A guest blog from Kim Harris of TSheets by QuickBooks.

The first NCAA-sponsored men’s basketball championship took place in 1939, back when the tournament consisted of just eight teams. For the title, the University of Oregon Webfoots went head to head with the Ohio State Buckeyes in Evanston, Illinois, taking home the championship trophy with a final score of 46-33.

Back in Oregon, dedicated fans listened to the game via radio, and the city of Eugene threw a massive party in the streets to celebrate the victory. The team put the small college town on the map, and the wild competition, known today as March Madness, was born.

By 1951, the number of teams in the NCAA championship tournament doubled, and by 1985, 64 teams had been invited to play. Today, 68 teams grace the courts in the annual tournament.

It’s possible that fans are even more crazy for NCAA championships now than they used to be, with more teams in the mix and real-time streaming access of the tournament. It’s commonplace to hear March Madness chatter at the job site, see coworkers cheerfully building their brackets, and even tune in on their computers or smartphones while they work.

The excitement is so palpable, in some workplaces, non-basketball fans might see it as a potential distraction from day-to-day duties. But does March Madness really interfere with productivity?

March Madness in the workplace

A recent survey of 200 college basketball fans revealed how they manage to keep up with the tournament while at work and if they think watching negatively impacts their productivity. While about one-third of March Madness fans admit the tournament decreases their productivity, 68 percent of respondents say March Madness has no impact (or it increases) their productivity. But that doesn’t mean they don’t spend time watching. Quite the opposite. Nearly 40 percent of March Madness fans say they tune in continuously during work hours.

Of those who watch March Madness at work, women are more likely to always have it on in the background. However, men are more likely to watch more than four hours while working. Almost a quarter (23 percent) of those who watch the games say they watch in secret.

One in 5 respondents admits they watch March Madness on the toilet, while the same number of fans say they watch in their car. Nearly a quarter of fans who tune in at work say they watch March Madness in meetings, and about 30 percent say they watch the games while working from home.

The research also found some employees will arrange their days around the games, which might explain why the majority say they still feel productive during the workday. One in 5 employees says they work fewer hours during the tournament, while just over that number say they start work early to free up time to cheer on their teams.

The work-basketball balance

The same March Madness survey found over a quarter of employees say their boss has a positive view of March Madness at work, meaning they encourage engagement or watch it with their employees. Nearly 61 percent of employees say their boss takes a neutral position on March Madness at work, while only about 14 percent say their boss is against them watching at work.

With this survey in mind, as an employer, how do you encourage a fun and balanced workplace while also fostering productivity and focus, especially during major sporting events like March Madness?

1. Watch together.

To ensure your employees aren’t watching in secret — and possibly wasting more time on the clock than you’d otherwise approve of — ask employees if they’d like to watch the games during the workday. Once you’ve gauged interest and allowed your team to be open about their viewing habits during the tournament, you can decide how much time you want to allocate to the games during the day.

2. Encourage moderation.

If the nature of the job makes it impossible for employees to watch the games while staying productive, set designated game time during which workers can catch up on the games. Encouraging moderation shows you value work-life balance.

3. Accountability wins.

If it’s possible for your employees to catch all of March Madness (and even have it streaming in the background all day), the only thing that matters is making sure employees are being held accountable for their time and their work. Set the expectations early to ensure your employees know that quality and timely work is still part of the deal.

It’s fun to imagine those early Oregon fans huddled around the radio, listening to the names of their favorite players, maybe even placing bets on the outcome. Although the ways in which we experience the tournament has changed dramatically since the first March Madness took hold of the country, the obsession has clearly held steady.

Author Bio

Kim Harris is a copywriter and blogger based in Boise, Idaho, who has been putting her journalism background to good use telling true stories and helping businesses grow since 2008. When she’s not writing for TSheets by QuickBooks, you’ll find her queuing up entertainment and plotting her next escape.

Imagine if you could order your coffee via text.

You open up a new message, speak your order, and receive a response saying it’ll be ready for you at the pick-up counter. It’s like having your own personal barista right within your smart device.

Starbucks is just one of many brands turning to chatbots to deliver a better experience and a new channel to boost product sales. But chatbots aren’t just limited to ordering coffee, placing a food order, purchasing shoes, paying a water bill, or checking out the forecast.

Chatbots are also being infused into everyday sales processes for B2B businesses, big and small alike. From inbox tools like x.ai that help read your inbox and assist with scheduling meetings for you to Facebook messenger bots such as MobileMonkey that are designed to have automated one-to-one conversations with your visitors with the objective of driving them to a conversion goal.  

It’s easy to see why so many businesses are excited about this cutting-edge technology. But for some,  it can be a bit overwhelming to wrap their heads around whatever the latest “customer experience” or “digital marketing” buzzword is.

This leads to one big question: Is it worth investing money in this now, or should I sit tight?

Well, let’s play a game of “You might need a chatbot if…”

You might need a chatbot if…

You sell a product that involves a lot of questions before purchasing.

Let’s face it time is money for your business. So if you find your sales team answering a lot of same pre-purchase questions over and over again from your prospects and customers, you might need a chatbot. Chatbots can engage with prospects online to answer commonly asked questions from pricing to product demonstrations—all while freeing up valuable time for your sales team. Intelligent chat tools eliminate tedious conversations with tire kickers and help your business focus more time on qualified opportunities.

Chatbots are also a great way to shorten the sales cycle. By gathering personal data on prospects early in the process, salespeople don’t have to spend hours a day compiling data in your CRM. Instead, they can focus on the activities closest to the money—like generating contracts and closing deals.

You are looking to deliver a more personalized online experience.

Times are a changin’. People want answers and assistance when they want it. Whether is 10 PM or 2 AM.  Despite your best intentions, energy, or passion, it’s impossible to give every single customer or potential customer the attention they need immediately. The truth is studies show that over 50% of customers expect businesses to be open 24/7.  So if you’re looking for ways to deliver a personalized experience look no further than a chatbot.

With a chatbot, people aren’t forced to speak with someone unless they absolutely need to, and you have energy left over to deal with more complex customer problems while your chatbot handles quick and common inquiries.

You are searching for more qualified leads—at scale.

If you’re like most businesses, you’re always looking for new ways to fill the marketing and sales pipeline with more qualified leads. The challenge is, in order to drive more quality leads, you need to hire more salespeople or to increase your marketing spend. And there’s the rub. It isn’t scalable for most businesses.

Chatbots can deliver a better ROI from sales and marketing resources you already have in place. By using a chatbot to ask sales questions to your visitors such as company size, buying time frame and specific challenges, your sales team will get warmed up conversions from your bot that otherwise would have probably not engaged. And as your online conversations scale, you don’t have to worry about adding extra manpower to qualify your leads—your chatbot has it covered.

You’d like to boost your business’s brand.

A chatbot instantly does two things. It offers an alternative way for customers to interact with your brand to gather the information they need. It also elevates your brand value in the eyes of customers who hold the keys to the most powerful marketing channel in your arsenal—word of mouth.

Keep in mind that a poorly-designed chatbot can harm instead of help your business. If the chatbot doesn’t understand inquiries or crashes often, it sends a bad message about your brand value and also risks frustrating customers who just want information.

You want a direct, conversational way to advertise to customers.

We tune out advertisements, direct promotional emails to our inbox, and skip ads on YouTube.

As for banner ads, we’ve basically evolved past even seeing them at the bottom of a web page.

Businesses are always looking for new ways to advertise to customers since we quickly grow immune to existing promotional strategies.

A good chatbot makes you feel like you’re having a conversation with a human. Imagine your online visitors asking a chatbot about the price of your product or service…along with a promotional offer tailored directly to their needs.

This is being called “conversational advertising.” Chatbots present an interesting way for your business to diversify its marketing and deliver a real-time conversation with your audience.

Carefully assess your business to determine whether you need a chatbot.

Although chatbots can deliver a more personalized experience and help to streamline online communications with your prospects and customers, they aren’t for everyone.

Chatbots are most effective when you have the need to engage with people online. Which means you need at least a decent presence on social media and within your website. Unfortunately, businesses can waste time building out a chatbot only to hear crickets on the other end.  

It is also important to map out a process of where and how you will deploy at chatbot in your sales and marketing process. Start first with key areas such as your blog, pricing pages and product demonstration pages. Learn what drives the best engagement, and monitor your chatbot conversations to ensure your visitors aren’t jumping ship before they get to your desired conversion goals.

As with any technology, be smart. Remember that technology is most powerful when it propels human engagement, not replaces it all together. By using these five tips to decide if a chatbot is right for you, your business will be in better position to take advantage of the power of online conversations.

Ready to scale your business? It’s probably going to require the help of other people. That can be challenging if you can’t afford to hire full-time permanent employees. For many small business owners, the answer is building a flexible workforce.

A flexible workforce can take many forms. Often, it consists of freelancers and contractors, but sometimes it may include temps and part-time employees, as well.

The advantage of a flexible workforce is you don’t have the responsibility that comes with adding full-time, permanent employees to payroll. The downside is that freelancers, temps and contractors may not be available when you need them since they likely have to do other work to make a living.

So how do you build a flexible workforce you can rely on when the pressure is on? Here are some strategies to deploy.

Determine where you need help.

When you’re the owner of small business, you probably cannot afford to hire all of the help you need. That means making some strategic decisions about where to deploy the money you spend on personnel. Generally, it’s best to hire people to do that you’re not good at or that are not the highest and best use of your time, like routine administrative work.

Figure out how much you can afford to spend.

Hiring a flexible workforce is a good way to keep your personnel budget under control, but it still costs money. Before you bring on help, take a look at your budget to make sure you can afford to it. Whether you hire someone as a freelancer or a part-time employee, they will expect to be paid in a timely way, so it’s essential to make sure you have enough cash flow. If you don’t have strong enough cash flow, devote yourself to increasing your sales for the next couple of months and reducing overhead enough to pay someone to help you, and then revisit your decision.

Choose the right work arrangement.

Labor laws on how to classify employees are strict so make sure you familiarize yourself with both state and federal laws by looking them up before hiring anyone. Check out both the U.S. Department of Labor website and your state department of labor’s sites to familiarize yourself with the rules.

Generally speaking, if you need hourly workers on a recurring basis, you will need to set them up on payroll as employees. If you need help on a self-contained project, like designing your website, and you’re hiring a professional services firm such as a web design shop, you can usually pay the provider as a freelancer or contractor, meaning you don’t have to put them on payroll. If you hire freelancers through a major freelance platform, they typically often offer questionnaires that will help you make the right call on how you classify your employees.

If you do need hourly workers but not year-round or on a very unpredictable basis, consider retaining them through a temporary agency. In addition to traditional types of temps such as administrative assistants and day laborers, these agencies now offer professional services like attorneys and accountants, too.

Try a test project.

Most employers don’t have time to conduct a lengthy interview process with each freelancer or temp, but it is important to make sure any member of your team can perform well and get along with key team members before you commit to assigning them larger projects.

Assigning a small test project to a new freelancer is a good way to evaluate whether there is a good fit. Pay attention to things like the quality of the work, whether it needs revisions, whether the freelancer made the deadline, how the freelancer interacted with you and your team and other factors that matter to you.

Show them you care.

Some employers treat freelancers like second-class employees. For instance, while they take time to explain complex projects to their team, they don’t set aside the same time to make sure their freelancers can succeed. Or, while they always pay their W-2 workers on time, they make freelancers wait months to be paid.

If you want the best flexible workers to clear the decks for your projects, simply extending the courtesies you provide to other team members will go a long way and differentiate you from the many employers who don’t. In a recent survey, the freelance platform Kalo found that freelancers greatly valued clear communication, appropriate use of their skills, inclusion as valued members of the team and timely payment, so those are excellent places to start.

Although freelancers and temps may not be permanent members of your team, they can bring a lot of talent to the table—and the more you nurture your relationships with them, the better the situation will be for both of you.

As we barrel on into 2018, it should dawn on everyone—not just marketers and business owners, but literally everyone—that robots are taking over the world and transforming it into a terrifying dystopian future wherein all humankind will succumb to a future of subservient drones.

I mean, sure, the situation might not be so dramatic as that. But we truly are entering an unprecedented era blending human with tech and crafting tech to become more human-like than ever before.

Almost every tech trend in 2018 will touch on that theme: that the future of marketing, UX and business is reliant on the future of robots that will in all likelihood soon overpower us wholly and reduce our minds and bodies to… well, you get the picture.

Listen Up: The Future is Voice Control

According to a recent Consumer Technology Association report, a quarter of all holiday shoppers last year used voice assistants while making their Q4 purchases. Regardless of whether it was for research or an actual purchase, it almost doesn’t matter—they’re talking before they’re buying.

Moreover, this follows the overall popularity of smart speakers in households. Shipments have leapfrogged year-over-year from 7,200 units in 2016 to more than 27,000 in 2017, no doubt signifying that price drops and consumer marketing are transforming smart assistants into the new smartphones. Several savvy agencies are leaning into this burgeoning market, encouraging businesses to create their own apps and skills for these devices to catch on during a pivotal moment.

The hype isn’t confined to speakers, though. Voice searches are likewise climbing rapidly in the mobile game, as voice-controlled search finally catches up to the fact that hundreds of millions of smartphone users live in freezing cold climates half the year and don’t want to remove their winter mittens to search for the nearest cafe.

And so, lines such as “Okay Google, where’s the nearest cafe?” will begin springing up even more. It’s well documented that mobile searches already skew local and long-tail, and the increased number of voice searches will push even further in this direction. This is great news for small businesses looking to hone their SEM direction in 2018, as those tenets of search have long been the hallmark of savvy small-business marketers.

Machine Learning: Is 2018 the Year Robots Replace Drivers?

Some are predicting 2018 will be the year we see autonomous vehicles hit commercial roads. While private cars are likely still in the distant future, delivery vehicles may be nearer.

Yet while artificial intelligence and machine learning will fuel a multi-billion-dollar industry in 2018, there are ways for small business owners and agency marketers to get in on the machine-learning industry without investing in self-driving cars.

We are already living firmly in a world where customer service, product support, field research and consumer purchases are all being tackled by chatbots on a level that is disrupting—but not yet erasing—humans from the business side. While every business should still have some person on the other end of the phone (we love ranting to someone who can empathize with us, not just respond with naturalized conversations), chatbots, such as Mobile Monkey, are helping to capitalize on the increasingly enormous space of direct messaging.

Indeed, messaging apps passed social media recently in daily activity, proving that humans crave direct interaction, confidence, privacy and an immediate connection. Chatbots can play into this world, but Facebook’s introduction of pay-per-click ads and quick-loading pages into Facebook Messenger indicates that the universe extends far beyond just thinking of the consumer as someone who interacts with your brand.

AR and VR: Immersion Never Felt So Immersive

With Google leaning into ARCore and Apple into ARKit, the world of virtual and augmented reality appears to be more than just a superficial attempt to wow consumers with new hardware. VR arcades are popping up in major cities, and VR companies are teaming up with brands to create unique customer experiences that showcase their product in new, innovative ways.  

VR and AR have become less about sheer marketing and more about practical tools. Augmented reality can be used to help customers imagine paint colors, furniture and clothes as a real part of their lives. Virtual reality can take people on a finished tour of an under-construction condo. Think about how you can skew your content immersive and the boundaries are limitless.   

Smile for the Camera: Biometrics Are Here

Apple’s initial iPhone X facial recognition demo may have suffered a viral hiccup, but don’t let that dissuade you: facial and fingerprint recognition are only getting stronger, more accurate and more useful.

In an age marked by significant data breaches and heightened security, fingerprint scans denote an obvious solution in lieu of flimsy and predictable passwords. Anyone working in the app sphere, or with sensitive financial data, would do well to look for state-of-the-art solutions, many of which should grow rapidly in 2018.

Meanwhile, machines are learning to recognize users by face (think of a self-driving car that unlocks when it sees your smiling mug), and facial recognition has become a key factor in the growth of goofy app filters from Snapchat to Instagram. With a generation now growing up expecting a phone to know what a face looks like, advancing and securing this tech will surely be a priority for many developers.

Key Takeaways

Overall, the trend is clear: whether it’s vocal recognition, facial recognition, making robots more lifelike or leaning into virtual realities, the biggest tech trends in 2018 will involve a blending of machine life and human life, helping computers understand what humans are like and easing humans into a world where computers do more than sit on your desk.

Marketers, business owners and developers should think about ways in which they can stay ahead of this curve, or at least follow it as rapidly as it changes.