AI and Bots will kill our Future – Or Not
After the Hype 2016 has been the year of bots, AI, and automation the beginning of 2017 seems to be the time of looking at wider implications. There is a lot of discussion going on in academia, politics, and on the web, e.g. the one spurred by Denis Pombriant with a very readable article, and two follow-ups here and here, in November and December 2016. Denis, supported by Vinnie Mirchandani, took a very optimistic stance – something that is highly important in times of simplification and pessimism. There is no doubt in my mind that technologies that are driven by artificial intelligence can have a tremendous benefit for both, companies and organizations, as well as consumers. Consumer technology like Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri, generally intelligent home automation, self driving cars, etc., can simplify peoples’ lives tremendously by taking away routine activities or making it just easier to execute them. Organizations can create improved customer and employee experiences via automating existing processes, and they could create entirely new experiences using technology – doing things more effectively. Opportunities to do so can be found within the complete value chain. Automation also serves the aspect of doing the same, or more, at less cost, i.e. more efficiently. And in the last point lies a catch. This means that less people are needed to deliver on an amount of work. This means less employed people and, on a first view, more unemployment. This means less disposable income. Because advances in technology have the tendency to benefit only a few, which are those who deliver the automation systems and those who are able...
Ocean Medallion – Which Customer Problem Does it Solve?
A few years ago Disney embarked on a massive customer experience journey that included the introduction of a ‘Magic Band’. Disney at that time followed (and likely still does) an idea that can be paraphrased as looking at everything through the eyes of the customer and pay attention to all details. During his 2016 CRM Evolution opening keynote Dennis Snow explained this concept and implementation in depth (see also my earlier CRM Evolution post). Dennis talked about the Disney way of creating great customer experiences, which basically follows three simple rules Design your processes with the customer in mind, not with internal/operational priorities; look through the lens of the customer Pay attention to details Create little “Wow Moments”. These add up to a lasting great experience and are easier to achieve than single “big” experiences. To me the most important message that Dennis conveyed is that the simple things and consistency are what matters. Consistently provide little experiences throughout the customer life cycle. He underpinned this with some examples from the ‘ordeal’ of getting out of the park and back into the hotel. Everybody is exhausted, kids may be edgy, riding the bus is usually not fun. What about the bus driver singing some songs or doing a little trivia? The rooms showing some little surprise, like specially folded towels? Another of his core messages was that a company gets loyalty and advocacy only by creating those “wow” moments mentioned above. For this to be effective, however, it must not fail at base priorities. Customer expectations can get mapped to a pyramid. Every customer expects accuracy and availability. These...
AI and Machinelearning in 2017 – What to Expect
2016 has been the year of Artificial Intelligence and machinelearning. With the year being almost at an end, let me chime in to the gang of pundits who venture into prediction land and pronounce what we get out of our glass balls. So here are my 5 plus 2 bonus ones. AI gets mainstream in Consumer Environments Alexa paved the way, the Google Assistant is on its heels, Microsoft Cortana wants to get there, too – and Apple, amazingly, is a late starter in this environment. Amazon started with a pretty smart strategy by not overselling the capabilities of its underlying AI, as Apple did with Siri, which caused some grief for Apple and some laughs for many people around. More and more helpful Alexa skills are developed and implemented that improve its usefulness. Similarly Google; they started late but are in the game now, too – following a different strategy of adding new functionality by just making it available in contrast to Amazon, who opt to have users individually enable ‘skills’. Identification of what these systems can do will be an interesting question. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg created a butler for his house, who he calls Jarvis, like the one of Tony Stark in the Ironman movies. Google recently based its translation engine on machinelearning and AI, seeing vastly improved translations. Facebook’s translations base on an AI, too – although this one still seems to have a lot to learn. Not to mention all the countless other consumer services Google has, that utilize machinelearning and AIs in the background. Two of the main developments to look at here are...