For All Lovers Reading: The Top 10 Best Sellers on Amazon 2017

Many readers are looking for recommendations for books at least twice a year. The first research opportunity is the arrival of summer, the other is Christmas, coinciding with the mid-school holiday, and the reading challenge begins at the beginning of each new year. Plan the number of books to be completed by the end of next year..

Find out the best sellers on the Amazon - Amazon site during the year

1- The Instant Pot

With more than 300,000 copies sold, The Instant Pot - Laurel Randolph - Laurel Randolph's first-ever bestseller on Amazon in 2017 - contains more than 100 easy, healthy, and customizable recipes, combining a cooker Slow cooking, and high pressure cooker; to be at the top of cookbooks for 2017

2- Laugh-Out-Loud Jokes for Kids

See what happens to race car drivers when they eat too much? Laugh - Out-Loud Jokes for Kids - Rob Elliott's Rob Elliott, published for the first time in 2010, came second in Amazon's best-selling book, with sales exceeding 1.5 , And contains a collection of jokes fun and entertaining, for children aged 7:10 years.

 3-The Sun and Her Flowers

The Sun and Her Flowers - The Sun and its Flowers by Rupi Kaur - Ruby Kaur, author of Milk & Honey, which was classified by The New York Times as the bestseller. Founded in 1992, Rupi Kaur is a Canadian original, and works as a famous photographer, painter, writer, poet, sculptor, and advocate for women's rights. She started her career in writing and writing by publishing her poetry through social networking sites.

4- First 100 Words

First 100 Words - The first 100 words, as an educational book by Roger Priddy - Roger Bredy, helps young children learn their first keywords. It contains 100 simple words to read and learn accompanied by color images. Pages are made of cardboard for hours. Reading is fun and learning.

5- The Getaway

 Jeff Kinney's "Getaway", published early this year in November 2017, is set in an adventurous setting about a family that decides to leave the city on a trip to a tropical island resort, relaxing and relaxing, To escape the pressures of life.

After several days in heaven, the journey turns upside down, between the sun and poisoning, stomach disorders, and poisonous creatures, all threatening to destroy the family holiday. Can the trip be saved, or will it end in disaster?

Las vegas shooting --Victims & Their Families Has Been Set Up — Here’s How To Donate

In the wake of the horrific shooting in Las Vegas on Sunday night, which left more 50 people dead and 400 injured, Clark County Commission Chairman Steve Sisolak and Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Sheriff Joseph Lombardo have set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for Las Vegas shooting victims and their families.

"We are raising funds to assist the victim's of the tragic Las Vegas shooting," Sisolak wrote on the Las Vegas Victims' Fund page. "I am at Clark County's only level-one trauma center with the victims and their families as we speak. Funds will be used to provide relief and financial support to the victims and families of the horrific Las Vegas mass shooting​."

Sisolak said he pledged the first $10,000. So far, in the less than three hours since it's been up, the campaign has raised over $58,000 of its $500,000 goal.

Although $500,000 is an important start, it is likely only a drop in the bucket of the amount of assistance victims will need. The attack, which began just after 10 p.m. on Sunday night when a gunman shot into a crowd of over 20,000 concertgoers on the Las Vegas Strip, is the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history.

The number of victims continues to rise and right now, one of the most immediate concerns facing victims and the hospitals treating them, is having enough blood for all of the people who require surgery. Blood donation centers have been set up around Nevada, and even those of you outside the state can help by donating blood at your local Red Cross.

More to come...

Building Customer Relationships (6 Tactics)

               

  Building customer relationships is one of the nine customer retention strategies you can use to improve customer service and reduce customer churn.

Sam Walton, founder of Walmart was famously quoted as saying,

“The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best, but LEGENDARY.” – Sam Walton

Those words couldn’t be closer to the truth in today’s competitive business world and it is now more important than ever to build customer relationships that add-value to the overall customer experience.

A study by White House Office of Consumer Affairs found that 80% of U.S. consumers say they would pay more to ensure a superior customer experience.

Unfortunately for most businesses, they are making lots of customer retention mistakes. They don’t know how to create a customer experience that improves customer service and increases satisfaction.

In fact, in our 2013 Customer Satisfaction Industry Report that surveyed over 200+ IT Companies, Client Heartbeat found that one in six clients were ‘at risk’ of leaving or cancelling their contracts.

One of the fastest ways to improve customer service and reduce customer churn is through building customer relationships that are strong and ‘sticky’.

Here are six tactics to assist you in building customer relationships:

1. Communicate like a human-being

Sometimes, when I’m speaking to a glassy-eyed, toneless customer service representative, I can’t believe the Japanese have finally succeeded at making robots look so human.

What’s funny is many businesses make the mistake of training employees to memorize greetings, sales pitches and apologies, when all customers really want to do is communicate with you. When speaking with your customers, try to get face-to-face, make sure you use their names, make jokes and be polite but conversational. Avoid looking like a zombie and actually empathize and emote with customers.

When using multiple communication channels, make sure the channels are organized and reliable.  A study by Aspect Software found 77% of US consumers believe companies that offer multiple channels as part of their customer service are easier to do business with and 74% say they provide better service. So what are you waiting for?

Every interaction with a customer is a great opportunity to focus on building customer relationships.

Think about it from your own personal experiences for a second.

When you start engaging with a company more than 10 times, you naturally start building a loyal relationship with them.

It’s like anything in life. You build connections with people you spend a lot of time around, whether that is your friends, work buddies or family.

Same applies when building customer relationships, it takes multiple interactions.

Always make communication as seamless as possible, acknowledging, acting on and following up feedback where necessary. Today’s customers are no longer passive and they want to be listened to. Exceptional communication will improve customer service and give you that point of difference from your competitors.

When it comes to using a human element to build customer relationships, Jason W. Roulston from Just Digital People knows exactly how to do it the right way. He does a really good job at communicating with his customers and relationships on a personal level via his Web Recruiter Blog, Twitter and Facebook.

2. Learn about your customer

Building customer relationships is much like building rapport as a salesperson.  Just like a good salesperson, you need to know your customer. You must remember the client’s name, their needs and wants, what kind of dog they own and so forth.

The key to learning about your customer is to continue the conversation after the transaction. After the sale, do a little research on them. Connect on LinkedIn, find commonalities within your industries, connections, job roles and more. Start thinking about ways you can add value to them, whether that be through referrals, forwarding blog posts or offering training sessions.

In today’s world the easiest way to differentiate your business is by the customer experience you deliver, not the products you sell. Continuously learning about your customer every time you meet will extend your customer relationship beyond ‘hi, how is your dog’, and will go a long way to improving customer service.

3. Live for customer complaints

Negative feedback and customer complaints give you the opportunity to hear what your customers really think about your service. Complaints help you improve your service, give you a chance to redeem yourself and, keep potentially toxic reviews from hitting social media.

That’s provided your know how to handle and monitor customer complaints.

I actually like to look at customer complaints in a positive sense. You want customers letting you know that you stuffed up. The last thing any business owner wants is a customer keeping all their problems inside, telling a bunch of people and generally being a nuisance.

You want the opportunity to fix your customers’ problems. If they want to share their painful experience with you, it’s your job to listen respectfully and pick out what you need to know about the issue, and fix it quickly.

According to Eastbridge Consulting Group, 70% of complaining customers will do business with you again if you resolve the complaint in their favor. When rectifying the situation, offer a heartfelt apology, thank the customer for bringing the issue to your attention, and promise only as much as you can deliver.

Be realistic about the solution to avoid disappointing your customer again, and then work quickly to repair the problem. Building customer relationships is a two-way street, and working through the problem areas together will make your bond stronger than it was before the complaint began.

4. Stay in regular contact with customers

The key to building customer relationships is to keep your eye on the ball. Every interaction with a customer should be treated as an opportunity to monitor and build that relationship.

I tell all my employees to treat every customer engagement as if you are going to ask for a referral afterwards. It puts customer service in perspective and goes a long way to delivering a superior service. – Gordon Tan, Director at  Client Heartbeat, R&G Technologies

By keeping in regular contact, you can track customer sentiments towards your business, and rectify problem areas identified through your regular communication. It’s a frustrating truth that 96% of unhappy customers don’t complain when they’re unhappy, and 91% will simply leave and never return.

Tracking customer satisfaction can be hard, try using Client Heartbeat. It is a simple customer feedback tool that surveys your customers, measures satisfaction and identifies customers that need immediate attention.

Here are some ways you can stay in regular contact with customers:

• Follow up with customers after meetings by phone, email, or even social media
• Send customers friendly reminders to show that you are
• Forward through blog posts and videos that would be valuable to your customers
• Send customers a monthly email to keep them up to date with what’s going on at your company. Include product news, company news and links to interesting content

5. Build trust with customers

Whether you have a committed, rewarding relationship with your wife, girlfriend, dog or hamster, by now you’ve had loads of practice at building trust. A customer’s trust and commitment is built in the same manner.

Commitment is as an essential ingredient for successful long-term relationships. Developing a customer’s commitment in business relationships does pay off in increased profits, customer retention, willingness to refer and recommend. Relationship marketing literature suggests customer satisfaction and trust as major determinants of commitment.
– The Impact of Satisfaction, Trust, and Relationship Value on Commitment

Here are three  tips to build trust in your customer relationships:

• Show compassion in your actions affecting the relationship
• Be honest, credible and keep your integrity (if you say something, make sure you do it, on time!)
• Show you have the competence to act for the mutual benefit of your relationship

It’s essential to exhibit these characteristics, because trust diminishes the perceived risk and vulnerability in a partnership, leading to increased customer satisfaction and reduced churn. If you don’t act in your customer’s best interests, lie to hide your flaws and make heaps of dumb mistakes, your customer will realize you can’t be trusted, and abandon your business relationship.

6. Practice inbound marketing

Traditional ‘Outbound Marketing’ has focused on going to where customers live and interrupting their day to show them your products and services (i.e. TV ads, blanket emails).  When you practice Inbound Marketing, customers come to you. It’s commonly known as ‘pull-marketing’ as opposed to ‘push-marketing’ and is a great tactic to help with building customer relationships.

This can be achieved by creating really valuable content that solves your customers real-world problems. Use mediums like blog posts, videos, eBooks and whitepapers. Share your content on the web through social media and by engaging in relevant online communities. Inbound marketing costs 62% less per lead than outbound marketing and is a generally considered a lead generation tool. I believe it can actually help you build stronger customer relationships. It keeps the conversation going by feeding customers useful content.

Building customer relationships improves customer service

Can you afford to lose a customer due to poor customer relationships?

By focusing on these six tactics, you can start building strong  relationships with your customers that extend beyond the bare product or service. You can improve customer service that builds ‘sticky’ customer loyalty and reduces customer churn.

Increase Customer Satisfaction

In a business world where customer acquisition costs are sky-rocketing, small and medium businesses must focus on building a customer experience to increase customer satisfaction.

Here are nine game-changing ideas to help you on your way:

1. Treat your customers like they are your boss

Jeffery Gitomer speaks about how your customer is your paycheck. With no customers, there’s nobody to pay you! By taking this approach to every customer interaction you can naturally flip the angle on customer service.

Picture yourself as the boss… if your employee treated every customer the way they treated you, how good would the service be!

Here are some of the approaches I recommend businesses use:

• Thank all your customers for their business
• Go out your way to help customers
• Try to impress your customers as if you want a pay raise
• Think about your paycheck every time you talk to a customer
• Keep your promises and integrity

2. Focus on measuring customer satisfaction

Did you know that 91% of your unhappy customers will never purchase services from you again? Measuring customer satisfaction can help you reduce the number of unhappy customers.

So how do you measure customer satisfaction?

• Use one of these four Online Survey Tools
• Focus on these Customer Satisfaction Metrics
• Use customer support tools with ticket systems (Zendesk, Desk.com or Helpscout)

• 3. Build customer loyalty to increase customer satisfaction

  Customer satisfaction is worthless. Customer loyalty is priceless.
  – Jeffrey Gitomer

  Jeffery talks strongly about customer loyalty and it’s relationship with customer satisfaction in his book, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless. He believes that businesses should be focuses their efforts on creating loyal customers, that sticky and not easily influenced by competitors.
  I agree with Jeffery and have included my five favorite ways to build customer loyalty to increase customer satisfaction:
  • Remember special occasions like birthdays
  • Strive to empower and educate customers
  • Invest in a self-service support channel
  • Top level managers must lead from the front with customer service
  • Talk to your customers, tap into what they want and deliver
  
  

  4. Avoid making these customer retention mistakes

  No business is immune to unhappy customers. In fact, even companies with the best customer service in the world will still lose up to 9% of their customers to competitors.
  The good news is you can do something to stop customers defecting. Here are three common customer retention mistakes that are killing your customer satisfaction:
  • You are ignoring customer feedback
  • You are taking customer feedback to personally
  • You are using long, boring customer feedback surveys

KFC founder Colonel Sanders didn't achieve his remarkable rise to success until his 60s

KFC's current ad campaign stars a cartoonish Colonel Sanders played by "Saturday Night Live" alumnus Darrell Hammond, but the fast-food icon was a real person who followed an unlikely path to creating a multibillion-dollar international company.

The real Col. Sanders was an entrepreneur who didn't become a professional chef until he was 40, didn't franchise Kentucky Fried Chicken until he was 62, and didn't become an icon until after he sold his company at 75.

According to a 1970 New Yorker profile by William Whitworth, as well as biographies from Bio and the University of Houston, here are the highlights of the Colonel's remarkable rise to success.

Harland Sanders was born in 1890 and grew up on a farm in Indiana. When he was 6 years old, Sanders' father died, leaving him to take care of his younger brother and sister while his mom spent long days working. One of these responsibilities was feeding his siblings, and by age 7 he was already a decent cook, according to the New Yorker.

His mom remarried when he was 12. Because his new stepfather didn't like the boys around, Sanders' brother was sent to live with an aunt while he was sent to work on a farm about 80 miles away.

Sanders soon realized he would rather work all day than go to school, so he dropped out in the seventh grade.

In addition to a stint in Cuba with the Army, Sanders spent the first half of his life working a series of odd jobs, including stoking the steam engines of trains throughout the South, selling insurance, selling tires, making lighting systems, and operating a ferry boat.

He acquired a service station in Corbin, Kentucky, in 1930 and began serving classic Southern dishes to travelers. The location became known for its food, and Sanders eventually got rid of the service station's gas pump and converted the location to a full-fledged restaurant.

His breakthrough came in 1939 when he found that frying his chicken and its signature "11 herbs and spices" in a new device, a pressure cooker (different from the ones used today), resulted in the ideal consistency he had been looking for.

Sanders' restaurant enjoyed great popularity over the next decade, and in 1950 the governor of Kentucky named him colonel, the highest title of honor the state can give. Sanders began dressing the part, adopting the white suit and Kentucky colonel tie that would help make him a pop-culture icon.

In 1952, he made a deal with his restaurateur friend, Pete Harman, to sell his chicken dish as "Kentucky Fried Chicken" in exchange for a 4-cent royalty on every piece sold. After it became a top-selling item, Sanders made the same deal with several other local restaurants.

Things were going great, but when a new interstate bypassed Sanders' restaurant, it spelled doom.

He sold the location at a loss in 1956, leaving his $105 monthly Social Security check as his only income. Sanders then decided that he was not going to settle for a quiet retirement.

Since he'd closed his restaurant, the Colonel decided to dedicate himself fully to the franchising side project he'd started four years earlier.

He hit the road with his wife, the car packed with a couple pressure cookers, flour, and spice blends. He would enter a restaurant, offer to cook his chicken, and then make a deal if the owner liked what they tasted.

By 1963, Sanders was fielding franchise requests without having to put in the legwork, and had more than 600 restaurants across the US and Canada selling Kentucky Fried Chicken. That October, he was approached by John Y. Brown, Jr., "an aggressive young lawyer" as the New Yorker puts it, and a venture capitalist named Jack C. Massey who wanted to buy the franchise rights.

Sanders was initially reluctant, but after weeks of persuasion, he agreed to sell his rights for $2 million ($15.1 million in 2015 dollars) in January 1965, and the deal went through in March.

Under the contract, the company Kentucky Fried Chicken would establish its own restaurants around the world and would not compromise the chicken recipe. Sanders was to have a lifetime salary of $40,000 (later upped to $75,000), a seat on the board, majority ownership of KFC's Canadian franchises, and would serve as the company's brand ambassador.

Sanders wasn't happy to let go of his baby, but at 75, he decided that it would be best to see his company continue to grow beyond his capacity.

The New Yorker profile noted that some of his friends believed Sanders was shorted on the deal, but it also shows that Sanders turned down stock in the company and did not negotiate for a higher price.

It seems Sanders' pursuit was never really about becoming rich, but rather about becoming renowned for his food. That's why he constantly grumbled and swore about the more profitable but lower quality gravy that the corporate KFC began producing.

"If you were a franchisee turning out perfect gravy but making very little money for the company and I was a franchisee making lots of money for the company but serving gravy that was merely excellent, the Colonel would think that you were great and I was a bum," a KFC executive told the New Yorker. "With the Colonel, it isn't money that counts, it's artistic talent."

Sanders spent the latter years of his life giving interviews on talk shows and appearing in commercials, like this one from 1969:

The University of Houston, which honors Sanders in its Hospitality Industry Hall of Fame, says that up until his death in 1980, the Colonel traveled 250,000 miles each year visiting KFC locations and promoting the brand in the media.

Brown, who sold his stake in KFC in 1971 for $284 million, became governor of Kentucky in 1979. When Sanders died the next year, Brown said Sanders was "a real legend" and "the spirit of the American dream," the New York Times reported.

Sanders may have lacked the motivation to become as wealthy as he could have been, but he's now known in 115 countries for his favorite fried chicken recipe, which is more than he ever could have hoped for when he hit the road at age 65 with a car full of cooking supplies.

What is a KPI? Measure your performance against key business objectives.

       

  key performance indicator (KPI) is a type of performance measurementKPIs evaluate the success of an organization or of a particular activity in which it engages. Often success is simply the repeated, periodic achievement of some levels of operational goal (e.g. zero defects, 10/10 customer satisfaction, etc.), and sometimes success is defined in terms of making progress toward strategic goals. Accordingly, choosing the right KPIs relies upon a good understanding of what is important to the organization. 'What is important' often depends on the department measuring the performance – e.g. the KPIs useful to finance will differ from the KPIs assigned to sales. Since there is a need to understand well what is important, various techniques to assess the present state of the business, and its key activities, are associated with the selection of performance indicators. These assessments often lead to the identification of potential improvements, so performance indicators are routinely associated with 'performance improvement' initiatives. A very common way to choose KPIs is to apply a management framework such as the balanced scorecard.             

How to define a KPI

Defining a KPI can be tricky business. The operative word in KPI is “key” because it every KPI should related to a specific business outcome. KPIs are often confused with business metrics. Although often used in the same spirit, KPIs need to be defined according to critical business objectives. Follow these steps when defining a KPI:

• What is your desired outcome?
• Why does this outcome matter?
• How are you going to measure progress?
• How can you influence the outcome?
• Who is responsible for the business outcome?
• How will you know you’ve achieved your outcome?
• How often will you review progress towards the outcome?

As an example, let’s say your objective is to increase sales revenue this year. You’re going to call this KPI your Sales Growth KPI. Here’s how you might define this KPI:

• To increase sales revenue by 20% this year
• Achieving this target will allow the business to become profitable
• Progress will be measured as an increase in revenue measured in dollars spent
• By hiring additional sales staff, by promoting existing customers to buy more product
• The Chief Sales Officer is responsible for this metric
• Revenue will have increased by 20% this year
• The KPI will be reviewed on a monthly basic Examples of common departmental KPIs
• As noted above, KPI examples can be used to provide guidance, but you need to consider the specific goals and processes associated with your organization before adopting a template. These examples illustrate KPIs for several different departments.
• 
  
  
  

• Marketing and sales

  Some examples are:
  1. New customer acquisition
  2. Demographic analysis of individuals (potential customers) applying to become customers, and the levels of approval, rejections, and pending numbers
  3. Status of existing customers
  4. Customer attrition
  5. Turnover (i.e., revenue) generated by segments of the customer population
  6. Outstanding balances held by segments of customers and terms of payment
  7. Collection of bad debts within customer relationships
  8. Profitability of customers by demographic segments and segmentation of customers by profitability 
  Many of these customer KPIs are developed and managed with customer relationship management software.
  Faster availability of data is a competitive issue for most organizations. For example, businesses which have higher operational/credit risk (involving for example credit cards or wealth management) may want weekly or even daily availability of KPI analysis, facilitated by appropriate IT systems and tools.

  Manufacturing

  Overall equipment effectiveness is a set of broadly accepted non-financial metrics which reflect manufacturing success.
  • OEE = availability x performance x quality
  • Availability = run time / total time, by definition this is the percentage of the actual amount of production time the machine is running to the production time the machine is available.
  • Performance = total count / target counter, by definition this is the percentage of total parts produced on the machine to the production rate of machine.
  • Quality = good count / total count, by definition, this is the percentage of good parts out of the total parts produced on the machine.
  • Cycle time, this is the total time from the beginning to the end of the process. Cycle time includes process time, during which a unit is acted upon to bring it closer to an output, and delay time, during which a unit of work is spent waiting to take the next action.
  • Cycle time ratio (CTR) = standard cycle time / real cycle time
  • Utilization
  • Rejection rate

  IT operations

  • Availability / uptime
  • Mean time between failure
  • Mean time to repair
  • Unplanned unavailability
  • Average time

  IT project execution

  • Earned value
  • Estimate to complete
  • Labour spent / month
  • Euros spent / month
  • Planned euros / month
  • Planned labour / month
  • Average time to delivery
  • Tasks / staff
  • Project overhead / ROI
  • Number of new customers
  • Planned delivery date vs actual delivery date

  Supply chain management

  Businesses can utilize KPIs to establish and monitor progress toward a variety of goals, including lean manufacturing objectives, minority business enterprise and diversity spending, environmental "green" initiatives, cost avoidance programs and low-cost country sourcing targets.
  Any business, regardless of size, can better manage supplier performance with the help of KPIs robust capabilities, which include:
  • Automated entry and approval functions
  • On-demand, real-time scorecard measures
  • Rework on procured inventory
  • Single data repository to eliminate inefficiencies and maintain consistency
  • Advanced workflow approval process to ensure consistent procedures
  • Flexible data-input modes and real-time graphical performance displays
  • Customized cost savings documentation
  • Simplified setup procedures to eliminate dependence upon IT resources
  Main SCM KPIs will detail the following processes:
  • Sales forecasts
  • Inventory
  • Procurement and suppliers
  • Warehousing
  • Transportation
  • Reverse logistics
  Suppliers can implement KPIs to gain an advantage over the competition. Suppliers have instant access to a user-friendly portal for submitting standardized cost savings templates. Suppliers and their customers exchange vital supply chain performance data while gaining visibility to the exact status of cost improvement projects and cost savings documentation.

  Government[edit]

  The provincial government of Ontario, Canada has been using KPIs since 1998 to measure the performance of higher education institutions in the province. All post secondary schools collect and report performance data in five areas – graduate satisfaction, student satisfaction, employer satisfaction, employment rate, and graduation rate.