Category Archives for "ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE"

People buy experiences, not products

At Adobe Summit 2018, Adobe EVP and GM for digital experience Brad Rencher challenged brand marketers to “make experience your business.”  2018 was the year when marketers, chief experience officers, and leaders across business organizations, started to get it that people buy experiences, not products.

Rencher asserted that while the good folks at Adobe have spent a ton of time thinking about the types of experience customers want and need, he said, “. . . we need to change from experience thinkers to experience makers. We need to be customer-obsessed, not customer-centric.”

Okay, now that sounds good. Being customer-obsessed means you are REALLY serious about it, right? To the point of being a little crazy about it. And that’s probably a good thing in most cases. 

But here’s the thing: you have to ask yourself, what are you really obsessed about? How do you know what that is? Do you know your customer that well? How do you know if you do or not? Do you talk with each of your customers every day to know? 

Now you are probably saying, of course not. How could I possibly do that?

The typical answers are: with standard VoC surveys or more targeted methods like feedback from your frontline employees. Yes, they work to some extent, but can they scale? Do they cover the waterfront? 

So how do you know your customer so well you are totally aligned with them and their experience of you is totally aligned with their business life?

You get to know that with intelligent software agents. You know, the chatbot—conversational commerce, some people call it. But that term cheapens and discounts the true potential of these intelligent software agents. It’s the conversation that counts, where you learn in real-time and first hand through the chatbot what is on your customer’s mind, what propels them to do the things they do and you will learn exactly how they are experiencing your company. Not just your customer service, or your products, your services, but experiencing your company within every facet of their business. 

These software intelligent agents, these chatbots, are the conversation conductors for the artificial intelligence that takes that information and transforms it for the enterprise so that the humans at the enterprise make intelligent choices on behalf of their customers. AI gets at least 10 times the information and does this at least 10 times faster than humans, empowering the human in your business to do the human things they need to do, and not the things that machines do better. 

That is the opportunity in this new world where people buy experiences, not products. 

Consider Machine Intelligence for Piloting Your Business

A Price Waterhouse Coopers team led by Chris Curran tracked emerging technologies and chose eight as essential for the enterprise in 2020.

First is Artificial Intelligence, followed by Augmented Reality, Blockchain, Drones, Internet of Things, Robots, Virtual Reality, and 3D Printing.

For the B2B Media Executive, a solid understanding of the basics starts with AI.

Artificial Intelligence is an umbrella term often used to cover subfields like machine learning, but there is a difference. In fact, cognitive computing, AI, machine learning, and deep learning all can be described as machine intelligence.

Cognitive computing is the sensory branch of sensory intelligence. Computers use sensors and algorithms to see, hear, and feel, bringing human capabilities to computers so they think, behave, and act like humans.

AI is the brain behind cognitive computing. AI brings decision-making capabilities to computers, which we experience every day in the form of recommendation engines—think Netflix and Amazon—chatbots, and self-driving cars.

Now, machine learning requires massive amounts of data to recognize patterns and make predictions.

Businesses are using the predictive aspects of machine learning to improve customer service, security and business efficiencies.

And finally, deep learning uses neural science to mimic the physiology and function of the human brain, takes machine learning and applies the way a human brain thinks. Deep learning is the most advanced form of machine learning and is becoming the preferred way to train computers.

Knowing what Machine intelligence is doing for business is more than looking smart at your next social gathering. It’s essential to piloting your business into the future.

On solving the industry-specific problem as a Vertical AI startup with AI and subject matter expertise

Again and again, we’ve been revisiting this article by Bradford Cross and the embedded video of his talk at Data and Scale By the Bay, Vertical AI startups: Solving Industry-specific Problems by Combining AI and Subject Matter Expertise

I was reminded of the article recently when I talked with Greg Head of Scaling Point. Greg stressed starting with the need first, not the tech/software first. This is what Cross talks about with vertical AI and why AI startups should focus on providing a full-stack, fully-integrated solution to the end customer problem. Not only is this defensible, but you also control the “data value chain” and have pricing power.

So what are Vertical AI startups? As Cross says, they are full-stack products that require subject matter expertise, they gather unique, proprietary data from that domain, and then they use AI to deliver that core value proposition for that particular domain.