As cities, buildings, things and people become more connected, less attention will be paid to what is connected and how, but what can be done with the data. Mobile, apps, M2M and trillions of data touch points between humans, objects and devices are about to change the way we live
analytics
Lots of companies talk about keeping customers satisfied, happy or even “delighted,” but a new study has dug deeper by measuring a range of emotions across tens of thousands of call-center conversations. The research makes some unsurprising findings (customers score interactions lowest when they feel anger, for example), along with
cloud services
Maharashtra, the largest state economy in India, has ambitious plans to quickly develop smart cities across the region and improve urban livability. Under a memorandum of understanding signed with Oracle, the government aims to create a Center of Excellence in Mumbai with the goal of finding ways to improve government-to-citizen
AI
Already a dominant force in customer relationship management, Salesforce is now laying claims to be the “world’s smartest CRM” with the launch of Einstein, its new artificial intelligence. Einstein, Salesforce says, not only adds new AI capabilities to its existing platform of applications for sales, service and marketing professionals…
Digital Leaders
In our next Digital Leaders spot we talk to Roland Schaar, CIO of Paysafe. Tell us a bit about yourself, your back ground and how you came to be where you are today. I am 45 years old, married and have four children aged 8 to 19 years old. I
AI
The Pasadena-based startup ObEN is hoping to out-Babel the Babel fish… except for speaking in any language rather than understanding any tongue. In the late Douglas Adams’ classic “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” the fictional Babel fish enabled users anywhere to understand any spoken language. The “small, yellow, leech-like”
API
What’s one of the greatest enablers of digital business today? APIs clearly have a critical role to play, as Google recently illustrated with its decision to acquire Apigee for $625 million. “APIs — the mechanism developers use to interface and integrate with outside apps and services — are vital for how
AI
More than a year ago, in the very early days of the electoral race for U.S. president, an artificial-intelligence startup called Emotient — since acquired by Apple — decided to have some fun and apply its facial-expression-analyzing, emotion-reading algorithms to the Republicans vying for the GOP nomination. The results? Ted Cruz
china
In today’s digital business era, it can be easy to slip into believing that customers around the world all want pretty much the same things. But that’s definitely not the case, as the recent departure of Uber from China illustrates. Uber’s decision to sell its China operations
customer experience
What does it take to turn an organization around from poor customer service to good… or at least better? Digital technologies and automation help, but part of the solution lies with things that are a lot less sexy, according to Forrester Research. In its latest assessment of how U.S.
enhanced reality
News stories about virtual-reality technologies often tend to focus on gaming and entertainment applications… and there’s no question the possibilities there are very cool. But, just as VR itself is in its earliest stages of development, so too is innovation in what VR can be used for. Other areas
algorithms
Automation, artificial intelligence and digital business get a lot of attention today as cutting-edge ways to improve customer service. But are they really as promising as they’re made out to be? Not according to the 11th annual Accenture Global Consumer Pulse Survey, released earlier this year after polling of