thomas.wieberneit@aheadcrm.co.nz
The vCon Reality Check: Moving Beyond Generative Hype to Actual Conversational Architecture

The vCon Reality Check: Moving Beyond Generative Hype to Actual Conversational Architecture

Welcome to Reality. Leave Your “AI Magic” at the Door. The AI hype train is moving at terminal velocity, but the tracks are missing. We have vendors pitching artificial general intelligence that will solve world peace, and executives panicking because they think a conversational wrapper around a large language model is a strategy. In the latest episode of CRMKonvos, Ralf sat down with Dan Miller, formerly of Opus Research to discuss something that actually matters: infrastructure. Specifically, we are talking about vCons, or Virtual Conversations. It is an IETF standard that threatens to finally bring architectural integrity to the chaotic mess we currently call conversational AI. TL;DR If you want to watch the full CRMKonvo, please go ahead here (optimized for smartphones) or here (optimized for tablets/computers). Else, be my guest and continue to read. Or do both … The “PDF Problem”: Why Your Call Recordings Are Useless For decades, the contact center has relied on the clunky mechanics of Automatic Call Distributors, green screen terminals, and audio recordings. As Dan rightly points out, a traditional call recording is essentially the conversational equivalent of a PDF. You get a static document or an audio file that you cannot easily manipulate, query, or extract meaningful context from. It captures one part of the conversation at a specific point in time, freezes it, and historically required overnight batch processing just to transcribe it for basic analytics. These days, we have swarms of AI agents acting on our behalf, yet the enterprise plumbing remains grossly neglected. You are trying to deliver a data stream simultaneously with historical information about that stream to...
Beyond GDPR: Is MyTerms the New Standard for Enforceable Personal Data Agreements?

Beyond GDPR: Is MyTerms the New Standard for Enforceable Personal Data Agreements?

The news IEE just released standard 7012-2025 for machine readable personal privacy terms, nicknamed MyTerms. MyTerms covers interactions and agreements between individuals and service providers they interact with on a network. It defines a way for personal privacy requirements to be expressed as standard-form contractual agreements.  MyTerms is intended to replace today’s “notice and consent” pattern with a standardized, machine-readable contract handshake between an individual and a service provider. The standard considers individuals true first parties who can proffer privacy terms as contractual terms, typically through an automated agent acting on their behalf. The system relies on a neutral, non-business entity that hosts a bounded set of standard-form privacy agreements. These agreements are designed to be understandable and usable in practice by humans and by machines. They must be available in plain-language human-readable form, maintain legally meaningful wording, and also exist in machine-readable structured formats with stable identifiers so software agents can select and process them reliably. When an individual, or their agent, proposes one of these agreements to a service provider, this service provider has a deliberately constrained set of responses to allow model scalability. The service provider may accept the proposed agreement, offer one alternative agreement from the same bounded roster, or reject the proposed agreement. The standard does not expect open-ended negotiation beyond that single alternative choice. If the service provider accepts, the agreement is recorded so that both sides retain matching, immutable copies, including contextual metadata such as time, date, and location, to support later retrieval, audits, and dispute resolution. In parallel, service providers are required to publicly disclose which of the standard agreements they...
A CRMKonvos fireworks – the crop of the year according to you

A CRMKonvos fireworks – the crop of the year according to you

The other day, I had a look at my blog, checking the articles that resonated with you most in 2023. Today, I’d like to do the same for my YouTube channel, CRMKonvos. Shameless plug – any new subscriber is cordially welcomed – it means a lot to us. “Us” means my colleagues Ralf Korb and Marshall Lager, and I. We run this channel as a joint endeavor. CRMKonvos are all about fun and friendly one hour conversations with one or more live expert guest about a topic in the wider area of – you guessed correctly – CRM. Of course, this includes related topics, e.g., it is virtually impossible to talk CRM or CX without touching AI. They are streamed to LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, and X. In addition, we actively encourage our audience to engage with our guest and us. Again, any new subscriber is more than appreciated. If I am not totally off, you can subscribe by just clicking this link. But now, what are the CRMKonvos that resonated most with you? Which ones received the most views?  Of course, we do not want to get the beans spilled immediately, so let’s start with the fifth place. Culture is the most enduring form of capital. This is a conversation I had with Zoho’s Chief Strategy Officer Vijay Sundaram about why a great corporate culture makes all the difference, how it contributes to success and why and how Zoho’s culture is different from that of most other companies. The fourth place is taken by an ISP’s journey with Zoho One. This is an interview with Amit Rai, Chief HR Officer of Tata Fiber. Amit has overseen the implementation...
Browsing in privacy with Ulaa? Here’s why!

Browsing in privacy with Ulaa? Here’s why!

During Zoho’s signature event Zoholics in Austin, the company announced the availability of Ulaa, the new Zoho web browser. Of course, Ulaa does have a meaning. It is a Tamil word that means journey or path. Tamil is the language spoken in Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu, where Zoho’s HQ is situated. Similar to Safari or Internet Explorer it signifies that the web is about discovery. Ulaa is a privacy orientated webbrowser that is based on Google’s Chromium engine. It has been built specifically to help users protect their online privacy by offering capabilities to block tracking and website surveillance. According to a study by YouGov, this  is something that two thirds of consumers want, as they feel that tech companies have too much control over their personal data. The 2022 Norton Cyber Safety Insights Report Special Release – Online Creeping even found that globally, 85 percent of internet users want to do more to protect their privacy, while 80 percent say that they are concerned about data privacy. Almost 70 percent say that they are more alarmed than ever. So, there is clearly a case for privacy-oriented browsers, also one more browser, as there are already some existing ones, like Brave or DuckDuckGo, even Safari. We had the chance to talk to Tejas Gadhia, Zoho evangelist in charge of Ulaa about the rationale behind Zoho developing a web browser and what the future will bring. You can watch the full interview here. Why did Zoho build a browser? According to Tejas, there hasn’t been much innovation in the browser market lately. Some browsers came, like Brave or DuckDuckGo, and went (TOR, anybody?),...
Why privacy is not an option

Why privacy is not an option

Data breaches, ransomware, stolen identities, collecting of data for no benefit of the customer, are only some of the things that we do see every day. There does not seem to be any privacy anymore. This makes privacy and data protection hot topics not only for customers, but also for software vendors – or at least should make it hot topics. Apple put in some privacy controls and got chided for it by Facebook and the rest of the adtech industry. Google, with FLOC, tried to establish a technology that aimed at being able to track users in a post cookie world. To adapt a quote of the Asterix books: The whole world tracks users and customers. The whole world? No, there is one brave company that doesn’t. All this is reason enough to have a #CRMKonvo with one of the most accomplished and outspoken protagonists of privacy in the enterprise software arena and we were very excited about the opportunity to have an intense and interactive discussion with Raju Vegesna of...