The Sundance Company

You probably already use a variety of digital tools to boost your business. But to ensure your company is keeping up with the competition, it’s important to understand the AI tools on the market, what they do, and how they may benefit your business. Once you identify the areas in which your company can use AI assistance, you’ll likely find an option to suit your needs below.

• ChatGPT: Even if you haven’t kept up on recent advances in AI technology, you’ve probably heard the news of ChatGPT’s launch by OpenAI in November 2022. From content creation to recruiting and customer service, this free, generative dialogue AI application has the potential to be useful in nearly any industry for all kinds of businesses. The basic version is free. Users can pay a monthly fee for the premium version, which offers more consistent access, faster responses, and priority access to new features.
• Jasper: Another useful option for content creation, Jasper is an intuitive writing tool that can generate all kinds of copy (such as emails, blog posts, social media, and product descriptions) with limited instruction. In addition to suggesting a writing tone (such as “casual”), you can drop your writing samples into Jasper to help it create new content in your personal style. Jasper offers a range of subscription plans based on usage and feature needs. Some people report a steep learning curve, so you may need a bit of time to get up to speed.
• Grammarly: This online writing assistant offers an AI-powered desktop app to help users quickly compose clear, error-free copy whether they’re working in a document, composing an email, or writing a social media post. It doesn’t only catch grammar and spelling errors but can also make suggestions to ensure content hits the right tone and communicates ideas effectively. The basic assistant is free, and users can opt for a yearly subscription for advanced features such as tone adjustment and plagiarism detection.
• Lensa AI: This imaging tool incorporates AI art generation, which you may have seen in the form of colorful reimaginings of your friends’ selfies on social media. In addition to using many of the standard editing elements you’d find in other image editing apps, Lensa AI uses compiled online art to give visual content an AI makeover. Users can pay a one-time fee for a specific number of unique avatars or opt for an annual subscription for unlimited avatars. And while those selfies may be the example we’ve seen most frequently, the tool can also edit product or service photos at a near-professional level for a low fee.
• Xero: This accounting software offers tools for small businesses, accountants, and bookkeepers to automate basic accounting tasks and forecast cash flow. It can capture data (such as bills and receipts) automatically by pairing it with Hubdoc. Xero offers a range of subscription plans depending on your needs.
• Zendesk: Built to improve the customer service experience, Zendesk is a cloud-based help-desk management solution that allows companies to customize the types of experiences they provide their customers. Features like live chat, a customizable front-end portal, and the ability to integrate with applications like Salesforce and Google Analytics make it a popular pick. Zendesk offers subscription plans that vary in price and features.
• rasa.io: Using AI for email marketing, rasa.io aggregates, curates, and personalizes your website and blog content to help you send industry-relevant, individualized newsletters to community members or subscribers on your email list. It helps companies grow their customer relationships through increased reader engagement. With three subscription plans, rasa.io can suit businesses with small, medium, or large contact lists.
• Drift: Through conversational AI, Drift aims to help companies engage in personalized conversations to build trust and grow revenue. The company offers real-time chat, video, voice, and email AI products and boasts use cases in marketing, sales, and service within various industries. Drift offers three subscription plans to suit businesses with varying needs.

Portions of this article originally appeared on Quill website.

The Sundance Company                                                              
Established in 1976, The Sundance Company has the experience to help you with your commercial real estate needs throughout the Boise Valley. If your requirements include property management, leasing, real estate development, project planning, construction or space planning then look to us. The Sundance Company has more than 1.6 million square feet of office and industrial space available in prime locations in the Boise metropolitan area. More information is available at www.sundanceco.com or 208.322.7300.

Without incorporating the right healthy work habits, the day-to-day reality of work can have negative effects on the body, too, including everything from sore muscles and sapped productivity to eye strain and increased anxiety. In fact, research has found that on-the-job stress is more strongly correlated with physical health complaints than any other life stressor.

Use these workplace wellness tips for employees to take care of your body at work and reduce physical stress.

Ergonomic Workstation

Taking care of your body at work starts with having the right ergonomic desk setup. Because office work so often involves repetitive tasks and postures, even slight changes to the way your workstation is configured can make a huge difference in how much stress you place on your body throughout the day.

Follow these healthy workplace tips to make your space more ergonomic and create a physical environment that supports your body at work:

• For desk workers who spend most of the day sitting, an ergonomic office chair, such as this Tempur-Pedic® task chair, is essential. Choose a chair that supports spinal alignment and sound posture. In addition, set your chair at the right height, ensuring that your feet can lay flat on the floor.
• Your chair isn’t the only factor in supporting good posture. Avoid slouching and craning your neck by placing your computer monitor atop a stand, stack of books, or small box to keep it at eye level. A good rule of thumb for monitor positioning is to align the top of the screen with your eye line.
• Support your arms and wrists to avoid straining your back and shoulders. Adjust your chair’s armrests so that your arms are slightly lifted at your shoulders. A wrist rest can bring additional comfort and ergonomics to your workstation setup.
• At the end of the day, just sitting for too long—even at the most ergonomic desk—can take its physical toll. Consider counteracting the effects of the so-called “sitting disease” by opting for an adjustable workstation. A sit-stand ergonomic solution that allows you to adjust the height of your desk, as needed, between sitting and standing, can reduce discomfort and help you maintain productivity.

Build in Breaks

Even when supported by the best workstation design, the body is simply not meant to withstand very long sessions of stationary desk work, whether it’s done sitting or standing. That’s why it’s critical to take short breaks throughout the day to stretch, hydrate, improve circulation, and help keep stress and strain from building.

Of course, during a busy or productive period, it can be easy to let too much time pass between pauses in your work. Luckily, technology can help remind you to take care of your body as well as your work tasks. Setting recurring notifications in your calendar or on your smartphone’s clock app can provide timely reminders. You can even use fitness trackers to set reminders, too. Similarly, following the Pomodoro technique can incorporate short breaks in a productive rhythm of work while encouraging longer breaks over time.

Rest Your Eyes

Be sure to care for your eyes as well as you do the rest of your body during these breaks. After all, prolonged use of your computer can lead to a range of aggravating eye health complications. Avoid eye strain, dry eyes, and even potential migraines by adhering to the 20-20-20 rule. It’s just about as easy to follow as it is to remember: Simply pause every 20 minutes to look into the distance 20 feet for 20 seconds. In the meantime, take even more strain off your eyes by outfitting your workspace with eye-friendly office lamps and lighting.

Take Your Meetings on the Move

For many office employees, a schedule full of meetings might make it even harder to find the time to get out of the chair—whether it’s at your own desk or in the conference room just down the hall.

However, a slate of meetings doesn’t necessarily need to be incompatible with movement. For instance, you can easily convert your one-on-ones and team check-ins from stale sit-downs to dynamic walking meetings. Even if you don’t head very far, just getting outside for some fresh air can reduce stress and give you yet another opportunity to stretch, away from your desk.

Make the Most of Your Time Outside the Office

When it comes down to it, even the best-structured workstation and schedule won’t necessarily be a cure-all for bodily strain and fatigue. Supporting your well-being and fighting physical (and mental) stress at work will require some effort outside the office as well.

After all, maintaining your physical well-being and reducing stress on your body is a crucial part of achieving a healthy work-life balance. In addition to the healthy workplace tips we’ve covered above, be sure to practice a healthy and balanced overall lifestyle.

For instance, getting enough sleep each night isn’t just important to have a fresh mind at work. Healthy sleep habits are also closely connected to your physical well-being, helping to regulate stress, improve immune function, repair cells, and maintain cardiovascular health. Meanwhile, regular exercise during the day can improve the quality of your sleep, reduce stress and anxiety, and potentially lower the risk of work-induced strain and injury.

Portions of this article originally appeared on Quill website.

The Sundance Company                                                               
Established in 1976, The Sundance Company has the experience to help you with your commercial real estate needs throughout the Boise Valley. If your requirements include property management, leasing, real estate development, project planning, construction or space planning then look to us. The Sundance Company has more than 1.6 million square feet of office and industrial space available in prime locations in the Boise metropolitan area. More information is available at www.sundanceco.com or 208.322.7300.

The Sundance Company                                                              
Established in 1976, The Sundance Company has the experience to help you with your commercial real estate needs throughout the Boise Valley. If your requirements include property management, leasing, real estate development, project planning, construction or space planning then look to us. The Sundance Company has more than 1.6 million square feet of office and industrial space available in prime locations in the Boise metropolitan area. More information is available at www.sundanceco.com or 208.322.7300.

If humans could live longer, what would this mean for the future of work and the workforce?

We may not have to ask this question for much longer.

More and more medical professionals and researchers have a suspicion that a medicine costing just five dollars a month — developed from a compound discovered more than a century ago in the common French lilac — could be the key to combating aging.  

The drug, called metformin, has some interesting effects on metabolism, cells, and the way our bodies defend against viruses. The drug has so far shown anti-aging effects on mice, roundworms, and fruit flies.

This drug might help humans to age slower because it can potentially delay the onset of cancer, cognitive decline, and vision loss in seniors. Studies show that metformin can delay stem-cell aging, promote autophagy, and prevent telomere shortening — all of which help combat the effects of aging. This remarkable drug also safeguards against processes that lead to disease, such as oxidative stress. 

The other revolutionary part? It won’t just be millionaire tech magnates who can afford this drug; anyone could take it.  

What impact would anti-aging meds have on the future of work?  

If these innovative treatments mean our workforce is healthier and living longer, it most likely means people would need to work longer. What would this mean for the economy? What would this phenomenon mean for the future of work? Perhaps the most jarring question is: What would this mean for the age of retirement — will the U.S. benchmark of 65 no longer be feasible? 

These are all questions that are difficult to address. Adjusting a set retirement age is a touchy, politically risky and divisive topic, as laid bare by the revolt in France against President Emmanuel Macron’s legislation that would raise the age of retirement just two years — from 62 to 64.   

While the full repercussions of a longer-living workforce are still to be imagined, the idea of prolonging human life using anti-aging drugs has been tossed around for years.  

In 2006, an NBC article discussed the topic: “For most people, living longer will inevitably mean more time spent working. Careers will necessarily become longer, and the retirement age will have to be pushed back, not only so individuals can support themselves, but to avoid overtaxing a nation’s social security system,” wrote Ker Than. “Advocates of anti-aging research say that working longer might not be such a bad thing. With skilled workers remaining in the workforce longer, economic productivity would go up.”  

Bioethicist Daniel Callahan, a co-founder of the Hastings Center in New York said in the same article that “if this could ever happen, then we’d better ask what kind of society we want to get. We had better not go anywhere near it until we have figured those problems out.”  

It is certainly too soon to tell what significant impact these types of medications will have on society long term. But there are two options, each with wide-reaching implications if the workforce enters this longer-work life reality:  

1. If healthy older people remain in the workforce longer, they could continue to make money, thus relieving pressure on health care and entitlement programs.  
2. If healthy older people don’t want to work and still plan to retire in their 60s, then they might collect social security benefits, which would unbalance and drain these benefits for future generations.  

The effects of these medications are endless — both positive and negative — and responses to their implications for workers will need to be carefully considered by individual governments.  

Portions of this article originally appeared on All Work website.

The Sundance Company                                                              
Established in 1976, The Sundance Company has the experience to help you with your commercial real estate needs throughout the Boise Valley. If your requirements include property management, leasing, real estate development, project planning, construction or space planning then look to us. The Sundance Company has more than 1.6 million square feet of office and industrial space available in prime locations in the Boise metropolitan area. More information is available at www.sundanceco.com or 208.322.7300.

Do you have customers that have become a one-and-done missed opportunity?

Why didn’t they come back?

Answering this critical question depends on a powerful tactic essential to every business’s success: Asking them. Below are five essential methods of engaging customers for feedback.

1. Survey New Customers

The moment a prospective customer chooses to become an actual customer is crucial for your business. Send new customers a survey via email or SMS text to gain insights into this decision so that you can create better first impressions—and better site conversion—in the future.

• Lead the survey with a simple, easy-to-answer question. For example: “Would you recommend ABC Widgets to a friend?”
• Follow up with multiple-choice questions asking what your business does well and what it could do better.
• End with an open-ended question that lets customers say whatever is on their minds.
• Allow enough time to pass for the customer to complete their transaction. If you deliver, wait until the customer receives their shipment to send the survey. 3-5 days post-purchase is a good rule of thumb.

2. Ask for Feedback on Your Site

Ideas strike anytime, but ideas for improving your website mainly arise while customers use it. Provide opportunities for feedback throughout your site experience to increase your odds of capturing actional information.

• General feedback form: Create a feedback widget that follows customers on your site. This allows them to share thoughts in real-time as they arise.
• Post-purchase survey: Take a more proactive approach by asking customers to complete a short survey after they make a purchase.
• Live chat sessions: Include a survey at the end of a live chat session. This is a great way to engage a customer primed to deliver constructive feedback about your business.

3. Ask for Reviews

Positive reviews will help promote your popular products and services. Negative ones will provide insights on optimizing what needs improving. There are two key opportunities to ask for reviews:

• On product and services pages: Add reviews to your site’s product and services pages with a prompt to leave one.
• Post-purchase email: Send an email or SMS text after customers have had a chance to use your product. The best time to do this depends on what you sell (and how quickly your customers will use it). A good rule of thumb is 10 to 14 days post-purchase.

4. Conduct Customer Interviews

Online surveys are the most efficient way to garner customer feedback. But personal interviews allow for a deeper insight. Customers have more time to share thoughts, and you can ask follow-up questions that online surveys don’t allow. Consider interviewing your customers in the following ways:

• Customer roundtable: Talk to a group of customers in a physical or virtual location about your company and their needs. This lets you gain multiple viewpoints quickly. One risk to this approach is groupthink: Customers often influence each other’s opinions.
• One-on-one interviews: Instead of talking to customers simultaneously, conduct separate interviews over a phone or video call. This allows you to receive uninfluenced opinions and engage in in-depth conversations to learn more about their needs.
• Multiple interviews over time: Take your insights to the next level by checking in with a regular group of customers over time. You can track their reactions to enhancements you make to your website and other areas of your business, plus learn about new needs and challenges they face as they arise.

5. Monitor social media

Surveys, forms, and interviews provide feedback in a controlled setting. Social media is anything but controlled, with positive and negative emotions often driving discourse. Monitoring and quickly responding to feedback on your platforms is vital to maintaining a productive conversation with your customers.

• Monitor comments: Enable alerts in your social media accounts to stay on top of replies, shares, and other customer engagement.
• Respond quickly and professionally: Turning a negative into a positive with quick and helpful responses on social media puts your customer service on display for all current and prospective customers.
• Engage in social listening: Social listening tools let you monitor online conversations about your company, competitors, and industry. They’re a great way to keep a finger on the pulse of your brand’s perception and emerging trends in your trade.

Additional Benefits of Asking for Feedback

The biggest benefit of asking for feedback is receiving honest opinions about your company along with other customer insights. But it’s not the only advantage you gain.

• Customer testimonials: Some feedback you receive will be positive, highlighting what you do well. Sharing customers’ enthusiasm for your company is a powerful way to build your brand’s credibility.
• Relationship building: Studies show that active listening—listening to understand—strengthens relationships. This is true for the relationship between your business and your customers. When you ask for feedback, customers feel heard and validated and develop a more favorable opinion of your company.

Portions of this article originally appeared on Quill website.

The Sundance Company                                                               
Established in 1976, The Sundance Company has the experience to help you with your commercial real estate needs throughout the Boise Valley. If your requirements include property management, leasing, real estate development, project planning, construction or space planning then look to us. The Sundance Company has more than 1.6 million square feet of office and industrial space available in prime locations in the Boise metropolitan area. More information is available at www.sundanceco.com or 208.322.7300.

The Sundance Company                                                               
Established in 1976, The Sundance Company has the experience to help you with your commercial real estate needs throughout the Boise Valley. If your requirements include property management, leasing, real estate development, project planning, construction or space planning then look to us. The Sundance Company has more than 1.6 million square feet of office and industrial space available in prime locations in the Boise metropolitan area. More information is available at www.sundanceco.com or 208.322.7300.

Here’s a list of technology tools that won’t drain your budget and will still help you stay efficient.

Listing Websites

The first relatively budget-friendly investment to consider is to create a branded listing website or to post your properties on a listing platform. Nowadays, it just doesn’t make sense to invest in other technologies if nobody can see your listings online. Plus, not having to be physically present for the initial office viewing is what your customers appreciate the most. Specifically, a branded listing website can:

• Enable you to introduce new listings to the public faster and more efficiently.
• Reduce the time your team spends on administrative tasks.
• Capture new leads from your listings directly into your CRM or deal management system (if you have one).
• Offer user-friendly property search features to your customers.

Сhat GPT

Chat GPT is an AI-based tool that has been making waves globally with its conversation-like AI capabilities. Even though it’s not yet widely adopted in real estate, it could relieve some of your basic (but time-consuming) tasks, such as:

• Writing descriptions for property listings.
• Generating text for social media posts.
• Creating marketing emails based on the information you feed into them.
• Creating detailed guides about specific neighborhoods.
• Drafting legal documents.
• Answering frequently asked questions.
• Doing complex calculations.

If you haven’t yet seen Chat GPT, create an account now. Then, start your conversation by asking it to write a listing for a two-bedroom, three-bathroom home in Boise. You’ll be amazed how quickly the bot will spit out an elegantly worded description.

CRM

Many real estate agents use Excel as their customer relationship management (CRM) technology. Granted, Excel is good at what it does, but only for industry beginners and small agencies with limited financial and human resources.

And, because Excel was not designed primarily as a collaborative platform — an environment in which the real estate industry thrives — savvy business owners use a real estate CRM, instead.

Although a full-fledged CRM is far more costly than Excel, investing in a CRM will allow you to:

• Organize the vast amount of data that real estate agents use.
• Store data about clients, deals, assets, tenants, partners, leases, deals, inquiries and commissions securely in one place without having to worry about data leaks.
• Automate half of the repetitive task in the real estate transaction process so you can focus on more important tasks.
• Begin strategic planning of follow-up and email campaigns with a systematic cadence.
• Track relationships between clients, contacts, properties, deals and more.

Tools for Data Management

Ideally, all real estate companies should have a CRM, but making such a significant investment upfront might not always be feasible. Alternatively, you might consider leveraging your data in a more intelligent way by using data management tools, which allow you to:

• Search for properties and contacts in databases with thousands of records.
• Provide a client with a list of properties based on specific search criteria (for example, X miles from city A; budget range; or year built).
• Filter and narrow the list that you’ll send to clients quickly and easily.
• Find targeted audiences for new properties that have an abundance of availability.
• Perform advanced searches of contacts for your targeted email campaigns.
• Identify prospects who require your attention.

Flyer Generation Tools

There are template-based real estate flyer generation tools that offer great DIY functionality at moderate prices. By investing in these, you’ll:

• Have access to a library of predefined templates for any type of document or marketing collateral.
• Generate presentation-ready reports with detailed property descriptions and photos in just a few clicks.
• Avoid manual input of property information and images by syncing these tools with your current systems.
• Create marketing brochures, various activity reports, and documents quickly and without external help.

Portions of this article originally appeared on Commercial Cafe website.

The Sundance Company                                                               
Established in 1976, The Sundance Company has the experience to help you with your commercial real estate needs throughout the Boise Valley. If your requirements include property management, leasing, real estate development, project planning, construction or space planning then look to us. The Sundance Company has more than 1.6 million square feet of office and industrial space available in prime locations in the Boise metropolitan area. More information is available at www.sundanceco.com or 208.322.7300.

The Sundance Company                                                               
Established in 1976, The Sundance Company has the experience to help you with your commercial real estate needs throughout the Boise Valley. If your requirements include property management, leasing, real estate development, project planning, construction or space planning then look to us. The Sundance Company has more than 1.6 million square feet of office and industrial space available in prime locations in the Boise metropolitan area. More information is available at www.sundanceco.com or 208.322.7300.

Filippo Incorvaia doesn’t know much about poultry. He’s a real estate broker, not a farmer.

To help a commercial client identify a possible warehouse distribution center, he would have to do hours of research on the poultry industry. But with the emergence of AI chatbot ChatGPT, the Miami-based Incorvaia says he can find what he needs to know within five minutes.

“That’s how I optimize my service and then take my expertise, take the knowledge that I have about this client or this customer, and provide the best result,” said Incorvaia, CEO of FI Real Estate Brokerage. “That’s what makes you a super broker, and with ChatGPT, ultimately everybody can be a super broker.”

Stories of such epiphanies are beginning to make the rounds in commercial real estate. Brokers are turning to the bot developed by artificial intelligence firm OpenAI to assist with everyday tasks. The free technology produces conversational answers to inquiries rather than responding to questions and scraping the internet for search results.

Gparency’s Ira Zlotowitz said that the bot will ultimately close the knowledge gap among brokers and further emphasize the importance of personal connections.

“ChatGPT is the brain in the room,” Zlotowitz said. “The only thing left is relationships. There’s no more knowledge needed because basically, you could feed it your business.”

Zlotowitz said that he is in the process of incorporating ChatGPT into Gparency. The goal is to provide customers with information such as property listings and bank lenders without having to call someone.

“Where I think it’s changing the business is there’s no such thing as an off-market deal that no one knew,” Zlotowitz said. “Everyone’s going to know everything.”

Olive Tree Ventures’ Jeremy Kaner said that he is seeing exciting technology in multifamily, a market that Olive Tree has invested in across the Midwest and Sun Belt.

“Everything from leasing chatbots to materials procurement, we’ve started to see this flow of technology, not to come in to fully replace employees, but just to make employees more efficient,” Kaner said. “We’re really on the precipice of seeing this revolutionizing real estate.”

However, ChatGPT is disconnected from the internet, which limits its knowledge of current events, and is frequently unavailable because too many people are on it. The bot reportedly had 1 million users in its first week. OpenAI has started piloting a paid version called ChatGPT Professional.

“When it gets plugged back in (to the internet) and gets all that data and all that knowledge that it learned from humankind, it will be really interesting to see how it evolves,” Incorvaia said. “It’s really remarkable.”

It’s unclear how widely the technology has permeated commercial real estate. Some firms, such as Savills and Marcus & Millichap, told The Real Deal they aren’t using it yet. CBRE declined to say whether it was using the chatbot for services. Other brokerages did not comment.

Current Real Estate Advisors’ Adam Henick said that neither his firm nor his clients have regularly employed ChatGPT, but he acknowledged that it is likely going to play a role in the future.

“I like to think that there are enough intricacies and unique things on everything that we deal with on a day-to-day basis that we’re not being replaced by robots just yet,” Henick said. “But there’s certainly a world for us to coexist at some point, so I am looking forward to understanding the technology more and seeing what it’s capable of and how it could benefit our business.”

Whether or not ChatGPT will lead to job cuts is the elephant in the room, but a common sentiment is that it will assist rather than replace real estate professionals. However, as attrition occurs, some tasks will be automated, said Olive Tree’s Ian Bel.

“Certainly, over time … there will be job elimination, but I don’t think it’s as horrible as a lot of people fear,” said Bel, whose firm is experimenting with ChatGPT. “It’s more about helping to make people really good at what they do and really focusing on the most impactful human judgment they can bring.”

Most observers agree that ChatGPT’s proliferation in commercial real estate is inevitable.

“The thing we can’t stop is technology,” Incorvaia said. “The genie is out of the bottle.”

Portions of this article originally appeared on The Real Deal website.

The Sundance Company                                                                
Established in 1976, The Sundance Company has the experience to help you with your commercial real estate needs throughout the Boise Valley. If your requirements include property management, leasing, real estate development, project planning, construction or space planning then look to us. The Sundance Company has more than 1.6 million square feet of office and industrial space available in prime locations in the Boise metropolitan area. More information is available at www.sundanceco.com or 208.322.7300.