Tech layoffs signal 'feeling economy' shift
Tech company layoffs exceeded 260,000 in 2023, and continue in 2024. This, despite a robust job market in non-tech industries.
Feb 13, 2024
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Tech company layoffs exceeded 260,000 in 2023, and continue in 2024. This, despite a robust job market in non-tech industries.
Feb 13, 2024
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Some recent mergers, acquisitions and investments in the business world have highlighted the strategic value of data to companies. These businesses are not just buying assets or market share—they are also acquiring or investing ...
Jan 31, 2024
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Microsoft Corp. is opening up its artificial intelligence assistant to consumers and making the corporate version available to smaller companies as it tries to increase the number of paying customers for the new services.
Jan 16, 2024
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Boeing told employees Monday that it plans to increase quality inspections of its 737 Max 9 aircraft, following the failure of an emergency exit door panel on an Alaska Airlines flight last week.
Jan 15, 2024
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As global carbon emissions from human activity hit an all-time high last year, my family zeroed out emissions from our home and cars while getting an 11% tax-free return on the investment. That's more than twice the yield ...
Jan 11, 2024
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Google has laid off hundreds of employees working on its hardware, voice assistance and engineering teams as part of cost-cutting measures.
Jan 11, 2024
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The U.S. retail mortgage lender loanDepot is struggling to recover from a cyberattack that impacted its loan processing and phone service.
Jan 9, 2024
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Amazon has shuttered the last of its two Fresh Pickup facilities, marking the end of its experiment with a drive-in and drop-off grocery service.
Jan 4, 2024
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Consumer interest in electric vehicles (EVs) is rising, but the lack of charging stations is a continuing concern to potential customers. No U.S. counties currently have a charging infrastructure that can deliver power equal ...
Jan 3, 2024
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US airlines are gearing up for record traffic this holiday season, having beefed up staffing in the hopes of avoiding a repeat of last Christmas's operational meltdown.
Dec 21, 2023
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A customer (also known as a client, buyer, or purchaser) is usually used to refer to a current or potential buyer or user of the products of an individual or organization, called the supplier, seller, or vendor. This is typically through purchasing or renting goods or services. However, in certain contexts, the term customer also includes by extension any entity that uses or experiences the services of another. A customer may also be a viewer of the product or service that is being sold despite deciding not to buy them. The general distinction between a customer and a client is that a customer purchases products, whereas a client purchases services.
In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 67 percent responded that they found customer metrics very useful.
Three metrics are used to count customers and track customer activity irrespective of the number of transactions (or monetary value of those transactions) made by each customer:
In contractual situations, it makes sense to talk about the number of customers currently under contract and the percentage retained when the contract period runs out. In non-contractual situations (such as catalogue sales), it makes less sense to talk about the current number of customers, but instead to count the number of customers of a specified recency.
The word derives from "custom," meaning "habit"; a customer was someone who frequented a particular shop, who made it a habit to purchase goods of the sort the shop sold there rather than elsewhere, and with whom the shopkeeper had to maintain a relationship to keep his or her "custom," meaning expected purchases in the future.
The slogans "the customer is king" or "the customer is god" or "the customer is always right" indicate the importance of customers to businesses – although the last expression is sometimes used ironically.
However, "customer" also has a more generalized meaning as in customer service and a less commercialized meaning in not-for-profit areas. To avoid unwanted implications in some areas such as government services, community services, and education, the term "customer" is sometimes substituted by words such as "constituent" or "stakeholder". This is done to address concerns that the word "customer" implies a narrowly commercial relationship involving the purchase of products and services. However, some managers in this environment, in which the emphasis is on being helpful to the people one is dealing with rather than on commercial sales, comfortably use the word "customer" to both internal and external customers.
Obsolete meaning: In the early 17th century customer was defined as a "common prostitute. This meaning is important for understanding historical literary works. ("I marry her! What, a customer?") Othello, or ("I think thee now a common customer") All's Well that Ends Well. Today the meaning of "customer" has been inverted in this usage.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA