By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD Several years ago, I set up a Website for a local nonprofit organization that I helped. I registered three domain names for it: the main one, with two alternatives. The first ended with .org (as did one of the alternates). I also registered the .com version of their main domain […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. With the Millennial generation’s love for texting and general avoidance of placing a phone call, it’s tempting to project the demise of the call center. Although this may make for a logical conclusion, it’s not going to happen any time soon. Though tomorrow’s healthcare call center will undoubtedly have more […]
Presented at the 2017 Grand Rapids WordCamp Hi, I’m Peter DeHaan. Here’s a little bit of information about me. I’m a published writer. I’m a passionate blogger. I’ve written about 2,200 blog posts for myself and about 500 for other people. I’m a commercial freelance writer, a magazine and newsletter publisher, and a WordPress fan. […]
A simple word of encouragement can mean a lot to a writer As a person who uses words to make a living, words have a great impact on me. The words of others have encouraged me—and discouraged me. Even the lack of words, the things left unsaid, can have a powerful effect—a negative effect. The […]
What Is Your First Thought? By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD Being the slightly cynical person that I am, my initial reaction is that someone is trying to dupe me with a marketing tactic. I suspect that nothing substantive has been changed, but lacking anything substantial to proclaim, they fall back on trumpeting that their product […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD Bots, sometimes called chatbots, are applications used to automate responses to social media and online inquiries. The purpose of bots is to speed answers to customer information requests. And they do this automatically. They’re programs, after all. They can do in seconds what it might take a person minutes to […]
Remember that we write for people and not computer algorithms People have different opinions as to the ideal length of a blog post. When I first started blogging almost ten years ago, I heard you needed at least 200 words for search engines to be able to learn enough information about your post to categorize […]
Celebrate the benefits of using your voice to produce your first draft A couple of years ago I heard about authors using dictation to write the first draft of their books. Although intrigued by the idea of using speech-to-text software to write, I dismissed it as impractical. However, as more and more writers extolled the […]
Categories
So, You’re Being Acquired
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD Most employees fear the changes wrought by acquisition. I have never been “acquired,” but I have been on the other side—about a dozen times, buying small and medium-sized companies and integrating them into a larger operation. The almost universal response to an acquisition announcement is trepidation and panic. Staff, especially […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD As the telephone answering service industry continues to consolidate amid a sellers’ market, it leaves many wondering what the future looks like as they contemplate their long-term strategy. There are three general scenarios that apply to most situations: buy, sell, or stay. Buy Some large players, both from outside the […]