatives in empathy and active listening can lead to better interactions. Finally, actively seeking and acting on customer feedback can pinpoint areas needing improvement, ensuring a better overall experience. What Are the Ways to Improve Customer Service? To improve customer service, you can adopt several strategies. Start by implementing advanced technologies, like AI tools, to provide agents with real-time insights. Establish a culture of continuous training and feedback to boost agent performance. Utilize omnichannel support for seamless communication across platforms. Regularly gather customer feedback to identify areas for improvement. Finally, set clear performance metrics to monitor progress and guarantee alignment with your customer satisfaction goals. Conclusion Incorporating these innovative strategies can greatly improve your customer service efforts. By leveraging technology, improving agent training, encouraging a customer-centric culture, utilizing data analytics, and optimizing the omnichannel experience, you can create a more efficient and satisfying interaction for customers. These approaches not just address current challenges but likewise position your business for ongoing improvement and success. Prioritizing these elements will help you meet customer expectations and drive loyalty in a competitive market. Image via Google Gemini This article, "5 Innovative Ideas for Improving Customer Service" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Highest ever number of megadeals lifts total value of M&A by 50% in 2025View the full article

Talks expected to address the most sensitive parts of US peace plan View the full article

It’s time to reckon with the reality that nonstop doomscrolling has delivered us: a hard-to-ignore erosion of our cognitive skills. We’ve lost the ability to focus on words for long stretches of time . . . er, read books. Years of turning everything worth consuming into “content” that’s been “optimized” for attention has turned our brains into mush, shoved our mental health into free fall, and reduced our ability to pay attention to anything for more than five seconds at a time. (In fact, I clicked away from completing this sentence to check Facebook Marketplace for credenzas on sale.) While we’re still in the early days of what the long-term impact of artificial intelligence on our brains might look like, a growing contingent of folks are fighting back against the hijacking of our attention spans in favor of good old-fashioned reading. These are teenagers forgoing social media for social reality, working moms carving out time in their busy schedules to devour books, and people on #BookTok swapping tips to get into reading. In the spirit of celebrating the dying art of reading actual, honest-to-god chapter books—and not just furiously scrolling through endless Instagram slideshows and calling it a day—and before AI-written novels completely take over (this reality might already be upon us), I consulted a number of my colleagues at Fast Company to compile a list of the best books they’ve read this year in the hopes of inspiring you, too. You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue From Amy Farley, Executive Editor You Dreamed of Empires is a weird, wild, hypnotic retelling about the fateful meeting between emperor Moctezuma and Hernán Cortés in Tenochtitlan. The action takes place across a single day in 1519, but what a day: packed with family drama, palace intrigue, world history-altering misunderstandings, and lots and lots of psychedelics. But the highlight, for me, were Enrigue’s descriptions of the city of Tenochtitlan itself: its layout and architecture, the smells and food, the everyday routines of its many residents. Halfway through reading the novel, I started planning a trip to Mexico City. Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid From Isa Luzarraga, Social Media Producer Nearly everyone knows the name Sally Ride. In 1983, she became the first American woman in space, setting a crucial precedent for female astronaut candidates at NASA. Still, the National Geographic documentary Sally, released earlier this year, verified what many had only surmised during the astronaut’s life, that Ride was queer. There are clear parallels between Ride’s story and the protagonist of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s most recent novel. Atmosphere follows astronomer Joan Goodwin as she becomes a member of the second NASA astronaut class to accept female candidates. The narrative alternates between two timelines: Joan’s years of training at NASA and her role as the on-ground liaison between the astronauts and command center for a mission gone wrong. Throughout her training, Joan forms a secret relationship with fellow astronaut Vanessa. Like the rest of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s body of work, this historical fiction novel is rigorously researched and highlights the author’s signature, evocative prose. It is an ode, not only to Ride and the first female astronauts, but also to the queer community as a whole. Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams From Bryan Lufkin, Senior Editor I started reading this after getting super into the This Jungian Life podcast. The three brilliant, warm and funny psychoanalysts who host it wrote this book about how to analyze dreams. (They analyze a listener’s dream at the end of every episode.) Every one of us is an iceberg, and this book gives amazing insight into the huge stuff going on with you underneath the surface! Natives: Race & Class in the Ruins of Empire From Vanessa Singh, Executive Producer This is such an insightful look into Britain’s world empire takeover, but specifically about the Caribbean-British experience and growing up in London as a Black person during the ’80s and ’90s. Written by Akala (a British rapper and activist), the book is history that is easy to digest and semi-autobiographical. I love it because it is not written by an upper-class historian who has no emotional investment in the topics discussed. It is written by a highly intelligent, working-class, mixed-race man from London. The book looks at how racism and class shape life in modern Britain, and he shows how the legacy of empire still influences policing, education, and opportunities today. Very no-nonsense. The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante From Rebecca Barker, Event Producer I can’t believe it took me until 2025 to read Elena Ferrante’s esteemed Neapolitan Novels, but, as they say, better late than never. The Story of a New Name is the second book of the series and follows the events of the New York Times’ best book of the 21st century, My Brilliant Friend, chronicling the teenage and early adulthood years of friends Lenu and Lila, who have grown up together in poverty in 1960s Naples. I consider the first book’s role as building a rich foundation for the characters and setting that drive the plot of the second—in my humble opinion, The Story of a New Name is where things get good. As the girls navigate Lila’s new marriage (which brings her wealth and stability but lacks love and respect), a growing schism between their social classes and the opportunities available to them, political turmoil, and a shared romantic interest, they are forced to reckon with the strength of their friendship and what it can survive. Ferrante paints one of the most intricate and beautiful portrayals of female friendship in literature—I can’t recommend it enough. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro From Maia McCann, Executive Digital Director The story is told by Klara, an artificial friend/AI robot for a very ill child. Klara and her human, Josie, live in a dystopian future where some children are genetically lifted or enhanced and others are left behind. The reader follows an AI as it tries to understand complex human emotions like grief and love. Potentially a little disturbing, but you wind up really rooting for the robot. This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone From Anne Latini, Art Director I was absolutely rapt reading this beautiful science-fiction fantasy while on vacation this summer. Written as a series of letters that rove forward and backward through time, the book reminds you that the tension between technology and nature has been with humanity since the beginning and will continue long after we’re gone. Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan From Jill Bernstein, Editorial Director I finally read Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach and couldn’t put it down. I loved the characters and was totally absorbed by the action and historical detail. It’s about bravery, love, and the mysterious pull of the sea. Foster by Claire Keegan From Jay Woodruff, Senior Editor Knowing my wife and I were heading to Dublin for our daughter’s wedding in October, a friend told me, “Read everything you can get your hands on by Claire Keegan.” If this exquisite Irish novella doesn’t help restore your faith in humanity, it will definitely restore your faith in first-rate, quiet, vivid storytelling. “Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing,” one kindly character tells the narrator. Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams From Sandra Riano, Photo Editor This was an eye-opening memoir about Facebook’s leap from Silicon Valley tech enterprise into global politics. Both illuminating and terrifying, it poses the question, How far will Meta go under the guise of free speech? Carless People is a cautionary tale about Big Tech’s quest for more and what we all stand to lose. View the full article

Rightwing attacks on one of the world’s most visited cities at odds with reality, says mayorView the full article

The bank regulator is proposing to strengthen national preemption in the wake of conflicting decisions in related court cases. View the full article

In Denmark, a grocery store chain used a black star. In Canada, it was a maple leaf. President Donald The President’s trade war inspired new country-of-origin “Made In” labels this year as shoppers outside the U.S. looked to avoid buying American-made goods and shop local instead. In the U.S., though, the “Made in USA” brand is losing its domestic appeal. Country-of-origin labeling is designed to be a stamp of authenticity and quality. Countries police their own rules to ensure products labeled “made” or “assembled” in their country really were made or assembled there and that they meet national standards. When the Copenhagen-based think tank 21st Century introduced its concept for a possible future “Made in Europe” label, its managing director said it was designed to establish trust, as in, if something was made in Europe, consumers could trust no arsenic would be in it. In the U.S. this year, though, “Made in USA” isn’t so much about trust for a growing number of consumers as it is about higher prices. And they don’t want to pay them. A Conference Board survey released in August found about half of U.S. consumers say knowing a product was made in the U.S. made them more likely to buy it again, an 18% decline since 2022. The report’s author blamed the drop on consumers appearing to associate “Made in USA” with being expensive because of high domestic production costs. U.S. consumers today face an overall average effective tariff rate of 16.8%, according to Yale’s Budget Lab. That’s the highest rate since 1935, and it comes amid wider economic discontent. Half of U.S. adults say they are spending more time than usual looking for the the lowest price for items, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll. That’s up from 31% in 2021 and helps explain the rise of yuppie, designified generic brands. Value matters to consumers today. The President’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) plans to make “Made in USA” one of its top enforcement priorities in 2026, but for half of all shoppers looking for the best deal, they won’t be swayed one way or the other, no matter where a product was produced. Americans say they are generally attentive to where their products are made, an October Gallup poll found, with 76% aware of the country products were made in before purchasing them sometimes, most of the time, or always. Following years of inflation, though, the most important label for many U.S. shoppers isn’t “Made in USA.” It’s the price tag. View the full article

Vince Gilligan spent a decade ruminating about his next TV series before he had a clear vision of what it was going to be. But through all that time, the writer/director, who is best known for creating Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, knew one thing for sure: it had to be entirely different from what he’d made before. In fact, it had to be completely unlike any other show, period. “As far as a prime directive, it is always: A) how can we make this show look different than any other show on TV? That’s the most important one,” Gilligan told me during a recent call. “And B, how can we make the show look and sound and feel different from the other shows we’ve already done?” Gilligan made good on his promise to himself. The resulting show, Pluribus, really is a wholly unique take on the sci-fi genre. Massive in scope, yet intimate at its core, it’s a deep study of a character who is going through an impossibly hard situation that affects the entire planet. Before Gilligan told anyone about his idea for Pluribus, he wanted to get his idea onto paper. “I wait as long as I can, and I have as much figured out, at least with the first episode, as possible,” he says. “And in this case, I had the luxury of having a completely written first script, I think actually, possibly a completely written first two scripts.” Vince Gilligan That’s what he showed to Rhea Seehorn, who played Kim Wexler opposite Bob Odenkirk’s Saul Goodman in Better Call Saul. Initially, Gilligan thought about a male protagonist for Pluribus but, after working with Seehorn, he decided to write the series for her. “I talked to Rhea first because I wanted to make sure Rhea would star in the show,” he says. It was only after Seehorn agreed to play Carol Sturka—the grumpy bestseller romance author who becomes the hero—that he got the production ball rolling. “I started talking to our department heads, our wonderful crew people that I’ve been working with for years,” he tells me. “And that makes it a lot easier.” Gilligan—together with series’ writer/director Gordon Smith and writer Alison Tatlock—says the show’s premise is meant to be the opposite of every “alien invasion film” you’ve seen up to this point. Having first worked as a writer on The X-Files, which embodied and invented many of the universal sci-fi tropes, Gilligan knew that Pluribus needed to serve the premise with no cracks in the story, which resulted in flipping, subverting, and ultimately destroying every single sci-fi trope wedged into our collective mind since The Twilight Zone. For Gilligan, Pluribus is the culmination of decades of work in TV. Filmed in Albuquerque (where most of the crew lives), Gilligan says the show is a direct result of working with the same reliable team he’s been with since Breaking Bad. Pluribus’ composer Dave Porter, who worked with Gilligan on his previous two series, told me that Gilligan’s directive cut across departments on Pluribus: “We wanted to plant our flag in the ground to say this is a very, very different experience.” A Post-it sketch becomes a panopticon To understand the production design, it helps to know what the series is about (my recommendation: run to watch the first episode if you haven’t yet). The series begins with an eerie but subtle alien encounter. The U.S. Army lab uses RNA code radioed from an exoplanet 600 light-years away to create a self-replicating alien retrovirus. The virus infects one person transforming her into the first node of a hive mind called The Others. Within a few weeks, all of humanity turns from a selfish, violent-prone, greedy group of individuals into a pacifist, vegetarian, and very happy collective. Immune to this alien virus, only 13 humans survive this process, called “The Joining.” Carol being one of them, is the only person in the U.S. that keeps her free will. The Others only have one mission: To turn civilization and the entire planet into a hippie bliss paradise, all while trying to find a way to “save” those last 13 humans from what they think is the angst of freewill, the pain of our daily choices, our imperfect nature. It’s not that they want to assimilate the 13 like the Borg or cordyceps; The Others believe they are doing the right thing when they liberate you from your sad pointless life. Pluribus follows Carol as she grapples with this new reality, and as she tries to find a way to revert the world back to how it was. Carol has a mission, but her mission is far from a sci-fi trope of saving the world. There are no tropes in Gilligan’s vision. In fact, the series team had to strip away the spectacle usually associated with global cataclysms. Smith and Tatlock describe this as a pursuit of “scrupulous emotional truth.” In most sci-fi, when the world changes, the characters sprint toward the explosions. In Pluribus, as it happened in Better Call Saul, they stop. “Your wife just died. Really? The world just became a hive mind, how fast do you move to get past that?” Smith asks. This refusal to rush required a specific kind of geography and to ground the infinite scope of a global hive mind, led the production team to build a very small, very specific cage for Rhea Seehorn’s character. Her home is the center of her world. That began with a crude drawing. “My favorite picture is a Post-it drawn by Vince,” production designer Denise Pizzini tells me. “He has a little cul-de-sac and he has these houses and he has the one house at the top that says ‘C’, which is Carol’s house.”​ That doodle evolved into a big civil engineering project. Rather than fighting the logistical nightmare of filming in a real neighborhood for multiple seasons, Pizzini and her team leased a plot of empty land outside Albuquerque and built Carol’s cul-de-sac from the dirt up, complete with plans and full permits and licenses. They poured concrete slabs, laid curbs, and constructed seven custom homes around a circle of asphalt, which became itself a way to communicate later in the series (warning: some minor generic spoilers ahead). A controlled gaze The physical location of the house is real, with fully working systems and finished downstairs interiors. The team also built the upstairs bedroom, office, and hallways on a controlled soundstage. They duplicated the ground floor almost exactly, allowing the camera to seamlessly look from the street into Carol’s living room, or from her kitchen window out to the hive, without a cut, effectively building the house twice. The architectural mirroring was so precise that the illusion eventually fooled its own creator. “I watched the episode last night, and there’s a shot of her in the kitchen seeing the exterior, and I thought, I couldn’t tell,” Pizzini confesses. “Is that on location or is that on the set? Which is great because I don’t remember.” For Gilligan, this wasn’t just about production convenience; it was about the gaze. Before a single wall was framed, the team pounded stakes into the empty field so Gilligan could test the camera angles. “Vince was very specific about what we wanted Carol’s view to be,” Pizzini says. “We needed from her front door and that front window, we needed to be able to see everybody else’s front door. Plus the city lights below.” They even graded each house separately to ensure the street curved precisely to vanish into a fictional neighborhood.​ The result is a set that functions like a panopticon, designed to ensure Carol is never truly alone. Pizzini designed Carol’s house as the “bastion of her humanity,” filled with the evidence of her previous life with Helen, who fails to survive the merging into the hive mind. The production team filled the space with invisible details. “Helen was [Carol’s] organizer . . . she manages all her tours,” Pizzini says. They placed Helen’s laptop on the dining room table, an orchid she bought, her sleeping mask, and her books by the bed. “Just little things like that give you an indication that they had a life together,” she says. Pizzini also designed the interior knowing that this home was a character in itself. Inside, she used arches and open sightlines because so much of the action was going to happen there and they needed to move the camera around. “She’s in a little bit of a maze because she’s kind of stuck in her house . . . or she chooses to be,” Pizzini tells me. To show the passage of time, Pizzini added an atrium. “I decided to do this so there could be actual sunlight coming in. We could see the plants kind of growing or dying because Helen’s not there taking care of things.”​ Gilligan was over the moon with the Pluribus set, he tells me, because it opened so many creative opportunities for them. They were able to design so many scenes in advance. “For episode one, when Carol’s coming home after this horrible night she’s been through, I wanted certain angles past her onto the house next door where the little kids [part of The Others] come out,” Gilligan says. Carol’s home is a brutal contrast to the spaces controlled by the hive mind. As The Others consolidate, they abandon individual homes for communal living to save electricity and water. The world becomes austere. Traffic doesn’t exist. Lawns grow wild. Commercial spaces and offices are closed. Buffalos roam golf courses. Hospitals have the bare minimum personnel (remember, since the minds merged, everyone has everyone else’s knowledge, so every person regardless of age, gender, or previous occupation, is now the best doctor, the best pilot, the best physicist, and the best anything you can imagine). Supermarkets are also empty. The production took over a real Sprouts supermarket after a year negotiating with the actual chain and weeks physically emptying the shelves. “Emptying out a supermarket . . . boy, that’s a nightmare,” Gilligan says. Sometimes you think something is going to be very complicated but turns out to be so easy. This was the contrary: They thought it was simple but it was a logistical hell, he points out. “Every step of the process, I was like, this is a nightmare,” Smith adds. Seeing the empty supermarket—and how it gets filled in a matter of hours—captures a society that has optimized itself into terrifying efficiency and silence. Subtracting humanity, adding logic So many other things required the same level of subtraction, which became the mandate—and nightmare—for the visual effects department. Rather than adding hordes of zombies, spaceships, and lasers, VFX Supervisor Ara Khanikian and his crew spent his time erasing life from each frame. “We’re subtracting a lot instead of adding,” he says. To achieve the eerie stillness of a society reduced to its most efficient expression, Khanikian’s team meticulously rotoscoped out people, cars, and movement from wide shots of Albuquerque. This forced the team to realize more consequences about the show’s premise, answering philosophical questions about a post-human world. “If there’s no concept of humans and traffic . . . are they all green or do they continue blinking? Or have we turned off the electricity to that because we don’t need it anymore?” Khanikian asks.​ Another question was how The Others move. At one point of the series, there is a massive exodus from the city. The team initially created film plates to animate cars moving in perfect synchronization, assuming a networked intelligence would drive with mathematical precision. But it looked fake. “Theoretically, if everybody’s in sync together, there shouldn’t be any traffic jams,” Khanikian explains. “We have to add a little bit of that human imperfection . . . Some people accelerate just a little bit more. Some brake a little bit later.” Gilligan’s commitment to physical reality extended everywhere. At one point, one of the unaffected humans arrives at the airport in Bilbao, Spain, on Air Force One. Initially, Pizzini tells me, they started out building just the plane’s door, the surrounding frame, some stairs and green screen. “But we knew Vince was going to want it big,” she says. Gilligan saw it and he asked to expand it. “He was like, no, we need to do a little more, a little more,” she recalls amused. “So we built a big chunk of it and we found the stairs that could go up to it. And then we . . . built little pieces of the interior, so you could go inside Air Force One and shoot out and see them coming up the stairs.” But it didn’t end there. They ended up buying the frontal 747 landing gear. And, since they filmed scenes on the runways of Bilbao’s airport, they had to match the cement and asphalt patterns of the airport. “That was a big, big set,” Pizzini recalls. Clothing becomes function Like the sets, the costumes show us a civilization that has decided to stop waste, both physical and mental. Costume designer Jennifer Bryan pitched a radical concept to Gilligan: In a hive mind, clothing no longer serves to signal status, culture, or religion. It is reduced to its leanest, meanest function. “I pitched to him that the clothes shouldn’t signify any of that,” Bryan says.“Basically just leaving clothing as a shell to cover your body, like a snail has a shell.”​ She stripped the costumes of jewelry and accessories. She only kept belts in cases where pants would literally fall down. The clothes also tell the story without having to enunciate it with dialog, one of the core strengths of Pluribus. In the early days of the assimilation, because the hive mind shares its knowledge, anyone can do anything, regardless of their attire. This leads to the visual dissonance of a TGI Friday’s waitress piloting the Airbus that flies Carol to Bilbao. The woman wears the uniform she was caught in when the virus struck, but she possesses the skill set of a veteran pilot. “When you see the uniform or the clothing not matching the occupation, you know something’s off,” Bryan says. Even the man cleaning Carol’s house in a spandex cyclist suit is a misplacement of role (fun fact: that character is played by the actual mayor of Albuquerque).​ Those were the early days of the hive mind unification. Later in the series, as society continues to optimize, people lose their individual uniform and begin to wear plainer, neutral clothing—a “shell” aesthetic will only deepen as the series progresses. As the hive mind realizes that wool requires disturbing a sheep and silk requires killing a worm, the very materials of clothing will change to reflect a society that refuses to do harm. “In the second season you’ll start to see the effects of that,” Bryan teases. She explains what we all know about modern society. “Somewhere along the line, something had to die for it, whether it’s a mulberry worm to make silk or you cut on a tree to make lumber.”​ This also opens a stark contrast among the few remaining humans. While waiting to find the science to assimilate them, The Others are obsessed with pleasing the 13 free humans by doing anything these ‘freewill’ humans ask for. While Carol largely rejects the hive’s offers of help and comfort, other survivors indulge. Mr. Diabate, one of the 13 free humans, treats the hive like a genie lamp. To dress him, Bryan looked to the Sapeurs of Brazzaville, Congo—blue-collar workers who dress in ostentatious, high-end suits. She dressed Diabate in a tuxedo made of African fabric, a visual explosion of ego in a world that has otherwise been flattened to grey. She looked at the characters and asked herself: “If you could get every single thing that you wanted, what would you go for?”​ Since Gilligan insisted on actors who were genuinely from the regions they portrayed—like Mauritius, Colombia, China, or Peru, Bryan collaborated with them on the specific mix of Western and traditional clothing unique to their cultures. The sound of the swarm The final layer of this happy apocalypse is the soundscape. Like everyone else on the production team, composer Dave Porter tells me that he got the same prime directive from Gilligan. After spending 20 years defining the sonic palette of the Breaking Bad, El Camino, and Better Call Saul universe, he realized he needed to “strip it down to the studs” for Pluribus. The series premise also defined his musical choice from the start. Instead of sci-fi synths or traditional orchestral arrangements, Porter chose the most innate human instrument: the voice. But like the traffic in Khanikian’s visual effects, he found that a controlled cacophony of a slightly off-sync choir was the perfect way to convey both the nature of The Others while introducing a disheartening, uneasy feeling. Something must be wrong. Porter tells me that he was influenced by American minimalist composers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich to structure the score, using syncopation and phase-shifting to mirror the hive’s behavior—moving from soothing unison to chaotic dissonance. At times, this chaos gets into an ever-increasing crescendo that reminds me of the work of Hungarian composer György Ligeti for the Monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: Space Odyssey. “Nobody’s singing any words, but there’s a lot of syncopation and punctuation about what they’re doing,” he says. This technique was used to perfection in a chilling scene in which Carol is trying to extract information from Zosia, the character who serves as her primary contact and chaperone with The Others. In the scene, Carol drugs Zosia with Sodium Pentothal, as she asks Zosia to give her information about what might reverse what’s happened to the world. When the hive mind realizes what’s going on, a mob appears out of nowhere to surround them. The on-set extras’ voices were blended with a choir to create an overwhelming wall of sound to stop her. Tatlock told me the story logic behind that moment. The Others were not talking in perfect synchronicity because of “network latency” but as a tactic to create a buzz to stop her. “They can pretty quietly and calmly drown her out,” Tatlock explains. It is a sonic tactic designed to “foil” Carol’s questions without aggression. The hive doesn’t need to scream; it just needs to vibrate at a frequency to drown you in sound. The ants Porter tells me that the music was designed to explore the tension between the pain of individuality and the comfort of surrender. He also avoided scoring The Others with purely menacing music. Instead, he used vocals that could shift from comforting to terrifying. “As Vince has been saying a lot in interviews about the show, they’re not all bad, right?” he says. For Gilligan, it was important that the score didn’t paint anything in black and white—there’s always multiple ways to view things. Which brings us back to the very nature of the show. Unlike most series, it doesn’t give us answers; instead it gives us all the questions we should be asking. At every plot turn, every reveal, and every character decision, you feel that any kind of dichotomy is a false one. Like Porter says, there are no binary answers in the real world. Especially when it comes to free will, our nature, and the nature of the societies we build. And that’s perhaps Pluribus’ greatest success, beyond its storytelling and cinematic virtues. Vince and his family have built a glass ant farm, removed the chaos of individuality, and forced us to watch what remains. The result is a world that feels nice, quiet, seductive, yet profoundly inhuman, which makes you appreciate your faulty humanity even more. View the full article

Mortgage lenders test crypto-backed mortgages as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac review digital assets in underwriting, weighing risk, non-QM loans and access for nontraditional homebuyers. View the full article

For the chronically online, 2025 was the year of “brain rot”, AI slop, and “rage bait,” a time of consuming Labubu matcha Dubai chocolate to the sound of “nothing beats a Jet2 holiday” and “six-seven,” on repeat, as a form of torture. Here, ​​we take a look back at the biggest internet-culture moments that brought us all together even as the country is more divided than ever. The TikTok ban that never happened If I told you the supposed TikTok ban was this year, would you believe me? In January, users panicked over the looming threat of the apps impending disappearance, flocking to alternatives like the Chinese-owned RedNote and making last-ditch confessions on the doomed app—only for the ban to never materialize. American woman in Pakistan American Onijah Andrew Robinson went viral in February after claiming she flew to Pakistan to marry a 19-year-old she met online, only to be rejected. Instead of returning home, she became a minor celebrity in Pakistan, holding press conferences in Karachi, demanding money, and announcing plans to “rebuild” the country, earning the moniker “American woman in Pakistan.” The lone anglerfish Usually found 6,500 feet under the sea, this black seadevil was filmed by marine researchers in Tenerife swimming toward the water’s surface. Tragically, the fish died just hours after being spotted, sparking an emotional outpouring on social media for this six-inch fish. RIP. Tesla Cybertrucks If one good thing came out of 2025, it’s the unanimous cancellation of Cybertrucks. The ostentatiously hideous vehicles became everyone’s favorite punching bag in 2025 as a result of anti-Elon Musk backlash. A group of TikTokers known as the Cybertruck Hunters roamed the streets, hunting Tesla Cybertrucks in the wild. People posted their Tesla trade-ins on TikTok accompanied by the hashtag “ByeTesla” and scored to Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do.” Die-hard owners eventually retreated to Facebook support groups and demanded harassment of Tesla drivers be labeled a hate crime (if so, owning one should also be considered one). Great Meme Depression The panic around the lack of memes as we entered the third month of the year began on March 10, when user @goofangel posted a video titled “TikTok Great Depression March 2025.” He says, “Nine days into March and we haven’t had a single original meme.” The Great Meme Depression soon became a meme itself, later triggering talk of The Great Meme Reset of 2026. Stay tuned for updates. OpenAI Studio-Ghibli-gate After “Images for ChatGPT” launched in March, users transformed selfies and family photos into Studio Ghibli-style “portraits.” What started as a lighthearted trend quickly took a darker turn as ethical questions and copyright issues began to surface. In a resurfaced clip from a 2016 documentary, Hayao Miyazaki, the founder of Studio Ghibli, called AI “an insult to life itself.” Some food for thought for 2026. Chicken Jockey If you took a trip to the cinema in April to watch A Minecraft Movie, based on the popular game, you would likely have been subjected to a teen-filled audience yelling “Chicken jockey!” at the top of their lungs, flashing phone lights, and launching popcorn and drinks at the screen. (To which I say: Why were you watching A Minecraft Movie in the first place?) Conclave In May, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost of the United States was declared the 267th pope, taking the name Pope Leo XIV. On social media, “diva sightings,” memes about the niche, daily process of conclave, and live updates of the Sistine Chapel’s chimney flooded FYPs. Can we do it all again next year? Velvet Sundown The mysterious indie rock band—seemingly unironically named Velvet Sundown—suddenly appeared in Spotify’s Discovery Weekly in July, quickly amassing hundreds of thousands of listeners. Their rapid rise sparked speculation that the group might be AI-generated (while they confessed they kind of are, but kind of aren’t). A true mystery for the ages. Etsy witches 2025 has been a big year for Etsy witches. From sports fans hoping to gain an advantage for their teams to anxious brides praying for perfect wedding weather, more people than ever were purchasing spells on platforms like Etsy this year to turn their luck around. Coldplay’s Kiss Cam We all remember where we were the first time we saw the clip. A Coldplay concert in Massachusetts went viral in July when an HR executive was caught on the jumbotron embracing her company’s CEO—spurring a million memes and breaking the internet in the process. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security The official X account of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security tested a new social media strategy this year, as meme lord, drawing widespread backlash on and offline. So far, they’ve got on the wrong side of Sabrina Carpenter, SZA, Olivia Rodrigo, Jess Glynne, Theo Von, and Pokémon, to name a few, for featuring their songs and audios without permission to promote deportations. “6-7” Last but not least . . . you can’t talk about 2025 without mentioning six, seeeeven. Or maybe we can, and instead pretend a bunch of grown adults don’t need to dissect a trend that is only funny, relevant, or interesting if your birth year begins with a two. Unfortunately, the two digits have become too ubiquitous to ignore, wreaking havoc in classrooms, banned at fast food chain In-N-Out, and cemented as the choice for Dictionary.com‘s word of the year. Lets hope for 2026. View the full article

When you hear the phrase “family business,” you might think of the backstabbing Roys of Succession or the dysfunctional Duttons of Yellowstone. But while TV’s family companies are entertaining, their real-life counterparts may be even more compelling. Around the world, family businesses produce about two-thirds of all economic output and employ more than half of all workers. And they can be very profitable: The world’s 500 largest family businesses generated a collective US$8.8 trillion in 2024. That’s nearly twice the gross domestic product of Germany. If you’re not steeped in family business research—and even if you are—their ubiquity might seem a little strange. After all, families can come with drama, conflict, and long memories. That might not sound like the formula for an efficient company. We are researchers who study family businesses, and we wanted to understand why there are so many of them in the first place. In our recent article published in the Journal of Management, we set out to understand this different kind of “why”—not just the purpose of family firms, but why they thrive around the world. The usual answers don’t really explain it The standard answer to “Why do family companies exist?” is straightforward: They allow owners to generate income and potentially create a legacy for future generations. A related question is: “Why do entrepreneurs even want to involve their relatives in their new ventures?” Research suggests entrepreneurs do so because family members care and can help when resources are limited. But that might not be unique to family businesses. All companies—whether run by a family or corporate executives—balance short-term profit and long-term goals. And all of them want reliable workers who are willing to pitch in. So those answers don’t explain why family companies, specifically, are so common worldwide. A different angle: Winning without fighting For our study, we considered decades of research about family firms to conclude that family businesses are uniquely skilled at keeping competitors out of their market space—often without actually competing with them. How? We think a quote from Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War captures the idea: To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting. Family-owned businesses often do exactly this, which is why there are so many of them. Here’s how it works in practice. 3 key differences Research on family businesses has shown that they differ from other types of companies in three key ways: the types of goals they pursue, the governance structures they establish, and the resources they have. Together, these three characteristics explain how family businesses may use their property rights to get an edge over their competitors. The first is goals. Unlike other types of enterprises, family businesses prioritize noneconomic goals involving the reputation, legacy, and well-being of the family—both now and in the future. Of course, they still have to worry about making a profit. But their interest in family-centered goals can lead them to choose projects that may yield lower returns but still fulfill their noneconomic goals. These sorts of projects may not be attractive to other types of firms. As a result, family businesses may find themselves operating in spaces where there’s not much competition to start with. For instance, take Corticeira Amorim, a family-run Portuguese company that dominates the global market for cork stoppers and other cork products. The cork industry is a classic narrow niche: There are only a handful of serious global competitors, and Amorim is widely described as the world’s largest cork processing group, with a sizable share of global wine and Champagne corks. CEO Antonio Rios de Amorim discusses the history of his family business in this Business Insider video. The second key factor is governance. Family members who work together often know each other well, care about each other, and want the best for both the family and the firm, which may stay in the family’s possession for generations. This fact may reduce operating costs and the cost of contracting. Why? When they make decisions, they don’t always need to hire a fancy, Harvey Specter-like lawyer from the show Suits. They can decide on the next move for the company while having dinner together. This significantly reduces the costs associated with decision-making. In other words, because they rely less on formal contracts and monitoring, family businesses can operate more cheaply. Finally, family firms use resources like information and money differently. Since many established family businesses have been around for decades, relatives who work together accumulate information that’s hard to acquire and transfer, and might not even be useful elsewhere. Being a family member means not only doing business with relatives but also going through life together, acquiring a unique perspective about the family itself. As a result, family businesses have lower transaction costs than other companies. Sometimes this shows up in very concrete ways. An uncle may invest money in the business and never ask for it back. Would that happen at a nonfamily business? Probably not. This dedication makes family members a special type of human asset that’s hard to replace. Put simply, nonfamily businesses are unlikely to hire someone who cares as much about the company’s success as a deeply invested relative does. And because these relationships aren’t for sale on the open market, competitors can’t easily access them. That fact helps family businesses keep competitors at bay while essentially being themselves—which in turn explains why there are so many of them. Family businesses are so common worldwide that there are several holidays celebrating them, including International Family Business Day on November 25; U.S. National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day on March 29; and the United Nations’ Micro-, Small, and Medium-Sized Enterprises Day on June 27. This holiday season, you might consider spreading a little extra cheer with the family-run retailers in your community. Vitaliy Skorodziyevskiy is an assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship at the University of Louisville. Hanqing “Chevy” Fang is an associate professor of business and information technology at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. Jim Chrisman is a professor of management at Mississippi State University. View the full article

2025 was unquestionably the year of the AI boom at work. When generative AI like ChatGPT entered the scene a few years ago, it started as a novelty. Early adapters saw its potential to change the way we work, but for most people it was a way to rewrite Keats’s poetry in pirate speak, or remix their favorite memes. But in 2025 AI rolled into offices everywhere, taking up residence as the boss who set performance goals, the on-call therapist-cum-coach, and the silent brainstorm partner. A McKinsey study found that 33% of organizations used genAI at work in 2023, and 55% used AI. This year, that leapt to 79% and 88% respectively. Here are five ways AI changed work in 2025. 1. The AI job application Not only is AI changing how we do our jobs, it’s changing how we get our jobs. AI generated résumés submitted on LinkedIn surged by 45% this year. Job candidates are also using AI to find companies to apply to and help them network. In parallel, overwhelmed by all the AI generated applications, HR departments are using AI to help them keep up. Three-fourths of hiring managers say they use AI to schedule interviews, and over 90% use AI to screen résumés. While interviewing still remains the domain of humans, about 25% of companies are using AI interviewers. Researcher Brian Jabarian even found that AI interviewers are more likely to result in increased job offers. They also improve 30-day job retention by 17% for industries that hire at a high volume, such as customer service. 2. AI as the superstar employee AI arrived on the scene as the perfect employee. It does not ask for a salary or raises, it does not care about getting promoted, and it won’t steal someone’s lunch from the break room. Instead, it can do the automatic, repetitive work that’s present in every job that eats up hours of the week offering very little intellectual satisfaction in return. In fact, even as companies waffled on how to train employees on how to use AI and what their AI policies should be, employees took matters into their own hands and figured out how to use AI to make their jobs easier. About 80% of employees at small and medium-size companies were using their own AI tools at work giving rise to BYOAI: bring your own AI. AI has also reduced the barrier to entry for founders: instead of hiring a fleet of programmers, vibe code. Instead of sinking hours into finding client contact information, get AI to suggest leads. 3. The silent copilot Not only is AI the superstar employee, it’s the perfect confidante since it won’t gossip. As such, AI also became the silent copilot who helped workers brush up on their soft skills and stress test their ideas without judgement. In an informal survey Fast Company conducted of employees using LinkedIn, workers reported using AI to organize documents, brainstorm ideas, challenge assumptions, summarize meeting notes, and prioritize tasks. Employees are even asking AI what kind of health insurance they should get. It’s not just employees: leaders are using AI to up their game. Studies show that 85% of new managers don’t receive training. AI quietly stepped in to fill the gap. James Cross, cofounder of Tenor, an AI leadership company, noted that “managers are often more receptive to AI feedback,” because “there’s no emotion attached to it.” 4. The rise of workslop AI might be the best employee but it’s also the worst employee because it knows not what it does. While AI can generate work, that doesn’t mean it understands what it’s doing. 2025 might have seen the ascendance of AI at work, but it also saw the ascendance of AI generated “workslop.” Stanford researchers found that 40% of employees reported receiving “AI-generated work content that masquerades as good work, but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task.” Meanwhile, in July, MIT published a report that found that while companies were investing billions of dollars in AI, 95% of companies had found no return on their AI investments. Worse, OpenAI’s research found that their models can lie deliberately. AI promises to work easier, but workers may find instead of kicking back, they have a new job: sorting through piles of AI generated trash. 5. AI took all the jobs, or did it just get blamed for it? In addition to being the superstar employee, AI is also everyone’s favorite scapegoat. It’s getting blamed for replacing all the jobs for good reason. First, 2025 was a rough year for layoffs, with layoff announcements totaling over one million. Second, CEOs pinned the blame on AI. Understandably, as wave after wave of layoffs have swept through corporate America, nearly a third of employees say that they think AI will lead to fewer job opportunities. However, experts point out there’s little evidence AI is replacing workers—AI’s impact on the workforce is comparable to earlier technological disruptions such as the rise of the PC and the internet. In a rocky economy, where companies are struggling to trim back, “it makes companies look good to their shareholders, to suggest ‘we are deploying AI so well [that] we are now cutting our labor costs’,” Molly Kinder, a Brookings senior fellow, told Fast Company. View the full article