GITEX 2019 Preview: What to Expect at GITEX Technology Week

Online Learning is a fantastic way to increase your knowledge and skills in a unique, flexible environment with its own distinct strengths and opportunities.

Whether you’re trying online classes for the first time or looking for ways to strengthen your current habits and approaches, there are a few key areas to consider to set yourself up for success and take full advantage of all online learning has to offer.

In this collection of online learning best practices, we share tips and strategies to help you succeed in your learning journey, including ways to:

1. Keep your mind and body healthy
2. Effectively manage your time and minimize distractions
3. Forge connections with your virtual learning community
4. Get the most out of your learning
5. Conquer logistics
   
   

Self Care
Self-care is important to your successful learning experience. A healthy mind (and body) is a mind ready for learning.

Advocate for your learning needs

Ask for flexible ways of participating in the class that work for you. This is important for learners who require specific accommodations, such as a note taker or extended test time, but is also important for all learners.

Schedule breaks

Get up and walk around, go outside, schedule your distractions, don’t forget to move. Plenty of apps exist to keep you on task and turn off distractions, as well as remind you to get up and take breaks.

Maintain healthy habits

Your brain, like your body, needs rest and exercise. Get sleep, stay hydrated, go outside, eat well.

Time Management

One of the biggest benefits of online learning is flexibility, but too much freedom can pose new challenges. Find ways to structure and optimize your time for when and where you learn best and keep your learning on track.

Set aside time for learning

This doesn’t mean you need to find four-hour blocks, three days a week. Online learning is designed to be modular and flexible. You may find 15 minutes to watch a short video lecture and write a three-sentence reflection post. But of course, other learning activities will require more time. Be planful and dedicate time to learn as you would to exercise or spending time with friends.

Track deadlines

Add important due dates to a calendar so you don’t miss important deadlines.

Minimize distractions

As much as you can, minimize distractions both in your physical environment and your digital environment. Close web browser windows not relevant to your learning, keep the TV off, etc.

Looking for more strategies for online learning success?

Learn about online learning while experiencing it: Take our How to Learn Online course, where you’ll dive into some of the most powerful, science-backed techniques that you can start using right away and on any learning platform.

Artificial Intelligence or AI is one of the most disrupting technologies of the 2000s. Machines are getting smarter each day. While AI can create tremendous time and cost savings, it promises even bigger, more meaningful returns in another area: customer experience. 

Businesses across the world are discovering new ways to leverage AI and their enhance customer experience and engagement.

In recent research, Gartner indicated that “in a few years from now, 89% of businesses will compete mostly on customer experience”. 

In this post we will discuss some ways AI is already disrupting customer experience across the industries. 

Making self-service more efficient

Everyone knows how excruciating it can be to just stay on hold for several minutes when we call a customer care number for a simple issue. 

One of the most favourable aspects of AI is that it eliminates the need to put the customer “on hold” for the next available agent to help them with a simple problem like billing, booking or any trivial question.

AI allows companies to use chatbots to answer common customer service questions, and let customers resolve their trivial issues in a jiffy.

Back in 2011, Gartner predicted that by 2020, 85% of customer relationships will be managed without human interaction. 

Besides this, most customers don’t mind chatting with customer care chatbot. As long as they answer their question quickly, they leave as a happy customer.

Improving Personalisation for online services

Another important way AI is transforming the customer experience is by providing personalised content. Now a days we rarely have to search for the products that would fit our preferences. It’s so easy now to get a recommendation based on your past history.

For example: Audio & videos streaming services like YouTube, Netflix or Spotify or concerts and performances on Bands in Town. And anyone who has shopped on Amazon has seen products recommendations. 

It is now possible for products and services providers to use technology to make intelligent and accurate recommendations to their customers based on their past purchase or browsing history. 

Round-the-Clock Availability 

AI never needs to sleep. Similar to empowering customers via self-service, AI also offers customers 24/7 support — something most companies would not be able to afford or staff just a couple of decades ago.

What’s more, 24/7 support isn’t just “good CX”— the stakes are high in today’s market. Most customers are not willing to wait until you open your doors to get answers to their issues. AI makes that possible.

Automated day to day assistance

Many households now a days use Alexa to turn on music or dim the lights. But more and more, companies are using Alexa, Google Home and other robotic AI to make their customers’ lives easier.

E-commerce stores have started to link Alexa and Google Home to allow customers to order products using voice commands. People can also purchase movie tickets and pre-order snacks before they even leave the house. These are just a few ways the AI is transforming the customer experience.

It can save significant costs 

Our partner, Ubility AI recently supported two companies in France — DataSolutions & Retail Explorer in optimising their services using AI.

In the past DataSolutions and Retail explorer used to take all information in newspapers and magazines, scan them and identify prices and promotions from major retailers, enter it in their systems and then using the insights generated support their customers on how should they adjust their prices and offerings.

Until now this was a manual process. They used to scan all the pages and have people handling data entry manually loaded them into their system. This used to take on average 2-3 weeks costing EUR 50,000.

Using Ubility's image and text recognition they were able to automate 90% of the data entry tasks, which reduced the time required to do the job from weeks to days translating into EUR 40,000.00 savings per month.

Ubility AI is a leading provider of AI Solutions helping organisations optimise their work processes using technology.

Learn more about UBILITY AI 

Related: Meet the Experts: Khaled Dassouki, CEO, Ubility

As we can see, the entire goal of using AI to improve customer experience is to help your customers feel known and valued. Business should test the processes, re-test, and test again— from the customers’ viewpoint. The only thing worse than not using AI for CX today is using it inefficiently.